The back room was empty of everything but the grime of ages. Plaster had fallen, revealing older plaster behind it, and on the older plaster there were traces of color as if the walls had been painted in figures no longer to be made out. And there was one place, on the western wall, where the plaster was wet. A roughly square spot of a foot-and-a-half by a foot-and-a-half, about a yard above the floor-level, glistening with moisture.
In Coghlan’s living-room, with Ghalil looking interestedly at him, Coghlan frowned.
“There was nothing in the room. It was empty. There was no ‘Gadget’ there as Duval’s book declared.”
Ghalil said mildly:
“The book was of the thirteenth century. Would you expect to find anything in a room after so long a time, so many lootings, the use of twenty generations?”
“I was guided only by Duval’s book,” said Coghlan with some irony.
“You suspect that wet spot on the wall, eh?”
“I didn’t understand it,” admitted Coghlan, “and it was— peculiar. It was cold.”
“Perhaps it is the gadget,” said Ghalil. He said in mild reproof, “After you left, I felt it as you had done. It was very cold. I thought my hand would be frost-bitten, when I kept it there for some time. In fact, later I covered the spot with a blanket, and frost appeared under it!”
Coghlan said impatiently, “Not without refrigerating apparatus, and that’s out of the question!”
Ghalil thought that over. “Yet it did appear.”
“Would refrigerating apparatus be called a gadget?” Coghlan wondered.
The Turk shook his head. “It is peculiar. I learn that it is traditional that a spot on the plaster in that room has always been and will always be wet. It has been considered magical, and has given the place a bad name—which is one reason the house is empty. The legend is verifiable for sixty years. Refrigeration was not known in small units so long ago. Would that coldness be another impossibility of this affair?”
Coghlan said, “We talk nonsense all the time!”
Ghalil thought, again. “Could refrigeration be a lost art of the ancients?” he asked with a faint smile, “and if so, what has it to do with you and Mr. Mannard and this—Appolonius?”
“There aren’t any lost arts,” Coghlan assured him. “In olden times people did things at random, on what they thought were magical principles. Sometimes they got results. On magical reasoning, they used digitalis for the heart. It happened to be right, and they kept on. On magical reasoning, they hammered copper past all sanity. It got hardened, and they thought it was tempered. There are electroplated objects surviving from a thousand years and more ago. The Greeks made a steam turbine in the classic age. It’s more than likely that they made a magic lantern. But there could be no science without scientific thinking. They got results by accident, but they didn’t know what they were doing or what they’d done. They couldn’t think technically . . . so there are no lost arts, only redefinitions. We can do everything the ancients could.”
“Can you make a place that will stay cold for sixty years—let alone seven hundred?”
“It’s an illusion,” said Coghlan. “It must be! You’d better ask Appolonius how it’s done. That’s in his line.”
“I would be pleased if you would examine again that cold place on the wall at 80 Hosain,” said Ghalil ruefully. “If it is an illusion, it is singularly impenetrable!”
“I promised,” said Coghlan, “to go on a picnic today with the Mannards. They’re going up along the Sea of Marmora to look at a piece of ground.”
Ghalil raised his eyebrows.
“They plan a home here?”
“A children’s camp,” Coghlan explained with reserve. “Mannard’s a millionaire. He’s given a lot of money to the American College, and it’s been suggested that he do something more. A camp for slum-children is projected. He may finance it to show what can be done for children’s health by the sort of thing that’s standard in the United States. He’s looking over a site. If he puts up the money, the camp will be handled by Turkish personnel and the cost and results worked out. If it’s successful, the Turkish Government or private charities will carry it on and extend it.”
“Admirable,” said Lieutenant Ghalil. “One would not like to see such a man murdered.”
Coghlan did not comment. Ghalil rose.
“But—come and examine this refrigeration apparatus of ancient days, please! After all, it is undoubtedly mentioned in a memorandum in your handwriting of seven hundred years ago! And—Mr. Coghlan, will you be careful?”
“Of what?”
“For one, Mr. Mannard.” Ghalil’s expression was wry. “I do not believe in things from the past any more than you do, but as a philosopher and a policeman I have to face facts even when they are impossible, and possibilities even when they are insane. There are two things foretold which disturb me. I hope you will help me to prevent them.”
“The murder of Mannard, of course. But what’s the other?”
“I should regret that, and I guard against it,” Ghalil told him. But I would be intellectually more disturbed if you should cut your thumb. A murder would be explicable.”
Coghlan grinned. “I won’t. That’s not likely!”
“That is why I dread it. Please come to 80 Hosain when you can. I am having the room examined microscopically—and cleaned in the process. I even have it garrisoned, to prevent any preparation of illusion.”
He waved his hand and went away.
An hour later, Coghlan joined the excursion which was to inspect a site for a possible children’s camp. An impressive small yacht lay at dock on the shore of the Golden Horn. There was a vast confusion everywhere. From Italian freighters to cabin-cruisers, from clumsy barges to lateen-rigged tubs and grimy small two- and three-passenger rowboats—every conceivable type of floating thing floated or moved or was docked all about. The yacht had been loaned as a grand gesture by its owner, so that Mannard would make a gift of money the yacht’s owner preferred to spend otherwise.
Laurie looked relieved when Coghlan turned up. She waved to him as he came aboard.
“News, Tommy! Your friend Duval telephoned me this morning!”
“What for?”
“He sounded hysterical and apologetic,” Laurie told him, “because he’d been trying to reach Father, and couldn’t. He said he could not tell me the details or the source of his information, but he had certain knowledge that you intended to murder my father. He nearly collapsed when I said sweetly, ‘Thank you so much, M’sieur Duval! So he told us last night!’ “ She grinned. “It wasn’t quite the reaction he expected!”
“If he were an honest man,” Coghlan mused, “that’s just exactly what he’d have done—tried to warn your father. But he couldn’t say why he thought a murder was in the wind, because that’s unbelievable. Maybe he is honest. I don’t know.”
Appolonius the Great came waddling down to the dock, in a marvelous yachting costume. He beamed and waved, and the sunlight gleamed on his wristwatch. A beggar thrust up to him and whined, holding out a ragged European cap. The beggar cringed and gabbled shrilly. And Appolonius the Great paused, looked into the extended cap with apparent stupefaction, and pointed; whereupon the beggar also looked into the cap, yelped, and fled at the top of his speed, clutching the cap fast. Appolonius came on, shaking all over with his amusement.
“You say?” he asked amiably as he reached the yacht’s deck. “Indeed I cannot resist such jests! He held out his cap, and I looked, and feigned surprise—and there was a handful of jewels in the cap! True, they were merely paste and trinketry, but I added a silver coin to comfort him when he discovers they are worthless.”