Chapter II: Part 2

“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.

“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.

“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.”

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.

_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.

There are so many factors that enter into the intelligent carrying out of large constructive ideas that it would be quite hopeless to attempt to enumerate them in a brief general reference to the subject. We might for illustration take certain enthusiastic promoters, who, with a vision of what transportation facilities might produce from some region with vast undeveloped resources, conceive the idea of the construction of a railroad. Through their optimism, persistent agitation and presentation of the commercial possibilities of the project they finally attract the requisite capital. First the funds are provided for preliminary surveys to determine the most feasible route. Reports are made by experts, money is furnished for grading, men in the forests are cutting timber for ties, cars, bridges, buildings, etc., others are toiling in distant mines extracting ore that long low steamers take over the Great Lakes to the steel mills, where it is swung out of the holds by huge cranes. In glowing furnaces it is metamorphosed into red streams that cool in the forms required for the infinite fabrications to follow. It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter--the modern railroad.

Perhaps several years elapse before the road is in running condition. It may have its vicissitudes, receivership, bankruptcy, and reorganization, but at last the dream of the promoters comes true. All of the manifold forces and influences that have had their part in the growth and realization of the original idea have found fruition. Cumulative effort has succeeded and a ton of freight is carried a mile for less than a cent and a quarter. Out of a turmoil of varied fortunes a virile factor has been born into the economic world that has made life easier for those within its environment, and figuratively, has made “two blades of grass grow where but one grew before.” This is one of the gradual processes of civilization.

Conservation, utility, efficiency and economy are the watchwords of the day, and, while the cry of Teach’s parrot from the bloody deck of his pirate ship--“Pieces-of-Eight!--Pieces-of-Eight!”--may be echoed now and then within the shadow of Trinity’s spire, we who are alive and in the enjoyment of rational mentality, know that there are a great many things in that neighborhood that are entitled to our profound admiration.

I hope that you will not feel that I have intentionally written anything that may detract from the interest of your story, for it delights me very much. We may dismiss with smiles many of the observations of our ghostly friend, for after all--like himself--they are mere phantoms, and as such we may enjoy them. If I had known of the wraithy guest in my tower, and his “phantom flagon” I would perhaps have spent more time up there than I have, for even a phantom flagon now would have certain attractions that it would be flippant to dwell upon in this letter.

Next Christmas eve I will go up to the tower, and possibly I may be favored with a “visitation.” If so I may go over some things I have mentioned in this letter, but, as I have before intimated, there would not be much use trying to convince a ghost of anything. There is too much of that kind of argument in the world already. It will be better to try and make him feel at home and as comfortable as possible. If he should fail to appear it might be well to leave another spirit on the stairway where he might find it. That possibly would change his views into a rosy glow of optimism, for the world is not nearly as bad as he painted it to you. He ought to have something to cheer him up, for, with the amount of time that he has on his hands he will find such a state of mind very wearisome.

Hoping that you will enjoy next Christmas eve as much as you evidently did the last one, I remain, with kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,
Henry W. Jacobs.

TOBY RUBOVITS
PRINTER AND BINDER
CHICAGO

End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghost in the Tower, by Earl Howell Reed