by Unknown
They could tell the way by the feel of the ground underfoot when they wandered off the path, and a moment of dim light would put them right again. The noises in the night stayed behind them and to both sides as they hurried along, and gradually the path began to rise. It turned oftener, too, and soon they were starting up a fairly steep hill.
Then suddenly there was a patch of something against the grassy side of the hill. Illya's light danced over it, and vanished into a small cave. Just then there was a soft, menacing growl just ahead of them.
Illya said quickly, "This looks like a cozy place to spend the night. It also has a conveniently narrow mouth. After you."
They stepped inside, ducking under the low ridge of rock that guarded the entrance. Illya shone his light around, and saw only the rough walls of natural stone. There was no indication of occupancy other than an ancient burned area on the floor just inside the entrance. The back of the cave, rough and convoluted, could be seen dimly just within the limits of the beam.
"Got any wood?" asked Napoleon. "A fire would go well right now."
"Wood's right outside," said Illya. "If you want a fire, you have my full permission to gather the fuel for it."
Napoleon looked thoughtfully out at the night. "Should have collected a few sticks as we came along," he said. "Well, I think under the circumstances we can get along without one...."
He listened for a while. There were no more sounds outside—the pack had either gone on or was waiting. After a minute or two he said, "On the other hand, we both need to sleep eventually. Maybe if I just went to the nearest tree and..."
He looked outside and stopped. There seemed to be something out there. More than something—some things. He held out his hand, and wordlessly Illya placed the pen-light in it.
In the faint yellow glow, there were twenty or thirty shaggy gray shapes standing in a half-circle some twenty feet away, green eyes catching the light and glittering like emeralds. Gradually they began moving in on the mouth of the cave.
"On the other hand," he continued very softly, "there are definite advantages to staying in the cave, even without a fire."
"The mouth is narrow," said Illya. "We can shoot them as fast as they come in—if the bullets will affect them."
Napoleon looked at his partner with an expression which was lost in the darkness, perhaps fortunately for both of them. But before he could frame a comment, a third voice spoke softly out of the blackness of the cave behind them. "That should not be necessary, gentlemen," it said in Rumanian.
It said a great deal for both Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin that neither of them dropped their guns or fired at the sound. Napoleon did take several seconds to bring up the light and direct it into the dead-end of the cave, but his hand was steady as he did so.
The faint spot slithered across the uneven floor, and paused on a pair of shiny black boots. After a moment it crept up the front of a black cloak wrapped about the tall figure who stood there, his back to a solid rock wall. The light stopped on the white face above the cloak, which stood out against the darkness like the luminescence of a rotting tree stump.
His eyes narrowed against the dim light, but after a moment he took a slow soundless step forward and spoke again. "Iertati-ma. I beg pardon—my pets are unusually restive tonight. If you will permit me..."
Neither Napoleon nor Illya felt like contesting his right of way as he moved toward the cave entrance. He passed between them and they looked out as he stood in the door facing the circle of fangs, which was now almost close enough to touch. He raised his arms, and the full black cloak hung from them like leathery wings as he faced the wolves and said in a soft but ringing voice, "Not yet, my dear ones. It is not yet time."
And then, without a growl or another sound, the wolves turned as one and vanished into the forest. He stood a few more seconds, then slowly lowered his arms, and gathered his cloak about him before turning to face the U.N.C.L.E. agents again. He stepped back into the cave as he said, "My sincere apologies for this...incident. When you leave, take that path. It will lead you to your automobile. I suggest you return directly to the village."
He stepped aside to let them pass him. Napoleon looked doubtfully at Illya and murmured in English, "But the wolves might just be..."
"Let's go, Napoleon," said Illya in a fierce whisper, and started out. Napoleon followed him, noticing that his automatic was still in his hand, and slipped it back into its holster.
Just as he stepped through the entrance behind Illya, Napoleon thought of something and turned around. "Multumesc," he said. "Thank you for the..." He stopped as the glow from the pen-light swept around the barren rock walls of the sides and back of the empty cave.
* * *
They found their car as promised at the end of the path, waiting as if it had been there all along. The fog was thinner, and a few stars were visible to give them the direction to the village. It was only shortly after 10:00 P.M. when they pulled up behind Satul Contru.
Colonel Hanevitch was in his office as usual, and his voice answered their knock with a cheerful invitation to enter. When he saw them he put down his pen and stood up.
"Solo and Kuryakin! I suggest you telephone the inn at once. Domnisoara Eclary has been most concerned as to your whereabouts." He indicated a bulky telephone on his desk, and, as Illya placed the call with the sleepy operator, added, "I think you can understand her apprehension."
"Believe me," said Napoleon, "we were not entirely free of apprehension ourselves."
"Quite so," said Illya. "And this is the reason we came directly to you." He turned back to the telephone and spoke soothingly to Hilda, as Hanevitch raised an eyebrow or two at Napoleon.
"Well," he began, "we were digging the bullets out of the trees where Carl was found, when it got dark. We started back to the car to get the flash..."
Illya had hung up the telephone long before the story was finished, and added a few corroborative touches to the narrative.
Colonel Hanevitch listened politely all the way through, making no comment by word or expression. When they finished, he leaned slowly back in his swivel chair, which creaked sharply beneath him. He looked over his folded hands at them, and shook his head slowly.
"Your reputations are well known as honorable," he said. "You would have no imaginable reason for coming to me with so fantastic a story—and you would not create such a lie. If you were to lie, it would at least be a logical and believable lie. Therefore I have no choice but to believe that this is truly what you think happened. What actually happened, I must reserve judgment on. Perhaps you were drugged and hypnotized into remembering all these things. But wolves are very rare in this part of the mountains—and seeing twenty or thirty of them all together..." He shrugged, expressively. "As for the cave—do you think you could find it again?"
"I think so," said Illya. "I could find the path and follow it back from where we picked up the car."
"That might be worth doing," said the Colonel. "Perhaps footprints, or other clues, might avail themselves to a careful search—in full daylight, of course."
"Of course," said Illya automatically.
"Did you get a clear look at your rescuer?"
"Fairly clear," said Napoleon. "He walked close enough to us that his cloak brushed against me, and I had the pen-light on him at the time."
"Do you think you would recognize him?"
"Yes," said Napoleon definitely. "It was a...well, an unusual face. It was a very long oval shape, heavy-lidded eyes, high thin nose, thin dark lips, high cheek-bones, bushy eyebrows..."
"Did he look anything like your friend Zoltan?"
Napoleon thought. "Not as tall, and thinner. The face shape was similar, and the nose was the same."
The Colonel turned in his swivel chair and reached up to a small shelf for a dusty leatherbound book. Gold lettering was stamped deep into its cracked dark red spine. He opened it on the desk before him, and leafed through it, stopping at a double page of small oval portraits.
He spun the book to face Illya and Napoleon. "Do you recognize any of these pictures?"
They studied the faces in the book for a while, and then Napoleon said, "Yes. I see one."
"Which?"
"Just a minute. I want to see if Illya picks the same one."
Illya looked very carefully at a few of the portraits, then nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, beyond a doubt. This one, Napoleon."
Solo nodded as his friend's finger touched a face in the book. It was the face they had seen in the cave, above a cloak the color of the night, apologizing for his pets.
Hanevitch rose slightly, and looked at the book as they turned back to him and pointed. He nodded slowly. "I was afraid of that," he said. "This is the Vlad Tsepesh Stobolzny, five-times-great-grandfather of Zoltan Dracula. He is believed to have died in 1704, but there were rumors he was a demon, and the village did not rest easy for many years. He left his men while on a hunt in the forest, and disappeared. His trail ended in a pool of blood, with other tracks leaving. Mr. Solo, they were the footprints of a gigantic wolf."
Chapter 7: "Oh-oh, Here Comes Zoltan."
Zoltan appeared beside the table the following morning as Napoleon, Illya and Hilda were addressing themselves to breakfast, and offered his condolences on their nerve-shattering experience of the night before. He seemed concerned, and Hilda invited him to join them.
"I told him last night," she explained, "as soon as Illya called from Satul Contru. And I told him this morning whose picture you recognized."
Zoltan frowned and nodded. "Yes," he said. "My five-times-great-grandfather, the Vlad Tsepesh. He was the grandson of Petru, on whom the name of Dracula devolved in 1658. According to family tradition, it was he who was responsible for the loss of the documentation of our title. He was a cruel and wicked man, and met a death fitting to his manner of life."
"Look," said Napoleon after a pause. "Illya, you're going to be looking for that cave today, and Hilda will be helping you. I'd like to run down to Brasov, to check through the records on the castle of Zoltan's. See if there's anything odd about its present ownership."
"I had intended to start my queries here in Pokol," said Zoltan, "but if you would like to have a companion in your researches, I would be most happy to accompany you."
"As a matter of fact, that's what I had in mind. You know the language better than I do, and you can go places I can't and get questions answered. As long as you don't tell people your real name..."
Zoltan's eyebrows drew together slightly, and his lips thinned. "I bear my name proudly," he said. "I do not give it to those who do not need it, but I would never deny it. Besides, this is..."
"... a rational country?" asked Napoleon. "You aren't even fooling yourself on that one. This country is no more rational than anyplace else on Earth that has people in it. And if you want to go around looking for trouble, I'm going to start letting you get yourself out of it, too."
Zoltan smiled slightly. "I have done well enough in the past."
"Okay. It's up to you. But when they're trying to drive a stake through your heart, don't look at me. You could be bad for my reputation."
* * *
As Hilda and Illya went off to borrow Gheorghe's horse-drawn cart for the trip into the forest, Napoleon and Zoltan fueled up the big black Poboda and started down the narrow winding mountain road towards the main highway which led to Brasov, some forty miles north.
It was shortly past noon when they arrived in the city, and not quite an hour later when they found the office of records and the city library. Zoltan, being Rumanian, was less likely to be held up by red tape in his examination of the history of Castle Stobolzny since his grandfather had sold it, before his death in 1939. Napoleon, therefore, went to the library.
The goal of his search was any written material on vampirism in the local area, including case histories; specifically those connected with the Stobolzny family, and even more specifically anything at all to do with the Vlad Tsepesh.
The custodian of the books on folklore and history—the two subjects are inextricably intermingled in this part of the world—led him to a reading room. The ceiling was almost lost in the shadows, and dust motes made the shaft of sunlight coming in from a high window seem solid enough to climb. She brought him a stack of material pertaining to the subjects he requested, and told him in a low voice that the other volumes on the vampiric legends were in use by the gentleman over there.
Napoleon's gaze followed her pointing finger and found, in the shadows next to the spot of sunlight, the figure of a man, bent over two or three volumes. A notebook could be seen beside him, and he seemed to be recording material copiously.
"I am sure he would be willing to share his books with you, sir," she said. "He is an American, like yourself." She shook her head. "I do not understand what your people find so interesting in stories made up by old women to frighten their grandchildren. Please leave the books at the front office when you have finished." And she disappeared into the shadows.
Napoleon carried his books over towards the sunspot, and quietly took a seat across from the other American. He was about Solo's height, but heavier. He seemed deeply engrossed in his books, and did not look up. At last Napoleon cleared his throat, and said, "I beg your pardon...."
The American looked up with slight surprise, and Napoleon continued, "Our researches seem to be overlapping. May I look at the books you've finished with?"
"Well, sure," said the other. "Golly, I didn't expect to run into another American here. Uh, how's your Rumanian?"
"Good enough. Having trouble?"
"Here and there, none at the moment. I've been using this dictionary to get me over the rough spots." He rubbed his eyes and squinted. "What brings you here after awful things like werewolves and vampires?"
Napoleon was instantly alert. "Sort of an investigation," he said cautiously. "What about you?"
The man smiled. With the light mustache and slightly receding hairline, he resembled a fuller-faced Vincent Price, but without the comic villainy affected by the actor. "My work," he said. "I specialize in horror films. Just came from Trieste, and a sci-fi film festival. I took the opportunity to stop off in Transylvania on my way north, and collect some facts on real monsters."
"You make horror movies?"
"No, just write about them. I run a magazine devoted to the subject—Famous Monsters of Filmland. And a quarter of a million readers consider me to be the world's greatest authority on monsters, vampires, ghouls and werewolves—not to mention spaceships, mutants, time machines, and anything else you can think of that Hollywood has ever used to scare audiences. And believe me, it takes a lot of work to keep up with my reputation. That's what I'm doing now." He indicated the books open around him.
Napoleon nodded. "Maybe we could be of help to each other," he said. "My name is Napoleon Solo."
The other man smiled in pleasant surprise. "You don't say! You work for U.N.C.L.E., don't you? I've heard a little bit about you. Do you really think I could help you out? Don't tell me you're investigating a werewolf or..." His eyes and mouth opened wide as something hit. "Oh! I remember! Is it the vampire murders up in the mountains a month or so ago? I heard some rumors at the film festival about them."
Napoleon hesitated, then nodded. This amiable American seemed to know an unusual amount for a casually met tourist. But he could be checked out with New York, and if he was an expert on vampires, he could definitely come in handy. "Yes, that's it, Mr....ah..."
"Ackerman. Forrest J Ackerman—no period on the J. But call me Forry. Tell me all about them—but first tell me if I can publish it."
"I'm afraid not. Besides, I don't think you would like something this real. It's not nearly as much fun as in the movies." He glanced at his watch. "We can talk later. We only have three and a half hours until the library closes. Let me give you a quick rundown on what we want to know now, and we can go through some of these books with it in mind."
He didn't dare tell Ackerman about their
experience in the woods the night before, but he mentioned the Vlad Tsepesh and said he had been seen around the village by reliable witnesses, which was certainly true.
The spot of sunlight moved along the table while they talked and worked over the great dusty volumes of history, and was starting up the wall at the end of the room when the librarian came back in with a little bell to warn them that closing time was almost upon them.
They found rumors and old stories dating back two hundred and sixty years to the death of the Vlad Tsepesh, stories which linked him with a pack of wolves which would harry his prey through the forest until it dropped from exhaustion, after which he would swoop down in the form of a giant bat and suck its blood. Ackerman knew of similar legends from all over Europe, and was able to put many aspects of the stories into perspective as part of the folk traditions of the Balkans.
It was getting towards dusk as they stepped out into the parklike area surrounding the public buildings of Brasov. Forry and Napoleon walked side by side down the broad stone steps, and Solo looked around for Zoltan.
There was no sign of him. The night guard at the Hall of Records remembered him from a description, but said he had left when the Hall closed about an hour ago. He had asked about the library's hours, and presumably had gone there. Napoleon shook his head.
"Who's your friend?" Forry asked. "Somebody else from U.N.C.L.E.?"
"No," said Napoleon. "He's Rumanian. A Count, as a matter of fact. I think you'd be interested in meeting him."
"A genuine Rumanian Count? I sure would! Golly, my monster-fans will be surprised when I tell them about this. Er—I can tell them about meeting him, can't I?"
"That'll be up to him. But you have no idea how surprised they'll be." He looked around the area in the gathering darkness. A few scattered streetlights were coming on around the park, but there was no moon, and the stars were lost in the sky-glow of the city. "I just wonder where he could be."