The Man Who Sees Ghosts Read online

  The wretched creature in question was indeed a pitiful object. The double shock of the second apparition and now this unforeseen surprise raid had overwhelmed his capacity to think. Like a child he allowed himself to be bound; his eyes were wide open in a fixed stare, his face like that of a corpse, while his lips, quivering in silent convulsions, emitted no sound. We thought a fit of convulsions to be imminent. The Prince was moved to pity for him in this state he was in and set about to effect his release through the constable, to whom he disclosed his identity.

  “My lord,” said the latter, “are you sure you know who this man is for whom you are interceding so generously? The deception he intended to practise on you is the least of his crimes. We have his accomplices. They report abominable things of him. He can count himself fortunate if he escapes with the galleys.”

  Meanwhile we saw the landlord, also bound and together with other house-guests, being led across the courtyard. “This man, too?” exclaimed the Prince. “What has he done wrong?” He was his accomplice and receiver,” answered the constable, “the one who assisted him in his conjuring tricks and thieving and shared in his spoils. You will shortly be fully persuaded, my lord,” and he turned to his companions. “Search the whole house and bring me news immediately of anything that you find.”

  The Prince now looked around for the Armenian—but he was no longer present; he had used the general confusion that the raid had occasioned to leave unnoticed. The Prince was inconsolable; he immediately wanted send out all his people after him; he wanted to look for him himself and drag me off with him. I hurried to the window; the whole house was surrounded by inquisitive people who had been drawn by the rumour of this incident. It was impossible to get through the crowd. I pointed out to him as follows: “If the Armenian is serious about not being found by us, then he will certainly know all secret hide-outs better than we, and all our efforts to trace him will be in vain. Let us rather stay here awhile, my lord. Perhaps this officer of the court will be able to tell us more about him—tell us what the Armenian, if I correctly observed, revealed to him about himself.”

  We now remembered that we were still half-dressed. We hurried to our room to put our clothes on as quickly as we could. On our return we found the house had been searched.

  After the altar had been removed and the floorboards of the room taken up, they discovered a spacious vault in which a man could comfortably sit upright, furnished with a door that led down some narrow steps into the cellar. In this vault they found an electric machine, a clock and a little silver bell, the last of which, along with the electric machine, was connected to the altar and the attached crucifix. A hole had been made in a window-shutter directly opposite the fireplace and through this a sleeve had been inserted so that a magic lantern could be fitted in the aperture, from which the desired figure had been cast onto the wall above the fireplace. A variety of drums were fetched from the attic and cellar, from which hung large, tied, lead weights, these being probably used to produce the sound of thunder that we had heard. When the Sicilian’s clothes were searched, a small case was found containing various powders, as well as quicksilver in phials and canisters, phosphorus in a glass bottle, a ring which we immediately saw was magnetic because it was sticking to a steel button to which it had come into chance contact, and in the coat pockets a rosary, a Jew’s beard, pocket pistols and a dagger.

  “Let’s see whether they are loaded!” said one of the officers, taking one of the pistols and firing it up the chimney.

  “Jesu Maria!” cried a hollow human voice, the same we had heard at the first apparition—and simultaneously we saw a bleeding shape come crashing down the chimney.

  “Not yet at rest, perturbèd spirit?” exclaimed the Englishman, as the rest of us leapt back in fright. “Go back home to your grave. You appeared to be what you were not; now you will be what you appeared to be.”

  “Jesu Maria! I am wounded,” repeated the man in the fireplace. The ball had shattered his right leg. Steps were taken immediately to bind the wound.

  “Who are you, then, and what was the devil that brought you here?”

  “A poor friar,” the wounded man replied. “A stranger here offered me offered me a zechin to—”

  “To repeat some set words? And why didn’t you run off immediately afterwards?”

  “He was to have given me a signal when I should leave but the signal never came and when I went to climb out I found the ladder removed.”

  “And what were these words which he taught you?”

  At this point the man fell into a faint, so that nothing more could be extracted from him. When we looked at him more closely we recognised him to be the same man who had stood in the path of the Prince the day before and addressed him so solemnly.

  Meanwhile the Prince had turned to the constable.

  “You have rescued us,” he said, pressing some gold coins into his hand at the same time, “from the grasp of an impostor and, without knowing us, given us justice. Will you now complete our indebtedness by revealing to us the identity of that mysterious stranger who needed to say only a few words to restore our liberty?”

  “Whom do you mean?” asked the constable with an air that clearly showed how unnecessary this question was.

  “I mean the gentleman in Russian uniform who took you to one side earlier, who showed you some written document and spoke some words in your ear, at which you immediately released us.”

  “So you do not know this gentleman?” the constable asked again. “He was not one of your company?”

  “No,” said the Prince,—“and for very important reaons I would like to become better acquainted with him.”

  “I am no better acquainted with him myself,” replied the constable. “I do not even know his name and today was the first time in my life that I saw him.”

  “What? And was he able in so short a time and with a couple of words so to sway you that you cleared both him and all of us of any wrong-doing?”

  “One word alone in fact.”

  “And that was?—I confess I would like to know what it was.”

  “This nameless man, my lord,” he said, weighing the zechins in his hand, “—you have been too generous to me that I should keep it secret from you any longer—this nameless man was—an officer of the State Inquisition.”

  “He—The State Inquisition!”

  “None other, my lord—and the paper he showed me convinced me of this.”

  “This man, you say? It is not possible.”

  “I will tell you something more, my lord. This was this very same man on whose information I came here to arrest the spirit conjuror.”

  We looked at each other in even greater astonishment.

  “That would explain,” exclaimed the Englishman, “why the wretched devil of all conjurors gave such a start of fear when he looked at him more closely. He realised he was a spy and that was why he let out that cry and fell to his knees.”

  “Not at all,” cried the Prince. “This man is everything that he wants to be, and everything that the moment requires him to be. No mortal man has yet dicovered what he really is. Did you not see how the Sicilian shrank together when he uttered the words in his ears: “Never more will you summon spirits!” There is more behind this. No-one will persuade me that something human can inspire so much fear.”

  “The magician himself will best be able to set us right on this score,” said the lord, “if this gentleman is willing,” turning to the constable, “to furnish us with the opportunity to speak to his prisoner.”

  The constable gave his word and we arranged with the Englishman to visit him first thing the next day. We now made our way back to Venice. At first light Lord Seymour arrived (for this was the name of the Englishman) and soon afterwards a trusted person appeared, sent by the constable to take us to the prison. I forgot to relate that for some days now the Prince had been missing one of his huntsmen, a Bremen man by birth, who had served him honestly for many years and had his complete
trust. Whether he had met with some accident, been kidnapped or had run away no-one knew. As to the last, there was little likelihood of a cause, for he had always been a quiet and decent man, never needing rebuke. All that his fellow servants could remember was that he had recently been very melancholy and that whenever he had a moment he would seize it to visit a certain Minorite cloister in the Giudecca, the Jewish quarter, where he often kept company with some of the brethren, too. This led us to suppose that he had perhaps fallen into the clutches of the monks and turned Catholic, and, since at that time the articles of this faith were a matter of great indifference to the Prince, he let the matter rest after some fruitless inquiries. But it pained him to lose this man, who had always been at his side on his campaigns, who had always been loyally devoted to him, and who, in a foreign land, was not easy to replace. Anyway, today, just as we were on the point of going out, the Prince’s banker, who had been commissioned to look out for a new servant, was announced. He presented to the Prince a well-educated and well-dressed, middle-aged man, who had been for a long while in the service of a procurator as secretary, spoke French and a little German, and was moreover furnished with the best recommendations. He had a pleasant face, and as he also proposed that his pay should depend on the Prince’s satisfaction with his services, he was taken on there and then.

  We found the Sicilian in a private prison, to which he had brought temporarily as a favour to the Prince, so the constable said, before being placed under the leaden roofs to which access is no longer permitted. These cells under the roof of San Marco Palazzo constitute the most dreadful prison in Venice, in which the wretched criminals are often driven mad by the withering heat of the sun that builds up on the leaden surface. The Sicilian had recovered from the accidents of the previous day, and stood up respectfully when he saw the Prince. One leg and one hand were fettered, but otherwise he could walk freely about the room. At our entrance the guard withdrew to a position in front of the door.

  “I have come,” said the Prince, after we had sat down, “to demand from you an explanation regarding two matters. The one you owe me, and to satisfy me as regards the other will do you no harm.”

  “My part is played,” answered the Sicilian. “My fate lies in your hands.”

  “Only your candour,” replied the Prince, “can make that easier for you.”

  “Let me hear your questions, then, my lord. I am ready to answer them, since I have nothing more to lose.”

  “You let me see the face of the Armenian in your mirror. How did you manage to do that?”

  “It was not a mirror that you saw. A simple crayon drawing behind a glass depicting a man in Armenian clothing deceived you. The swiftness of my movements, the twilight and your astonishment supported this deception. The picture will be found among the rest of the items confiscated at the inn.”

  “But how were you able to know my thoughts so well and choose the Armenian of all people?”

  “That was not at all difficult, my lord. When you were at table, in the presence of your servants, you clearly must have spoken of the incident that took place between yourself and the Armenian. One of my people happened to become acquainted in the Giudecca with a huntsman in your service, from whom he was gradually able to extract as much as I needed to know.”

  “Where is this huntsman?” asked the Prince. “I miss him and I’ll be bound you know about his disappearance.”

  “I swear to you that I know nothing at all about it, my lord. I myself have never seen him, and never had any other purpose with him other than what I have just declared.”

  “Proceed,” said the Prince.

  “It was in this way that I obtained the first news of your stay and your fortunes here in Venice, and I immediately resolved to make use of the information. You can see, my lord, that I am being candid with you. I knew of your intended excursion on the river Brenta. I had prepared for it, and a key which you had accidentally lost gave me the first opportunity to try out my skill on you.”

  “What? So was I mistaken, then? The trick with the key was your work, then, and not the Armenian’s? You’re saying I dropped it?”

  “As you pulled out your purse—and I seized the moment when nobody was watching me to cover it quickly with my foot. The person who gave you your lottery ticket was in collusion with me. She had you make your draw from a container where there were no blanks and the key had been lying in the box long before you won it.”

  “Now I understand. And what about the Franciscan monk who barred my way and addressed me so solemnly?”

  “He was the same man whom they pulled wounded out of the chimney, so I hear. He is one of my associates and has performed already many good services for me under that disguise.”

  “But what was your purpose in setting this up?”

  “To set you to speculating—to prepare a state of mind in you which would make you receptive to the marvels I was intending to enact for you.”

  “But the pantomime dance, which took such a suddenly strange turn—this at least cannot have been of your devising, surely?”

  “The girl who played the queen I instructed in her part, which was wholly my work. I calculated that it would strike your highness as not a little strange to be recognised in that place, and pardon me, my lord, but the adventure with the Armenian led me to hope that you would be predisposed to scorn natural explanations of the extraordinary and seek rather for higher sources.”

  “Really?” exclaimed the Prince with an expression of both displeasure and astonishment, while at the same time giving me in particular a significant look. “That,” he cried, “I really did not expect.”

  “But how,” continued the Prince, after a long silence, “did you produce the figure which appeared on the wall over the fireplace?”

  “By means of a magic lantern placed in the opposite window shutter, where you will have also noticed an opening made for it.”

  “But how was it that not a single one of us became aware of it?” asked Lord Seymour.

  “You will remember, my lord, that dense smoke had made the whole room darker when you returned. At the same time I had taken the precaution of having the floorboards that had been taken up leant up against the very same window where the magic lantern was installed: in this way I prevented you from immediately catching sight of the window-shutter. Besides, until such time as you had all taken your places and there was no further fear of of your examining the room, the lantern remained hidden by a slide.”

  “I had the impression,” I interrupted, “that I heard a ladder being set up near this room while I was looking out of another window in the building. Was this in fact the case?”

  “It was. The very ladder by which my accomplice climbed up to the window in question in order to operate the magic lantern.”

  “The figure,” continued the Prince, “truly appeared to bear a fleeting resemblance to my departed friend; it was a particularly true likeness in that the figure was fair-haired. Was this mere accident, or how else did you arrive at this?”

  “Your highness will recollect that you had left a box lying on the table, on which there was the portrait in enamel of an officer in the uniform of the *** regiment. I asked you if you carried about with you some kind of memento of your friend, which you confirmed. From this I concluded it might be perhaps the box. Over the meal I had obtained a good view of the picture and, being a very practised draughtsman as well as very successful in getting a likeness, it was therefore an easy matter for me to give the portrait that fleeting resemblance which you noted, all the more so since the features of the Marquis are particularly striking.”

  “But the figure seemed to move.”

  “So it seemed—but it was not the figure that moved but the smoke, lit up from the moment the figure made its appearance.”

  “And the man who fell down from the chimney—was he the one who provided the answers for the apparition?”

  “The very same.”

  “But surely he was not able t
o hear the questions very clearly.”

  “He did not need to. If you remember, your highness, I strictly forbade all of you to put a question to the spectre yourselves. What I would ask it and what it was to answer was prearranged, and, so that no slip-ups might occur, I had him observe long pauses, which he had to measure by the ticking of the clock.”

  “You gave the host orders to carefully extinguish all the fires in the house with water; you did this, no doubt, —”

  “To remove my man in the chimney from any danger of being suffocated, since the chimneys of the house run into one another, and because I did not believe myself to be completely secure against the suspicions of your retinue.”

  “But how was it,” asked Lord Seymour, “that your ghost was there neither earlier nor later than you needed him?”

  “My ghost had been in the room a good while already before I invoked him, but as long as the spirit was burning this faint apparition was not visible. When my incantation had ended, I closed the vessel in which the spirit was burning, the room grew as dark as night, and only then did people notice the figure on the wall, on which it had been thrown for some while already.”