The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (84 page)

“Have you seen Petroff?” Hammond King barked into the phone at this end.

“No, not yet.”

“Well, I’ll be around in the morning, at ten. We’ve got to work fast, you understand? Something’s happening that I don’t like.”

“What is it?” asked Lorna Colby.

“I can’t talk now. See you tomorrow. Good night.”

He hung up. I hung up. It was my turn to look at the Scotch bottle as he came in.

“Where were we?” he asked.

“You were just going to spill the beans,” I said.

Hammond King smiled. “Was I? Lucky for me I got called away. I’m afraid I can’t talk this matter over with you just at present. That call was from a client in Pasadena. I’ve got to take the train tonight.”

I rose. One of his desk drawers was half opened. I reached in and scooped up a handful of garlic leaves.

“You had these left over from decorating the Petroff house, I presume,” I told him. “Too bad you didn’t think to put these on the French windows.”

I slipped the garlic wreath into his hand and left the room. He stood there with his mouth open, giving a poor imitation of a stuffed moose.

I rode downstairs and walked around the corner and across the block to the Eastmore Hotel. I didn’t bother to send my name up, but rode in person to the ninth floor. Nine-nineteen was down the hall to my left. I found the room and knocked on Lorna Colby’s door.

There was no answer – except a sudden, ear-shattering scream.

I jerked the doorknob. The door opened on a tableau of frozen horror.

A blonde girl lay slumped on the bed. Crouching above her was a shadowy figure out of a nightmare. Its head was bending toward her neck. I saw lean, outstretched fingers claw down, saw the mouth descend – then the shadow straightened, turned, swooped across the room and out through the open window.

Lorna Colby lay there, clutching her throat and staring in wide-eyed terror. I stared, too. For the intruder had been Igor Petroff.

When I reached the window, the fire-escape outside was empty. Perhaps it had never held a figure. Perhaps I’d have done better to look for something flying in the sky.

I turned back to the bed. Lorna Colby was sitting up. There was still fear in her hazel eyes as she looked at me.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

I introduced myself. “Dave Kirby, of the
Leader
. You’re Lorna Colby, of course?”

She nodded. “Yes. But how did you know? And what made you come here?”

“Hammond King sent me,” I lied.

It was the right hunch.

“Then maybe you can tell me,” she said, “what’s wrong with my uncle? He sent me a wire to come down and talk about the estate. I waited to hear from him tonight. I was getting sleepy and lay down on the bed. When I opened my eyes again, he was in the room.”

“Petroff?”

“Yes. You recognized him, too?”

I nodded.

“He must have come through the window some way. He just crouched over me, staring, and there was something wrong with his face. It was so white, but his eyes glared, and I couldn’t look away. Then I felt his hands come down toward my neck, and I screamed, and then—”

I shook her, not gently. It was fun, but this was no time for amusement.

“Stop it!” I snapped. “Relax.”

She cried a little. Then she sat up and fished around for her make up. I took the opportunity to study her more closely.

Lorna Colby was tall, blonde, and about twenty-two. She had a good face and a better figure. All in all, the kind of a girl worth whistling after.

That noise like a ton of bricks was me, falling. She didn’t notice it. After a while she patted her hair back and smiled.

“Your uncle is – ill,” I said. “That’s what Hammond King asked me to tell you. We’re trying to keep things quiet until we can take him away for a rest.”

“You mean he’s crazy?”

I shrugged.

“I’ve always thought so,” Lorna declared. “Even when Aunt Irene was alive, I knew there was something wrong with him. He led her an awful life.”

She halted, bit her lower lip, and continued.

“After she died, he got worse. He kept dogs at the house, guarding it. He wanted to guard her tomb, he said. I haven’t seen him now for almost a year. Nobody has seen him since the day she died. She had a heart attack, you know. He buried her in the private vaults on the estate. He wouldn’t even let me see her or come to the funeral.

“I knew he hated me, and it came as a surprise when I got his wire yesterday, asking me to come down from Frisco to talk about the will. That didn’t make sense, either. After all, Aunt Irene left him the whole estate, even though he can’t touch the money for a year.”

Something clicked into place. I decided to follow it up.

“By the way, who was your aunt’s physician?” I asked.

“Dr Kelring.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” I told her. “It’s important.”

“You think he might know what’s wrong with Uncle Igor?”

“That’s right.” I nodded. “He must know.”

I looked him up in the book. Dr Roger Kelring. I called his downtown office, not hoping for much of anything. Still, this gang seemed to work late. Hammond King was on the job, and Igor Petroff was a regular night-owl. Or was he? “They fly by night.”

The phone gave off that irritating sound known as a busy signal. That was enough for me.

“Come on, Miss Colby,” I said. “We’re going over to Dr Kelring’s office.”

“But you didn’t talk to him,” she objected.

“Busy signal,” I explained. “On second thought, I’d just as soon not say anything to him in advance.”

“What do you mean? Do you think he’s mixed up in all this?”

“Definitely,” I assured her. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your uncle was up there with him now.”

Lorna put on her coat and we went downstairs. In the lobby, she halted indecisively.

“Wait a minute, Mr Kirby. Aren’t we going to report seeing Uncle Igor in my room? After all, if he’s sick somebody should be looking after him. He may be—”

“Dangerous? Perhaps. But let’s not start something we can’t finish. It’s my hunch that he’s over at Dr Kelring’s office. Don’t ask me why, but I’ve got reasons. Besides, you don’t want to get mixed up in a lot of cross-questioning, do you?”

She agreed. I was relieved. What could I do if we called some Law? Tell them that a suspected vampire was running around attacking girls in hotel rooms?

Besides, I didn’t think Igor Petroff was “running around”. He might be flying around. Or he might be working according to a plan. Dr Kelring would know the plan.

We took a cab to Kelring’s office, in a building off Pershing Square.

“What’s the doctor like?” I asked Lorna.

“He’s a rich woman’s doctor,” she told me. “You know – smooth, quiet, genial. He’s about fifty, I guess. Bald-headed, with a little goatee. I only saw him once, at Aunt Irene’s, a few months before she died. He was pleasant, but I didn’t like him.”

Lorna’s voice betrayed her inner tension. I understood. It’s not every night that a girl is attacked by a vampire, even if he’s a member of the family.

Partly for that reason and partly for personal pleasure, I held her arm as we took the elevator up to Kelring’s office. A light burned behind the outer door. I opened it and stepped in. I had no gun, but if there was anything doing, I counted on the surprise element.

There was one.

Seated at the desk in the reception room was a man of about fifty, bald-headed, and wearing a small goatee. His hand rested on the telephone as though he were going to pick it up and make another call.

But Dr Kelring would never make another call. He sat there staring off into space, and when I touched his shoulder his neck wobbled off at an angle so that his goatee almost touched the spot between his shoulder-blades. Roger Kelring was quite, was definitely, was unmistakably dead.

I was patting Lorna’s shoulder and making with the reassurance when the phone rang. Its sharp note cut the air, and I jumped. For a moment I stared at Dr Kelring, wondering why his dead hand didn’t lift the receiver and hold it to his ear.

Then I got around the desk, fast, and pried his cold fingers from the receiver.

“Lorna,” I said, “how did – he – talk?”

“You mean Dr Kelring?” She shuddered.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don’t remember . . . Yes, I think I do. He had a soft voice. Very soft.”

“Good.”

I whipped out my handkerchief and covered the mouthpiece. Just a hunch.

“Hello,” I said lifting the receiver.

“Hello. That you, Kelring?”

I jumped as I recognized the voice. Hammond King!

“What is it?” I said, softly.

“Kelring, I must talk to you.” He sounded frightened. Too frightened to analyze my voice.

“Go ahead. What’s on your mind?”

“Did you ever read ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Kelring. She’s alive out there. I know it!”

“Who’s alive?”

“Mrs Petroff. Don’t stall me, Kelring. I’m desperate.”

“What makes you think so, man?”

“It happened two months ago. I was out there at the house with Petroff, arguing about the will. You know he’s been trying to get me to turn over the estate before the time stipulated. I won’t bother with details, but I heard a noise. A woman’s voice, coming from behind the wall. It came from the private staircase behind the bookshelves – the one leading down to the family burial vaults in the hillside.”

“Get to the point, King,” I said.

“He tried to hold me off, but I made him take me down there. I don’t know how to tell you this – but beyond the iron grille entrance, in the vaults, I caught a glimpse of Irene Colby Petroff. Alive.”

“But I pronounced her dead of heart failure,” I said, remembering what I’d been told.

“She was alive, I tell you! She ran into one of the passages, but I recognized her face. I tried to get Petroff to open the grille and go in, but he dragged me back upstairs. Then he told me the story.”

“What story?”

“You know, all right, Kelring. That’s why I didn’t call before. I wanted to investigate on my own. Now I need your help.”

“Better tell me all you know, then.”

“I know that she’s a – vampire.”

I held my breath. King didn’t wait for any comment.

“Petroff broke down and confessed. Said he knew it and you knew it. She’d been mixed up in some kind of Black Magic cult in Europe when he met her. And when she died, she didn’t really die. She lived on, after sundown, as a vampire.”

“Preposterous!”

“I wasn’t sure myself, then. I wanted to call in the police. But Petroff pleaded with me. Said he had the guard and the dogs and kept people away. He had her locked up down there, fed her raw liver. Because you were trying to work on a cure. He asked for a little more time. And he explained it all. Gave me books on demonology to read. I didn’t know what to believe, but I promised to wait. Then, three nights ago, he called and told me that she had tried to attack him. He asked me to come out this afternoon and talk things over.

“I went out there about four today. Maybe I was a fool, but I took some garlic with me. The books say garlic wards them off. When I arrived, I found Petroff lying on the floor. There were two holes in his throat – the marks of a vampire’s teeth. So he has become a vampire now!

“I got frightened and ran. I knew he had sent for his niece, Lorna Colby. I wanted to talk to her before I did anything. Then, tonight, a young man called on me. Said he was from the newspapers. He knows something, too.

“Kelring, I’ve made up my mind to act. I won’t call the police. I – I can’t. They’d laugh at me. But there’s a monster loose tonight, and I can’t stand waiting any longer. I’m going out to the Petroff place now.”

“Wait!” I said.

His voice was shrill as he replied. “Do you know what I’ve been doing, Kelring? I’ve been sitting here molding silver bullets. Silver bullets for my gun. And I’m leaving now. I’m going out there to get him!”

“Don’t be a fool!” I yelled, in my natural voice.

But he had hung up.

“Come on,” I snapped at Lorna. “I’ll call the police and report on Kelring now. But we’re getting out before they come.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Petroff’s house,” I answered.

She nodded. I moved around the table. As I did, I saw something on the floor. It was a spectacle-case. I picked it up, turned it over. It was an expensive case, with an engraved name. The silver signature read:

Hammond King

As the cab driver grumbled about the long haul, I told Lorna what I thought was wise.

I was too groggy to think clearly. Lenehan thought I was drunk, I’d jumped arrest, I’d eavesdropped, and impersonated, and messed up a murder. And it looked like an even busier day tomorrow unless I could straighten this tangle out tonight.

That’s my only excuse, I guess. I was a punch-drunk fool to take Lorna to that house, with only a crazy hunch to guide us, and armed with nothing but my suspicions.

But I did it. We rolled up to the black, forbidding portals of the Petroff place. We walked up the porch of the Petroff mansion and the cab waited in the driveway. I didn’t see Hammond King’s car, and I was glad we had arrived first.

He was wrong, I thought. Petroff was not here. And if he wasn’t, we could find that staircase, take a look into the vault, and see for ourselves whether Irene Colby Petroff walked or slept forever.

Never mind the details. The garlic odor choked us in the creaky hall. It flooded the parlor as I lit the lamp, tapped bookcases, and found the button that opened a section of the wall. Lorna shivered at my side. The setup looked like something out of “The Cat and the Canary”.

I kept listening for sounds. All quiet on the Western Front. With the light streaming from the parlor behind us, we took the secret staircase in stride. Down below was another panel in the wall. I switched on the light and walked down a long corridor. It was damp. King had said the private vaults of the family were out under the hillside.

We rounded a turn and came to the iron grille barring the hall. A perpetual light burned behind it. I tried the door. It was open. It squeaked as I pushed.