by P. N. Elrod
“And after all that reading you still wanted to risk meeting me?”
He rested his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes. “There were many small indications that it was less of a risk than you would think. Trifles, really, but important trifles. A person’s posture and movements reveal his soul far more clearly than his words, and once one has studied this alphabet of expression, the thoughts flashing through a man’s mind are as easy to read as a child’s primer.”
“How’d you figure all this?”
“My theatrical background: in order to imitate life, one must first study it. When I first noticed you, your movements and expression suggested a deep preoccupation with some problem, but an energetic willingness to face it.”
“Maybe I was worried about finding a victim to drain.”
“Perhaps, but after witnessing your purposeful walk to the Stockyards, I concluded you had no need to subsist exclusively on human blood.”
“Unless I was hunting up some handy worker there.”
“Why go there when more convenient meals were strolling the crowded streets? If it were very difficult to isolate a pedestrian for some nefarious purpose, the crime rate for mugging would be strangely low.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“After you emerged from the yards, your posture had not changed. You still had a problem and it was not hunger. At that point I knew I wanted to arrange to meet you and to find out more, so I intruded myself—”
“I wouldn’t call it an intrusion now. You just wanted to get my attention.”
“You are most forgiving on that point.”
“Why not? I got my earth back and you got your questions answered. Everything turned out all right.”
“True.” A lazy puff of blue smoke rolled slowly to the ceiling and his eyes opened a crack, studying me. After another puff, he said, “I was wondering if everything was all right now.”
It was pretty vague and at the same time a pretty personal question, at least for him. “What d’ya mean?”
“I’m inquiring about your physical and mental state after that stairwell incident. Are you all right?”
A simple yes would have been the easy and obvious answer, but he wasn’t one to ask casual questions, so I thought things over until I concluded I felt fine. It was crazy, too, considering I’d been staked in the heart and left to die by inches in my own blood.
Without passion I remembered the silent, paralyzing agony in the blackness, the near-insanity, and the final icy cold creeping up to claim me forever. Ultimately, in my mind, I saw my would-be killer as I’d left him: his face blank, his eyes staring pinpoints, and his mouth hanging slack. I’d left him as he had left me, except no one would come by to save him, now or ever. No one could.
It might be a popular conception in some circles that vampires are selfish creatures of pure appetite, that we can only take. In the brief time since my violent rebirth I’d learned that we are able to give of ourselves. I believe it’s a way of venting off all the negative stuff that gets stored up in the memory, leaving only the memory, but not the destructive emotions. I’d freely given mine away to a man who deserved them. He was forever lost in my nightmare and would never wake from it again. I had no regrets.
“I’m fine,” I said at last, and meant it. “Been reading my posture or something?”
“I did that on our way to the station.”
“Yeah? So what trifles did you observe and what did you conclude from them?”
He kept his eyes on the darkened city slipping past our window. His tone was kindly and amused. “My dear fellow, there are certain things a gentleman just does not discuss and still expect to be considered a gentleman.”
I went a little red in the face. “What about you? Are you okay?”
He dismissed his own feelings with a decisive wave of his pipe. It was what he didn’t say that filled my head now. He’d read the papers and talked to the cops and doctors. By now he knew all about what I’d done to the man. Apparently he had no regrets, either.
We’d booked a double, but Escott had it all to himself. My place of rest was elsewhere on the train, and I remained in the smoking car long after he’d gone off to bed. It was lonely; no die-hard insomniacs were aboard, and the staff had better things to do than keep me company. I got busy reading a fresh copy of Jibaro Death that I’d bought at the station newsstand. It kept me busy over the next few hours, though it was poor occupation when compared to my recent time with Bobbi. Sometimes I’d drift out of the plot entirely and catch myself looking at nothing in particular, no doubt with a sappy smile on my face.
Toward dawn I moved on to the baggage car and slipped inside without getting caught. Buried deep among the tons of suitcases, crates, and other luggage was my own traveling bedroom—a lightproof and very sturdy trunk. It was large enough to hold some extra clothes, a sack filled with my home earth, and me, though it was less than comfortable to someone with my long bones. Standing vertically as it was now, I’d have to rest my rump on the sack with my knees crowding up by my ears. During the day the awkwardness of the position hardly mattered; as long as the earth was next to my body I slept the sleep of the dead.
No joke.
Outside the car I could sense the searing, blinding sun start to roll above the horizon line. I quickly folded away my magazine, sieved into the trunk, and let the rocking motion of the train ease me safely out of the world for another day.
I’d been alive once, in the normal sense of the word. In that time, I’d met a woman and fallen in love. All the clichés I’d ever read about the subject had turned out to be absolutely correct. Floating—not walking—around in a gauzy pink haze of giddy happiness, I could charitably understand how the power of love had changed the course of human history. I felt a kinship for other courting couples and pity for those who were still searching.
Maybe Maureen’s nature set us apart and made us feel unique from all the others who’d ever been in love, but I didn’t see it at the time and still don’t. Love is love and I’d have felt the same about Maureen no matter what. You see, Maureen Dumont was a vampire.
Of course, she wasn’t the kind of white-faced, blood-obsessed zombie found on the screen at the Bijou down the street; she wasn’t the freckled girl next door, either. She was rare and special and so was our relationship, and we were smart enough to know it. We took steps then in the hope of making our love last beyond my own short life span. The one thing the books and movies do get right is our method of reproduction; it takes a vampire to make a vampire—only there’s no guarantee it will work. You can get into bed, make love and exchange all the blood you want, but the change won’t necessarily happen or there’d be a lot more of us around. Maybe it’s like a rare disease and nearly everyone is immune to it.
In my case it was a success. One traumatic night I woke up dead—only Maureen wasn’t there to see it happen. Five years ago she’d packed a few things together and vanished, leaving me a cryptic note with a promise to return when she felt safe again. She never returned.
I’d waited and then searched for her. Not knowing if she’d been caught by the people she’d feared or if she’d grown tired of me and wanted an easy way to say good-bye, the bewildering pain was still inside me, fresh and harsh after all the years in between.
I’d finally decided to try to leave it behind, desperate enough to quit my job with a New York paper in the middle of the Depression to attempt another start on life in Chicago. My efforts caught the attention of the people who had also been hunting her. One of them had been her younger sister Gaylen, who had been as murderous as Maureen had been gentle.
Escott and I had managed to survive that encounter, and now we were outward bound to pick up where he’d left off on his trail after Maureen. He was a professional, and damned smart, and I trusted him enough to take care of things on his own, but he insisted I come along this time. Between us was an informal agreement to work together, so I came, willing to render what
ever help he thought I could offer, but doubting our chances of success.
We arrived in New York during the day, so I was completely out of things while Escott took care of the business of getting us routed to our hotel. His plan was to check in, then hop a train up to Kingsburg. Maureen had had Gaylen confined to an expensive asylum there, and Escott wanted to talk with her doctors again. He must have had a hectic time before he took off; when I came to at sunset my shoulders and spine were all twisted and aching. A sloppy wooziness sloshed between my ears and I felt oddly heavy all over.
Outside the trunk, a door opened slowly and closed abruptly and Escott muttered a pithy exclamation. My confined world lurched, tilted, and whumped solidly onto the floor. He clicked the key in the lock and pushed the lid up.
“Mm?” I said, still dizzy from being on my head.
“Terribly sorry, old man. I didn’t have time to see you to your room. The train schedule was just too close. I distinctly told the fellow how I wanted your trunk placed and he deigned not to listen.”
“Welcome to New York,” I said philosophically and winced at the blinding dregs of a new dusk burning through the thin curtains. The sun was officially down, but more than enough light lingered in the sky to be painful. I fumbled for my dark glasses and found they’d slipped from their pocket and were burrowing into my ribs. One metal earpiece was bent, but they were still serviceable, and I slipped them on with a sigh of relief. Sometimes I really hate waking up.
“How are you?” he asked, walking to the open window and considerately pulling down the shade. A stale breeze made it flap a bit. It was the familiar used air of a big city, but some thirty degrees cooler than the stuff we’d left behind in Chicago.
I rubbed the sore place on my head and a few grains of dirt from my bag of soil trickled to the floor. “Gritty.”
He liked puns, but only when he was making them. “Facilities are just over there if you wish to refresh yourself.”
I did and got untangled from my mixed-up belongings and staggered into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. “How was Kingsburg?”
He dropped into a fat chair, stretched his long legs out straight, and looked smug. “I have the address of Gaylen’s next of kin—”
“Next of kin?”
“—to be notified in the event of an emergency.”
“It’s not Maureen, is it?” I’d read that from his attitude.
“No, it is not Maureen, but some other woman named Edith Sedlock.”
I’d never heard of her and said as much. “Where is she? Have you checked on her?”
“She lives here in Manhattan, and I’ve not had time to look her up.”
It flashed through my mind that Edith could be Maureen. “Let’s get going, then.”
He held up a cautionary hand. “You’d create a better impression if you had a quick wash and brush-up.”
“Damn.” But he was right; I looked rumpled and felt the same. Spending twelve hours packed in a trunk does that to a person.
He checked his watch. “There’s a café off the lobby just left of the elevator. I’ll wait for you there. Thirty minutes?”
“Fifteen.”
He’d just finished his sandwich and I gave him no time to linger over the coffee. Playing native guide for a change, I led the way to the nearest subway station, taking the fastest route to the address we wanted.
“How did you manage to get it?” I spoke just loud enough for him to hear over the background noise of the train. “I thought doctors were first cousins to clams.”
“By talking a great deal.”
“The Ronald Colman bit, huh?”
“Hardly. I merely told them the truth . . . some of it, anyway.”
“How much is some?”
“That I was hired by an interested third party to search for Gaylen’s missing ‘daughter,’ Maureen. I had only to show them my credentials and a stunning letter of reference.”
“Letter of—” Then the dawn came. “You mean you’re still packing all that stuff from the blackmail list?”
“I haven’t had time to return it yet and it seemed a waste not to use it in a good cause.”
“But how could it be used?” I wasn’t accusatory, just curious about his mechanics. As far as I knew, the stuff in his safekeeping consisted of nothing but embarrassing photos and indiscreet letters and documents.
“There are ways. I simply hinted around that my client was very prominent, but wished to remain anonymous. When pressed, I reluctantly revealed an important name on a miraculously appropriate letter, one of a most interesting series. It was child’s play to keep my thumb over the name of the original addressee.”
“Jeez, don’t you take the cake. What did you learn from them about this Edith Sedlock?”
“They believe her to be Gaylen’s other daughter.”
“Other—Maureen’s got another sister?”
“Possibly.”
“She’d have to be a younger woman if the Kingsburg doctors thought her to be Gaylen’s daughter. Then she could be—”
“Like you, yes, but I am not inclined to think so.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because she was able to answer the phone during the day when they called to tell her of Gaylen’s escape.”
“Maybe she was rooming with a human friend.”
“There’s that,” he conceded. “She instructed them to keep her informed on the situation, and that’s all they were able to tell me about her.”
“Would they phone her about you?”
“I’m sure they already have. Anyone else searching for Gaylen would certainly be of interest to the next of kin.”
“Did Maureen leave any other address for them?”
“Her own—that is, the one you originally gave to me. All the bills for Gaylen’s care were sent there and promptly paid via Western Union. Did Maureen always pay in cash?”
“As far as I know, when she did buy anything. We didn’t exactly spend time shopping.”
“Yes, and I know you hardly keep banker’s hours. I did find out something quite interesting: the date of Gaylen’s escape coincides exactly to the date you found Maureen’s note.”
That was no real surprise and made a lot of sense. “I wish she could have found some other way of handling things than by running.”
“Perhaps she once tried.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“In the same situation, what would you have done to neutralize Gaylen as a threat?”
“Same as I did to Matheus, I guess.”
“But no matter what the provocation, she might have been most reluctant to do so with her own sister. You weren’t happy with the idea yourself.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Or perhaps Gaylen’s will might have been strong enough for her to resist such an imposed influence. The woman was utterly obsessed with getting her own way and quite mentally unbalanced, considering the lengths she went to to finally achieve her goal.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumbled, and thought about Bobbi with a pang of guilt over what she’d been put through. “I hope to God we can clear this up now.”
“As do I,” he agreed, and left me alone with my thoughts until our stop came up.
We emerged in the east fifties and walked a couple of blocks south to Forty-eighth and a promising line of brownstones. It was a respectable working-class neighborhood with a few shops along the street, a drugstore on one corner, and a quiet little tavern at the other. We found the right number and went up.
Edith Sedlock lived in the back corner flat on the third floor, and her door remained firmly locked as she asked our business.
“My name is Jack Fleming,” I called through the plain panel of wood. “I’m a friend of Maureen Dumont—”
“Maureen?”
“Yes, we’ve just come from Kingsburg—”
A key clicked and the door opened exactly four inches. Two dark brown eyes glared at us suspiciously. She had matching brown hair,
bobbed short, and was nearer thirty than forty. Aside from the giveaway of her age, she had a strong and fast heartbeat. She was definitely not a vampire.
“What’s this about?” she demanded.
“May we come in and tell you, Miss Sedlock?” Escott asked politely, his hat in hand. I took the hint and grabbed mine off.
Still doubtful, she stepped back, swinging the door wide and leaving it open after we walked in. She looked us over carefully, frowning, but apparently we weren’t too threatening. She gestured us to a small lumpy sofa.
It was a simple one-room flat, and the place was littered with too much furniture, clothes, books, magazines, loose papers, and used dishes. A radio sang to itself on a table next to a tiny stove and sink. She turned it off and dragged a wicker chair from the table and sat facing us, her knees and ankles pinched tightly together and her hands yanking the hemline of her dark dress down as far as it could go.
“Our apologies for intruding on you, Miss Sedlock,” Escott began.
She interrupted. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you. The sanatorium called me. They said you’d been asking after Gaylen Dumont. Are you Mr. Escott?”
“I am.”
“May I see your identification?”
He solemnly opened his wallet, she peered at it, then at me. In turn, I peeled out my old press card for her inspection. She sniffed at both of them, vaguely dissatisfied. With her, it was probably a chronic condition.
“It’s out of date,” she said to me. She looked as if she wanted to find fault with Escott’s but couldn’t think of anything.
I put my card away.
“You’re very observant,” Escott commented neutrally.
“I have to be, I’m a teacher.”
“No doubt you are quite good at your job.” He was turning on the charm again, but keeping it to a low level so as not to scare her off. From the pallid pink spots that appeared and vanished from her cheeks it seemed to be working, too.
“How did the sanatorium come to give you my name?” she asked.
It was Escott’s show, so I gave him the nod. He explained about our search for Maureen and that he had at least located her mother as having been a patient at Kingsburg. Since Gaylen Dumont was no longer in residence and since he had excellent references, the administrator there had every confidence in Escott’s professional discretion. The doctor in charge had no qualms in giving out the name listed as Gaylen’s next of kin.
