The office of the director of the Louisiana World Exposition had large glass windows overlooking the grounds. James Eloi Trosclair – Jet – shook hands then sat so that his reflection was superimposed against the colored flags, sparkling lights, eagerly hustling tourists. Benet Daniels, director, had invisible defensive plates of armor drawn up around him.
"I'm going to tell you quite frankly, Mister Trosclair," he said, shaking his head before his rump had even touched the seat, "I'm very reluctant to … uh … to employ your services. You … uh … can realize what the publicity ...."
"Yes, but you have employed my 'services' as you call them. And they're needed or you wouldn't have called. By the way, payment would be directly to the Departmental Fund, Louisiana State University Department of Parapsychology, LSU, Baton Rouge. Now, your World's Fair is haunted, Mister Daniels, accept it and admit it. Tell me about your problem."
Daniels sighed. He leaned forward resignedly, elbows on the desk, hands slightly apart as though he were going to describe the size of a fish he had caught.
"Call me Ben," he said. "At first, we thought it was some kind of electrical failure. Then we hoped it would prove to be squirrelly winds, things like that."
"Any violence? That's the important part."
"Not from the.. .uh .. .is 'ghost' the right word?"
"Are you comfortable with that?"
"Not altogether," Daniels admitted.
"Is there another word more comfortable?" Jet asked. Daniels considered.
"No," he said.
"The word doesn't matter. Maybe you'll get used to the word 'ghost', ainh? You were telling me about violence."
"Yes. Not violence from the … uh … ghost. It is more that the ghost inspires violence."
"Ainh? Uh ... what? Explain."
"There've been some fights between men over some ladies getting … well … getting fondled."
"Fondled?"
"That's right. You know … felt up?"
"By the ghost."
"Apparently," Daniels said with a sigh that told Jet this was his first real admission to himself of even the possibility.
"We've got a live one," Jet said. "By that I mean lively, not a-live. I'll get started right away."
He stood to leave. Daniels stood, too, and put out his hand, although the expression on his face indicated that he thought there'd be much more to the interview. Jet had determined over the years that his own impressions were most useful. He didn't like to infiltrate his own feelings with the observations of others.
"I certainly hope ..." Daniels started to say. Jet interrupted him.
"Hope is the most dangerous of all human qualities, Ben," Jet said. "Apparently, only human beings have it but it clouds intelligence, clouds intuition. You just sit tight. Me, I'm going to work."
Jet began by strolling through the fair. It was a fascinating show. He was more interested in the tourists than in the displays, absorbed by the glitter and the ambiance.
The first manifestation was in the hearing. A mist of foreign music all around him, music not foreign by geography but by time. A whisper of light street banter, Irish brogue and a gritting sound like an old mill wheel against grain.
Yet, what he actually saw remained the same. At first. He was standing at the Vatican Pavilion, near Reunion Hall. Dixieland from the hall faded, did not echo off the granite blocks.
Granite block buildings. There they were. A street. Another place. No, the same place before it had been transformed. Jet was partially in a shadow-world. He thought of it as monde d'ombre.
He saw seamen in striped shirts, one even with an eye patch right out of Robert Louis Stevenson. Ladies in long, full dresses. Men in high collars and long coats. Top hats. Carriages.
The people, the buildings, the streets of the manifestation shimmered like oil on water. Natural, but unreal. Ahead a portly, broad-backed man in perfect Victorian – dress, snug-cut serge coat with single, center flair; blue-gray striped trousers over spats and shining black shoes; hat high and shiny – ignored the modern women in their halters and shorts all around him. He tipped his hat to every bustle-backsided shimmering shadow-woman he saw, however. The women nodded politely in reciprocation. But the ghost also saw the people of Jet's world. Jet interpreted that right away. The ghost was in control. He manipulated the manifestation.
Now, the lights of the fair began to flash in a rhythmic pattern. A showgirl hurrying in costume near him turned pale beneath her makeup and uttered, 'Good Lord.' Sparks began to squirt from behind light bulbs as though they were water outlets without a washer. The roofs and superstructures of the high displays began to moan and whistle in an unfelt wind. The sidewalk became as slippery as the mossy bottom of a cold mountain creek and many young women in skirts fell to their bottoms with a flurry of underwear.
Among the shadow-people, because Jet thought of them as gent d'ombre, the man with the top hat turned, beamed at the display, then viewed with a pleased, smiling expression the havoc of the unfelt wind and rampant lights. The slipperiness disappeared, and Jet noted none of the elderly or handicapped had fallen. A little tomado of curses arose in a swirl as the broad-backed shadow-man glanced once at Jet, reached a gloved thumb and forefinger into the floppy folds of a young living woman's shorts and pinched hard the soft, bare flesh.
She screamed and turned and faced an innocent man behind her with a string of insults which were nothing compared to what her husband hurled at him. The husband dropped the innocent man with one punch.
"We don't have to take that crud," the husband said in a thick Midwestern accent. He put his arm protectively around his wife's shoulders as others stepped in to help the fallen man.
Jet moved fast. The ghost made sure Jet was watching, then turned and walked slowly toward St. Charles Avenue. Jet followed, dodging pedestrians as best he could.
At first it was quite difficult. Urban renewal and the World's Fair had altered the former pattern of the streets. Jet darted through phantoms of buildings to the Fair exit. Then he searched modern, material streets to find the shadowy ones.
The vision faded with distance; but, now that he was leaving the Fair, the shadow-world around him thickened and took on color, definition. Jet found him waiting on a corner of Magazine Street. There was an ebony cane with a gold knob. Jet heard the lonely sound of the steel tip against the ghostly brick streets.
The specter crossed one side of St. Charles and waited calmly in the landscaped center for the next streetcar. Jet could not cross to join him. An invisible hand on his chest held him. He was required to wait on the corner by the restaurant Delmonico.
Two electric streetcars came and left with passengers filing through the phantom. The ghost ignored them, looking toward Lee Circle for a phantom streetcar. Eyebrows raised, eyelids heavy and tight, a man of elegance with patience wearing thin.
Now, down the twin sets of rails came the phantom of a mule-drawn car. Mules, head-down with day's end weariness plodded to the stopping place. The car paused. The ghost entered, paid the fare. The car pulled out. Unable to move, Jet watched it plod away.
***
When the restraint was lifted, Jet followed him on a modern, electric counterpart of the mule-drawn streetcar. It rattled past The Columns Hotel – Jet always stayed at The Columns – and stopped just short of Tulane University. It was the same stop at precisely the same time for the phantom mule-drawn car. Jet's modern one overtook it so that there were two streetcars, two sets of passengers. Jet sat alongside the broad-backed Victorian man though at a level a yard higher.
They stood and exited together. The ghost took up the proper interval on the street. Jackson Avenue, a few blocks downtown from Audubon Park. The former images blended with the natural shadow.
Now Jet could follow. The streetlights on corners illuminated the ghost. Pale, gas streetlights of another century. A little park at Prytania, a little triangular park. The centerpiece a larger-than-necessary terra cotta base in rose and gray topped by a miniscule statue green with mold.
A ghostly hand rested on the gaudy base and sparkling ghost eyes trained on him. The luminescent chin nodded curtly. Then the spirit turned and walked toward Audubon.
A handprint, though, a bright, green-glowing palm and fingers remained upon the terra cotta. A sign. A clue. It had faded to nothing by the time Jet reached the base.
The statue was a copy of a Roman Ceres, a goddess of agriculture. The ghost was moving, Jet in tow. Inside Audubon Park. Some kind of boulder. Another handprint, fading. Close-up, Jet saw it was a hunk of iron.
The ghost strode back toward Exposition Boulevard. There was a cute little gingerbread structure there, dwarfed by the buildings around it. Jet hurried but was unable to get within ten feet as the ghost paused on the threshold, removed his hat, opened a door of air and walked in.
Something was suddenly gone from the Upper Garden District. A flower picked. A dolphin changing color as he dies. The special thread was broken.
Back at The Columns, Jet left a message at the newspaper for Arlene Degaterre. Then he collapsed into bed. Her call woke him in the morning.
"Have you heard from Eleanor?" she asked in that sweet, feminine, understanding thickness after the usual pleasantries had been exchanged.
"No," he said, feeling the pang. "Don't expect to for a long time."
"Must be hell."
"Almost. Trou Noir. But listen. I got a riddle for you."
"Oh, God," she said, sighing. "Another story my editors won't print."
"Maybe so."
"Same rules?"
"Same rules."
"Got my VDT ready, shoot."
"What happened to pencils?"
"No pencils, no paper. Video display terminals, now. Shoot."
"We're in the Upper Garden District, Exposition Boulevard. What does a statue of Ceres … with a 'C', Roman goddess of agriculture … what does that statue, a hunk of iron and a little house at 508 Exposition .. .what do they have in common?"
"A statue of agriculture, an iron blob and a house … I give up."
"Not yet. Find out. Get me here or at Benet Daniel's office ...."
"World's Fair Benet Daniels?"
'The same."
"Ho-ho! You got a ghost at the World's Fair! We just did a release saying all of that bagasse was a faulty transformer that somehow affected a wind machine for … I don't know … for something. Those bastards. We'll blow the ...."
"Hold on, there, woman. Rules, remember, rules."
She hesitated but then said resignedly, "Okay. You got it. Let me go. I'll get on this right away and see what I come up with."
Daylight changed everything on Exposition Boulevard. He circulated between Ceres, the hunk of iron and the odd little house. But there were no phenomena. The fair had been going on for hours before Jet got to the grounds.
There was no message from Arlene Degaterre. While Jet was calling the Times-Picayune City Desk, Daniels came out of his sanctum sanctorum all smiles with his hand out like the host of a daytime giveaway program congratulating Jet on breaking his bank. A little confused, Jet took his hand and hung up the telephone.
"I don't know what you did," he said, "but it was worth every penny. My accountants tell me it's deductible, too. Not one thing, today. Not one peep."
"I didn't do anything," Jet said. "It hasn't even started yet."
Daniels grinned at the obvious joke. He slapped Jet on the back. Jet was about to tell him it was no joke when the telephone buzzed and flashed and his secretary said, "It's Arlene Degaterre from the Picayune."
"I'll take it in my office," Daniels said, pleased.
"It's not for you. It's for Mister Trosclair."
Daniels' expression changed immediately.
"You bringing in the press?" he demanded.
"She's an old associate. I helped the spirit of an ancestor of hers hanged during the Civil War at Rouen. I ...."
"We're going to deny everything," Daniels said. Like a fiddler crab, he scurried back to his inner office. Jet took the call on the secretary's telephone.
"Great story," Arlene said. "The iron, the statue, the house, Exposition Boulevard, they're all that's left of the 1884 World's Fair, the World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, one-hundred years ago exactly and right here in New Orleans."
"What else?" Jet asked abruptly. Arlene was not the kind of woman a man had to tiptoe around.
"Lots of hanky-panky. I don't want to talk over the phone. Come on downstairs."
"Downstairs?"
"Yeah. I'm in Reunion Hall. Meet you in front of the Vatican. I don't like to go up there, they're always trying to sell you something. Come on down."
"On my way."
The sky had that curious glow of early twilight, something charged in the atmosphere. Jet saw it as he approached the Vatican Pavilion. Arlene was there, studying a sheaf of computer printout paper bordered with sprocket holes and folded at lines of perforations. The ghost, dressed as the night before, was standing very close to her and reading over her shoulder.
Jet slowed his pace. He looked the ghost over carefully. He had a clipped, white moustache. Telling Arlene that a Victorian pincher was reading over her shoulder was going to be fun. But the ghost looked up, waved him to hurry and pointed at the story. Then he tapped the top of his hat to seat it firmly and started again toward Lafayette Square.
"Come on, let's go," Jet said to Arlene before she could speak. She rattled the papers at him.
"This is big stuff," she said.
"I know," Jet said. "Our friend just read it over your shoulder. He thinks it's hot stuff, too."
He held her elbow to hurry her along.
"What?"
"Quick," Jet said. "He's heading out of the fair grounds."
"You mean right now? At this minute?"
"That's right," Jet said. "Give me the rundown."
Stumbling and panting, Arlene gave it to him.
"Last World's Fair had troubles. Mud, mostly, but incredible bureaucratic snafus. Unbelievable. And the newspapers, especially the Times-Democrat, printed nothing but good stuff. It's history repeating itself."
"History repeats itself because we read anything we want into it," Jet said. "What else went wrong?"
"Poor management, mostly. I think I have demonstrated in this story that it was deliberately poor. You see, E.A. Burke was director general. At the time of the fair, he was the darling of New Orleans. Railroad builder, Confederate major, fought and won a big duel. Could do no wrong. He got the federal government to loan a million dollars and guess what? The fair lost four hundred and seventy thousand dollars! He didn't have to pay back the loan. Get it? And he got the city to kick in a bundle they never got back. And he got the feds to out-and-out give another three hundred thousand. And that was just the seed money. There were hundreds of heavy investors. Many of them were wiped out."
They stopped on Magazine Street across from Lafayette Square. The ghost was on North Street, beside a large entrance to the manifestation of an older, previously demolished building. The apparition was superimposed against the lower three floors of a new skyscraper. The skyscraper was closed but the older building was open and in business in a big way. Loading docks rumbled with the comings and goings of carts and wagons with bound newspapers. There was a clacking sound coming from the lower floor. Arlene finally caught her breath.
"That's an old printing press," she said.
"What?"
"That noise. That's just like the old press at Rouen, when I was a kid working in my daddy's office."
"You got it."
"What's going on?"
"Tell me one more thing about that story."
"Burke was the editor that wrote there wasn't any yellow fever epidemic to keep the merchants happy."
Jet tapped his chin with a forefinger while he considered it.
"That's not it. What else? What else about this Burke guy."
"Years later, when he was secretary-treasurer for the state, he stole eight hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars and skipped to Honduras."
"That's it! That's it! You on an exposé, girl," Jet said jubilantly. But then he started angling her across the street by her elbow again. The ghost was beckoning. He shouldered past two exiting spirit reporters and climbed the stairs into the shadows. "We got to hurry. He's gone inside."
"Inside what?"
"That building there. Don't you see it?"
"That building's closed."
"No, the other one there."
But she couldn't see it. Jet smashed a window in a door and got a hand in to unlock it. No burglar alarm. Impossible, but still, no burglar alarm. When they entered, she could see it.
"Look at those linotype machines. Mark Twain went broke over the linotype. Move over, honey, let me have a shot."
She tried to back into the operator with her derriere to shove him over and give her room on the bench, but her body just went through the operator's body and her butt hit the floor when she tried to sit on the bench. She rubbed at the soreness as Jet hustled her up and got her going down a material hallway then up a material stairwell.
"Ooooh, that smarts," she said at the onset.
Every aspect of the old building was there, but transparent. They had to use the new building's stairs to climb to the upper floor of the old one. Down a hall to the shadow newsroom, Jet saw him beckoning. Jet started them toward the newsroom and saw the ghost open the door and walk through.
They could not open the door. Instead, they walked right through it. It was suddenly as though Jet and Arlene were the ghosts and the manifestations were real. And the floor they stood on was much lower than that of the manifestation so that their heads were at the level of the desk tops. It was like being a child again in an adult world. They followed their leader to a glassed-in office. The ghost barged in and, undetected, they followed.
"That's E.A. Burke," Arlene whispered, pointing to the thin, thickly mustachioed man behind the desk.
"You don't have to whisper," Jet said. "He can't hear us."
But, in fact, all ghostly sound diminished when they spoke. Even if they did not speak, the sound drifted in and out like a poorly tuned radio. At first, Burke listened like a man very weary of an old tune. Then he filled with anger and stood, pounding the desk.
"Don't you understand what we're trying to do here?"
"You damn right I do! It keeps on, too. What we do here keeps going on. Like a seed dropped into the ground. It keeps happening. I want it stopped."
"You can't stop progress!"
"Nobody wants to stop progress. I want to stop this ...."
And now all movement stopped. It was as though Burke and the newsroom were frozen. The ghost turned toward them and said to them very clearly in a voice as real as Jet's or Arlene's, 'That article, please, young lady'."
"Yes, sir," Arlene said, handing him the paper. "And if you have a few mo...."
But the activity resumed. The paper, passed through some kind of cosmic barrier, had dematerialized and was now clearly a part of the shadow side. With an air of triumph, the ghost tossed the sheaf onto Burke's desk.
"What's this?" Burke asked.
"Read it. Read about Honduras."
"But this hasn't hap … we're only just … where did you get this?"
"Worry about where I bring it. If you don't stop this time-meddling, I'm going to take it to the Daily Picayune and ruin you."
Arlene was fascinated.
"But the Picayune and the Democrat-Times didn't merge into the ...."
"Shhh!" Jet interrupted. "He doesn't know that. He's locked in a time warp."
Burke read it and then looked up, defeated.
"This is impossible."
"I've got you, Major! Close up shop!"
"Damn you," Burke said. Behind his desk was a button which was labeled 'Stop The Presses'. He reached behind and pressed it. A loud, ghostly bell rang through the building. It kept ringing as all the images faded except the broad-backed man in the top hat. Against the bell, hidden somewhere inside the bell, he said a simple 'Thank you' and was gone.
Not until then did they realize that the bell was the delayed burglar alarm. Jet held her in the darkened office building, the jarring rattle of the alarm surrounding them like a cloak or a shroud.
"Who was he?" Arlene asked.
"We'll never know. Some bilked businessman, maybe. Let's get out of here before some cop shoots us for burglary."
They made their way downstairs and waited for the police to explain as best they could. But, though they waited for almost an hour, the police did not respond. So Jet and Arlene walked away arm-in-arm. Behind them the bell softened to a pleasant rattle and then died away altogether.