Free Ghosts by Gaslight by Jack Dann Page B

though to shake him into sense, and then released him and stepped back, making every effort to calm himself.
    “Who did this?” he asked. “If it was not you, who then? Answer me!” He realized that he was sweating through his good linen suit, which he always wore on rent-collecting day. “Who is this who is responsible? Which man?” He was vain of his proficiency in English, but knew that when he was hurried or upset, the impossible grammar tended to set gleeful traps for him. “Who? Which?”
    Griffith shrugged. “Angelos . . . yes, why not Angelos? Bloody Jew, you know, Angelos . . .” His head lolled forward. Mr. Emanetoglu pushed him back on his bed and went up the stair at a run.
    Angelos met him at the top, waiting with his arms folded resignedly across his chest. He looked very nearly skeletal and even nearer to complete collapse than Griffith, but he held himself with a stubborn, painful dignity. He said, “Mr. Emanetoglu, I’m going to have to ask you for one or two days’ grace on the rent. No more than two, I assure you.”
    “Never mind the bloody rent!” Mr. Emanetoglu would go to his grave—he was certain of it—never truly comprehending the significance and usage of that single English word, but he employed it at every sensed opportunity, hoping that if it should fit into the conversation, so perhaps would he. “What has occurred here, Mr. Angelos? Tell me precisely what you and your friends”—for Scheuch and Vordran had come trudging up the stair behind him—“have done to my brother’s nice house?” He was outraged to realize that he was close to weeping.
    Angelos’s voice was wearily conciliatory, without being at all defensive. “Mr. Emanetoglu, this is my fault entirely. I have been experimenting at random to learn whether it might be possible for people, say, in Turkey to speak directly to people here in England—and instead, I began to hear voices right in my rooms—”
    “Voices of spirits who haunt my brother’s house?” Mr. Emanetoglu broke in furiously. “No, it is you four, you yourselves, who are haunted—whatever ghosts or demons may be in this house, you surely brought them with you! I could feel it, hear it, smell it on the street outside!” He checked himself, turning—as he never failed to do in such crises—to the calming words of his personal guru, the great Sufi Muhammad al-Ghazali, who never failed to comfort him by reminding him that it was wisdom always to consider and to doubt. “Doubt is the scholar’s dear friend, and self-doubt the dearest . . .” Therefore, taking several deep breaths before he spoke again, he said quietly, “It is an old house, this, and I know from my own experience that some old houses can in some way retain the . . . the shadows of those who once lived there. Is that what happened, Mr. Angelos? Did you and your . . . experiments awaken Ismail’s house?”
    Angelos shook his head, which seemed to take an enormous effort from him. “That is not what happened, Mr. Emanetoglu. I dismantled my generator more than two weeks ago”—a crooked half smile at the silent surprise of the others—“without informing these gentlemen, since it was my decision alone to make. Yet we all still keep hearing the voices of people who cannot have lived here, people who can have had nothing to do with this house, this time—perhaps even with London itself. I cannot tell you anything more useful than that. I would if I could. I can only beg your forgiveness, and say that we will do all we can to make things right again.”
    Mr. Emanetoglu looked slowly around at Scheuch and Vordran, seeing Griffith crossing the landing to join them. Each was obviously as fatigued as Angelos, exhausted down to his bones, and to the soul beyond. He said, “You are all hearing the . . . these voices, then?”
    Griffith and Vordran nodded without answering. Scheuch said, “Mine, last night . . . mine was a child, I could tell that much. I think