‘There were three of them today for the simple reason that today is Monday and, as usual, there was no one in the building over the weekend to take down the letters from Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You should have removed them from the bulletin board first thing this morning, but, as I said, that was my fault, not yours. Here.’
Lilburn took the sheets of very ordinary paper and read them carefully. They had been written with a fountain pen, and the words were the same on all three, without the slightest variation:
Dear Friend,
In view of the regrettable events of recent days, the nature of which run counter not only to my habits, but to my principles, I have no alternative, even though I am well aware of the grave difficulties my decision will cause you, of resigning forthwith from my post. And may I say too, that I strenuotisly disapprove of and condemn your attitude to the aforementioned events.
Leandro P. de Santiesteban
‘As you see,’ said Mr Bayo, ‘the letter reveals nothing, in fact, it only serves to make the whole business even more baffling, given that this building was a private residence and not an office or whatever, that is, not a place occupied by people with posts from which they could resign. We have to be satisfied with merely contemplating the enigma without trying to decipher it.’
The months of March and April came and went, and each Friday, young Lilburn, sitting in the library, would listen to Señor de Santiestebans unvarying footsteps on the floor above. He tried to follow the advice Mr Bayo had given him and to ignore those mysterious steps, but sometimes, unexpectedly, he would find himself pondering the ghost’s personality and history or mechanically counting the number of steps in each direction. In this respect, he had discovered that, as his superior had told him on one occasion, Señor de Santiesteban always took seven steps in one direction and then, after a pause, eight steps back, after which he closed the door. And it was during the Easter vacation, which he spent in Toledo, that a possible explanation for this occurred to him. He was extremely excited by this tiny discovery — which was, in fact, no more than mere conjecture whose truth he would be unable to verify — and he longed for the moment when he could return to Madrid and tell Mr Bayo.
And on the first day back after the holidays, instead of staying in the playground during break, exchanging complaints with Miss Ferris and Mr Bayo about the unsatisfactory behaviour of their students, young Lilburn asked Mr Bayo if they could go somewhere private to talk and, once they were ensconced in the old history teacher’s office, he laid his discovery before him.
‘In my opinion,’ he said, slightly nervously, ‘the reason Señor de Santiesteban takes, first, seven steps and then eight is this: outraged by the events to which he refers in his letter and which prevent him, a man of principle, from remaining in his post, he storms out of the room in which he is sitting and takes seven steps, or should I say strides, over to the bulletin board. He leaves his letter there, and, feeling calmer now that he has done his duty, now that he’s broken with the friend who has so disappointed him, and now that his conscience is clear, he returns to his room taking eight steps instead of seven because he is now less angry or agitated, and may even be feeling rather pleased with himself. The proof of this, Mr Bayo, is the fact that he then closes the door slowly, without the anger evident in the violence with which he flung it open.’
‘You put the case very well, Mr Lilburn,’ replied Mr Bayo with barely perceptible irony. ‘And I think you’re right. I myself reached the same conclusion many years ago, when I, too, took an interest in the matter. But it got me nowhere imagining that the different number of steps taken in each direction was due to a slight change in Señor de Santiesteban’s mood. Here I am, as ignorant as I was on my first day. Listen. The enigma of the Institute’s ghost is just that, an enigma. There is no way it can be deciphered.’
Mr Lilburn thought for a moment, somewhat disappointed by Mr Bayo’s cool response. After a few seconds, however, he looked up and asked:
‘Wouldn’t it be possible to speak to him?’
‘Speak to whom? To Señor de Santiesteban? No. Let me explain: on Friday night at a quarter to nine, you hear the door of this office being flung open, as you would on any other evening of the week if you happened to be in the Institute; then you hear footsteps and the door closing again. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
‘And where are you usually sitting when this happens?’
‘In the library.’
‘Well, if, instead of sitting in the library, you were in this office or, indeed, outside in the corridor, you would hear exactly the same thing, but you would also see that the door does not open. You hear it opening and closing, but you can see that it neither opens nor closes; it remains in its place, motionless, the glass panes don’t even rattle when you hear the door being flung open initially.’
‘I see. And are you absolutely sure that it’s this door and not another door that the ghost opens?’
‘Yes. It’s definitely that glass-paned door behind you. Believe me, I’ve checked. When I was sure that this was the case, I spent a few nights here, watching it. As you said before, Señor de Santiesteban storms out of this office, goes over to the bulletin board, pins up his letter of resignation and comes back. The letter, however, doesn’t appear at once, but at some point during the night or in the early hours — precisely when I don’t know. The only two occasions on which I managed to remain awake, without once nodding off and thus giving Señor de Santiesteban a chance to pin up his letter, I heard the usual footsteps, but the letter never appeared. That must mean that he saw me (saw that I was awake, which is why the letter didn’t appear). But he refuses to speak or perhaps cannot speak. After those two nights, when I realised that I, in turn, was being watched by him (or, rather, although I couldn’t see him, he was watching my every move), I addressed him on several occasions and in the most diverse tones of voice: one day, I greeted him respectfully, the next mellifluously, the day after that angrily. I even went so far as to insult him, just to see if he would react. But he never responded; nothing worked, and so I did the best thing I could have done: I abandoned my stupid, naive vigils and came to think of Don Leandro P. de Santiesteban just as everyone else here does, as “the Institute’s remarkable ghost”.’
Young Lilburn again thought for a few moments and then said with real concern:
‘But, Mr Bayo, if everything you have told me is true, then Señor de Santiesteban must inhabit this office and might well be listening to us now, isn’t that so?’
‘Possibly, Mr Lilburn,’ responded Mr Bayo, ‘possibly.’
From that day forth, young Lilburn did not speak to Mr Bayo or to anyone else about the Institute’s ghost. The old teacher assumed, with some relief, that Lilburn had concluded that giving any further thought to the matter was a waste of time and had decided to follow his advice, born of long experience. This was not, however, the case. Young Lilburn, behind his superior’s back and in a rather improvised fashion, had decided to find out for himself what it was that drove Señor de Santiesteban to resign from his post every night and, since he was left in charge of the keys of the building over the weekend and could, therefore, come and go as he pleased during those days without having to explain himself to anyone, he had started spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights on the sofa in the second-floor corridor, where, even when lying down, he had a clear view of the entire, albeit rather limited stage occupied by the invisible ghost’s nocturnal walks, that is, the door of Mr Bayo’s office, the bulletin board opposite and, of course, the space between.