by Various
One Vanderhof had pulled the curtain back into place, but Vanderhofs were emerging through it in twos, threes, and dozens. The room was suddenly flooded with Vanderhofs, all wearing Model Twelve. It was as though the ante-room had suddenly decided to give birth. It erupted Vanderhofs. It spewed them forth, and as fast as they emerged new ones followed. For there were many mirrors in that little room.
The element of surprise was in Vanderhof's favor. The crooks were struck dumb by this insane manifestation of men in evening gowns. Before they could recover, each one found himself borne down under a tangle of slugging, punching, kicking, homicidally-active Vanderhofs.
Mrs. Smythe-Kennicott-Smythe threw up her hands in hob horror. A Vanderhof paused to chuck her under the chins. "Keep your shirt on, babe," he advised. "I'll get your jewels back."
The lady fainted.
Not all the Vanderhofs were engaged in taking care of the crooks. Twenty of them had mounted the runway and were delicately parading, showing off Model Twelve, which, to say the least, looked rather startling on Tim Vanderhofs masculine figure. A half-dozen more had surrounded the pallid, paralyzed Walker and were engaged in making horrific faces at him. Another group of Vanderhofs were holding an impromptu jam session in a corner, while still another had recaptured the canvas bag and was strewing its contents around the room, shouting, "Pig pig pig pig" in a hoarse voice. The clients were on hands and knees, scrambling after their stolen property.
It was a scene of utter chaos.
And Tim Vanderhof was—or were—having a glorious time. He hadn't enjoyed himself so much in years. He was doing a dozen different things, all at the same time, and the most delightful one of all dealt with the thugs, who by this time were trying only to escape from the veritable army that was assailing them.
Someone cried, "The police!"
That brought Vanderhof bade to sanity. He hurriedly knocked out the thugs—not a difficult task, since they were already nearly smothered by sheer weight of numbers—and then fled in a body, leaving confusion in his wake.
When the police arrived, they found six unconscious gangsters and a horde of socialites on hands and knees, squabbling over the division of their property. Walker was counting his fingers, with a vague air of skeptical disbelief. And there was no sign of a Vanderhof.
Indeed, there was only one Vanderhof by that time. The process of assimilation had again taken place, and the resultant single Vanderhof had removed Model Twelve—now torn into shreds—and resumed his own clothing. He didn't wait for events to happen, though. He took them into his own hands.
The elevator lifted him fifteen stories above Fifth Avenue, letting him out at the private office of Enoch Throckmorton, the actual owner of The Svelte Shop, as well as a number of other enterprises. Vanderhof had never seen Throckmorton; there were vague rumors of his existence on some Olympian height. Walker sometimes visited the man, and even dined with him on occasion. Now, leaving the elevator, Vanderhof thought of Walker, and visualized the man, blue-black hair, flashing eyes, and apish face.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Walker," said the receptionist. "Go right in."
Vanderhof nodded and opened a door, facing a glass-brick desk about a mile long. Behind it sat a shriveled little fellow who was chewing a cigar.
This was Enoch Throckmorton.
Or, better yet: This was—Enoch Throckmorton!
"Ha," said Throckmorton in a cracked voice, "sit down, Walker. I've just been getting a telephone call from downstairs. Quite a little fuss, eh?"
"Nothing much," Vanderhof shrugged, grinning to himself. Apparently his resemblance to Walker was so complete that even Throckmorton was deceived.
"Nothing much! Indeed! This man Vanderhof deserves recognition! He captured those bandits himself—we'd have had to make good on every cent stolen if he hadn't. I still don't know how he did it, but—he did it. That's the important thing."
"Well," Vanderhof said, "I've been intending to talk to you about Vanderhof for some time. He's the smartest man we have. Candidly, I think he deserves promotion."
"Very well. What have you in mind?"
"Manager. At a corresponding salary."
Throckmorton said slowly, "You know, of course, that the manager of The Svelte Shop is responsible only to me. You will have no authority over Vanderhof if—"
"I know my limitations," Vanderhof shrugged. "Vanderhof needs no discipline."
"Very well," said Throckmorton, pressing a button. 'Til attend to it immediately."
"Uh—" Vanderhof stood up. "By the way—if I should change my mind—"
Steel glinted in Throckmorton's beady eyes. "Indeed! You should have thought of that before. Do you, or do you not, recommend Vanderhof's promotion."
"I do."
"Then he's promoted. And the matter is now out of your hands—entirely!"
Vanderhof smiled and turned. He walked out on clouds. He did not even know that the elevator was taking him downstairs. Nuts to Walker....
So engrossed was he in day-dreams that he forgot to resume his normal appearance by the time he reached the general offices—which was, save for one person, deserted. This person wore tweeds, and now turned a round, crimson face and a bristling mustache on Vanderhof. It was Colonel Quester.
"Hah!" the colonel bellowed gently. "There you are! I see you've kept me waiting again."
"Uh—"
"Silence!" said Colonel Quester, and the ceiling shook. "I have come for Model Forty-three. Mrs. Quester's still furious, but the gown will placate her, I am sure. Is it ready? It had better be."
"Yes," said Vanderhof faintly. "I—I'll get it."
He fled. He got Model Forty-three. And, looking into a nearby mirror, he saw that he still exactly resembled S. Horton Walker.
Carrying the gown over his arm, on the way back he met one of the models. "Why, there you are, Mr. Walker," the girl said. "I thought you were in your office."
"I—uh—just stepped out for a minute."
So Walker was in his office! Vanderhof started to grin. He was beaming like a Cheshire cat when he entered the room where Colonel Quester waited, rumbling faintly like a miniature Vesuvius.
But the colonel softened at sight of the dress. "Ha!" he remarked. "A beauty! It is exclusive, you say?"
Vanderhof stepped back a pace. "The only one in existence," he remarked. "How do you like it, bottle-nose?"
There was a dead silence. Colonel Quester breathed through his nose. At last he asked, in a quiet voice, "What did you say?"
"Bottle-nose was the term," said Vanderhof happily. "Also, now that I think of it, you rather resemble a wart-hog."
"Brrrmph!" Quester rumbled warningly.
"Brrrmph to you," said Vanderhof. "You rhinocerous. So you want Model Forty-three, do you, fathead? Well, look."
He held up Model Forty-three, and with a strong tug ripped the dress from top to bottom.
Quester turned magenta.
Vanderhof ripped the dress again.
Quester turned blue.
Vanderhof finished the job by ripping Model Forty-three into ribbons and throwing it into the colonel's face. Then he waited.
Colonel Quester was having difficulty in breathing. His mighty fists were clenched. "Wait," he promised. "Just wait till I control my blood-pressure. I'll break you for this—"
He took a step forward, and simultaneously Vanderhof dived for the inner office. He slipped through the door, held it shut behind him, and saw before him the blue-black thatch of S. Horton Walker, who was looking down at some papers on his desk.
Vanderhof asserted his will-power. Instantly he changed his shape.
Walker looked up. "Vanderhof?" he snapped. "I want to talk to you—"
"Just a minute. You have a caller."
"Wait!"
Vanderhof didn't wait. He stepped out of the office, carefully closing the door, and turned to confront Colonel Quester.
"Ah," he said. "What can I do for you, Colonel?"
"Get out of my way," said
Quester, in a low, impassioned voice.
"With pleasure," Vanderhof smiled, stepping aside. "If you're looking for Mr. Walker, he's right inside."
To this the colonel made no answer. He entered the inner office, and Vanderhof gently shut the door after him. There was a brief silence.
It was broken by a dull thud, and a short, sharp cry, mingled with a bellow of triumph. Other noises followed.
"Model Forty-three, hey?" a hoarse voice boomed. "By Gad, sir, you'll eat it!"
"Ah?" Vanderhof murmured, walking away. "That lace collar should make a tasty mouthful."
He dusted his hands delicately. He was thinking that he had managed to acquire a personality of his own, and that his weird power of metamorphosis would gradually fade and vanish of its own accord. He was no longer a jellyfish—a chameleon.
He was the manager of The Svelte Shop. A choked gurgle of stark anguish came faintly from the distance.
Tim Vanderhof lifted his eyebrows. "Heigh-ho," he observed. "It's five o'clock. Another day."
* * *
Contents
I, THE VAMPIRE
by Henry Kuttner
1. Chevalier Futaine
The party was dull. I had come too early. There was a preview that night at Grauman’s Chinese, and few of the important guests would arrive until it was over. Jack Hardy, ace director at Summit Pictures, where I worked as assistant director, hadn’t arrived—yet—and he was the host. But Hardy had never been noted for punctuality.
I went out on the porch and leaned against a coctail and looking down at the lights of Hollywood. Hardy’s place was on the summit of a hill overlooking the film capital, near Falcon Lair, Valentino’s famous turreted castle. I shivered a little. Fog was sweeping in from Santa Monica, blotting out the lights to the west.
Jean Hubbard, who was an ingenue at Summit, came up beside me and took the glass out of my hand.
"Hello, Mart," she said, sipping the liquor. "Where’ve you been?"
"Down with the Murder Desert troupe, on location in the Mojave," I said. "Miss me, honey?" I drew her close.
She smiled up at me, her tilted eyebrows lending a touch of diablerie to the tanned, lovely face. I was going to marry Jean, but I wasn’t sure just when.
"Missed you lots," she said, and held up her lips. I responded.
After a moment I said, "What’s this about the vampire man?"
She chuckled. "Oh, the Chevalier Futaine. Didn’t you read Lolly Parsons’, write-up in Script'? Jack Hardy picked him up last month in Europe. Silly rot. Bill it’s good publicity."
"Three cheers for publicity," I said. "Look what it did for Birth of a Nation. But where does the vampire angle come in?"
"Mystery man. Nobody can take a picture of him, scarcely anybody can meet him. Weird tales are told about his former life in Paris. Going to play in Jack , Red Thirst. The kind of build-up Universal gave Karloff for Frankenstein. Our Chevalier Futaine"—she rolled out the words with amused relish—"is probably a singing waiter from a Paris cafe. I haven’t seen him—but the deuce with him, anyway. Mart, I want you to do something for me. For Deming."
"Hess Deming?" I raised my eyebrows in astonishment. Hess Deming, Summit’s biggest box-office star, whose wife, Sandra Colter, had died two day before. She, too, had been an actress, although never the great star her husband was. Hess loved her, I knew—and now I guessed what the trouble was. I said, "I noticed he was a bit wobbly."
"He’ll kill himself," Jean said, looking worried. "I—I feel responsible for him somehow, Mart. After all, he gave me my start at Summit. And he’s due for the DTs any time now."
"Well, I’ll do what I can," I told her. "But that isn’t a great deal. After all, getting tight is probably the best thing he could do. I know if I lost you, Jean—"
I stopped. I didn’t like to think of it.
Jean nodded. "Sec what you can do for him, anyway. Losing Sandra that way was—pretty terrible."
"What way?" I asked. "I’ve been away, remember. I read something aboul it, but—"
"She just died," Jean said. "Pernicious anemia, they said. But Hess told me the doctor really didn’t know what it was. She just seemed to grow weaker and weaker until—she passed away."
I nodded, gave Jean a hasty kiss, and went back into the house. I had just seen Hess Deming walk past, a glass in his hand. He turned as I tapped his shoulder.
"Oh, Mart," he said, his voice just a bit fuzzy. He could hold his liquor, but I could tell by his bloodshot eyes that he was almost at the end of his rope. He was a handsome devil, all right, well-built, strong-featured, with level gray eyes and a broad mouth that was usually smiling. It wasn’t smiling now. It was slack, and his face was bedewed with perspiration.
"You know about Sandra?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I’m sorry, Hess."
He drank deeply from the glass, wiped his mouth with a grimace of distaste. "I'm drunk, Mart," he confided. "I had to get drunk. It was awful—those last few days. I’ve got to burn her up."
I didn’t say anything.
"Burn her up. Oh, my God, Mart—that beautiful body of hers, crumbling to • In i -and I’ve got to watch it! She made me promise I’d watch to make sure they burned her."
I said, "Cremation’s a clean ending, Hess. And Sandra was a clean girl, and a damned good actress."
He put his flushed face close to mine. "Yeah—but I’ve got to burn her up. It’ll kill me, Mart. Oh, God!" He put the empty glass down on a table and looked around dazedly.
I was wondering why Sandra had insisted on cremation. She’d given an interview once in which she stressed her dread of fire. Most write-ups of stars are applesauce, but I happened to know that Sandra did dread fire. Once, on the set, I’d seen her go into hysterics when her leading man lit his pipe too near her face.
"Excuse me, Mart," Hess said. "I’ve got to get another drink."
"Wait a minute," I said, holding him. "You want to watch yourself, Hess, you’ve had too much already."
"It still hurts," he said. "Just a little more and maybe it won’t hurt so much." But he didn’t pull away. Instead he stared at me with the dullness of intoxication in his eyes. "Clean," he said presently.
"She said that too. Mart. She said burning was a clean death. But, God, that beautiful white body of hers—I can’t stand it, Mart! I’m going crazy, I think. Get me a drink, like a good fellow."
I said, "Wait here, Hess. I’ll get you one." I didn't add that it would be watered—considerably.
He sank down in a chair, mumbling thanks. As I went off I felt sick. I’d seen too many actors going on the rocks to mistake Hess’s symptoms. I knew that his box office days were over. There would be longer and longer waits between features, and then personal appearances, and finally Poverty Row and serials. And in the end maybe a man found dead in a cheap hall bedroom on Main Street, with the gas on.
There was a crowd around the bar. Somebody said, "Here’s Mart. Hey, come on and meet the vampire."
Then I got a shock. I saw Jack Hardy, my host, the director with whom I'd on many a hit. He looked like a corpse. And I’d seen him looking plenty Ixitl before. A man with a hangover or a marijuana jag isn't a pretty sight, but I’d never seen Hardy like this. He looked as though he was keeping going on his nerve alone. There was no blood in the man.
I’d last seen him as a stocky, ruddy blond, who looked like nothing so much as a wrestler, with his huge biceps, his ugly, good-natured face, and his bristling crop of yellow hair. Now he looked like a skeleton, with skin hanging loosely on the big frame. His face was a network of sagging wrinkles. Pouches bagged beneath his eyes, and those eyes were dull and glazed. About his neck a black silk scarf was knotted tightly.
"Good God, Jack!" I exclaimed. "What have you done to yourself?"
He looked away quickly. "Nothing," he said brusquely. "I’m all right. I want you to meet the Chevalier Futaine—this is Mart Prescott."
"Pierre," a voice said. "Hollywood is no place for titles. Ma
rt Prescott—the pleasure is mine."
I faced the Chevalier Pierre Futaine.
We shook hands. My first impression was of icy cold, and a slick kind of dryness—and I let go of his hand too quickly to be polite. He smiled at me.
A charming man, the chevalier. Or so he seemed. Slender, below medium height, his bland, round face seemed incongruously youthful. Blond hair was plastered close to his scalp. I saw that his cheeks were rouged—very deftly, but I know something about makeup. And under the rouge I read a curious, deathly pallor that would have made him a marked man had he not disguised it. Some disease, perhaps, had blanched his skin—but his lips were not artificially reddened. And they were as crimson as blood.
He was clean-shaved, wore impeccable evening clothes, and his eyes were black pools of ink.
"Glad to know you," I said. "You’re the vampire, eh?"
He smiled. "So they tell me. But we all serve the dark god of publicity, eh Mr. Prescott? Or—is it Mart?"
"It’s Mart," I said, still staring at him. I saw his eyes go past me, and an extraordinary expression appeared on his face—an expression of amazement, disbelief. Swiftly it was gone.
I turned. Jean was approaching, was at my side as I moved. She said, "Is this the chevalier?"
Pierre Futaine was staring at her, his lips parted a little. Almost inaudibly he murmured, "Sonya." And then, on a note of interrogation, "Sonya?"
I introduced the two. Jean said, "You see, my name isn’t Sonya."
The chevalier shook his head, an odd look in his black eyes.
"I once knew a girl like you," he said softly. "Very much like you. It’s strange."
"Will you excuse me?" I broke in. Jack Hardy was leaving the bar. Quickly I followed him.
I touched his shoulder as he went out the French windows. He jerked out a snarled oath, turned a white death mask of a face to me.
"Damn you, Mart," he snarled. "Keep your hands to yourself."
I put my hands on his shoulders and swung him around.
