The House of the Wolf (29 page)

He held the revolver ready as he eased up the metal staircase, every tread seeming to squeak and protest in an exaggerated way. The man-beast had supernatural cunning; Coleridge had no doubt of that. There had not been a sound since its disappearance into the dense green undergrowth, but the professor knew that fierce yellow eyes watched and noted his every movement from the shadow.

He was near to breaking point when he heard the footsteps, reverberating and magnified on the metal treads of the balcony. Relief flooded through him; that would be Abercrombie. Surely enough, there was the bearded head, white teeth gleaming as he stared from the foliage high overhead.

‘There you are, Professor.’

A pistol flared as Coleridge, bewildered, sagged against the balcony. He saw the heavy figure of Abercrombie break cover from the greenery. He clutched his stomach and tottered at the edge of the railing. Coleridge could hear distant shouts now, and the sound of running feet.

He turned as the pistol flashed again, could not believe what he saw. For Abercrombie was perched high among the forest of metal struts and columns that supported the roof, his face alight with triumph.

‘There is your werewolf, Professor!’ he cried, smoke ascending to the high ceiling from the barrel of his pistol.

The bearded figure on the balcony was going down now, taking a great section of the metal railing with him. He bounced once or twice on the lower balconies, making the gigantic structure of the conservatory vibrate and echo as though at any moment the whole thing must collapse. The man and the heavy mass of metal plunged into one of the lily ponds in a high plume of spray, and then the body reemerged, rocking slightly, arms and legs star-shaped as though crucified. Red stains spread out across the dark water.

Coleridge felt sick and turned away. He was aware now of the white shock of the Count’s hair on the high balcony. The military figure of Colonel Anton, pistol drawn, strode to the edge of the railing and stared down grimly. Coleridge could see Rakosi clattering briskly down one of the far staircases. The whole high dome was full of the distant echo and murmur of voices as others hurried to the scene.

Coleridge was aware that Abercrombie was at his side, his clothes smothered with dust, pain distorting his features. He looked long at the body in the pool.

‘I am sorry I had to expose you to that, Professor. I could not shoot when the wolf jumped because you were between me and the target. I had to make sure.’

Coleridge nodded. He felt too shocked and shattered to fully comprehend what had happened. He let the other take his arm and guide him down the stair and across the main floor of the conservatory to where the obscene thing in the pool floated gently. There seemed to be much blood now.

Colonel Anton’s harsh orders were spitting out. Coleridge saw the Count run back; whether to get more help or to keep the servants away he did not know. He could see the pale ovals of horrified faces at the edges of the high balconies. Rakosi ran past him with a rake he had found somewhere. He waded into the pool and prodded at the figure, drawing it slowly toward the edge. Coleridge stared uncomprehendingly as the captain bent to turn it over.

Abercrombie went to help him, and with much grunting and straining the two levered the corpse onto the floor of the conservatory. Coleridge found himself looking at the blanched features of George Parker.

Abercrombie glanced at him sympathetically.

‘As we suspected, Professor. And a true werewolf.’

He shrugged massively, his eyes on the immaculate figure of Colonel Anton, who was stiffly descending the white staircase with his drawn pistol still in his hand.

‘I have come round to your way of thinking,’ Abercrombie went on. He looked again at the dead face of the man-beast.

‘I used the Count’s laboratory up there. With his permission, of course. For a special purpose.’

He tapped his pistol significantly.

‘I used silver bullets, to make sure this time.’

CHAPTER 40: WOLF OR WEREWOLF?

‘I thought you did not believe in werewolves,’ the Count said.

The Countess shrugged. She looked white and her arm was still bandaged, but something of her old immaculate beauty had come back to her.

‘I do now,’ she said grimly.

The blizzard had blown itself out within the week, as predicted, and most of the guests had already left. There was just Coleridge and Abercrombie; the former was saying goodbye to Nadia on the floor below while the doctor finished his packing.

The Count stirred his tea with a faint tinkle of the spoon in the silence of the small drawing-room, which faced the front of the Castle and had a fine view over Lugos and the rolling hills beyond. Dusk was starting to fall, and lights were burning small holes in the wide expanse of snow.

‘Dr. Istvan’s report was a surprise,’ the Countess said, almost dreamily, as her cobalt eyes gazed unseeingly out the window.

‘But a great relief,’ the Count rejoined. ‘Mother would never have locked her door, so her end under those circumstances would have been agony.’

He smiled at his wife sadly.

‘She was already dead when the wolf savaged her. That would have appealed to Mother.’

‘She was very old,’ Countess Sylva said softly. ‘And I had noticed a slight failing in recent months. It was her heart, Istvan said. She could have died at any time.’

‘If Sanders, or whatever this creature called himself, had not stopped to attack Mother, you would be dead now,’ said the Count.

His wife’s hand sought his across the tabletop. They sat there in silence for some while, almost awkwardly, as their love was so deep and intimate it was almost too difficult for them to give it audible expression.

‘Poor Raglan,’ she said.

The Count’s eyes were smouldering now.

‘Poor Raglan,’ he repeated. ‘Coleridge was right. He had been hanged from the window bars. And the professor did see him there. But the thing came back and cut the rope. He plunged straight down through the wooden roof of one of the courtyard outhouses.’

‘And the snow covered everything over,’ the Countess added.

Her eyes went to the small black notebook which lay by the Count’s right hand.

‘If it had not been for this diary, which Bela brought to me an hour or two ago, so much would have remained vague and unclear,’ her husband said.

‘I am still uncertain . . .’ the Countess began. ‘I hope you are going to tell me.’

The Count gave her a thin smile, emphasising his sharpened teeth which were characteristic of the Homolky family.

‘I always tell you everything, my dear. Raglan hid this diary under the mattress of his bed. It was his insurance in case anything happened to him.’

‘I hope he was what he appeared to be,’ the Countess murmured. ‘There has been so much deception . . .’

The Count nodded.

‘The diary makes it clear that Raglan was the folklorist and writer whom we knew by repute. He was an official delegate to the Congress in Pest. But what we did not know was that he had recently been appointed to the staff of a lunatic asylum near Manchester, in England.’

There was surprise in the Countess’s eyes now.

‘The one in which Sanders had been incarcerated?’

‘Exactly. He had escaped some months before, so Raglan did not know him personally or what he looked like. All he had to go on was an ancient photograph. But he found in Sanders’s room an old copy of
The Times.
There was an article in it about the forthcoming Congress in Pest later in the year. It had been heavily ringed round in ink by the patient.’

‘Together with some material about our own miniature Congress at Castle Homolky,’ the Countess put in softly.

‘Exactly. Raglan had to come here in any event. He also hoped to track down the asylum’s escaped patient. From what he says in his diary it was a long chance, but one he felt he had to follow up. For he knew from the case-notes of the tragic background to the man’s history, of course.’

‘So he enlisted Nadia’s help and also hoped to warn Coleridge,’ said the Countess.

She abruptly changed the subject.

‘What do you think of the professor as a prospective son-in-law? Is he not a little old for her?’

The Count chuckled.

‘I see no objections. He is only about forty-three. Nadia will be nineteen in a week’s time. Coleridge is a handsome and distinguished man. Wealthy as well, which also helps.’

His wife smiled archly.

‘You are becoming cynical in your more mature years.’

The Count held up his hand.

‘Practical, my dear. I think they will make a very good match. And in any case Nadia is as headstrong as you. We could never stand against the two of them. And the young always get their own way, do they not?’

They were interrupted by a tapping at the door. Coleridge was there with the girl.

The two men clasped hands warmly. It was almost dark now, and from the drawing-room windows Lugos with its lights and the crisply spreading snow looked like a fairy-tale village. But everyone in the room knew what lay beneath and were not deceived.

‘The black wolf was shot this morning,’ the Countess offered.

Coleridge nodded, his eyes fixed on the golden beauty of Nadia.

‘Colonel Anton told me. It relied on the laws of chance once too often, it seems.’

He turned apologetically to the Countess.

‘Nadia and I are meeting in Paris in six weeks’ time. With your permission, of course. There is much to arrange. And I have some business there before returning to London to take up a new post.’

‘You promised to learn Hungarian,’ Homolky reminded him. ‘You will then be able to take advantage of my private library.’

Coleridge smiled.

‘I had not forgotten, sir.’

He looked round slowly, as though wishing to imprint the room on his memory.

‘I must go now. Abercrombie is waiting for me below. And you have, I believe, kindly arranged for the night-sleeper to Pest to stop for us.’

The Count nodded.

‘That is so. You must not be late. But you have plenty of time to catch the train. We will come down with you.’

The Countess was the last to leave the room. In front of the table which held the silverware and the empty tea-cups, the tall windows glowed like a stage-set. Lugos was spread out below, ghostly, mysterious, and unreal, as though it were composed of pasteboard, paint, and theatrical lighting.

On the horizon the sky was stained angrily with the fires of sunset. The dusk came on inexorably.

CHAPTER 41: RAGLAN’S DIARY

Moonlight blanched the window-frames and fell in bars of silver across the sharply angled roofs of Lugos. The Count and Countess were still at the table, this time with brandy-glasses between them. Far across the distant hillside Coleridge’s sledge, driven by the same man who had brought him there, stood out as a large black speck against the bleak landscape.

‘You promised to tell me what else was in Raglan’s diary,’ the Countess reminded him.

The Count’s tall figure remained standing at the window. Then he sat down abruptly.

‘So I did, my dear. So I did,’ he said absently.

He reached over for the bottle and poured a second offering into each of their big balloon glasses. They silently toasted each other in the moonlight spilling through the casement. The only other light in the room came from two red candles in a silver candelabrum that stood upon the table.

‘Raglan’s diary is a remarkable document,’ the Count went on eventually. ‘I shall preserve it among my archives. Either he is a madman, or my own sanity is in question.’

He smiled quietly to himself.

‘Perhaps a little of both.’

He turned to face his wife.

‘Have we had a mad werewolf under our roof? Or have we all been the victims of hallucination?’

The Countess paled slightly, plucking at the sling which held her injured arm.

‘That animal was no hallucination. Many people saw it. And it appeared and disappeared as though by magic.’

Homolky nodded grimly.

‘Just so. But a mad werewolf, bent on revenge! It passes belief.’

He pondered deeply.

‘I wonder whether Mother had recognised him?’

‘Had you not better tell me what you have learned from Raglan’s diary?’ the Countess went on. ‘The creature Sanders – or perhaps I should say that man, Parker . . .’

The Count shook his head, abruptly interrupting her.

‘Who said anything about Parker? If Raglan is not mad, then Abercrombie is the man. Or the were-creature, if you prefer.’

The Countess got up, blank amazement on her face. Her voice was agitated as she replied.

‘But the man Parker . . .’

‘Just another innocent victim, if Raglan’s diary is to be believed.’

There was a long silence between them. The Countess sat down again, breathing heavily.

‘But ought he not to be arrested?’ she said. ‘You let him leave our roof . . .’

There was a strange tenderness in the Count’s eyes as he gazed at his wife.

‘My dear girl, on what proof? That of a weird diary of a man who apparently hanged himself, and who may have even taken his own life in an insane fit?’

The Countess leaned forward.

‘You know he did not.’

There was a grim expression in the Count’s eyes.

‘Yes, we know. And with the aid of Raglan’s little black book we can piece together some of the apparently inexplicable events here.’

He tapped the small volume in front of him.

‘Raglan’s attention was first drawn to Abercrombie when he saw him drop some sort of capsule into Menlow’s wine one evening. The doctor did not know he was observed, and Raglan resolved to keep him under observation.’

‘That was why he enlisted Nadia’s help?’

The Count nodded.

‘Without drawing our daughter’s attention to any one man. Raglan felt it might be too dangerous.’

‘And not without cause.’

The Count got up and took a quick turn about the room. He came to a halt and stared at the diminishing speck of the sledge upon the horizon.

‘He pieced together a remarkable chain of events. Abercrombie was always there to guard Coleridge, was he not? He turned up time and again, ostensibly to save his life.’

‘After having first risked it?’ put in the Countess shrewdly.

‘According to Raglan,’ said the Count, ‘Abercrombie took him to the cellars to destroy him. He first had to disappear before metamorphosing himself. He did this by the effective trick of dropping through a half-rotted door leading to the oubliette.’

The Count smiled sardonically.

‘He had no doubt already inspected it. Not only that, he was in no danger. It was blocked by masonry a few feet below where Coleridge found him.’

‘Once in the dark he reappeared in his wolf-guise,’ the Countess breathed. ‘But Nadia interrupted his scheme.’

‘In the confusion he regained the oubliette,’ the Count went on. ‘Raglan thought Coleridge had wounded the wolf. He recognised the cut on Abercrombie’s forehead as a graze from Coleridge’s bullet and not an abrasion caused by his fall into the dungeon.’

‘This becomes more and more fantastic,’ said the Countess.

‘Does it not?’ her husband replied. ‘But it is the only sequence of facts that fits. Raglan went further. He says Abercrombie brought on that pack of wolves in The Place of the Skull to destroy Coleridge, the only man in the Castle, apparently, who had an inkling of the truth. The irony was that the one man who held the key was not even suspected by Abercrombie at that time.

The Countess took another sip of brandy. Some of the colour now was coming back to her cheeks.

‘Raglan’s theory was that Abercrombie fired to miss the wolves,’ said Homolky, ‘his accomplices in the matter. There were only some five or six bodies in the gorge, all shot by Coleridge, according to Raglan. Abercrombie only began to fight in earnest when Raglan and Anton’s party arrived at the gorge and when the beasts were almost upon them. Coleridge was interfering with his revenge, you see, and had first to be removed.’

‘So that we could all be destroyed,’ said the Countess with a shudder.

She drew closer to her husband as they sat staring at the blanched moonlight on the window.

‘Menlow was given a drug to weaken his resistance when the man-beast attacked him,’ the Count went on. ‘But again Coleridge interfered when Abercrombie destroyed Raglan. Abercrombie suspected Raglan had left some records about him; perhaps he knew he was on the staff of the Manchester asylum. Abercrombie needed time; it is my own theory that he administered some drug to Coleridge to incapacitate him. He then went to Raglan’s room, cut the rope suspending the body, closed the window, and removed the cut end.’

The heavy silence was broken this time by the Countess.

‘Why was George Parker in the conservatory at all at the crucial time? Another innocent man.’

‘They were all innocent men,’ said the Count heavily. ‘That was when Anton intervened. He could not let Coleridge face that danger alone. He and Rakosi followed. He was the first to search Parker’s body. He found a note in disguised handwriting arranging a rendezvous with Coleridge at the conservatory. No doubt Abercrombie had hoped to remove it himself, but the authorities were too quick for him. He has given up now and left with his revenge unaccomplished. For the time being, at least.’

‘How can you be sure of all this?’ the Countess persisted.

Her husband shook his head, a grim smile still lurking round his lips.

‘I cannot. The whole thing is fantastic. And one wonders what has happened to the real Abercrombie.’

Now there was an alarmed note in the Countess Sylva’s voice.

‘You have not told Coleridge this? That his close friend and protector is responsible for these horrible murders. Ought we not to warn him?’

The Count shook his head again.

‘It would do no good. There is no way on earth we can prove all this. And any city police-force would laugh at such primitive superstition. For the same reason I have not told Anton of this diary. I have no doubt he has reached his own conclusions.’

The Countess looked long and deep into her husband’s eyes.

‘And you really believe all this? Wolves and werewolves? That the entire lycanthropic legend of mediaeval times has been enacted beneath this roof?’

The Count’s eyes were solemn.

‘I do believe it, Sylva. You remember that Professor Coleridge wounded the wolf in the conservatory. The wound was on the right forepaw, according to his deposition to Colonel Anton.’

He sighed heavily, turning his head to the window.

‘As I said goodbye to Abercrombie, he winced slightly when we shook hands. I noticed that he had a bandage round his right wrist, which he tried to keep concealed as much as possible.’

The Countess got to her feet, alarm on her face.

‘What are you thinking of? Word must be got to the professor. It is a long journey to Pest. Coleridge will be quite unprotected if this creature strikes again.’

She looked at the passive figure of her husband with exasperation.

‘Do you hear what I am saying? We must think of Nadia.’

The Count shook his head, laughing low in his throat.

‘Do not distress yourself, my dear. Coleridge is safe enough. I have seen to that.’

He drew the Countess to him, and the two stood staring down at the tiny dot that was now dwindling to insignificance in the vastness of that plain of ice and snow.