“Unfortunately,” said Coghlan, “that just couldn’t happen. I didn’t know the address myself, until a week before I moved.”
“I am aware that it could not happen,” said Ghalil painedly. “My point is that it did.”
“You’re saying,” objected Coghlan, “that somebody had information three weeks before it existed!”
Ghalil made a wry face. “That is a masterpiece of understatement—”
“It is madness!” said Duval hoarsely. “It is lunacy! Ce n’est pas logique! Be so kind, M. Coghlan, as to regard the rest of the page!”
Coghlan pulled off the clips that held the police-department letterhead over the top of the parchment page, and immediately wondered if his hair was really standing on end. There was writing there. He saw words in faded, unbelievably ancient ink. It was modern English script. The handwriting was as familiar to Coghlan as his own—
Which it was. It said!
See Thomas Coghlan, 750 Fatima, Istanbul.
Professor, President, so what?
Gadget at 80 Hosain, second floor, back room.
Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.
Underneath, his fingerprints remained visible.
Coghlan stared at the sheet. He found his glass and gulped at it. On more mature consideration, he drained it. The situation seemed to call for something of the sort.
There was silence in the room, save for the drowsy sounds of the night outside. They were not all drowsy, at that. There were voices, and somewhere a radio emitted that nasal masculine howling which to the Turkish ear is music. Uninhibited taxicabs, an unidentifiable jingling, an intonation of speech, all made the sound that of Istanbul and no other place on earth. Moreover, they were the sounds of Istanbul at nightfall.
Duval was still. Ghalil looked at Coghlan and was silent. And Coghlan stared at the sheet of ancient parchment.
He faced the completely inexplicable, and he had to accept it. His name and present address—no puzzle, if Ghalil simply lied. The line about Laurie’s father, Mannard, implied that he was in danger of some sort; but it didn’t mean much because of its vagueness. The line referring to another address, 80 Hosain, and a “gadget” was wholly without any meaning at all. But the line about “professor, president”—that hit hard.
It was what Coghlan told himself whenever he thought of Laurie. He was a mere instructor in physics. As such, it would not be a good idea for him to ask Laurie to marry him. In time he might become a professor. Even then it would not be a good idea to ask the daughter of an umpty-millionaire to marry him. In more time, with the breaks, he might become a college president—the odds were astronomically against it, but it could happen. Then what? He’d last in that high estate until a college board of trustees decided that somebody else might be better at begging for money. All in all, then, too darned few prospects to justify his ever asking Laurie to marry him—only an instructor, with a professorship the likely peak of his career, and a presidency of a college something almost unimaginable. So, when Coghlan thought of Laurie, he said sourly to himself, “Professor, president, so what?” And was reminded not to yield to any inclination to be romantic.
But he had not said that four-word phrase to anybody on earth. He was the only human being to whom it would mean anything at all. It was absolute proof that he, Thomas Coghlan, had written those words. But he hadn’t.
He swallowed.
“That’s my handwriting,” he said carefully, “and I have to suppose that I wrote it. But I have no memory of doing so. I’ll be much obliged if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
Duval burst into frantic speech.
“That is what I have come to demand of you, M. Coghlan! I have been a sane man! I have been a student of the Byzantine empire and its history! I am an authority upon it! But this— modern English, written when there was no modern English? Arabic numerals, when Arabic numerals of that form were unknown? House-numbers when they did not exist, and the city of Istanbul when there was no city of that name on Earth? I could not rest! M. Coghlan, I demand of you—what is the meaning of this?”
Coghlan looked again at the faded brown writing on the parchment. Duval abruptly collapsed, buried his face in his hands. Ghalil carefully crushed out his cigarette. He waited.
Coghlan stood up with a certain deliberation.
“I think we can do with another drink.”
He gathered up the glasses and left the room, but he did not find that his mind grew any clearer. He found himself wishing that Duval and Ghalil had never been born, to bring a puzzle like this into his life. He hadn’t written that message—but nobody else could have. And it was written.
It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the message referred to, or what he should do about it.
He went back into the living-room with the refilled glasses. Duval still sat with his head in his hands. Ghalil had another cigarette going, was regarding its ash with an expression of acute discomfort. Coghlan put down the drinks.
“I don’t see how anyone else could have written that message,” he observed, “but I don’t remember writing it myself, and I’ve no idea what it means. Since you brought it, you must have some idea.”
“No,” said Ghalil. “My first question was the only sane one I can ask. Have you been traveling in the thirteenth century? I gather that you have not. I even feel that you have no plans of the sort.”
“At least no plans,” agreed Coghlan, with irony. “I know of nowhere I am less likely to visit.”
Ghalil waved his cigarette, and the ash fell off.
“As a police officer, there is a mention of someone to be killed; possibly murdered. That makes it my affair. As a student of philosophy it is surely my affair! In both police work and in philosophy it is sometimes necessary to assume the absurd, in order to reason toward the sensible. I would like to do so.”
“By all means!” said Coghlan dryly.
“At the moment, then,” said Ghalil, with a second wave of his cigarette, “you have as yet no anticipation of any attempt to murder Mr. Mannard. You have no scar upon your thumb, nor any expectation of one. And the existence of—let us say—a ‘gadget’ at 80 Hosain is not in your memory. Right?”
“Quite right,” admitted Coghlan.
“Now if you are to acquire the scar,” observed Ghalil, “you will make—or have made, I must add—those fingerprints at some time in the future, when you will know of danger to Mr. Mannard, and of a gadget at 80 Hosain. This—“
“Ce n’est pas logique!” protested Duval bitterly.
“But it is logic,” said Ghalil calmly. “The only flaw is that it is not common sense. Logically, then, one concludes that at some time in the future, Mr. Coghlan will know these things and will wish to inform himself, in what is now the present, of them. He will wish—perhaps next week—to inform himself today that there is danger to Mr. Mannard and that there is something of significance at 80 Hosain, on the second floor in the back room. So he will do so. And this memorandum on the fly-leaf of this very ancient book will be the method by which he informs himself.”
Coghlan said, “But you don’t believe that!”
“I do not admit that I believe it,” said Ghalil with a smile. “But I think it would be wise to visit 80 Hosain. I cannot think of anything else to do!”
“Why not tell Mannard about all this?” asked Coghlan dryly.
“He would think me insane,” said the Turk, just as dryly. “And with reason. In fact, I suspect it myself.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Coghlan, “for what it’s worth. I’m having dinner with him and with his daughter tonight. It will make small talk at least.” He looked at his watch. “I really should be leaving now.”