The Gadget Had a Ghost

THE GADGET HAD A GHOST BY MURRAY LEINSTER

I

THIS was Istanbul, and the sounds of the city—motor-cars and clumping donkeys, the nasal cries of peddlers and the distant roar of a jet-plane somewhere over the city—came muted through the windows of Coghlan’s flat. It was already late dusk, and Coghlan had just gotten back from the American College, where he taught physics. He relaxed in his chair and waited. He was to meet Laurie later, at the Hotel Petra on the improbably-named Grande Rue de Petra, and hadn’t too much time to spare; but he was intrigued by the unexpected guests he had found waiting for him when he arrived. Duval, the Frenchman, haggard and frantic with impatience; Lieutenant Ghalil, calm and patient and impressive in the uniform of the Istanbul Police Department. Ghalil had introduced himself with perfect courtesy and explained that he had come with M. Duval to ask for information which only Mr. Coghlan, of the American College, could possibly give.

They were now in Coghlan’s sitting-room. They held the iced drinks which were formal hospitality. Coghlan waited.

“I am afraid,” said Lieutenant Ghalil, wryly, “that you will think us mad, Mr. Coghlan.”

Duval drained his glass and said bitterly, “Surely I am mad! It cannot be otherwise!”

Coghlan raised sandy eyebrows at them. The Turkish lieutenant of police shrugged. “I think that what we wish to ask, Mr. Coghlan, is: Have you, by any chance, been visiting the thirteenth century?”

Coghlan smiled politely. Duval made an impatient gesture. “Pardon, M. Coghlan! I apologize for our seeming insanity. But that is truly a serious question!”

This time Coghlan grinned. “Then the answer’s ‘No.’ Not lately. You evidently are aware that I teach physics at the College. My course turns out graduates who can make electrons jump through hoops, you might say, and the better students can snoop into the private lives of neutrons. But fourth-dimension stuff—you refer to time-travel I believe—is out of my line.”

Lieutenant Ghalil sighed. He began to unwrap the bulky parcel that sat on his lap. A book appeared. It was large, more than four inches thick, and its pages were sheepskin. Its cover was heavy, ancient leather—so old that it was friable—and inset in it were deeply-carved ivory medallions. Coghlan recognized the style. They were Byzantine ivory-carvings, somewhat battered, done in the manner of the days before Byzantium became successively Constantinople and Stamboul and Istanbul.

“An early copy,” observed Ghalil, “of a book called the Alexiad, by the Princess Anna Commena, from the thirteenth century I mentioned. Will you be so good as to look, Mr. Coghlan?”

He opened the volume very carefully and handed it to Coghlan. The thick, yellowed pages were covered with those graceless Greek characters which—without capitals or divisions between words or any punctuation or paragraphing—were the text of books when they had just ceased to be written on long strips and rolled up on sticks. Coghlan regarded it curiously.

“Do you by any chance read Byzantine Greek?” asked the Turk hopefully.

Coghlan shook his head. The police lieutenant looked depressed. He began to turn pages, while Coghlan held the book. The very first page stood up stiffly. There was brown, crackled adhesive around its edge, evidence that at some time it had been glued to the cover and lately had been freed. The top half of the formerly hidden sheet was now covered by a blank letterhead of the Istanbul Police Department clipped in place by modern metal paperclips. On the uncovered part of the page, the bottom half, there were five brownish smudges that somehow looked familiar. Four in a row, and a larger one beneath them. Lieutenant Ghalil offered a pocket magnifying-glass.

“Will you examine?” he asked.

Coghlan looked. After a moment he raised his head.

“They’re fingerprints,” he agreed. “What of it?”

Duval stood up and abruptly began to pace up and down the room, as if filled with frantic impatience. Lieutenant Ghalil drew a deep breath.

“I am about to say the absurd,” he said ruefully. “M. Duval came upon this book in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. It has been owned by the library for more than a hundred years. Before, it was owned by the Comptes de Huisse, who in the sixteenth century were the patrons of a man known as Nostradamus. But the book itself is of the thirteenth century. Written and bound in Byzantium. In the Bibliotheque National, M. Duval observed that a leaf was glued tightly. He loosened it. He found those fingerprints and—other writing.”

Coghlan said, “Most interesting,” thinking that he should be leaving for his dinner engagement with Laurie and her father.

“Of course,” said the police officer, “M. Duval suspected a hoax. He had the ink examined chemically, then spectroscopically. But there could be no doubt. The fingerprints were placed there when the book was new. I repeat, there can be no doubt!”

Coghlan had no inkling of what was to come. He said, puzzledly:

“Fingerprinting is pretty modem stuff. So I suppose it’s remarkable to find prints so old. But—”

Duval, pacing up and down the room, uttered a stifled exclamation. He stopped by Coghlan’s desk. He played feverishly with a wooden-handled Kurdish dagger that Coghlan used as a letter-opener, his eyes a little wild.

Lieutenant Ghalil said resignedly:

“The fingerprints are not remarkable, Mr. Coghlan. They are impossible. I assure you that, considering their age alone, they are quite impossible! And that is so small, so trivial an impossibility compared to the rest! You see, Mr. Coghlan, those fingerprints are yours!”

While Coghlan sat, staring rather intently at nothing at all, the Turkish lieutenant of police brought out a small fingerprint pad, the kind used in up-to-date police departments. No need for ink. One presses one’s fingers on the pad and the prints develop of themselves.

“If I may show you—”

Coghlan let him roll the tips of his fingers on the glossy top sheet of the pad. It was a familiar enough process. Coghlan had had his fingerprints taken when he got his passport for Turkey, and again when he registered as a resident-alien with the Istanbul Police Department. The Turk offered the magnifying glass again. Coghlan studied the thumbprint he had just made. After a moment’s hesitation, he compared it with the thumbprint on the sheepskin. He jumped visibly. He checked the other prints, one by one, with increasing care and incredulity.

Presently he said in the tone of one who does not believe his own words: “They—they do seem to be alike! Except for—”

“Yes,” said Lieutenant Ghalil. “The thumbprint on the sheepskin shows a scar that your thumb does not now have. But still it is your fingerprint—that and all the others. It is both philosophically and mathematically impossible for two sets of fingerprints to match unless they come from the same hand!”

“These do,” observed Coghlan.

Duval muttered unhappily to himself. He put down the Kurdish knife and paced again. Ghalil shrugged.

“M. Duval observed the prints,” he explained, “quite three months ago—the prints and the writing. It took him some time to be convinced that the matter was not a hoax. He wrote to the Istanbul Police to ask if their records showed a Thomas Coghlan residing at 750 Fatima. Two months ago!”

Coghlan jumped again. “Where’d he get that address?”

“You will see,” said the Turk. “I repeat that this was two months ago! I replied that you were registered, but not at that address. He wrote again, forwarding a photograph of part of that sheepskin page and asking agitatedly if those were your fingerprints. I replied that they were, save for the scar on the thumb. And I added, with lively curiosity, that two days previously you had removed to 750 Fatima—the address M. Duval mentioned a month previously.”