Elizabeta Hedervary had just given a wonderful performance at the Paris Opera House; at last minute she had replaced Lilli Vogel, who was sick, as Margarita in the opera Fraust. Nobody had ever heard a voice like hers. The audience went mad with delight and clapped until Eliza was dragged off the stage waving at everybody.

In his box overlooking the stage, Basch Zwingli sighed at the woman who had replaced his adoptive sister. Basch was a young man of twenty-four and not a man you would want to anger, as head of one of the most powerful families in Switzerland and his way with guns. His best friend, Roderich Edelstein, sat next to him, his face pale with surprise.

"I wonder if Elizabeta will remember me?" Roderich questioned his friend. "We used to play on the beach together as children."

Basch raised his eyebrow at the Austrian man. "Don't you mean she played on the beach while you cowered behind her?"

Roderich blushed and quickly decided to go back-stage to meet Elizabeta.

As he made his way to Elizabeta's dressing room, Roderich passed some of the ballet dancers in the narrow corridors. They were talking about a phantom 'Prussian' who had been haunting the Opera House for some time: how he seemed to appear from nowhere in the shape of a knight, or, sometimes, a gentleman in a blue evening suit - and how me vanished as soon as he was seen.

Carlos Machado, a Cuban scene-shifter with a grudge against Americans, had met him once on the staircase leading to the cellars. "His skin was as pale as paper, as was his hair, and his eyes were so red they looked like blood." He had told everybody afterwards.

Now Roderich entered Elizabeta's dressing room just as she had finished changing. "Who are you?" she asked, holding up a frying pan.

Roderich kissed her hand. "Don't you remember?" he asked. "I'm the little boy who tried to go into the sea to get your scarf when it blew away. I should like to speak to you in private, Miss Elizabeta."

"No," she replied. "Go away! I want to be alone!"

Roderich waited impatiently outside her door. To his surprise, he heard a man's voice coming from the dressing room. "Lizzy, you must love the awesome me!" he said.

Elizabeta's strong voice replied, "Why should I? I sang for you tonight, isn't that enough?" the voices sounded like a lover's argument.

Roderich heard no more as he backed away from the door, waiting for the man to leave. He knew that he loved Elizabeta and hated the man in her dressing room.

At last, Elizabeta came out, but she didn't see Roderich. When she had gone, he went into the dressing room. The light had been turned out. He stood there in complete darkness. "Where are you?" Roderich called out, turning on a flashlight he always carried with him (he was afraid of the dark). "If you don't answer, you're a coward!"

The flashlight lit up the room - but it was empty.

Roderich waited for ten minutes, then he got bored and left. As he went through the door, an icy blast struck him in the face. He walked through the corridors for some time, not knowing where he was going. Suddenly, near the bottom of a staircase, he had to make way for a group of men carrying a stretcher. The person on it was covered with a white sheet.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Carlos Machado," one of the men answered. "He was found dead behind the scenery in the third cellar."