THE PHANTOM OF YREMY 
by Brian Craig 
	
	Now, said the story-teller, I will tell you a tale of Bretonnia, the country of the marvellous King Charles, who sets himself further above his people than any other lord in all the Old World, and who has so many governors under him that he cannot know their number, let alone their names.
	This story tells of a town named Yremy, which was not so very far from Moussillon, the legendary City of the Damned - not far enough, in the opinion of its citizens. The great earthquake which had destroyed the heart of Mousillon had barely stirred the foundations of Yremy, and none of the houses of its gentle folk had fallen. Nevertheless, the tremors had left their mark upon the town, for once the rich and the mighty have felt turbulence in the ground on which they tread, they always walk in fear of losing their position.
	This anxiety led the noblemen of Yremy to be especially stern and severe in their administration of the law. Whenever the governor had cause to speak to the good and honest men who had put him in his office he was proud to tell them that there was no other town in Bretonnia whose thieves were so fearful of the rewards of judgment, or where the scaffolds were so frequently hung with the broken bodies of those who dared offend the law and its upholders.
	With such an advantage as this Yremy might have been a happy city, but the people of Bretonnia were always a discontented folk. There were among the ungrateful poor a more than tiny number who were embittered by the firmness of their masters, and resentful of the way in which its force inhibited their spirit of adventure.
	"How should we live if we cannot steal?" they said to one another when they met in their secret dens and dirty inns. "Must we go back to the land, to spoil our hands and break our backs in the planting and the reaping? And for what? The best grain goes to the rich, who neither dig nor pick, and we are left with the turnips and the beets. We cannot seek honest work as watchmen, for we are the ones for whom watchmen must watch, and our masters would soon perceive that we had nothing to do. We must do what we can to reclaim the night for those who have stealthy business to conduct. We must discover among our ranks a robber of great daring, who can thumb his nose at the governor and his magistrates, and defy every effort of the guardsmen and the secret police to bring him to his reckoning."
	Alas, there was a long hard time when they looked among themselves for this paragon of cleverness, and could not find him. Yremy's thieves grew lean in the winter, and less capable in their trade as each of them in turn was caught about his business and returned to his family lightened by a hand.
	There came a day, however, when there began a series of robberies which restored hope to the poorest homes in Yremy - not petty thefts of food and trinkets from the marketplace, nor even a skilful cutting of purses, but burglaries of the boldest kind. These crimes were the work of a daring housebreaker who could climb high walls and break strong locks. Again and again he carried away fine jewels, virtuous amulets and gold coins, and sometimes weapons.
	Only a handful of the people who were robbed in the early days of his career caught glimpses of this robber, and they could say little about him save that he went about his business clad all in black leather, wearing a mask to hide his face.
	Only one man came near to laying hands upon him in those early days, but that was a fat merchant, who was at the time clad only in a linen nightshirt, and he lost all enthusiasm for a tussle when he saw that the thief was armed with a stabbing sword of the kind which is called anepee a l'estoc.
	"He stole the bag of coins which was my worldly wealth," wailed this unlucky man, when he told his anxious friends of his terrible ordeal, "and did not hesitate to add insult to injury, for he took my powdered wig as well when I cursed him as a truffle-digging pig, and impaled it on a spike upon my gate."
	In another realm, his hearers might have laughed about the wig, but in Bretonnia a merchant who apes the gentry by playing the fop is not reckoned a figure of fun, at least by his own kind. The fact that the robber carried a sword was taken more seriously still, for it was held to be proof of murderous intent, and rich men began to quiver in their beds for fear that when their turn came to attract the attention of the thief, he might puncture their bellies as well as their wigs.
	Within a matter of weeks every man of quality in the town was howling for protection or revenge.
	"We would expect such things to happen in Brionne," they cried, "but this is Yremy where the law is firm and the peace is sternly kept. Is this a phantom which robs us, that he cannot be captured and held? Is it some black magician who evades our every precaution with his spells? Then let us call upon our wizards and our priests to use their powers of divination! Let us call upon the Gods of Law to reveal this miscreant and deliver him to punishment!"
	These anguished cries were heard even in the houses of the poor, where they caused a certain merriment, and the name of the Phantom was thenceforth on everyone's lips, whether they hailed him as a hero or damned him as a villain.
	The only comfort which the wealthy could find in the midst of their distress was to say to one another: "In the end he will surely be caught, and then let us see what Jean Malchance and Monsieur Voltigeur will make of him!"
	Jean Malchance and Monsieur Voltigeur are two of the central characters of our story, and the only two who can be properly introduced - for the identity of the Phantom must remain a mystery until its climax.
	Malchance and Voltigeur were names invariably coupled, for they had been friends since boyhood, schooling together, courting the same woman (and when Voltigeur married her Malchance swore to remain a bachelor for life!), and in the fullness of time performing their public functions in harness, as senior Clerk and senior Magistrate of the High Court of Yremy. Voltigeur, who was ever the more glorious of the two, if only by a fraction, was the magistrate, while Malchance was the clerk.
	Yremy was a large enough town to boast four magistrates in all, and an equal number of clerks, but whenever a man had cause to think of the High Court of Yremy it was Malchance and Voltigeur who sprang first and foremost to mind. They were different from their fellows, because they had a lightness of touch in conducting their affairs which was born of long friendship. They were witty and clever, and their exchanges frequently evoked wild laughter in the public gallery of the court, even when the said gallery was packed with the friends of the accused.
	To say that there was a lightness about their manner is not at all to say that there was any lightness about M. Voltigeur's sentencing. Even in that matter, though, the cleverness and wit of the great man shone through. Aided by Malchance, M. Voltigeur was most inventive in his choice of punishments, sometimes devising penalties which were previously unheard of in the whole of Bretonnia. Some said that he followed the spirit of the law more closely than the ordinary scheme of punishment, but it must be admitted that others assessed him differently. M. Voltigeur himself said only that he tried to make a punishment fit the crime by which it was earned.
	It is of course true that many people believe the customary scheme of punishment to be already well-designed to serve the end of suiting the penalty to the crime. They hold that there is an abundance of natural justice in the common decree that a murderer should be hanged, a thief deprived of his offensive hand, and a petty traitor - which is to say, a woman who murders the man to whom she has been given in marriage - burned alive. But M. Voltigeur was not entirely satisfied with the beautiful simplicity of this ordinary scheme, and it was his invariable habit to attend to matters of finer detail, which led him to treat different thieves quite differently.
	For example, a man who stole an amulet or a gold coin might be allowed by M. Voltigeur to keep his hand, but instead be branded upon the forehead with the imprint of that same amulet or gold coin, heated near to melting-point, so that he must ever bear upon his brow the image of that which he had unlawfully coveted. A man who stole a bolt of fine velvet cloth (an item of much value in civilized Bretonnia) might likewise be allowed to keep his hand - but only on condition that he went about thereafter clad in a shirt of prickly hair which tickled his skin most horribly.
	By the same token, a poisoner would not usually be condemned by M. Voltigeur to be hanged upon the scaffold or (if of gentle birth) beheaded by the axe. Instead, he would be placed in the public pillory, and given a series of very noxious brews to drink, until his guts felt as though they were on fire, and the flesh upon his bones turned black-and-green as it rotted expeditiously away.
	Even the poorer people of Yremy perceived a clever wit at work in these unusual punishments, and the loyal public which loved to see the excutioner at work thought him a fine fellow for saving them from theennui which might otherwise claim them when the common business of hanging became overfamiliar. M. Voltigeur was therefore an extremely popular man, frequently called "the Great Judge".
	The so-called Phantom had not been long at his work when it became apparent that there was something most peculiar in the pattern of his crimes. For one thing, members of the family of M. Voltigeur appeared more often in the list of his targets than seemed likely. These burglaries stood out for a second reason too: instead of wholesale plunder of the accessible assets, the Phantom removed only a single item from each household, often leaving behind jewels and coin of considerable value. In every case involving a relative of the magistrate, the object removed was something the owner considered very precious, but each victim asserted that the value was chiefly sentimental.
	The close relatives of M. Voltigeur at this time numbered five.
	He was a widower, but had three surviving sons and two daughters. When the houses of all five had been invaded it became abundantly clear that some special of malice was at work. The fifth incident, involving the younger daughter, left no other interpretation possible, for this daughter had been unwise enough to marry for love, and she possessed nothing that was authentically valuable. She did however have a carved wooden heart which was marked by a patch of red dye in the shape of a teardrop, which she treasured greatly, not so much because of its significance as an emblem of the goddess Shallya, but because it had been given to her by the mother she had lost in infancy. This object was of no worth to any other, yet the clever robber went to some pains to remove it from her.
	When the news of this particular crime spread through the town the possibility was widely discussed that the Phantom was engaged in exacting some perverse revenge upon those near and dear to the city's favourite Judge. All Yremy waited to see how M. Voltigeur would respond.
	Now M. Voltigeur was a very dutiful man, though even his faithful friend Jean Malchance would never have said that he was unduly loving. He had been cool with his wife in the latter years of their marriage and he had always been cool with his sons. He was perhaps a little fonder of his daughters, but the fact that the younger had married for love had understandably annoyed him more than a little. But he who attacks a man's family also attacks the man, and when M. Voltigeur heard of the theft of the wooden heart he was moved to very considerable anger. He let it be known through the town that he would personally guarantee to double the price which had already been placed on the robber's head, so that the man who caught him would win a thousand silver sequins.
	No reward of that dimension had ever been offered in Yremy for the apprehension of a felon, and in the meaner streets the sum was much discussed.
	Every petty robber in the town began to watch his friends with avaricious care, and every unhappy child yearned to discover proof that one or other of his parents might prove to be the robber, and exchangeable for ready money.
	And when none of the poor could find the Phantom among his acquaintances, the rumour began to be put about that the robber must himself be a gentleman!
	This opinion was given further credence when the Phantom was very nearly apprehended in the garden of an impoverished marquis whose dwindling family fortune he had recently reduced by a further half. This time, the man who tried to stop him was no nightshirted milksop but a stout nightwatchman named Helinand, armed with apartizan (which is a kind of spear, as those of you who know Bretonnian weapons will already be aware).
	Helinand engaged the masked thief with alacrity, the pressure of his duty reinforced by greed, thrusting at him with his weapon as cunningly as he knew how. But his opponent was equal to his every challenge, parrying every blow with his own much tinier weapon.
	"Three times I drove him to the wall," Helinand declared, when he gave an acount of his adventure to M. Voltigeur, "and thrice he slipped away, as delicately as if he were dancing. I could not see his face, but I know now that he is a well-schooled fencer, who fights as only a light-footed sportsman fights, and very cleverly. Though he dressed himself in the plainest leather last night, I would wager everything I have that he is used to calfskin and lace!"
	"And did the wretch speak to you at all?" demanded M. Voltigeur, who found this ration of information far too meagre to assuage his hunger for news.
	"Why yes," said the unfortunate watchman. "When he finally tripped me up and took my partizan away, he said that he was sorry to have put me to the inconvenience of chasing him, but that he could not be caught until he had settled his account with you, which he hoped to do within the week. I did not recognize his voice, alas!"
	When M. Voltigeur heard of this amazing insolence his hands so shook with wrath that he was forced to ask Jean Malchance (who was well-used to taking dictation from him) to write down a proclamation for him, which he then gave to the First Crier of Yremy, demanding that it be loudly read in every quarter of the town.
	The message which the criers gave out was this:
	"I, M. Voltigeur, magistrate of Yremy, am sorely annoyed by the miseries inflicted upon my friends and my children by that low felon which the silly common folk have named the Phantom. I declare that this so-called Phantom is in reality worthy of no name save that of Rascal and Coward, and I say to him that if he bears any grudge against me, then he ought now to direct his attentions to my own house, and to no other. Should he answer this challenge, I promise him that he will be caught, exposed for the shabby trickster which he is, and delivered to the kind of justice which his horrid crimes deserve."
	This was an unprecedented event. Never before had a magistrate of the town sent such a message in such a fashion. Whether the man for whom it was intended heard it cried, none could tell, but wherever it was broadcast there were hundreds of interested ears to catch it and thousands of clucking tongues to pass it on, with the result that when the curfew tolled that day there was no one in Yremy who had not heard it repeated. It had been told to ancients so deaf they could hardly hear it, and youngsters so small they could barely understand it, and there was no doubt at all that if the Phantom was within the walls of the town, then the challenge must have been delivered. The citizens waited, thrilled by excitement, to see what would happen next.
	In the meantime, M. Voltigeur had not been idle. As a magistrate of the town he had in the normal course of affairs a guardsman to stand outside his front door, and now he obtained three more from the governor, so that the guard at the front might be doubled and one of equal strength placed at the back of the house.
	Inside the house he normally had a staff of thirteen servants, including six men. Not one of the six was frail and three - the coachman, the groom and his personal valet - were powerful fellows none would be eager to fight. M. Voltigeur ordered that from the day of his decree no more than two of his men should be asleep at any time, and that the others should all go armed; to those who were practised he gave short swords, while those who were unskilled were instructed to carry cudgels.
	Naturally, there came also to his aid the valiant Malchance, who loyally promised that he would sleep on a couch outside M. Voltigeur's bedroom door, and would see to it that the six servants were distributed about the house most carefully, so that each and every landing might be kept under perpetual surveillance.
	Nor did Malchance stop at such precautions as these. Mindful of the possibility that the Phantom's elusiveness might be laid to the account of magic, he brought into his friend's house the most talented of the town's licensed wizards, a man named named Odo. Odo, declaring that the thief had not yet been born who could steal goods which had been placed under his protection, set magical alarms upon the doorways, which made the entire house into a cunning trap.
	Malchance suggested then that M. Voltigeur's valuables should be gathered together into three strong chests, and he sat up all evening, closeted with his friend, compiling an inventory as the things were put away. When that was done, he sent for Odo again, beseeching him to set sealing spells upon the locks of three chests, and also the lock of the room in which they were placed. Though these spells were but petty ones Odo, full of the confidence which wizards always have when their work has not yet been tested, assured M. Voltigeur that in combination with the other precautions they would surely suffice to ward off any vulgar servant of the thief-god Ranald.
	That night, M. Voltigeur went to his bed determined to sleep as soundly as he normally did, in order to demonstrate his contempt for the Phantom and his faith in the precautions which he had taken. Unfortunately, his composure was not quite adequate to this intention, and he lay tossing and turning for many a long hour. Whenever he dozed off he found himself beset by horrid nightmares in which men he had sentenced to unusual deaths rose from their paupers' graves to march through the empty streets, heading for an appointed rendezvous with him, which he felt that he would somehow be obliged to keep.
	The fourth or fifth time that a bad dream sent him urgently back to wakefulness he felt such an overwhelming impression of dread that he reached for the firecord which he had laid beside the bed, ready for an emergency. Having blown vigorously upon it to make it grow bright he applied it to the tallow nightlight which was nearby.
	When the flame caught he took up the nightlight, holding it before him so that its faint radiance spread as far as it could into the four corners of the room. He did this to reassure himself that he was still alone and safe, but the plan misfired.
	He was not alone.
	Nor, he felt, as his heart seemed to sink into his belly, was he safe.
	Seated at the foot of the bed was a very curious person. M. Voltigeur could not tell whether it was man or woman, because a dark hood concealed the cut of its hair, and a leather mask hid its face. Its slimness suggested womanhood, but there was no hint of a breast beneath the black silken shirt which he could see through the gap where a dark cloak was imperfectly gathered about its torso.
	There was no doubt in his mind that he was confronted by the infamous Phantom of Yremy.
	M. Voltigeur opened his mouth to shout for help, but the figure put a slender finger to the lips of its unsmiling mask. The gesture seemed more conspiratorial than threatening, and the magistrate was very well aware of the absurdity of keeping silent, but he nevertheless stifled his call.
	"How did you come here?" he asked, instead - his voice hardly above a whisper.
	"Did you really think that you could keep me out?" asked the visitor. The voice was light, but had an odd throaty quality. He could not tell whether it was man's or woman's - and for all he knew for certain, it might have been an elfs.
	The Phantom continued: "Did not Helinand tell you that I would come to you within the week, Great Judge? Did you doubt that I meant what I said? Was it not, therefore, a silly thing you did when you issued so public an invitation?"
	"What do you want with me?" asked M. Voltigeur, his own voice grating a little because his mouth was so dry.
	"Only justice," said the other, "and a punishment to fit your many crimes. I come tonight only to pass sentence upon you - you must wait, as I have waited, for the sentence to be carried out. I will return again tomorrow to hear your plea for mercy... and on the third night, the sentence will take effect."
	"What sentence?" whispered M. Voltigeur, feeling an urgent wish to know what the Phantom planned.
	"No ordinary fate," said the voice from behind the mask. "Like yourself, I am not so lenient."
	Then, and only then, did the magistrate recover sufficient presence of mind to cry for help - and cry he did, letting loose a scream whose clamorous panic surprised all those who heard it. As he screamed, some reflex made him put up his arm before his face, as though to ward off an anticipated attack. But no attack came, and when he dropped his arm again to see what was happening, there was no one to be seen. The room was quite empty.
	The door burst open then, and Jean Malchance rushed in, brandishing a full three feet of polished blade, all ready to cut and slash. At exactly that moment the sound of the wizard's voice could be heard from another room, crying: "The alarm! The alarm! The door is breached!" Within minutes the footman and the coachman arrived, and then the other servants one after another, cudgels at the ready.
	But there was nothing for them to do. There was only M. Voltigeur, devoid of powder and paint, sitting up in his bed, looking foolish.
	The scenes which followed can easily be imagined. The room, which had no hiding places to offer, was searched with absurd thoroughness. Odo swore by all the gods that no one could have passed through the door until the alarm was raised. The guardsmen at the back of the house were summoned, and stoutly testified that no one had passed them, and that no one could have climbed to the shuttered window (whose shutters were still closed tight) without their seeing him.
	On considering these facts, everyone save M. Voltigeur came quickly to the conclusion that no one had entered the room at all, and that he must have dreamed his encounter with the Phantom - but in order to save the magistrate's feelings they assured him that he must have been the victim of an illusionist's magic, which had compelled him to see that which was not there.
	Though he was half-inclined to believe them, the magistrate did not like to think that such fear had been aroused in him by a mere illusionist, and he muttered darkly about the possible involvement of necromancy, as evidenced by the evil dream which had disturbed him - but in Yremy as in other cities of the Old World, necromancy was far more often talked about than actually encountered, and even M. Voltigeur could not bring himself to place much credence in that theory.
	Unfortunately, the conclusion that M. Voltigeur had only dreamed his encounter with the Phantom seemed slightly weaker in the morning, when he and Malchance went to inspect the room where the three chests of valuables had been so carefully placed.
	Though the magically-sealed door was apparently undisturbed the chests were not. One had been opened, apparently by sheer brute force, and its various contents had been scattered haphazardly around the room. Closer inspection revealed that though the wizard's spell had saved the lock from damage, its protection had not extended to the rusted iron hinges, which had been torn apart.
	The magistrate and his friend sat down with the inventory, and after two hours of meticulous counting concluded that one object and one only was missing: a silver comb, which the late Madame Voltigeur had often used to put up her lovely hair.
	M. Voltigeur swore all those involved in the affair to the utmost secrecy - with the inevitable result that the story was all around the town by noon, its every detail earnestly discussed by roadwardens and ragamuffins alike.
	There is only one thing that the poor people of a town love more than a heroic villain, and that is a mystery. They swapped questions with one another with avid interest. Who could the Phantom possibly be? What magic or trickery had allowed him to enter the magistrate's house and escape again undetected? Why had he taken the silver comb? All these puzzles received careful consideration, but none of course could compare in fascination with the most intriguing question of all, which was: What sentence had been passed on Yremy's Great Judge? What punishment, to fit what crime?
	The people racked their memories to recall every criminal on whom M. Voltigeur had ever passed sentence, whether living or dead (for those who are executed rarely die childless, and even in Bretonnia - though it is not the Empire - sons are expected to avenge fatal wrongs done to their fathers). The rumour spread that some unlucky person singled out by the Great Judge for a particularly nasty punishment must in fact have been innocent of his crime, and that the bloody libel of his false conviction was now to be wiped out, and the penalty repaid in full measure.
	M. Voltigeur did not stir from his house that day, but this did not prevent him from hearing the cries and cheers of the ragged, hungry children of the street, who informed him with delighted squeals that he was doomed, and that the second morrow would be the most miserable of his whole existence.
	The humble people of Yremy were not the only ones who were struggling to recall some particular case which might give a clue to the Phantom's identity. M. Voltigeur himself was as determined as anyone to find that clue, and had called upon loyal Malchance to jog his memory by reading from the scrupulously-compiled lists of indictments kept by the Court all the names of those who had had the misfortune to come before him.
	The Clerk did as he was asked. He recalled to M. Voltigeur's mind the three highway thieves whose feet he had ordered flayed, so that they might never walk the roads again. He listed the prostitutes convicted of picking their clients' pockets, whose own "pockets" the magistrate had ordered to be sown up tightly with catgut. He suggested the names of a couple of tax-evaders who had been castrated in order to remind them of the condition which the town would be in if adequate provision were not to be made for its defence against marauders.
	But all these were trivial matters, and M. Voltigeur opined that when all things were carefuly considered the only kind of case likely to have evoked such an extraordinary response as the Phantom's would be a case of murder.
	Malchance then read out the list of murderers condemned to death by M. Voltigeur, which turned out to number fifty-two, but in the main it was a dull enough list, enlivened only by the occasional cleverness by which the deaths of the accused had been contrived. There seemed to be no one on the list who had not fully merited death.
	M. Voltigeur then decided that they must concentrate their attention on those who had committed crimes involving magic - for he was sure that magic of some sort had been involved in the remarkable events of the night.
	Alas, Malchance did not need to consult the records closely in order to remind M. Voltigeur that he had never had occasion to pass sentence on anauthentic wizard. If such a one had ever committed crimes in Yremy, he had not been apprehended - a fact which, on reflection, could hardly be deemed surprising. In the last thirty years, in fact, the ever-vigilant guardsmen of the town - aided and abetted by licensed wizards and the priests attached to its miscellaneous shrines - had only managed to arrest four petty spellcasters. This tiny group consisted of three illusionists and one apprentice elementalist.
	The last-named, who had been turned in by his own master after trying to penetrate the mysteries of his calling ahead of the appointed schedule, and also committing various other misdemeanours, was immediately rejected as an exceedingly unlikely Phantom. In any case, his punishment had been relatively mild and not particularly unusual - he had been buried in the earth up to his neck and slaughtered by a shower of stones hurled in an entirely unmagical fashion by a troop of guardsmen.
	The illusionists seemed for a moment or two to be more promising suspects. Because illusionists were by nature deceptive, it was always difficult determine exactly what had happened before, during and after their capture, and there was always a possibility that the responsible persons might be deluded into thinking they had executed an illusionist when they had in fact allowed him to walk free, or executed a double in his stead. The three in question had all seemed relatively incompetent - they would not otherwise have been captured and tried - but it is one of the best-loved tricks of the master illusionist to disguise himself as an incompetent illusionist, thus to persuade his enemies that they have seen through his impostures when in fact they have merely torn away the first of many veils.
	M. Voltigeur, however, had been the presiding magistrate in only one of these three cases, and that a rather sordid case of fraud and petty theft. The case was rendered less interesting still by the fact that in a rare fit of orthodoxy the magistrate had ordered that the thief suffer the commonplace penalty of losing a hand. The only exceptional item on the record was that M. Voltigeur had decided that as there were two counts, the man should also lose the least two fingers from his other hand. It was difficult in the extreme to believe that the Phantom could have achieved his feats with one hand lacking and the other mutilated, so this suspect too was set aside.
	His failure to find any inspiration in the Court lists redoubled M. Voltigeur's determination to protect himself from the second promised visit of the Phantom. The guard outside the house was increased to eight. All six of the servants were issued with blades, and Jean Malchance acquired from the governor's own armoury a flintlock pistol with gunpowder and shot, which he gave to his friend with the instrucion that it must be saved as a last resort.
	Odo was asked to spread his alarm spells more liberally, with the aid of a wand of jade borrowed from Verena's temple. He was also asked to occupy the room to the right hand side of M. Voltigeur's. One of the minor shrines of the town, dedicated to the veneration of Morr, responded to the unique situation by sending a priest to assist in matters of magical defence - an unusual step, given that priests usually considered their magic too noble to be wasted in petty secular affairs. This priest was a skilled diviner named Hordubal, who was lodged in the room to the left hand side of M. Voltigeur's.
	Jean Malchance again elected to place himself outside the bedroom door, as the final line of external defence. He further suggested that as a new precaution he and M. Voltigeur should bring the three chests containing the magistrate's valuables to his bedroom. He helped his friend pack them most carefully, and when they were locked he summoned Odo again, instructing him to place alarm spells as well as magical seals upon the locks. Then he put them away beneath the bed - where, he said, they would surely be safe from any interference.
	When darkness came M. Voltigeur made no attempt to go to sleep, having resolved this time to remain awake. He kept no less than five stout candles burning in his room. Alas, as the night wore on, his determination to stay alert was put to an increasingly severe test by a seductive drowsiness which continually crept up on him.
	Four or five times the magistrate drifted off to sleep, only to dream each time that all the men he had ever condemned to death were rising from their graves and marching through the streets of Yremy, calling to him to meet them at a place assigned by destiny, to which heknew that he would in time be drawn.
	No sooner had he lost count of the occasions on which this happened than he opened his eyes with a sudden start, and saw a figure standing at the foot of the bed, wrapped all around by a dark cloak. Shadowed eyes were staring at him through two holes cut in a leathern mask.
	"It will do no good to strive against your fate, Monsieur Magistrate," said the voice, which sounded like the rustling of fallen leaves stirred by a cold north wind. "Sentence is passed, and only remains to be carried out."
	This time, M. Voltigeur did not pause to debate matters with the Phantom. Nor did he bother to cry out to rouse his friends, but clumsily brought the pistol from beneath his sheet, and fired it.
	The effect of what he did was not quite what he had expected. Instead of an instant explosion there was a sinister hiss and a great gout of white smoke which stung his eyes horribly. When the explosion came, after several seconds had passed, he had ceased to expect it and it made him jump with alarm. The recoil - which also came as a great surprise - wrenched the weapon from his hand. To the cloud of white smoke which had already blinded him there was added a much thicker cloud of black, and when he was finally able to see again he was not at all surprised to find that the visitor was no longer standing by his bed.
	As the door burst inwards to admit the sword-wielding Malchance, M. Voltigeur leapt to the foot of the bed, fully expecting - or, at least, desperately hoping - to see a corpse stretched upon the rug. But all that was on the floor were the wide-scattered contents of one of the treasure-chests. The lid had been wrenched away by sheer brute force which had burst the hinges asunder.
	Next door, the voice of Odo could be heard crying: "The alarms! The alarms! The door is breached, and so is the chest!"
	One by one the servants arrived - but it appeared that they already suspected what they might find, for their blades were not held aloft, and when they found that the Phantom was nowhere to be seen they did not seem at all surprised.
	Through the rest of the night the magistrate and his friend worked methodically through their inventory, in order to discover what had been taken from the second chest. By the early morning they were certain that one thing and one thing only was gone: a fine embroidered chemise trimmed with the fur of a rare white hare, which the late Mme. Voltigeur had used as her favourite nightshirt.
	M. Voltigeur did not trouble to swear the company to secrecy, for he knew by now how futile such a gesture would be. The whole town seemed to know what had happened almost before the rising sun was clear of the horizon, and by high noon there was not a single detail of the night's events which had escaped the scrupulous attention of the gossips.
	When he had eaten a far-from-hearty breakfast the magistrate summoned Jean Malchance, Odo and Hordubal to a conference, and implored all three to help him make some sense out of what had happened. He begged Odo to tell him what kind of magic had been worked to bring the Phantom into his room despite all possible precautions, and to leave it again so cleverly.
	"Monsieur," said Odo, who had been racking his brains for some time in the hope of excusing the apparent failure of his magical alarms, "it seems to me we can only conclude that the so-called Phantom is indeed a phantom, in a perfectly literal sense. This is no illusionist protected by a spell or potion of invisibility, for he does not come through the door or the window at all. It can only be a ghost, and if it appears in this house, it is surely the ghost of one who died in this house."
	"Ghost!" exclaimed M. Voltigeur, who had not thought of such a possibility, and was loath to consider it now. "Whose ghost?"
	Odo hesitated, but felt obliged to say what was in his mind. "I am reluctant, Monsieur, to say what will probably seem a shocking thing, but I think we must consider your late wife the most likely candidate, for the things which the Phantom has taken from you and from your younger daughter are certainly things which your wife once owned. Can you remember, perchance, whether it was your wife who gave to your other children the things which were subsequently removed from their possession?"
	While the wizard was speaking a deep frown came upon the magistrate's face, but M. Voltigeur did not react angrily. He was a man used to weighing evidence and drawing scrupulous conclusions, and when he considered the question which Odo had posed he realized that although he had not seen the connection before, all the objects removed from the houses of his sons had indeed been given to them by their mother, and that the trinket stolen from his elder daughter had likewise been a gift from her.
	"But what possible reason could my late wife have for haunting me?" complained the magistrate. "I was ever as just and fair in my dealings with her as with the world at large. She lived and died in comfort, with all that a woman could desire, and had the privilege of bearing seven fine children, only two of whom died in infancy. I cannot believe that she might want to hurt me."
	"And yet," said Hordubal, who seemed enthused by the possibility of finding an explanation of events which had utterly mystified him, "perhaps there is other evidence to incline us in the direction of an explanation of this kind. My lord Morr is the god of death and the god of dreams, and I felt his nearness when I slept last night in your house. You have admitted that each time you have seen the Phantom you have awakened momentarily from a dream in which graves seemed to open to yield up their dead, and that you have had a sense of being drawn to some fateful rendezvous. Perhaps your encounters with the Phantomwere the meetings of which your dreams spoke."
	"No doubt it was kind of Morr to send me an illuminating vision," said M. Voltigeur, with a sharpness born of disbelief, "but I might wish that he had made it clearer."
	At this, Hordubal shook his head sorrowfully, and said: "It is we who are the servants of the gods - they are not ours. We should be grateful for what they send, not resentful that they do not tell us more."
	"Most certainly," agreed Odo, in a pious way.
	But M. Voltigeur only scowled, and turned to his friend. "This is nonsense, Jean, is it not?" he said. "Assure me, please, that there is another way of interpreting this case, which these silly men have overlooked."
	"Well," said Jean Malchance, smoothly, "it certainly seems to me that there are several facts which are difficult to explain within this theory. The Phantom has certainly not been restricted to the bounds of this house, as true phantoms usually are. He has not even confined his attentions to the houses of M. Voltigeur's kin. He has carried out raids all over Yremy, and he was solid enough to engage the watchman Helinand in a very substantial duel. And if the Phantom were in truth a ghost, how could he break the hinges of the chests? I must remind you that when I burst into M. Voltigeur's room last night the contents of the chest were already strewn across the floor, and it seemed that Odo's magical alarm had proved no more effective than his magical seal."
	"Quite so!" cried the magistrate. "What have you to say to that, Master Spellcaster? And since the alarm on the chest proved to be ineffective, how can we be sure that the alarms on the door and window of my room were not defective also? It ismy belief that this Phantom is as solid as you or I, but that he is so clever a magician thatyour frail spells have been utterly impotent to keep him at bay!"
	"Well," replied Odo, in the offended tone which all wizards adopt when their competence is questioned, "you may believe that if you like, but I must agree with my friend the good servant of Morr, that you have too haughty an attitude to man and god alike. My magic is a good and humble magic entirely appropriate to the needs of Yremy's people, and if it is not enough to protect you in this case I can only conclude that you do not enjoy as much favour with the goddess Verena as your calling has led you to suppose."
	"Peace!" said Jean Malchance, in a soothing fashion. "It will not help us to become annoyed with one another. Nor will it help us to blame the gods for what they have or have not done, for I cannot believe thatthey are behind what is happening here. Let us think about this logically, and see where reason might lead us."
	"Oh, certainly," replied Odo, unmollified. "Let us do that, and let us discover what feeble creatures we are, who hope to reach the bottom of such mysteries. If my magic has failed, then more powerful magic must be at work, and that is all there is to it."
	"Perhaps so," said Malchance, evenly, "but I think that there is another way to interpret what has happened here, and with your permission, M. Voltigeur, I will describe it - though I must warn you that you may not like it any better than what these men have said."
	"I am a magistrate," replied his friend, stoutly, "and I am eager to hear all evidence and argument, wherever it may lead."
	"Well then," said Malchance, "let us consider the possibility that Odo's precautions were not so easily evaded. We packed the chests together, you will recall, and locked them all. Then I left the room in search of Odo, did I not, returning some minutes later so that the alarm spells could be set?"
	"That is so," said the magistrate. "But I did not leave the room. No one could have removed the objects from the chest before the spell was set."
	"But it is possible so far as I can tell," said Malchance, "that the objects we later found strewn around the room were not in the chest when the alarm was set, andcould have been distributed before the lock was broken. Assessing the evidence purely from my own point of view, I cannot help but ask myself whether it might have been the case that the chest was broken open at exactly the same moment as the lock on the door, when I burst into M. Voltigeur's room. If that were true, there might have been no failure of the alarms."
	"But that is absurd!" exclaimed the magistrate. "I tell you, Jean, that the objects werenot removed while you were out of the room. Who could have done it, save for me? Who could have secreted them, and later have strewn them around the room, except myself? And who, except myself, could have broken the lock on the chest at precisely the time that you burst through my door?"
	Jean Malchance spread his arms wide, and said: "There you have it, in a nutshell. Who has seen the Phantom in this house, except yourself? No one. Who could possibly have doneany of these mysterious things, except yourself? No one. Ergo, I must ask that we take seriously the proposition that you are the one who has done them!"
	Here Malchance was forced to pause, because M. Voltigeur appeared likely to suffer a fit of apoplexy.
	The clerk put a reassuring hand on his friend's shoulder, and said to him in a kindly tone: "Of course I do not say that you have done these thingsknowingly, but only that you must have done them.You could have conjured up this ghost.You could have taken these relics of your dead wife from your children's houses. You could be the Phantom, and it is hard to see that anyone else can have done what the Phantom has done. What other explanation is as probable? That you have been bewitched or accursed is certainly possible, but I must in all conscience say that we cannot seriously doubt that yours are the hands which have actually carried out these actions."
	M. Voltigeur was of a different opinion. "This is absurd!" he howled. "It is monstrous! I have been your firmest friend for forty years, Jean Malchance, and now you accuse me of this! I am a victim of robbery and evil haunting, and the only conclusion which my friend can reach is that I have robbed myself and haunted myself! It is no wonder, you serpent of ingratitude, that I had the wit and wisdom to become a great judge, while you remained my clerk. Logic be damned! Your contention is the vilest slander I have ever heard, and I only wish that I could find a punishment to fit such a crime, for I would surely exact it. Leave my house, and take your worthless spellcasters with you. Begone! I will face this vicious Phantom alone, and I will find out who he is for myself."
	It is doubtful that Odo or Hordubal would have been overanxious to agree with the curious hypothesis which Jean Malchance had advanced, but when M. Voltigeur exploded in this manner, and called them worthless, they were by no means inclined to dispute it. In fact, they each came quickly to the conclusion that M. Voltigeur was equally excessive in his ingratitude and his ungraciousness, and that Jean Malchance's charges, however unlikely they might seem, must have struck a spot made sore by conscience.
	Jean Malchance, on the other hand, seemed to repent his reckless words, and begged to be allowed to remain - in order, as he put it, to help M. Voltigeur defend himself against himelf - but this only roused M. Voltigeur's anger to a higher pitch, and he would not be content until his former friend was banished from his house.
	The two spellcasters went with him, feeling very aggrieved by the way that their sincere attempts to help had not been better appreciated.
	By nightfall, the story of the quarrel was all around the town, and so was the rumour that the notorious Phantom had all along been none other than M. Voltigeur himself, turned to a life of crime by arrogance and impiety. Many people who had never imagined such a possibility soon began to say that they had expected it, having always been certain that a judge who handed down such unusual sentences could have no real respect for the law.
	Thanks to the incautious suspicions of Jean Malchance, M. Voltigeur went to bed that night a much less admirable man, in the estimation of his neighbours, than he had been before. In his own mind, however, he was absolutely certain that he was not guilty of the perverse charges which Malchance had so unexpectedly levelled against him, and he was enthusiastic to prove it in whatever manner he could.
	He distributed his servants about the house as before, and the guardsmen about the grounds, but he was not prepared to trouble himself with magical alarms and magical locks in whose efficacy he could no longer trust.
	Before he went to bed he carefully searched through the one chest which had not been plundered, and removed from it a small oval portrait of his dead wife, which had been painted before their marriage, and presented to him as a token of her respect - for she had ever been a respectful woman, who had never taken advantage of their intimacy to excuse any lapse of politeness.
	He could not be entirely certain that this portrait was the article most likely to be sought by the Phantom, but it seemed altogether likely. He placed the portrait beneath his pillow.
	He had kept the pistol, having persuaded himself that he had missed his shot on the previous night only because he had not understood how the cursed thing was supposed to work, and had failed to hold the barrel straight when he was bewildered by the smoke and the recoil. He was determined that his hand should be steadier this time, if he had the opportunity to fire another shot.
	The careful taking of these precautions calmed his anger somewhat, but they could not quiet his anxiety, and when he went to bed he felt as though an iron band had been drawn around his waist, squeezing his belly. His head was like a seething cauldron, his thoughts like bubbles bursting randomly upon his consciousness, so that he hardly needed to fall asleep in order to experience delirium.
	Two images kept coming back to him while he waited: the image of the graveyard where the dead were rising from their tombs, bent on keeping their appointment with the man who had sentenced them to death; and the image of Jean Malchance, who had undergone in a single instant of time a dramatic transformation from friend to foe.
	It was the latter image which possessed him more firmly. What had made Jean do it? Was he, too, the victim of some awful magic? Might he too be accursed?
	Because these images kept rising into his mind despite the fact that he was wide awake he was forced to search for something solid to look at, for the purpose of distraction. He took the portrait from his pillow, and occupied himself in staring at the face of the young girl whose wise and careful father had done him the honour of accepting his most generous offer for her hand.
	Remarkably, the sight of the picture calmed him more than anything else he had done. As he stared into the painted eyes he became convinced that if this really was the face of the fiend which haunted him, then the ghost had certainly not risen of its own volition, but had been torn from its rest by the foullest necromancy.
	But that, he thought, can hardly be possible. A necromancer must hate his victim more than he loves his own life, for he who injures others with the aid of daemons or vile spells must also injure himself. No one could hate me thus, for in all that I have done I have only been the humble instrument of the law.
	Having reached this conclusion, he began to think as a judge again, and as a man of reason, with his thoughts quite unclouded by wrath and barely upset by tremors of fear.
	And then, quite suddenly, he saw all that had happened in a different light, and guessed at last who the Phantom must be.
	He looked up then, and saw that the Phantom was with him, standing at the foot of the bed, just as he had on the previous night. Those shadowed eyes were watching him through the holes of his mask.
	M. Voltigeur raised the pistol, and pointed it carefully at the mask.
	"My hand is steady tonight, Jean Malchance," he said. "I promise that I will not miss again."
	Jean Malchance reached up without delay to remove the mask from his face, as though he had become tired of the masquerade in any case. He looked at his friend with eyes as hard as flints, and replied: "You cannot kill me, Monsieur. I have already seen to that"
	M. Voltigeur licked his lips, and stared into the naked face of the man who was most definitely not his friend, but must have been his enemy for longer than he cared to think.
	"I believe that you have," he whispered. "Or that you think so. But whatever wicked spell you have used, or whatever daemon it may be to whom you have sold yourself, you cannot be entirely sure. Dark magic is ever treacherous, and is said to be very likely to misfire, destroying its user instead of his victim."
	"The same is said of pistols," the other retorted, calmly.
	"But pistols do not care what they may destroy," said M. Voltigeur. "I have always believed that even the instruments of the foulest magic must hesitate to harm the good. And whatever hatred you nurse against me, you must allow that I have ever been a good and honest man, always as fair as I knew how to be."
	"I believe that you underestimate the power of dark magic," said Malchance, "and I know full well that you overestimate your worth as a man. Fair as you knew how to be you always were, but your failing always lay in what you knew how to be."
	M. Voltigeur's finger tightened a little on the trigger of his weapon, but he did not press it yet. He was not so very frightened, now that he knew what it was that he had to face.
	"I thought you were my friend, Jean," he said, piteously. "Why were you not my friend, when I was always friend to you?"
	"You hold the answer in your hand," replied Malchance. "I could have forgiven you the rest. I could have forgiven you for winning every other contest in which we took part as boys or men. I could have forgiven you for becoming a magistrate while I remained a clerk. I could even have forgiven you for becoming famous for those cunning sentences you passed, though fully three in four were ideas which I put into your head. I am the man who fits punishments to crimes, Monsieur, and I am doing now what I have always done."
	M. Voltigeur looked at the portrait which he held in his hand.
	"I remember that you liked her," he said, quietly.
	"Liked her!" said Malchance, stifling a cry of pain and showing for the fist time that ire which he must have kept hidden for many long years. "Iloved her with all my heart, and she loved me. But she could see that there was a magistrate in you and a clerk in me, just as she could see that there was gold in your family coffers and only silver in mine. She loved me, but she would not marry for love. She would rather have a man without a heart, whose fine clothes and full pockets made up for the emptiness that was inside him. Ifyou had loved her as I loved her, I would have understood, and forgiven, but I could not forgive you what you are, and what you made of her."
	"But men and women should not marry for love!" said the Great Judge, with the air of one stating the obvious. "It is our reason which sets us above the beasts, and we must live by that reason and not by silly passion. It is passion which drives men to use dark magic, and to sell their souls, thus to hurt themselves more horribly than any penalty of the law ever could."
	"I have not used much magic," Malchance told him. "Far less than you think, I do believe. I had only to use a petty spell which would blind you to my actions unless I desired that you should see them. I was beside you while you packed your chests, and removed whatever I wished before you closed them and before Odo put his seals upon them. I sleptwithin your door, not without, and could do what I wished, unnoticed, even while you kept your vigil. It was from within that I opened the door - and thus broke the magic seal - on each of the two occasions. I admit, though, that my arms were at full stretch the night I had to break the weakened chest as well, having earlier strewn its pilfered contents about the floor."
	"But you are only a clerk," said M. Voltigeur, "and as a clerk you surely have no skill in magic at all!"
	"I can read," replied Malchance, "and that rare talent, which made me your servant because I could do it better than you, allowed me to search in forbidden books for that which men of my station are not supposed to have. You do not know what I can do, Monsieur. You do not know me at all, for I am merely an appearance to you, about which you cannot truly care - just asshe was."
	M. Voltigeur looked again at the portrait.
	"Why did you steal her gifts to my children?" he asked.
	"Because they should have been gifts tomy children. It should have beenmy children that she bore, and not yours. You have no right to these things I have taken - you have no right to your own family, though I know you would not care if they were taken away, and so I have not sought to hurt them. I loved her. All her love-tokens are rightly mine, and all the things whichshe loved."
	"Oh Jean," said the magistrate, with a sigh, "you are a great fool. I was your friend, and you should have been mine. Instead you are a famous robber, and a faithless betrayer. How will I find a punishment to fit such crimes?"
	"We are not here to pass judgment on me," said Malchance. "I have been occupied in passing sentence onyou. In the eyes of the people of Yremy you, not I, are the famous robber. My denunciation has carried to every covert and corner of the town, and because it came from your trusted friend it is believed! And in the morning, valuables stolen from many houses will be discovered in those chests beneath your bed, to add the final proof. Your confession, dictated to me in your final hour of life, and signed by your own hand, will also be offered in evidence - I have it in my pocket now, with your name already forged. Your loyal footman who admitted me tonight fully believes the story which I told him, that I was bitterly sorry about our quarrel, and came to make amends. When I swear that you died by your own hand, and that I was just too late to prevent it, I will shed such tears that no one would doubt me for a moment. Every detail is now in place."
	"Not quite," said M. Voltigeur. "I have not died by my own hand, and have no intention of obliging you in such a matter. In fact, I rather think that I might shoot you dead instead."
	"Alas," said Jean Malchance, "I think that you are wrong, and can only hope that you will not betoo disappointed."
	"I must stand by my belief," said the magistrate, "that your evil magic will not work on a virtuous man, and that whatever daemon has given you your skill will come foryour soul, not for mine."
	And so saying, he fired his weapon, determined this time that the smoke and the recoil would not affect his aim.
	The powder in the pan sizzled madly for a moment, and then the pistol blew up in his hand.
	The force of the explosion sent fragments of twisted metal into his eyes. One tiny sliver penetrated to a deeper level; and killed him on the instant.
	Jean Malchance had thrown up his arms to shield himself from the explosion, but he quickly lowered them again.
	Poor man! he thought. You were ever a poorer Judge than you thought. It does not need magic to block up the barrel of such a stupid weapon as that, and only the pettiest of spells to accomplish it unobserved. If I have damned myself for such a little thing, so be it, but I do not think I have.
	The coachman arrived then, followed by the footman and the valet, and all the other servants who had kept such fruitless watch.
	"Alas," said Jean Malchance, "the poor man was so deluded and deranged that he thought his phantom had come back to haunt him again. But see! It is only a portrait of his dear late wife."
	So saying, he picked up the little picture - bloodstained now - which had fallen on the floor, and when the servants had looked at it, he put it in his own pocket, and took it away with him.
	Malchance was quite correct in his estimation that the people of Yremy would believe what he told them, and he had more than enough apparent proofs to convince them. He pretended to be so stricken by grief that he never served again as a clerk to the court of Yremy, but retired to live in solitude, alone with his memories and his secrets.
	M. Voltigeur, who was famous while he lived as the Great Judge, became more famous still after his death, albeit briefly, as the Phantom who had haunted himself. It was said of him by many that he had devised the most fiendish of all his punishments for himself.
	Whether Jean Malchance was damned for those petty magics which he had used to secure, as he saw it, a penalty uniquely fitted to his enemy's trespasses, no one knows. All that is certain is that he died but a few years after, and that just before he died he made a full confession of the whole affair - not to any eager priest of Verena or Morr, but to a wandering story-teller like myself, whom he first forced to swear that the tale should never be told within the walls of Yremy.
	The inevitable result of that injunction, of course, was that everyone within those walls had heard the whole of it within a fortnight - and the lowest of the low were for once united with the highest of the high in thinking it the finest tale to which their humble town had ever given birth.