He stood back. He brushed plaster dust off his fingers.
“That’s all we can do without more apparatus. Now—”
He picked up the alnico magnet and moved it across all the cleared space. An oblong pattern of silveriness appeared at the nearest part of the wet place to the magnet. It followed the magnet. It followed the magnet to the edge, and ran abruptly off into nothingness as the magnet passed an invisible boundary.
“At a guess,” said Coghlan thoughtfully, “this is the ghost, if you want to call it that, of what the ancients thought was a magic mirror—to look into the future with. Right, Duval?”
Duval said tensely:
“It is true that all through the middle ages alchemists wrote of and labored to make magic mirrors, as you say.”
“Maybe this one started the legend,” said Coghlan.
“The flashlight battery’s getting weak—” Ghalil’s voice from the darkness.
“We need better light and more apparatus,” said Coghlan. “I doubt if we can do any more before morning.”
His manner was matter-of-fact, but inside he felt oddly numb. His thumb stung a little. The cut had been irritated by plaster dust and by the soot that got into it when Ghalil took a fresh thumbprint to show Mannard. In the last analysis, he’d cut his thumb investigating the ghost of a gadget because presently he must write a memorandum and have it delivered yesterday, which memo would be the cause of the discovery of the ghost of a—
He felt the stirring about him as the others made ready to leave. He heard Mannard say irritably:
“I don’t get this! It’s preposterous!”
“Quite so,” said Ghalil, “so we shall have to be very careful. My Moslem ancestors had a saying that the fate of every man was writ upon his forehead. I hope, Mr. Mannard, that your fate is not writ upon the sheepskin page I showed you just now.”
“But what’s it all about?” demanded Mannard. “Who’s back of it? What’s back of it?”
Ghalil sighed, voicing a shrug.
They descended the stairs. The dark, narrow, twisty street outside looked ominous. Ghalil opened the door of the waiting police-car. He said to Mannard, in a sort of humorous abandonment of reason:
“Unfortunately, Mr. Coghlan was—or has not yet been—very specific in the memorandum which began this series of events. He said only—” he repeated the last line of Coghlan’s handwriting in the sheepskin book—” ‘Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.’“ Mannard said bitterly: “That’s specific enough!”
He and Laurie and Coghlan got into the back of the car. Lieutenant Ghalil climbed into the front seat, beside the driver. The car’s motor roared as it got the car into motion.
“Your message, when you do write it, Mr. Coghlan,” he said over his shoulder as the car moved toward a bend in the winding alleyway, “will be purposefully unclear. It is as if you will know that a clear message would prevent what you will wish to have happened. Thus it appears that you will write that message to bring about exactly what has already happened and will continue to happen up to the moment you write it—”
Then he snapped an explosive Turkish word to the driver. The driver jammed on the brakes. The car came to a screaming stop.
“One moment,” said Ghalil politely.
He got out of the car. He looked at something in the headlight beams. He touched it very cautiously. He waved the car back, and whistled shrilly. Men came running from the house they had just left. Ghalil spoke crisply, in Turkish. They bent over the object on the cobbles of the lane. The flashlight beams seemed insufficient and they struck matches. Presently Ghalil and a policeman picked up the thing gingerly and moved it with exquisite care to the side of the alley. They put it down against a wall. There Ghalil knelt and examined it again by the light of other matches.
He got up and brushed off his hands. He came back to the cam, got in. He spoke to the driver in Turkish and the car moved on again, more slowly. At the next curve it barely crawled.
“What was that?” demanded Mannard.
Lieutenant Ghalil hesitated.
“I fear it was another attempt upon your life,” he said apologetically. “A bomb. My men did not see it placed because of the many curves in the street.”
For a short while there were only breathing sounds in the car. The car came to a slightly wider highway and moved more swiftly. Presently Ghalil went on:
“I was saying, Mr. Mannard, that when Mr. Coghlan writes the memorandum we showed him yesterday, he will wish things to happen exactly as they will have happened. For that reason he will not be explicit in his message. He will not mention rifle-shots or bombs, times or locales. Knowing this, I trust that you will survive until the affair is concluded. I am making every effort to bring it about.”
Coghlan found his voice. He said savagely:
“But you can’t risk lives on crazy reasoning like that!”
“I am taking every sane precaution,” Ghalil said tiredly. “Among them, I shall ask you to remain at the Hotel Petra tonight, with my men guarding you as well as Mr. Mannard and Miss Mannard.”
“If there’s any risk to her, I’m certainly staying!” growled Coghlan.
The car emerged into still wider streets. There were more people about, now. Here, in the modern section, all lights were electric. Here were motion-picture theatres, and motor-cars, and people in wholly European dress instead of the compromises between Eastern and Western costume to be found in the poorer quarters. The Hotel Petra loomed up, impressively illuminated.
The police-car stopped before it. Ghalil got out and looked casually about him. A lounger, nearby, signalled inconspicuously. Ghalil nodded. The lounger moved away. Ghalil opened the car door for the others to emerge.
“I impose myself upon you also,” he said politely. “I shall stay on watch until affairs mature.”
They entered the lobby, went toward the lift, only slightly reassured by bustle and bright lights. Coghlan said suddenly:
“Where’s Duval? He’s in this too!”
“He remains at 80 Hosain,” said Ghalil briefly. “Poor man! He is wedded to logic and in love with the past. He is sorely tempted to a crime of passion! But I have left men with him.”
They crowded into the lift. It rose. There was a man polishing woodwork in the hall outside Mannard’s suite. He looked like an hotel employee, but nodded to Lieutenant Ghalil.
“One of my men,” the Turk said. “All is well so far. There are other guards.”
They went into the suite. Mannard looked definitely grim. “I’m going to order something to eat,” he told Ghalil. “It’s nearly ten o’clock, and we all missed dinner. But we’re going to get this thing thrashed out! I want some straight talk! If that’s the truth about somebody leaving a bomb on the street—and if gadgets have ghosts—”
He was in a state of mind in which consecutive thought was not easy. There were too many inexplicables, too many tag ends of fact. From Coghlan’s tale of an impossible book with an impossible message—which Mannard had seen now—to a preposterous shot smashing a coffee-cup to keep him from drinking an incredibly poisoned drink, and to a physical phenomenon of frost without refrigeration and a look of silvery metal which was not matter . . .
Mannard was an engineer. He was hard-headed. He was prepared to face anything which was fact, and worry about theory afterward. But he was not able to adjust to so many facts at once, each of them contradicting any reasonable theory. He looked at once irritable and dogged and a little frightened.
“When I try to think this thing over, I don’t believe even what I tell myself!” he said angrily. “Things happen, and I believe ‘em while they’re happening, but they don’t make any damned sense afterward!”