The House of the Wolf

by Basil Copper

  Coleridge knew the colonel would want to question him as soon as the lecture was over. He was glad now that he had said nothing to the Count or the girl about the feet he had seen running away immediately after he had struck himself upon the buttress.

  It may have been, in any event, a momentary effect of the blow. A sort of hallucination engendered by slight concussion, though he really could not convince himself of this. And it did not help Coleridge in explaining the other events of the night, or the trying of the door. He knew the animal was immediately outside. Therefore, no other human being would have been near. And he had definitely seen the handle turning. The girl had had a similar experience.

  It was not mass hysteria or anything of that sort. Both Coleridge’s nature and that of Nadia Homolky did not lie in those directions. And Menlow’s test had been conclusive.

  Coleridge caught Homolky’s eye as he glanced about the big room they were using as a lecture hall. His smooth, practised sentences went on in reasoned, coherent periods, his voice resonant and confident as it carried to the farthest corner of the chamber, while his brain continued to revolve imponderables. The Count was chairman, of course; it was a courtesy the host appreciated, and he had the agenda and timetable for every day and notes on each speaker giving information he would need as he introduced them.

  Homolky had a satisfied look on his face; things were going well. It had been a good start to the Congress, and it appeared, both to him and to Coleridge himself, as though this smaller gathering would be as successful as the major Congress just concluded in Pest.

  Coleridge’s gaze passed on, taking in the pale oval faces scattered about, gradually resolving them into detailed features. He had not been surprised to see the old Countess there; she looked like one of those rather austere oil paintings set about the panelled walls of the Castle, but there was no doubt about her interest in the subjects being debated or her knowledge of his work.

  Though the presence of Sylva Homolky, sitting next to her mother-in-law, had been a little more unexpected. Coleridge was encouraged by this gracious manifestation of the interest shown by the host family in their deliberations, and the speaker was pleased to see the amusement and appreciation on the younger Countess’s face at some of the more esoteric and erudite jokes with which he had sprinkled his text.

  But there was a vague doubt nagging at Coleridge’s mind; it had been there for some time, but he could not at first give it conscious recognition. He was bringing his comments to a rapid close now, and he again raked the hall. The stage was brilliantly lit with the rest of the room somewhat in shadow, which was normal for such events, of course, and at first he could not see any visible reason for his unease.

  Then he had it. Menlow did not appear to be there. He went round the semicircle of faces again. There was Sullivan, still in his archaic suit of plus-fours; George Parker, his black beard abristle and his eyes alight with enthusiasm; Raglan, who was sitting at a discreet distance from Nadia but eyeing her appreciatively from time to time.

  Pools of darker space were scattered between the figures, which stood out almost like tableaux in a museum. Shaw was there too, sitting at the edge of the gathering, toward the front. He did not know why he had not noticed Menlow’s absence earlier, or why it had not been mentioned before the lecture began. Coleridge hoped there was nothing wrong; judging by the gathering in Pest it was not like him to miss out on such an important event as the opening session. He would ask during the intermission following the questions; perhaps Menlow was ill and confined to his room. Homolky would send someone to inquire.

  And then there was the problem of Anton. The Chief of Police would obviously wish to question Coleridge on his experiences of the previous night. That was likely to be a long and tedious business, as Anton knew little English and the Count would have to translate. Coleridge had already decided to keep his own counsel about what he had seen just before consciousness faded, even so far as Anton was concerned. It would add nothing to the situation except an element of fantasy, which was certainly not needed at the present time.

  He should have kept a cooler head, but he had been unwell and off balance when he had confided in his host. After all, there was great danger overhanging the family if this thing was prowling the corridors. It had manifested itself on three separate occasions if the shadow seen by Coleridge at the door of the Weapons Hall could be counted.

  What the police chief would make of it all he did not know; he and the girl could only speak the truth, after all. The official had impressed him as being a man of great courage and probity, and he would obviously know the folkways of his own country at least as well as a scholar whose knowledge, however assiduously gleaned from long contact with European peasants, could only be superficial by comparison.

  Another question was coming up now, this time from Shaw. It was a good one; a clever one with a trick flaw in it, and he saw the admiration and pleasure in Shaw’s eyes as the speaker gently twisted it and handed it back to him. There was a further ripple of applause, in which the girl joined.

  It was a well-argued piece of sophistry, based on the turning of skins; the judiciary in the Middle Ages had the delightful habit – founded on the premise that the werewolf in daylight wore his skin reversed, the fur on the inside and the human skin on the outer – of skinning the werewolf-victim alive in order to discover if this were so.

  The victim invariably died, which, in the manner of Cotton Mather and the witch-trials, merely proved his guilt; Shaw had disguised the barb of his question with a neat double-entendre, but Coleridge had parried it equally deftly. He felt a certain dry satisfaction as he turned to a question by the Count himself. But as he argued his point with the smoothness engendered of long practice, he was still disturbed by the absence of Menlow.

  His vacant place among the leather chairs was like a gap in an otherwise well-ordered row of perfect teeth in a friend’s mouth, taken for granted but shockingly self-evident when one was missing. He wondered too what Anton would say about the use of the pistol in the Castle corridor. There was a faint flicker of amusement on Coleridge’s face now; he hardly thought it would matter.

  It was the Count’s pistol; it had been fired on his own private property, and at a moment when a guest had been in danger of his life from a savage beast. He could still see the redness of the creature’s eyes as he finished answering Homolky’s question. And it was not as though they were in England or America where a firearm permit might be required.

  It was to reduce the situation to a simple domestic process hinging on a bureaucratic whim as to whether he had been licensed to fire the shot or not, and he savoured the quiet joke for a moment or two longer. Something moving at the back of the library caught his eye, and he heard the faint squeak of boots on the polished floor.

  For a moment he thought it was Menlow, and relief flooded through him; then he saw he was mistaken, for as the figure emerged from the shadowy distance into the light of the lamps he saw that it was Rakosi. The young captain paused apologetically and then slipped into a vacant chair next to Nadia Homolky, giving her a hesitant smile.

  Coleridge brought his remarks to a close with a professional flourish and waited; apparently there were no more questions. He moved mechanically over toward the blackboard, erasing his statistics and the carefully drawn graph. It was something they all did; a sign of good manners. Literally leaving a clean slate for the next man to lecture.

  He stood to one side of the platform, watching the girl, only half-listening to the Count’s words of thanks; he was roused by the strength of the applause. Apparently his modest efforts had met with success. The Count was by his side, shaking his hand. The audience was rising now, moving over to the side-tables where the dumb majordomo and the huge black-bearded servant stood ready to dispense coffee and cognac.

  Coleridge was aware of thick snow drifting down past the high-up wi
ndow against a dreary sky that was almost the colour of soot. The bleakness of the vista reminded him of his promise to the wolf-hunters on the morrow. He hoped they would not have to rise at some unearthly hour.

  The Count was smiling, ushering his guest from the platform toward the refreshment-tables. As Coleridge moved over, following the others, he saw Shaw coming from his place in the auditorium. He walked with difficulty, and the professor saw that he was limping heavily on the right foot.

  CHAPTER 20: DEATH STRIKES AGAIN

  ‘So!’

  Anton’s hooded eyes glared blankly at Coleridge. If he had any opinions on the matter he was not divulging them. He, the Count, and Coleridge sat at one end of the shadowy library, apart from the babble of the refreshment-tables, while Nadia Homolky hovered halfway between the two groups, out of earshot but within call if her father needed her.

  The examination had been carried out with the Count’s acting as interpreter, and despite the apparent cumbersomeness of the method it had worked admirably; the colonel seemed to be a man who got at the pith of a matter with short, sharp questions, and his barked, equally concise replies to Homolky’s own queries had advanced the interview in a swift and efficient manner.

  Despite the limitations of communication and the language barrier Anton had seemed sympathetic and absorbed, his thick lips drawn into a tight line as he had listened intently to the Count’s version of Coleridge’s story. He had jotted a great many points in a large black notebook he produced from his uniform pocket, and it was now covered with pages of data.

  If he had any theories of his own on Coleridge’s experiences and of those of the Count’s daughter, he had kept them to himself; Coleridge was becoming more and more impressed as the minutes went by. Anton had told the professor, through his host, that steps would be taken to patrol the Castle perimeter and that Rakosi had also volunteered the use of his men for that purpose.

  But it was obvious Anton had a great deal more on his mind than that, and from time to time he paused, looking blankly in the girl’s direction, while his thick spatulate fingers drummed softly on the knee of his braided uniform trouser-leg. There was a pause in the interview now, and the Count excused himself and got up to refill their coffee cups.

  Coleridge, following his progress down the room, saw him stop for a brief word with his daughter. She joined them a few moments later. She was now wearing a pale green dress with a long skirt, cut vaguely on peasant lines and held in with a belt of soft leather. Her hair fell in waves across her face, and Coleridge noticed, as she crossed her legs, that she wore polished leather boots that came halfway up the calf.

  She spoke easily with Anton; it was obvious the two were old friends, and it was clear to Coleridge, from the isolated phrase here and there, that the girl was telling her own story to the police chief.

  It was evident that the family relied on his discretion, and Coleridge guessed that the colonel, who had served with distinction in the Imperial Army, as he had learned from the girl, had possibly also held diplomatic rank at one time. His rough exterior overlaid a good deal of polish, and Coleridge suspected that he too probably spoke other languages in addition to his own, though English was not one of his accomplishments.

  The Count was back again, and Coleridge was content to drop out of the conversation, sipping his coffee, his eyes searching the room for Menlow. He had still not appeared, and Coleridge was beginning to feel worried; he was not in his room, as a servant had been to look for him. He turned his eyes back to the police chief. He shut his notebook with a snap and replaced it in his uniform pocket, thanking the girl graciously as he bent his head over her hand to kiss her fingertips in an affectionate parody of a subject being dismissed by his queen.

  The Count’s amused eyes caught Coleridge’s own. Coleridge again glimpsed the tall figure of Shaw, coffee cup in hand, as he talked animatedly with the Countess Irina. He had fallen on the stairs earlier that morning, he had told Coleridge; turning his ankle. It appeared to be even more painful now.

  Abercrombie had confirmed this in an apparently casual query Coleridge had put to him later, but a question mark still hovered in his mind that he could not dispel, however much he tried. It would be a startling coincidence, and Coleridge’s thoughts were still darkened and distorted with the image of the naked feet running from the menace of his pistol.

  It would be a case of the subject’s literally biting the savant, had a real werewolf descended on their Congress. The idea was absurd, but it continued to dance round the edges of the professor’s troubled mind, like one of those little figures that were sold in the more elaborate toy shops. They hung on wires and were apparently animated by some inner secret life of their own but which in reality came from concealed springs.

  Coleridge wished that he could suddenly awake and find himself on the floor of the corridor, suffering from concussion, the whole incident a hallucination engendered by the sharp blow he had given himself by running at full speed upon the beam. But reality often had darker tints and more sharp-edged outlines, and so it was here.

  Anton was giving him his hand to shake, indicating that the interview was concluded. They could rely on his discretion, the Count added. A little bell was sounding, clear over the babble of conversation. Coleridge turned back to the lecture platform with a heavy heart to introduce the next speaker.

  Coleridge came to himself with a jerk, the thin smattering of applause in his ears. Abercrombie was reaching the end of his dissertation on witchcraft, and he was rounding off his paper in masterly style. There was a positive storm of clapping as he finished, and his eyes caught Coleridge’s with pleasure as the latter signalled his own approval and enthusiasm.

  But as the Count took the chair again and invited questions from the general gathering, Coleridge was only half concentrating on the business that had brought them there. Even two intelligent questions from the girl and one from her grandmother failed entirely to arouse him from his lethargy, though he had the tact later to add a few words of commendation to the ladies, which brought a glance of approbation from the Count.

  Both women were, in fact, extremely well-read and -versed in these arcane subjects, and under any other circumstances Coleridge would have been completely absorbed. But he could not forget the festering suspicions in his mind, and Menlow’s continued absence, though not commented on openly by his colleagues, was obviously a source of mounting uneasiness to more than one person in the room.

  The Count had twice consulted his watch within the last hour, and his wry glance at Coleridge had underlined the fact that he too was puzzled by this apparently unwarrantable breach of good manners.

  It was with relief that Homolky brought an end to the session, and the assembly adjourned. In the afternoon there were more major papers to be delivered by experts in their own field, and in the evening, after dinner, a general debate on the subjects of the day, with the Count in the chair. Coleridge took his host aside as everyone started filing out. Two minutes later he was walking up the shadowy staircase toward the guest wing.

  He was startled to see the figure of Nadia waiting at the stairhead. Then he guessed she must have come through one of her secret shortcuts. Her face was serious as he joined her at the top. Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm.

  ‘You’re worried about Dr. Menlow, aren’t you?’

  Coleridge nodded.

  ‘It is not like him to be absent from something so important as the opening sessions of this Congress. I am going to see whether he has returned to his room.’

  The girl fell in alongside him as he rounded the angle of the corridor.

  ‘I am going with you.’

  Coleridge took one look at her set, determined face, decided not to utter the sentence which had first sprung to his lips.

  ‘Very well. But please do as I say.’

  ‘You think there
may be danger?’

  The eyes were sparkling now. Coleridge felt the heavy pressure of the Count’s pistol against his ribs as they turned the corner. It was a reminder of the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘It is possible,’ he said, as lightly as he could. ‘Though he may have gone for a walk and become unwell, of course.’

  But he knew the sentence was not worth consideration as soon as he had uttered it. The Count had given specific instructions to everyone on the dangers of venturing out alone. And Menlow would not have done it. He was too alarmed at the weird result of his tests for that. Coleridge would never forget his face and the trembling delivery as he crouched on the shadowy staircase the previous night.

  Coleridge could not put from his mind, either, the savage snarl of the great beast as it bounded toward him down the corridor. That was something else stamped indelibly upon his memory.

  He was conscious that his fingers were none too steady as he put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, bringing her to a halt. They were quite close to Coleridge’s own room now. He knew that some of his fellow guests were farther down and others were in a second corridor that debouched from the stairhead in a different direction.

  It was dim in here with the panelled walls, and there were no windows to break the gloom except, at the far end, up a shadowy stair. Once again Coleridge noticed and smelt the exotic blooms which were arranged in bowls and pewter jugs on chests and tables set along the passage. Botany was not his particular subject, and he did not recognise the flowers. He presumed that Nadia’s mother or perhaps the old lady was responsible for the arrangements.

  He knew that in such a great house there would be a huge flower room attached to the conservatories where servants would prepare the arrangements under the skilled direction of the châtelaine. He knew also from his experiences as guest at some of the most prestigious mansions and châteaux of Europe that each arrangement for every room and corridor, every table even, would have its own special order and placing, and if there was one bowl so much as out of its designed position by a fraction, the Count or a member of his family would want to know the reason why.