Lieutenant Ghalil rose politely. Duval took his head from his hands and stood up also, looking more haggard now than at the beginning of the talk. Something occurred to Coghlan.
“Tell me,” he said curiously, “M. Duval, when you first found this book, what made you loosen a glued-down page?”
Duval spread out his hands. Ghalil turned back the cover again, and put the fly-leaf flat. On what had been the visible side there was a note, a gloss, of five or six lines. It was in an informal sort of Greek lettering, and unintelligible to Coghlan. But, judging by its placement, it was a memo by some previous owner of the book, rather than any contribution of the copyist.
“My translator and M. Duval agree,” observed Ghalil. “They say it says, ‘This book has traveled to the frigid Beyond and returned, bearing writing of the adepts who ask news of Appolonius.’ I do not know what that means, nor did M. Duval, but he searched for other writings. When he saw a page glued down, he loosened it—and you know what has resulted.”
Coghlan said vexedly, “I wouldn’t know what an adept is, and I can hardly guess what a frigid beyond is, or a warm one either. But I do know an Appolonius. I think he’s a Greek, but he calls himself a Neoplatonist as if that were a nationality, and says he hails from somewhere in Arabia. He’s trying to get Mannard to finance some sort of political shenanigan. But he wouldn’t be referred to. Not seven centuries ago!”
“You were,” said Ghalil. “And Mr. Mannard. And 80 Hosain. I think M. Duval and myself will investigate that address and see if it solves the mystery or deepens it.”
Duval suddenly shook his head.
“No,” he said with a sort of pathetic violence. “This affair is not possible! To think of it invites madness! Mr. Coghlan, let us thrust all this from our minds! Let us abandon it! I ask your pardon for my intrusion. I had hoped to find an explanation which could be believed. I abandon the hope and the attempt. I shall go back to Paris and deny to myself that any of this has ever taken place!”
Coghlan did not believe him, said nothing.
“I hope,” said Ghalil mildly, “that you may reconsider.” He moved toward the door with the Frenchman in tow. “To abandon all inquiry at this stage would be suicidal!”
Coghlan said:
“Suicidal?”
“For one,” admitted Ghalil, ruefully, “I should die of curiosity!”
He waved his hand and went out, pushing Duval. And Coghlan began to dress for his dinner with Laurie and her father at the Hotel Petra. But as he dressed, his forehead continually creased into a scowl of somehow angry puzzlement.
II
All the taxicabs of Istanbul are driven by escaped maniacs whom the Turkish police inexplicably leave at large. The cab in which Coghlan drove toward the Hotel Petra was driven by a man with very dark skin and very white teeth and a conviction that the fate of every pedestrian was determined by Allah and he did not have to worry about them. His cab was equipped with an unusually full-throated horn, and fortunately he seemed to love the sound of it. So Coghlan rode madly through narrow streets in which foot-passengers seemed constantly to be recoiling in horror from the cab-horn, and thereby escaping annihilation by the cab.
The cab passed howling through preposterously narrow lanes. It turned corners on two wheels with less than inches to spare. It rushed roaring upon knots of people who dissolved with incredible agility before its approach, and it plunged into alleys like tunnels, and it emerged into the wider streets of the more modern part of town with pungent Turkish curses hanging upon it like garlands.
Coghlan did not notice. Once he was alone, suspicions sprang up luxuriantly. But he could no more justify them than he could accept the situation his visitors had presented. The two had not asked for money or hinted at it. Coghlan didn’t have any money, anyhow, for them to be scheming to get. The only man a swindling scheme could be aimed at was Mannard. Mannard had money. He’s made a fortune building dams, docks, railroads and power installations in remote parts of the world. But he was hardly a likely mark for a profitable hoax, even if his name was mentioned in that memorandum so impossibly in Coghlan’s handwriting. He was one of the major benefactors of the college in which Coghlan taught. He had at least one other major philanthropy in view right now. He’d be amused. But there was Laurie, of course. She was a point where he could be vulnerable, be hit hard.
Decidedly Mannard had to be told about it.
The cab rushed hooting down the wide expanse of the Grande Rue de Petra. It made a U-turn. It peeled its way between a sedate limousine and a ferocious Turkish Army jeep, swerved precariously around a family group frozen in mid-pavement, barely grazed a parked convertible, and came to a squealing stop precisely before the canopy of the Hotel Petra. Its chauffeur beamed at Coghlan and happily demanded six times the legal fare for the journey.
Coghlan beckoned to the hotel Commissionaire. He put twice the legal fare in the man’s hand, said, “Pay him and keep the change,” and went into the hotel. His action was a form of American efficiency. It saved money and argument. The discussion was already reaching the shouting stage as he entered the hotel’s large and impressive lobby.
Laurie and her father were waiting for him. Laurie was a good deal better-looking than he tried to believe, so he muttered, “Professor, president, so what?” as he shook hands. It was very difficult to avoid being in love with Laurie, but he worked at it.
“I’m late,” he told them. “Two of the weirdest characters you ever saw turned up with absolutely the weirdest story you ever heard. I had to listen to it. It had me flipped.”
A gleaming white shirt-front moved into view. A beaming smile caressed him. The short broad person who called himself Appolonius the Great—he came almost up to Coghlan’s shoulder and outweighed him by forty pounds—cordially extended a short and pudgy arm and a round fat hand. Coghlan noticed that Appolonius’ expensive wrist-watch noticeably made a dent in the fatness of his wrist.
“Surely,” said Appolonius reproachfully, “you found no one stranger than myself!”
Coghlan shook hands as briefly as possible. Appolonius the Great was an illusionist—a theatrical magician—who was taking leave from a season he described as remarkable in the European capitals west of the Iron Curtain. His specialty, Coghlan understood, was sawing a woman in half before his various audiences, and then producing her unharmed afterward. He said proudly that when he had bisected the woman, the two halves of her body were carried off at opposite sides of the stage. This, he allowed it to be understood, was something nobody else could do with any hope of reintegrating her afterward.
“You know Appolonius,” grunted Mannard. “Let’s go to dinner.”
He led the way toward the dining-room. Laurie took Coghlan’s arm. She looked up at him and smiled.
“I was afraid you’d turned against me, Tommy,” she said. “I was practising a look of pretty despair to use if you didn’t turn up.”
Coghlan looked down at her and hardened his heart. On two previous occasions he’d resolutely broken appointments when he’d have seen Laurie, because he liked her too much and didn’t want her to find it out. But he was afraid she’d guessed it anyway.
“Good thing I had this date,” he told her. “My visitors had me dizzy. Come to think of it, I’m going to ask Appolonius how they did their stunt. It’s in his line, more or less.”
The headwaiter bowed the party to a table. There were only the four of them at dinner, and there was the gleam of silver and glass and the sound of voices, with a string orchestra valiantly trying to make a strictly Near-Eastern version of the Rhapsody in Blue sound like American swing. They didn’t make it, but at least it wasn’t loud.