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The Ghost of Me 315
your splendid clinic.”
“Bosh,” I snorted, and wished I believed it.
“Bosh it is indeed, but my parishioners are not notably intellectual. They have
brought with them from their own countries a mass of malformed and undigested
superstitions. In those superstitions there is some small grain of spiritual truth, and
that I seek to salvage whenever possible; but in most of those old-country beliefs
there is only ignorance and peril.”
“But what’s all this to me?”
“They think,” said Father Svatomir slowly, “that you are working miracles in
the clinic.”
“I am,” I admitted.
He smiled. “As an agnostic, John, you may call them miracles and think no more
of it. But my parishioners cannot see matters so simply. If I, now, were to work these
wonders of healing, they would accept the fact as a manifestation of God’s greatness;
but when you work them— You see, my son, to these poor believing people, all great
gifts and all perfect gifts are from above—or from below. Since you, in their sight,
are an unbeliever and obviously not an agent of God, why, then, you must be an
agent of the devil.”
“Does it matter so long as I heal their lungs from the effects of this damned
cement dust?”
“It matters very much indeed to them, John. It matters so much that, I repeat,
you are in danger of your life.”
I got up. “Excuse me a minute, Father … something I wanted to check in the
consulting room.”
It checked, all right. My ghost sat at the desk, large as death. He’d found my copy
of Fanny Hill, dematerialized it, and settled down to thorough enjoyment.
“I’d forgotten this too,” he observed as I came in.
I kept my voice low. “If you can forget our own murder, small wonder you’d
forget a book.”
“I don’t mean the book. I’d forgotten the subject matter. And now it all comes
back to me—”
“Look!” I said sharply. “The hell with your memories.”
“They’re not just mine.” He gazed at me with a sort of leering admiration.
“The hell with them anyway. There’s a man in the next room warning me that
my life’s in danger. I’ll admit he just saved my life, but that could be a trick. Could
he be the man?”
Reluctantly my ghost laid his book aside, came to the door, and peered out.
“Uh-uh. We’re safe as houses with him.”
I breathed. “Stick around. This check-up system’s going to be handy.”
“You can’t prevent what’s happened,” he said indifferently, and went back to the
desk and Fanny Hill. As he picked up the book he spoke again, and his voice was
wistful. “You haven’t got a blonde I could dematerialize?”
I shut the consulting-room door on him and turned back to Father Svatomir. “Everything
under control. I’ve got a notion, Father, that I’m going to prove quite capable
of frustrating any attempts to break up my miracle-mongering. Or is it monging?”