nights with Waters that we were as a small flock of babbling goslings,
or like little twittering snow birds on a limb, so to speak, compared
to the voracious human hawks and grand larceny specialists in the
neighboring towers, from the tops of which no Jolly Rogers flew--they
were too smooth for that. The church was quite the appropriate
retreat for our party, considering the character of the neighborhood,
and it might not be out of place to suggest that we would not have been
safe even there if we had had money. The gold of a stranger in these
parts would disappear like autumn leaves before the wind. A doubloon
dropped anywhere in the vicinity in the day time would scarcely have
got to the sidewalk and might have caused instantaneous bloodshed. It
would be like tossing a yellow canary bird into a cage of wild cats.
[Illustration: “LIKE LITTLE TWITTERING SNOW BIRDS ON A LIMB”]
“Waters said that the Savior would not have been admitted to Trinity
Church on Sunday on account of his clothes, and if he should appear and
stand at the corner of Broad and Wall for two minutes somebody would
take away his halo, his sandals and his robe. He would be divested of
everything that was his and be cast adrift in the darkness when the day
was done.
“I may say, parenthetically, there was one Spirit we never met in the
neighborhood. In fact none of our party ever seemed to have been in its
presence at any time.
“At night we saw troops of sinister and ravenous shades prowling among
the gloomy evil hives in this lair of Mammon like famished wolves upon
ground where they had once killed.
“Waters continued his revelations, with few interruptions, for a
month or more, for it took a long time to communicate his extensive
knowledge of the inner workings of the up-to-date methods of gold
accumulation. When he had finished I must admit that we shuddered at
the damnable realities he portrayed. At one point we who had head
coverings removed them reverently and bowed to Waters. Teach threw
his semblance of a black wide brimmed hat into the air, with a hollow
ghastly yell that brought many curious, pale peering faces up from
among the old crumbling stones in the church yard.
“Captain Morgan observed that all these operations were evidently
conducted without bodily risk--in other words, without the exercise of
personal courage--and the necessary murder involved was accomplished
by slow drawn out processes that inflicted needless suffering and
misery on entirely too many people. The cutlass, the plank walking,
and the ‘Long Tom’, loaded with grape-shot, were much more merciful,
although less effective as profit producers. He made the point that old
fashioned piracy was to a certain extent redeemed by the individual
valor of the pirates. They took brave men’s chances and carried their
lives in their hands, and that, at least, was one feature of their
business that was entitled to respect. He considered on the whole that,
from an ethical standpoint, modern methods were much more reprehensible
than the old.
“Waters’ continued narrations were like tales from the Arabian
Nights. They made all of us feel so insignificant that after a while
we concluded that we didn’t like him. Somehow we didn’t feel very
prominent when he was about, and we began to avoid him. We spent much
of our time in the sub-treasury and bank vaults watching new shades
vainly clutching at the money stacks with their pale fingers.
“The insane strife of the hordes of mortals to see who can die beside
the biggest gold pile has always been considered a rich joke in the
spirit world, for when they come among us they are unable to bring
any of it with them. The accumulation in the sub-treasury is very
convenient for them to gloat over and it continues their worldly
illusions perfectly. As a matter of fact it is just as consistent for
them to gloat over this vaulted gold in their spiritual state as it was
for them to strut and swell with pride over the earthly wealth on which
they had their short leases during life.
“You might be interested in knowing something of the present state
of a few well known shades. Washington, Lincoln, and many other
translated statesmen are no longer here. Most of the mighty dead were
men of settled convictions. Long ago a lot of these potent and highly
respected phantoms became disgusted with political developments and
with mundane conditions generally. They left the earth’s atmosphere
and are now flocking about on the moon, where there are no politics
whatever and plenty of big holes and extinct craters to crawl into when
perfect seclusion is desired.
“Since Pharaoh left the Red Sea he has been on Mars. Many of those
who became famous in the world for murdering on a large scale are now
there. They find the redness of that planet most congenial. Napoleon
still remains in the earth’s atmosphere for he still hopes that
some day he will come back. Socrates, Sir Isaac Newton, Columbus,
and numerous other worthy shades, are on one of the satellites of
Jupiter where finally they are beyond the reach of hostile criticism.
Nebuchadnezzar, who built and worshipped an image of gold, and who was
dethroned by the Lord and sent into the fields to eat grass, is now at
the North Pole. In that frigid silence there is no grass or gold and
there will he stay forever.
“This reminds me that great multitudes of shades are waiting eagerly
for Bill Hohenzollern. While it is true that, in your modern and
expressive slang, he is what might be called a ‘dead one’, he has not
yet been actually translated.
“In suggesting the proper disposition of a particularly offensive
public malefactor, one of your American orators once advised casting
him out of the universe through ‘the hole in the sky’. This hole
in the sky, astronomers tell us, is somewhere off down near the
Southern Cross. It is a vast void in the firmament in which there is
no planet, star or other heavenly body. No starry worlds, in their
eternal orbits, ever intersect that awful abyss. No stellar lights
ever twinkle there--no meteors ever stream through that Stygian
darkness, where creation has left an appalling and dismal blank. When
William Hohenzollern comes among us there will be a gala event in the
spirit world. He will be rolled up into a misty wad, loaded into a
long pale tube with millions of feet of poison gas, and shot out of
the cosmos through that awful hiatus among the constellations--that
frightful chasm in the universe, where he will forever be beyond
infinity itself--and where even the Almighty, whom he once claimed as
his partner, may never again be able to find him for consultation. He
will be beyond the limits of communication, and even the music of the
spheres can never reach him. It’s the hole in the sky for Bloody Bill,
and we are all looking forward in pleasurable anticipation to a day of
great spiritual exaltation and rarefied enjoyment.
“During his eruptive period he probably acted no worse than a great
many other humans would with the same opportunities--he was one of the
results of a bad system--the point of a much aggravated protuberance
that had to be lanced. We all realize that history has finally
demonstrated that autocracy is wrong. We greatly envy you who live
in an age that is beholding the dawn of cohesive democracy, and the
passing of conditions that have made it possible for one man to hold
the destiny of millions in the hollow of his hand. Bill will be
forgiven--but after he is projected.
“One night Kinisi and I were alone in the belfry. Out in the moonlight
we saw Sidi ben Musa, Red Beard, Morgan, Teach and Kidd, lined up
among the tombstones in the church yard. They appeared to be making
unfamiliar movements. I asked Kinisi what he thought they were doing
and he replied that they seemed to be kicking themselves, and that they
had been acting that way every night for a week. He thought that, like
the robins in autumn, they had flocked and were preparing to migrate.
“These shades, who, in life, had been relentless highwaymen of the
seas--blood bespattered, remorseless, steeped in murder, arson, theft
and unnamable crimes--the heels of whose boots had dripped with
human gore on a thousand decks--held their spectral hands aloft and
were aghast when they realized the pitiful inconsequence and puny
achievement of their futile careers.
[Illustration: “MY OLD TOWER IN HUNGARY”]
“There was a big storm one night and we never saw them again. The
valiant and hardy little band may have drifted out over the
sea with the heavy off-shore wind and rolling mists, and may now be
peacefully haunting the scenes of their former tame profiteering and
modest killings, where spiritual life is not as strenuous as we found
it in the twentieth century Gomorrah that we contemplated from the
belfry of Trinity.
“Kinisi wanted to stay with Waters for a while longer, but I had had
enough of modern money centers. I left one night in a freight car
that was loaded with light wines and moving westward. Although it was
marked for Atchison, Kansas, I had no difficulty in turning it up into
Michigan, to where I seemed impelled by some unaccountable instinct. I
may say incidentally that many wandering freight cars with spirits on
board are now being diverted over strange routes by ghostly direction,
and much of the present freight confusion is due to that cause. That
was several years ago, and, so far as I know, the car is still at
Benton Harbor.
“I drifted along the lake shore and around in the hills for some
time, and one night I was amazed to see what looked like my old tower
in Hungary. I promptly decided to haunt this place, after I had
investigated it, on account of the old associations it brought to mind.
It was impossible for me to go back to my old tower, for things have
changed so much in Hungary that I would take no comfort there, so you
see I have turned over a new leaf and here I am.
“A little while after you came in you were doubtless surprised, and
possibly startled, by certain sounds that it was necessary for me to
make in the top of the tower. I was communicating with Kinisi, who at
that moment was in the belfry of Trinity, and I have no doubt that
he got my message and will be here before long. You see that in the
spiritual world we have always used the Hertzian waves. You have only
recently found them with your wireless telegraphy and telephony. By
certain peculiar sound modulations, properly keyed, we are enabled
to utilize the waves in a way that your modern science has not yet
discovered. I imagine such communications might properly be called
phantograms. Before many years you will be able to talk to friends
in New York--if you have any--by simply raising a third story window
and pitching your tones into the exact harmonic, as you heard me do
tonight. It’s all quite simple when you know how. That heavy thumping
in the pipes was just a local manifestation and it had nothing to do
with the message to Kinisi.
[Illustration: THE CORNFIELDS IN OCTOBER]
“Any spiritual sound or demonstration, in which ghostly noise of any
kind is produced, is known among us as a ‘skreek’. Skreeks have a wide
range of utility. They may be vibrated over vast distances, as I
just exemplified from the tower top, or used in a merely local way,
like the expression in the pipes.
“In the summer time you often hear funny squeaky noises and loud thumps
in the water pipes that connect with the guest tents on the bluff.
Well, that’s me. While I am among the tents a great deal in the summer,
I play the pipes from the tower, so whenever you hear these skreeks
after this you will understand the cause. I tried the main pipes
tonight just to see if they were keeping their tonality in cold weather.
“Since I’ve been here I’ve greatly enjoyed myself. I take much pleasure
in wandering about the farm at night. I spend considerable time in our
friend’s cornfields during the warm summer nights where I meet many
Indian shades. They are among the stalks in the dark, cracking the
joints to make them grow faster. In October they stay in the shocks and
rustle the dry leaves at night. They used to live all over these bluffs
in their little wigwams. Sometimes I spend hours in the farm house
between the walls, listening to our friend Jacobs and his guests. A lot
of friends come to see him who interest me, and some of them I would
like to meet in the way I have met you tonight. Please remember me to
Professor Dientsbach, who has charge of the children’s saxophone band,
when you see him, and get him up here some Christmas eve if you can.
He has had the band in the tower on several occasions, and it afforded
me much pleasure. Give my regards to the small boy you call the ‘Hot
Spot’, and assure him and his little sister Gertie that there is
nothing at all in the tower for them to be afraid of, and I am always
glad to have them come up here and play.
“Sometimes I go up to Thunder Knob, the big sand dune north of here.
The shades of an Indian hunter and a large sand bear have been fighting
inside of this dune off and on for many years. When they are quiet too
long I go in and stir them up.
“I often visit the little chapel on the next hill during winter nights,
and sit there until early morning--in fact it is one of my favorite
haunts when I am outside of the tower. I also find much diversion in
drifting about in the dark through the winter woods and along the lake
shore when everything is frozen up. This winter I have spent several
nights in the deserted pavilion on the beach, amusing myself with the
phonograph records in the corner. Sometime they will learn to can heat
and cold as they do sound. The winds down there in the winter are very
wheezy and I like it.”
[Illustration: THE ROAD THROUGH THE WINTER WOODS]
There was a long silence after this. I changed my position on the box
against the wall and thought possibly that I must have dozed for a few
minutes and missed part of the story, but was not sure of it.
I looked up on the stairway, but apparently my ghost was not there.
Evidently he had faded with the first gray morning light that was now
stealing into the tower, and had taken his long lingering thirst down
below to his phantom flagon of musty wine.
I waited for some time, but remembering what he had said about a
possible sudden disappearance, I concluded that it was useless to
remain longer.
I arrived at the farm house just in time for breakfast, and,
immediately afterward I began this tale of what I had seen and heard in
the tower, while the facts were still fresh in my mind.
Up to that memorable Christmas eve I was entirely unfamiliar with
Hungarian history, and did not know whether anybody by the name of
Emric Szapolyia had ever lived or not. Naturally I was very curious on
the subject and anxious to convince myself that I had not been dreaming
in the tower.
I obtained a copy of Godkin’s “History of Hungary and the Magyars,” and
succeeded in locating my ghostly friend in a chapter devoted to the
career of King Mathias Corvinus, who reigned between 1457 and 1480.
The account given of him coincided with what he had told me as far as
it went. While he was referred to as a general and duke, it did not
mention his tower, or the fact that he had ever been a “robber baron,”
but the omission of such trifling details in a brief summary of his
period was to be expected. He was mentioned as “an able and experienced
officer, never at a loss for an expedient in the midst of the most
unpromising circumstances, always cool and collected.”
His friend Paul Kinisi was alluded to as “the Murat of the Magyar
army--fiery, brilliant, ostentatious, galloping to the charge with
flashing sabre and in splendid costume.” I also found confirmation of
Kinisi’s exploit with the three Turks, related by the ghost. As the
historical allusions in his narrative corresponded with such authentic
fragments as I was able to find concerning him and his friend Kinisi,
I assumed that the rest of his story was equally reliable. While I was
unable to verify all of his statements, any doubts as to the reality of
the interview were dissipated.
I carefully searched such piratical lore as I had access to and found
that there was nothing in the tale in the tower that was inconsistent
with recorded facts relating to piracy on the high seas from
Szapolyia’s time on earth down to that of the sojourn of the ghostly
crew on the Island of Manhattan. In “The Book of Pirates” I found the
life stories of nearly all of the sea faring Wizards of Finance with
whom he stated that he had associated. There appears to be no record of
any of them having been haunted at any time, but the haunter was of
course much better qualified to tell of this than some skeptical, and
perhaps careless, historian who was not there at the time.
One of our illustrations is from an old photograph of Wall Street and
Trinity Church, probably taken some time before the ghost left New
York. It is unfortunate that it could not have been made at night
and possibly have revealed at least some of the filmy forms of the
piratical crew on the sub-treasury steps. It would then be a welcome
bit of corroborative evidence in case the specter’s veracity should
ever be questioned.
I thought that some of the strictures and comparisons made by my
phantom friend were somewhat severe, but I have included them in this
chronicle for the sake of accuracy. We all have different points of
view, and I suppose, from his standpoint, the elucidation of present
day business methods by the shade of the case-hardened Mr. Waters,
did make that spectral little band of freebooters feel rather cheap
and disgruntled. The contrasts between their times and ours of course
shocked them, but they should have remembered that in an age of
progress everything must advance, and human villainy would naturally
be deeper and greater now than during their periods. I thought that
Waters might have been a little more tactful and considerate. He should
have revealed the situation in a way that would not have humiliated
the gentle little crew in the belfry by making them feel that they had
been out classed and, that if they had been alive, they would have been
without professional distinction.
[Illustration: THE END]
_Postscript_
I did not mention my experience in the tower, until after I had
finished writing the account of it, for the reason that I was anxious
that discussion with others should not disturb any of my impressions
of the visit with the ghost--at least until after I had recorded them.
When the story was completed, I mailed the manuscript to my friend
Jacobs, and, in a few days, received the following reply:
My dear Mr. Reed:--
I have read your narrative with much interest, and am delighted that
a path appears to have been opened that may lead to an explanation of
many queer and mysterious things that have happened on my Michigan farm
during the past few years. I had no idea that my water tower was the
abode of a distinguished spook, and I congratulate you on having met
that fine old remnant of a past age face to face. I envy you this honor
which I hope I may also enjoy at some time in the future.
Of course I have known for a long time about the ghost of Matt Jaeckel.
It has been on the place for years and has chased so many people
at different times that we have all come to consider it as an old
acquaintance, but you seem to have unearthed an entirely new specter.
I am afraid that if any more ghosts appear on my farm I will have
difficulty in selling the property if I should ever conclude to dispose
of it.
I was deeply interested in the old robber baron’s spiritual history
down to the time of the arrival of the little crew of eminent phantoms
in New York. I must confess that I felt somewhat shocked at some of
his comments on the business activities of that city. I have a great
many friends there who would have materially changed his belief in the
moral hopelessness of his modern surroundings if they had been in a
disembodied state and in a position to explain many things to him which
the shade of Waters apparently ignored.
Waters evidently had been a pirate, pure and unadorned--a type of the
financial thimbleriggers and wild-cat operators who claw at everything
and everybody they can reach. It seems quite natural that his spirit
should mingle with the piratical wraithy flock on the steps of the
sub-treasury, but I think if the phantom baron’s story is to go out
into the world you ought to send some sort of an antidote with it.
While it is perfectly true that there is a lot of iniquity in New York
just as there is everywhere else, it must not be forgotten that vast
enterprises have originated there that have been of infinite value to
mankind. I think the observations of the ghost might well be taken as a
text, and I am tempted to express some of the thoughts that came to me
while reading the story.
Of course we cannot argue with a ghost, any more than we can convince
a deceased writer that he was wrong, but we may always combat what we
believe to be fallacy, whether its author is in existence or not.
The old robber baron lived and died in a sphere of life that gave him
an unhealthy and morbid point of view and it seems natural that such a
mental attitude should be in some way reflected in his spiritual state.
Through him we have a shadowy expression of archaic ideas and obsolete
conceptions of the mission and ideals of mankind. He is a faint echo
of a tumultuous past, ruled by the lust of gold and blood, when men
recognized only the law of the jungle. In the light of our present day
civilization we may well forgive him.
Whatever my private beliefs may be as to ghosts and the activities of
departed spirits, I am assuming that this old party in the tower is in
a spiritual state, and that you did have the visit with him that you
have written about, for I have always considered you perfectly truthful.
This old ghost’s continued association with that renowned sea faring
gang of phantoms, and his contact with the unholy shade of Waters,
probably excluded him from the society of the departed spirits of
those who helped to build up the world during the period of his story.
Undoubtedly even in spirit realms the line must be drawn some where.
Had he enjoyed the advantages of proper ghostly companionship in New
York he might have learned that he was haunting a region where some of
the great constructive problems of the age are being worked out--where,
if he had been alive, he might have felt the financial pulsations of
a continent. He would have learned that, outside of the tricky stock
manipulators, iniquitous combinations, blue-sky schemers, and hosts of
other parasites and pests that always flourish in centers of financial
activity, great forces there have helped to lay the foundations upon
which the prosperity of the nation rests. Many millions have gone
forth from this great financial center that have webbed the map of our
country with railway lines, encircled its sea borders with prosperous
docks, established mammoth industrial enterprises, erected and
endowed universities, libraries and benevolent institutions, founded
innumerable charities and movements for the investigation and control
of disease, and done hundreds of other things that humanity would never
have done for itself without the initiative of individuals with power
to give form and effect to ideas for the good of mankind.
The hue and cry against what is called “big business” is the turbulent
protest of the untutored mob--the yelp of the Bolshevik. In our modern
social structure certain concentrations of wealth are inevitable and
seem necessary to our economic life. The physical expression and
realization of great individual ideas are impossible without them. Such
ideas have developed the potential and latent resources of this country
so that it has become a world power. The savages, who at one time owned
the entire continent, could not have done this, any more than Captains
Teach, Morgan and Kidd, and the rest of that destructive crew would
have done it if they could. They would never have made it possible to
transport a ton of freight a mile for less than a cent and a quarter,
which is now done in America as a result of intelligent organization,
co-operation and cumulative effort. In the absence of such highly
perfected co-ordination a Chinese coolie, working for twenty cents a
day, with two baskets suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, with the
greatest physical effort, transports commodities at a rate which would
be the equivalent of one ton per mile per day, or twenty cents per ton.