by Brian Lumley
Harry Keogh again.
There was a game Gormley played with Kyle. It was a
word-association game. Sometimes it startled Kyle’s future-oriented mind into action, opening a window for him. A window on tomorrow. Normally Kyle’s talent worked independent of conscious thought; he usually ‘dreamed’ his predictions; if he consciously tried for results they wouldn’t come. But if you could catch him unawares…
They had played their game just a few days ago. Gormley had had Keogh on his mind and had wandered into Kyle’s office. And seeing the ESPer sitting there he’d smiled and said: ‘Game?’
Kyle had understood. ‘Go right ahead.’
‘It’s a name,’ Gormley had warned, to which Kyle had nodded his head.
‘I’m ready,’ he’d said, sitting up and putting down whatever he was working on.
Gormley paced a while, then turned quickly and faced the other where he sat at his desk. ‘Harry Keogh!’ he had snapped then.
‘Mobius!’ answered Kyle at once.
‘Maths?’ Gormley frowned.
‘Space-time!’ Now Kyle went white, scared-looking, and Gormley had known they’d got something. He gave it one last shot:
‘Necroscope!’
‘Necromancer!’ the other shot back at once.
‘What? Necromancer?’ Gormley had repeated. But Kyle was still working.
‘Vampire!’ he’d shouted then, starting to his feet. Then he was swaying, trembling, shaking his head, saying, ‘That… that’s enough, sir. Whatever it was, it… it’s gone now.’
And that had been that…
Gormley came back to the present.
He looked up and found they’d passed through Victoria and that the train was almost empty. Already they were
mid-way to Sloane Square. And that was when he began to feel a strange depression settling over him.
He felt that there was something wrong but he couldn’t just put his finger on it. It might simply be the train’s emptiness (which even at this hour was a rare enough occurrence in itself) and that he missed the bustle of life and contact with other human beings, but he didn’t think so. Then, as the train pulled into the station he knew what it was: it was his talent working.
The doors sighed open and a middle-aged couple got out, leaving Gormley quite alone, but just before the doors hissed shut again two men got in — and their ESP-aura washed over him like a wave of icy water! Yes, and now he could put faces to feelings.
Dragosani and Batu sat directly opposite their quarry, stared straight at him with cold, expressionless faces. They made a strange pair, he thought, not designed with any degree of compatibility. Not outwardly, anyway. The taller one leaned forward, his sunken eyes reminding Gormley yet again of Harry Keogh. Yes, they were like Keogh’s eyes in a way, probably in their colour and intelligence. And that was especially strange, for set in this face one got the impression that by rights they should be feral or even red, and that the intelligence behind them was barely human at all but that of a beast.
‘You know what we are, Sir Keenan,’ the stranger said in a voice deep as it was dark, whose Russian accent he made no attempt to disguise, ‘if not who we are. And we know who and what you are. Therefore it would be childish simply to sit here and pretend that we were ignorant of each other. Don’t you agree?’
‘Your logic leaves little room for argument,’ Gormley nodded, imagining that his blood was already beginning to cool in his veins.
“Then let us continue to be logical,’ said Dragosani. ‘If we wanted you dead, you would be dead. We have not
lacked the opportunity, as I’m sure you know. And so, when we leave the train at South Kensington, you will not attempt to run or make a fuss, or bring unnecessary attention to yourself or to us. If you do, then we will be forced to kill you and that would be unfortunate, of benefit to no one. Is this understood and agreed?’
Gormley forced himself to remain calm, raised an eyebrow and said: ‘You’re very sure of yourself, Mr er — ?’
‘Dragosani,’ said the other at once. ‘Boris Dragosani. Yes, I am very sure of myself. As is my friend here, Max Batu.’
‘ — For a stranger in this country, I was about to say,’ Gormley continued. ‘It seems to me that I’m about to be kidnapped. But are you sure you know all you need to know about my habits? Mightn’t there be something you’ve overlooked? Something your logic hasn’t taken into account?’ He quickly, nervously took out a cigarette lighter from his right-hand overcoat pocket and placed it in his lap, patted his pockets as if he searched for a packet of cigarettes, finally started to reach inside his overcoat.
‘No!’ said Dragosani warningly. As if from nowhere he produced his own weapon and held it before him at arm’s length, pointing it directly into Gormley’s face, so that the older man looked straight down the rifled barrel of the stubby black silencer. ‘No, nothing has been overlooked. Max, could you see to that, please?’
Batu got up, eased himself on to the seat next to Gormley, drew the other’s hand slowly back into the open and took the Browning from Gormley’s trembling fingers. The safety catch was still on. Batu released the magazine and pocketed it, gave the automatic back to Gormley.
‘Nothing at all,’ Dragosani continued. ‘Unfortunately, however, that was the last wrong move you’ll be allowed
to make.’ He put away his gun, folded his slim fingers into his lap. His posture was unnatural, Gormley decided: very sinuous, almost feline, very nearly female. He didn’t know what to make of Dragosani at all.
‘Any more heroics,’ Dragosani continued, ‘will result in your death — immediately!’ And Gormley knew he wasn’t bluffing.
Carefully, he pushed the useless automatic back into its holster, said: ‘What is it you want with me?’
‘We want to talk to you,’ said Dragosani. ‘I wish to… to put some questions to you.’
‘I’ve had questions put to me before,’ Gormley answered, forcing a tight smile. ‘I imagine they’ll be very searching questions, eh?’
‘Ah!’ said Dragosani. Now he smiled, and it was ghastly. Gormley felt physically repulsed. His man’s mouth gaped like a panting dog’s, where elongated teeth gleamed sharply white. ‘Ah, no. There’ll be no bright lights in your eyes, Sir Keenan, if that’s what you mean,’ said Dragosani. ‘No drugs. No pincers. No hose to fill your belly with water. Oh, no, nothing like that. But you will tell me everything I want to know, of that I can assure you…’
The train was slowing as it pulled into South Kensington. Gormley’s heart gave a little lurch in his chest. So close to home, and yet so far. Dragosani had a light overcoat folded over his arm. He showed Gormley the silencer of his weapon, let it peep out of the folds of the overcoat for a moment, and reminded him: ‘No heroics.’
There was a handful of people on the platform: young people mainly, and a pair of down-and-outs with a bottle in a paper bag between them. Even if Gormley looked for help, he couldn’t find much here. ‘Just leave the station by the same route you take every night,’ said Dragosani at Gormley’s shoulder.
Gormley’s heart was hammering now. He knew full
well that if he went with these men it was all up with him. He was an older hand at this game than the two foreign agents. When Dragosani had told him his and his squat little companion’s names, that had been as good as saying: ‘But it won’t do you any good, for you won’t be around to tell anyone!’ And so he must escape from them — but how?
They left the underground onto Pelham Street, walked down the Brompton Road to Queen’s Gate. ‘I cross here, at the lights,’ Gormley said. But as they reached the parking lanes straddling the central reservation Dragosani’s grip tightened on his arm.
‘We have a car here,’ he said, drawing Gormley to the right and along the line of parked vehicles towards an anonymous-looking Ford. Dragosani had bought the car second-hand (tenth-hand, he suspected) and cash down, no questions asked. It would last only as long as his and Max Batu’s visit. T
hen it would be found burned-out in some suburban lane. But it was then, as they approached the car, that Gormley saw his chance.
Not twenty-five yards away a police patrol car pulled into an empty space and a uniformed constable got out and began checking the doors of the parked cars. A routine check, Gormley guessed. Or more properly, where he was concerned, a miracle!
Dragosani felt the sudden tension in Gormley, sensed his move before he could begin to make it. Batu had just opened the nearside front and rear doors of the Ford, was turning back towards Dragosani and Gormley, when his partner hissed: ‘Now, Max!’
Unprepared, still Batu instantly adopted his killing crouch, his moon face undergoing its monstrous metamorphosis. Dragosani maintained his grip on Gormley, looked away at the last moment. Gormley had opened his mouth to yell for help, but all that came out was a croak. He saw Batu’s face silhouetted against the night,
and one eye which was a yellow slit while the other was round and green and throbbing as if filled with sentient pus! Something passed from that face to Gormley as fast as the thrust of a mental knife; its razor edge located his spirit, his very soul, and opened them up! Except for what little traffic passed in the street, all was quiet, and yet Gormley heard the cacophonic gonging of some great cracked bell from deep inside himself, and knew it was his heart.
With that it should have been finished, but not quite. Thrown backward by the shock of Batu’s awful power, Gormley slammed loudly against the wing of a car parked behind the Ford. Along the street the constable’s face turned enquiringly in their direction as a second policeman got out of the patrol car. Worse, another vehicle, a blue Porsche, pulled in with a screech of brakes, its headlights dazzling where they picked the three figures out and pinned them against the darkness. In another moment the Porsche seemed to eject a tall young man into the street, his strong face concerned as he grabbed hold of Gormley to steady him.
‘Uncle?’ he said, staring into the other’s bulging eyes, his blue face. ‘My God! It must be his heart!’ The two policemen were already hurrying to see what was happening.
Dragosani found himself almost paralysed by the changing situation. Everything was going wrong. He made an effort to regain control, whispered to Max Batu: ‘Get into the car!’ Then he turned to the stranger. By now the policemen were on hand, offering assistance.
‘What happened here?’ one of them asked.
Dragosani thought fast. ‘We saw him stumble,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe he was drunk. Anyway, I went to help, asked if there was anything I could do. He said something about his heart…? I was about to take him to a hospital, but then this gentleman arrived and — ‘
Tm Arthur Banks,’ said the man in question. ‘This is Sir Keenan Gormley, my uncle. I was on my way to meet him at the station when I saw him with these two. But look, this isn’t the time or place for explanations. He has a bad heart. We have to get him to a hospital. And I mean right now!’
The policemen were galvanised into action. One of them said to Dragosani: ‘Perhaps you’ll give us a ring later, sir? Just so we can get a few more details? Thanks.’ He helped Banks get his uncle into the Porsche while his driver ran back to the patrol car and got the blue light going. Then, as Banks pulled away from the kerb and swung the Porsche around in a screeching half circle, the constable yelled: ‘Just follow us, sir. We’ll have him under care in two shakes!’
A moment later and he had joined his colleague in the patrol vehicle, by which time the siren was blaring its dee-dah, dee-dah warning to traffic. In a sort of numb disbelief Dragosani watched as the two cars moved off in tandem. He watched them out of sight, then slowly, unsteadily got into the Ford and sat there beside Batu trembling with rage. The door was still open. Finally Dragosani grabbed its handle and slammed it shut, slammed it so hard that it almost sprang from its fixings.
‘Damn!’ he snarled. ‘Damn the British, Sir Keenan Gormley, his nephew, their bloody oh-so-civilised police — everything!’
‘Things are not going well,’ Max Batu agreed.
‘And damn you, too!’ said Dragosani. ‘You and your bloody evil eye! You didn’t kill him!’
‘Allow me to know my business,’ Batu quietly answered. ‘I killed him all right. I felt it. It was like crushing a bug.’
Dragosani started the engine, pulled away. ‘I saw him looking at me, I tell you! He’ll talk…’
‘No,’ Batu shook his head. ‘He won’t have strength for
talking. He’s a dead man, Comrade, take my word for it At this very moment, a dead man.’
And in the Porsche, suddenly Gormley choked out a single word — ‘Dragosani!’ which meant nothing at all to his horrified nephew — and slumped down in his seat with spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
Max Batu was right: he was dead on arrival.
Harry Keogh arrived at Gormley’s house in South Kensington at about 3:00 p.m. the following day. Meanwhile Arthur Banks had been a very busy man. It seemed a year but in fact it was only yesterday when he’d driven up from Chichester with his wife, Gormley’s daughter, on a flying visit. Then there had been his uncle’s heart attack, since when the entire world seemed to have gone stark, staring mad! And horribly so.
First there had been the awful business of phoning his aunt, Jacqueline Gormley, from the hospital and telling her what had happened; then her breakdown when she arrived at the hospital; and her daughter consoling her all through the long night, when she had broken her heart as she wandered to and fro through the house looking for her husband. This morning she’d stayed at the house until they brought Sir Keenan from the hospital morgue. The mortician there had done a pretty good job with him, but still the old man’s face had been twisted in a dreadful rictus. Funeral arrangements were swift — that was the way Gormley had always said he would want it: a cremation tomorrow — until when he would lie in state at his home. Jackie couldn’t stay there, however, not with him looking like that. Why, it didn’t look like him at all! So she had had to be taken to her brother’s place on the other side of London. That, too, had been Banks’ job; and finally he had driven his wife to Waterloo so that she could go back to Chichester to the children. She’d be back for the funeral. Until then he was stuck at the house
on his own, or rather in the company of his dead uncle. Aunt Jackie had made him promise he wouldn’t leave Sir Keenan on his own, and of course he hadn’t refused her that.
But when he got back to the house after putting his wife on the Chichester train -
That had been the worst of all. It had been — mindless! Ghoulish! Unbelievable! And for all that it had been fifteen minutes ago, he was still reeling, still sick, numb to his brain with shock and horror, when Harry Keogh’s ring at the doorbell took him staggering to the front door.
Tin Harry Keogh,’ said the young man on the door step. ‘Sir Keenan Gormley asked me to come and see — ‘
‘H-help!’ Banks whispered, choking the word out as if there was no wind in him, as if all the spit had dried up in him. ‘God, Jesus Christ! — whoever you are — h-help me!’
Harry looked at him in amazement, grabbed him in order to hold him up. ‘What is it? What’s happened? This is Sir Keenan Gormley’s house, isn’t it?’
The other nodded. He was slowly turning green, about to throw up — again — at any moment. ‘C-come in. He’s in… in there. In the living-room, of all bloody places — but don’t go in there. I have to… have to call the police. Somebody has to, anyway!’ His legs began to buckle and Harry thought he would fall. Before that could happen he pushed him backwards and down into a chair in the lobby. Then he crouched down beside him and shook him.
‘Is it Sir Keenan? What’s happened to him?’
Even before the answer came, Harry knew.
Soon to die in agony. First and foremost a patriot.
Banks looked up, stared at Harry from a green-tinged face. ‘Did you… did you work for him?’
‘I was going to.’
Bank
s baulked, burst to his feet, staggered to a tiny
room to one side of the lobby. ‘He died last night,’ he managed to gulp the words out. ‘A heart attack. He was to be cremated tomorrow. But now — ‘ He yanked open the door and the odour of fresh vomit welled out. The room was a toilet and it was obvious that he’d already used it.
Harry turned his face away, grabbed a mouthful of fresh air from the open front door before quietly closing it. Then he left Banks retching and walked through into the living-room — and saw for himself what was wrong with Banks.
And what was wrong with Sir Keenan Gormley.
A heart attack, Banks had said. One look at the room told Harry there’d been an attack, all right, but what sort didn’t bear thinking about. He fought down the bile which at once rose up and threatened to swamp him, went back to Banks where he crouched weakly at the bowl of the toilet in the small room. ‘Call the police when you can,’ he said. ‘Sir Keenan’s office, too, if anyone’s on duty there. I’m sure he would want them to know about… this. I’ll stay here with you — with him — for a little while.’
‘Th-thanks,’ said Banks, without looking up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help right now. But when I came in and found him like that…’
‘I understand,’ said Harry.
‘I’ll be OK in a minute. I’m working on it.’
‘Of course.’
Harry went back to the other room. He saw everything, began to catalogue the horror, then stopped. What stopped him was this: a Queen Anne chair with claw feet lay on its side on the floor. One of its wooden legs was broken off just below the platform of the seat. Embedded in the club-like foot was a tooth; other teeth, wrenched out, lay scattered on the floor; the mouth of the corpse
had been forced open and now gaped like a black shaft in ‘ the wildly distorted, frozen grimace of the face!
Harry gropingly found himself a seat — another chair, but one free of debris — and collapsed into it. He closed his eyes, pictured the room as it must have looked before this. Sir Keenan in his coffin on an oak table draped in black, rose-scented candles burning at head and feet. And then, as he lay here alone, the… intrusion.