The Man Who Sees Ghosts (4 page)

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 to 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.”

“But it was just at that moment when the ghost appeared that we all experienced an electric shock. How did you do that?”

“You discovered the machine under the altar; you also saw me standing on a satin carpet. I had you stand around me in a half circle and join hands; when it was near the time I motioned to one of you to hold me by the hair. The crucifix was the conductor and you received the shock when I touched it with my hand.”

“You commanded Count von O** and myself,” said Lord Seymour, “to hold two naked daggers crossed above your head for as long as the incantation lasted. What was that for?”

“For no other reason than to keep both of you—the two I trusted the least—busy during the whole performance. You will remember that I expressly specified one inch above me; because you had to be constantly careful to maintain this distance, you were thus prevented from looking in the direction I did not want you to look. At that point I hadn’t yet seen that my worst enemy was present.”

“I can see,” exclaimed Lord Seymour, “that this was a precautionary measure—but why did we have to undress?”

“Simply to give the performance one more ceremonial embellishment and by means of the abnormal to stretch the powers of your imagination.”

“The second apparition prevented your ghost from speaking,” said the Prince. “What should we have, in fact, learned from him?”

“Nearly the same as what you heard afterwards. It was not without reason that I asked your highness whether you had told me everything the dying man had entrusted you with and whether you had put out any further enquiries about him in his native land; this I thought necessary in order not to blunder into giving facts which my ghost’s
utterances might have contradicted. I asked about certain sins of youth, whether the deceased had lived a spotless life, and I then based what I concocted on the answer you gave me.”

“As regards this matter,” began the Prince, after some silence, “you have given me a satisfactory explanation. But there is a circumstance of major importance that has still not been touched on, concerning which I demand you shed light.”

“If it is in my power, and—”

“No ifs! It is not in the nature of justice, in whose hands you are, to make polite enquiries. Who was that mysterious man we saw you fall down before? How do you know him? And how does this relate with the second apparition?”

“Your highness…”

“When you looked him in the face more closely, you let out a loud cry and fell to your knees. Why did you do that? What did it mean?”

“This strange man, your highness…” He faltered, became visibly more agitated and looked round at us all in turn in a confused manner. “Yes, in God’s name, my lord, this strange man is a terrifying being.”

“What do you know about him? What is his connection with you? —Don’t think you can hope to conceal the truth from us.”

“I will most certainly beware of doing that—for who can guarantee me that he is not standing at this moment in our midst.”

“Where? Who?” we all exclaimed at the same time, looking around the room half laughing, and half in dismay. “That cannot be possible.”

“Oh, there are things which are possible for this man—or whatever he may be—which are far more difficult to grasp.”

“But who is he then? Where does he come from? Is he Armenian or Russian? Is there any truth in what he passes himself off as?”

“He is none of the things he appears to be. There can be few ranks, characters and nations, whose mask he has not already worn. Who he is, where he comes from, where he goes, nobody knows. That he was in Egypt for a long time, as many maintain, and from there brought back his secret wisdom from out of a pyramid, this I will neither affirm nor deny. Here he is known only by the name, The Inscrutable One. How old, for instance, would you think he is?”