"Hell, I probably won't be off duty by ten and no telling where I'll be. I could have your call relayed, but the lieutenant wouldn't like that, we're pretty tied up with official calls and this wouldn't rate as that. No, call Sergeant Mustanoja, he'll be on duty, and he'll take a message for me. I'll contact him when I get time."
"Then let's make it eleven," Childe said. "Maybe I'll get hung up out there."
"Not by the balls, I hope," Bruin said, and, laughing, clicked the phone.
Childe felt his testicles withdraw a little. He did not care much for Bruin's humor. Not while the film about Colben was still bright in his mind.
He took three paces, and the phone rang again. Magda Holyani said that she was sorry, but it was necessary that the interview be put off until nine.
Childe said that it would make little difference to him. Holyani said that that was nice and please make it nine sharp.
Childe called Bruin back to report the change in plans. Bruin was gone, so he left a note with Sergeant Mustanoja.
At 8:30 he drove out. From Beverly Boulevard, the hills appeared like ghosts too timorous or too weak as yet to clothe themselves with dense ectoplasm.
By the time he had pulled up before the gateway to the Igescu estate, night had settled. A big car inside the gate was pouring out light from its beams up the private road away from the gate.
A large form leaned against the gate. It turned, and the extraordinarily broad-shouldered and lean-waisted figure of a giant was silhouetted against the lights. It wore a chauffeur's cap.
"I'm Mr. Wellston. I have an appointment at nine."
"Yes, sir. May I see your I.D., sir?"
The voice sounded as if it were being pounded out on a big drum.
Childe produced several cards, a driver's license, and a letter, all counterfeit. The chauffeur looked them over with the aid of a pencil-thin flashlight, handed them back through the opening in the gate, and walked off to one side. He disappeared behind the wall. The gate noiselessly swung inward. Childe walked in, and the gate swung back. Glam strode up, opened the rear door for him, and then shut it after Childe was in the back seat. He got into the driver's seat, and Childe could see that his ears were huge and at right angles to his head, seemingly as big as bat's wings. This, was an exaggeration, of course, but they were enormous.
The drive was made in silence; the big Rolls-Royce swung back and forth effortlessly and without any noticeable motor noise. Its beams sprayed trees, firs, maples, oaks, and many thick bushes trimmed into various shapes. The light seemed to bring the vegetation into existence. After going perhaps a half a mile as the crow flies, but two miles back and forth, the car stopped before another wall. This was of red brick, about nine feet high, and also had iron spikes with barbed wire between the spikes. Glam pressed something on the dashboard, and the gate's grille ironwork swung inward.
Childe looked through the windows but could see only more road and woods. Then, as the car came around the first bend, he saw the beams reflected against four gleaming eyes. The beams turned away, the eyes disappeared, but not before he had seen two wolfish shapes slinking off into the brush.
The car started up a steep hill and as it got near the top, its beams struck a Victorian cupola. The drive curved in front of the house and, as the beams swept across the building, Childe saw that it was, as the newspaper article had described it, rambling. The central part was obviously older and of adobe. The wings were of wood, painted gray, except for the red-trimmed windows, and they extended part way down the side of the hill, so that the house seemed to be like a huge octopus squatting on a rock.
This flashed across his mind, like a frame irrelevantly inserted in a reel, and then it became just a monstrous and incongruous building.
The original building had a broad porch, and the added-on buildings had also been equipped with porches. Most of the porch was in shadows, but the central portion was faintly illuminated with light leaking through thin blinds. A shadow passed across a blind.
The car stopped. Glam lunged out and opened the door for Childe. Childe stood for a minute, listening. The wolves had not howled once. He wondered what was to keep them from attacking the people in the house. Glam did not seem worried about them.
"This way, sir," Glam said and led him up the porch and to the front door. He pressed a button, and a light over the door came on. The door was of massive highly polished hardwood--mahogany?--carved to represent a scene from (it seemed likely) Hieronymous Bosch. But a closer look convinced him that the artist had been Spanish. There was something indefinably Iberian about the beings (demons, monsters, humans) undergoing various tortures or fornicating in some rather peculiar fashions with some rather peculiar organs.
Glam had left his chauffeur's cap on the front seat of the Rolls. He was dressed in a black flannel suit, and his trousers were stuffed into his boot-tops. He unlocked the door with a large key he produced from a pocket, swung the door open (it was well-oiled, no Inner-Sanctum squeaks), and bowed Childe on through. The room inside was a large (it could even be called great) hall. Two halls, rather, because one ran along the front of the house and halfway down it was a broad entrance to another hall which seemed to run the depth of the house. The carpets were thick and wine-colored with a very faint pattern in green. A few pieces of heavy, solid Spanish-looking furniture sat against the walls.
Glam asked Childe to wait while he announced him. Childe watched the giant stoop to go through the doorway to the center hall. Then he jerked his head to the right because he had caught a glimpse of somebody down at the far end just going around the corner. He was startled, because he had seen no one at that end when he came in. Now he saw the back of a tall woman, the floor-length full black skirt, white flesh of the back revealed in the V of the cut, high-piled black hair, a tall black comb.
He felt cold and, for a second, disoriented.
He had no more time to think about the woman then, because his host came to greet him. Igescu was a tall slim man with thick, wavy, brown-blond hair, large, bright green eyes, pointed features, a large curving nose and a dimple in his right cheek. The moustache was gone. He seemed to be about sixty-five years old, a vigorous athletic sixty-five. He wore a dark-blue business suit. His tie was black with a faint bluish symbol in its center. Childe could not make it out; the outlines seemed to be fluid, to change shape as Igescu changed position.
His voice was deep and pleasant, and he spoke with only a tinge of foreign pronunciation. He shook hands with Childe. His hands were large and strong-looking and his grip was powerful. His hand was cold but not abnormally so. He was a very amiable and easygoing host but made it clear that he intended to allow his guest to remain only an hour. He asked Childe a few questions about his work and the magazine he represented. Childe gave him glib answers; he was prepared for more interrogation than he got.
Glam had disappeared somewhere. Igescu immediately took Childe on a guided tour. This lasted about five minutes and was confined to a few rooms on the first floor. Childe could not get much idea of the layout of the house. They returned to a large room off the central hall where Igescu asked Childe to sit down. This was also fitted with Spanish-type furniture and a grand piano. There was a fireplace, above the mantel of which was a large oil painting. Childe, sipping on an excellent brandy, listened to his host but studied the portrait. The subject was a beautiful young woman dressed in Spanish costume and holding a large ivory-yellowish fan. She had unusually heavy eyebrows and extremely dark eyes, as if the painter had invented a paint able to concentrate blackness. There was, a faint smile about the lips--not Mona Lisa-ish, however--the smile seemed to indicate a determination to--what? Studying the lips, Childe thought that there was something nasty about the smile, as if there were a deep hatred there and a desire to get revenge. Perhaps the brandy and his surroundings made him think that, or perhaps the artist was the nasty and hateful one and he had projected onto the innocent blankness of the subject his own feelings. Whatever the truth, the artist
had talent. He had given the painting the authenticity of more than life.
He interrupted Igescu to ask him about the painting. Igescu did not seem annoyed.
"The artist's name was Krebens," he said. "If you get close to the painting, you'll see it in miniscule letters at the left-hand corner. I have a fairly good knowledge of art history and local history, but I have never seen another painting by him. The painting came with the house; it is said to be of Dolores del Osorojo. I am convinced that it is, since I have seen the subject."
He smiled. Childe felt cold again. He said, "Just after I came in, I saw a woman going around the corner down the hall. She was dressed in old-fashioned Spanish clothes. Could that be...?"
Igescu said, "Only three women live in this house. My secretary, my great-grandmother, and a house guest. None of them wear the clothing you describe."
"The ghost seems to have been seen by quite a few people," Childe said. "You don't seem to be upset, however."
Igescu shrugged and said, "Three of us, Holyani, Glam, and I, have seen Dolores many times, although always at a distance and fleetingly. She is no illusion or delusion. But she seems harmless, and I find it easier to put up with her than with many flesh and blood people."
"I wish you had permitted me to bring a camera. This house is very colorful, and if I could have caught her on film...or have you tried that and found out she doesn't photograph?"
"She didn't when I first moved in," Igescu said. "But I did shoot her and the developed films show her quite clearly. The furniture behind her showed dimly, but she's much more opaque than she used to be. Given time, and enough people to feed off..."
He waved his hand as if that would complete the sentence. Childe wondered if Igescu were putting him on. He said, "Could I see that photo?"
"Certainly," Igescu said., "But it won't prove anything, of course. There is very little that can't be faked."
He spoke into an intercom disguised as a cigar humidor in a language Childe did not recognize. It certainly did not sound Latin, although, unacquainted with Rumanian, he had no way of identifying it. He doubted that Rumanian would have such back-of-the-throat sounds.
He heard the click of billiard balls and turned to look down into the next room. Two youths were playing. They were both blond, of medium height, well built, and clothed in tight-fitting white sweaters, tight-fitting white jeans, and black sandals. They looked as if they could be brother and sister. Their eyebrows were high and arched and the eye sockets were deep. Their lips were peculiar. The upper lip was so thin it looked like the edge of a bloody knife; the lower lip was so swollen that it looked as if it had been cut and infected by the upper.
Igescu called to them. They raised their heads with such a lupine air that Childe could not help thinking of the wolves he had glimpsed on the way up. They nodded at Childe when Igescu introduced them as Vasili Chornkin and Mrs. Krautschner but they did not smile or say anything. They seemed eager to get back to their game. Igescu did not explain what their status was but Childe thought that the girl must be the house guest he had mentioned.
Glam appeared suddenly and noiselessly, as if he slid spaces around him instead of moving himself. He gave a manila envelope to Igescu. Childe glanced at Igescu as he removed the photo frame the envelope, then he looked up. Glam had gone as swiftly and silently as he had entered.
The photo was taken from about forty feet during the daytime. Light flooding in from the large window showed everything in detail. There was Dolores del Osorojo just about to leave the hall through a doorway. The edge of the doorway and part of a chair nearby could be faintly made out through her. She was looking back at the camera with the same faint smile as in her painting.
"I'll have to have it back," Igescu said.
* * *
CHAPTER 10
"As you say, a photo proves nothing," Childe said. He looked at his wristwatch. A half hour left. He opened his mouth to ask about the car accident and the morgue incident but Magda Holyani entered.
She was a tall, slim, small-breasted woman of about thirty with beautiful although disproportioned features and thick pale-yellow hair. She walked as if her bones were flexible or as if her flesh encased ten thousand delicate intricately articulated bones. The bones of her head seemed to be thin; her cheekbones were high, and her eyes were tilted. The mouth was too thin. There was something indefinably reptilian about her, or, to be more exact, snakish. This was not repulsive. After all, many snakes are beautiful.
Her eyes were so light he thought at first they were colorless, but, closer, they became a very light gray. Her skin was very white, as if she shunned not only the sun but the day. It was, however, flawless. She had no makeup whatever. The lips would have looked pale if she had been standing next to a woman with rouged lips, but set against her own white skin they seemed dark and bright.
She wore a tight-fitting black dress with a deep square-cut bodice and almost no back. Her stockings were black nylon, and the high-heeled shoes were black. She sat down after being introduced, revealing beautiful, but seemingly boneless, legs from the mid-thigh down. She took over the conversation from Igescu, who lit up an expensive cigar and seemed to become lost in gazing into the smoke.
Childe tried to keep the conversation to a question-and-answer interview, but she replied briefly and unsatisfactorily and followed with a question each time about himself or his work. He felt that he was being interviewed.
He was becoming desperate. This would be his only chance to find out anything, and he was not even getting a "feel" of rightness or wrongness about this place and its tenants. They were a little odd, but this meant nothing, especially in Southern California.
He noticed that Glam was busying himself nearby with emptying the Baron's and Magda's ash trays, refilling the glasses, and at the same time managing to keep his eyes on the woman. Once, he touched her, and she snapped her head back and glared at him. Igescu was aware that Childe was taking this in, but he only smiled.
Finally, Childe ignored her to ask Igescu directly if he would care to comment on the much-publicized "vampire" incident. After all, it was this that had brought him out here. And so far he had not learned much. The article would be spare, if indeed he had enough data to make an article.
"Frankly, Mr. Wellston," Igescu said, "I permitted this interview because I wanted to kill people's curiosity about this once and for all. Essentially, I am a man who likes privacy; I am wealthy but I leave the conduct of my business to others and enjoy myself. You have seen my library. It is very extensive and expensive and contains many first editions. It covers a wide variety of subjects. I can say without bragging that I am an extremely well-read man in many languages. Ten shelves are filled with books on my hobby: precious stones. But you may also have observed several shelves filled with books on such subjects as witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy, and so on. I am somewhat interested in these, but not, Mr. Wellston, because I take a professional interest."
He smiled over his cigar and said, "No, it is not because I am a vampire, Mr. Wellston, that I have read in these subjects. I took no interest in them until after the incident that caused you to come here. I thought that if I were to be accused of being a vampire, I had better find out just what a vampire was. I knew something about them, of course, because after all, I do come from an area in which the peasants believe more in vampires and the devil than they do in God. But my tutors never went much into folk-lore, and my contacts with the local non-nobility were not intimate.
"I decided to give you this interview so that, once and for all, this nonsense about my vampirism could be quelled. And also, to divert attention from me toward the only truly supernatural feature of this house: Dolores del Osorojo. I have changed my mind about photographs for your article. I will have Magda send you a number. These will show some of the rooms in the house and various photos of the ghost. I will do this on the condition that you make it clear in your article that I am a man who likes privacy and a quiet life and that the vampire tal
k is nonsense. After getting that out of the way, you may stress the ghost as much as you like. But you must also make it clear that there will be no other interviews with anybody and that I do not like to be disturbed by curiosity-seekers, spiritualists, or journalists. Agreed?"
"Certainly, Mr. Igescu. You have my word. And of course, as agreed, you will edit the article before it's published."
Childe felt a little dizzy. He wished that he had not accepted the brandy. It had been four years since he had drunk anything, and he would not have broken his rule now, except that Igescu had praised the brandy as being so rare that he had been tempted to try it. And he had also not wanted to offend his host in any way if he could help it. He had, however, not had more than one tumbler. The stuff was either very potent or he was vulnerable after the long dry period.
Igescu turned his head to look at the tall dark grandfather clock. "Your time is about up, Mr. Wellston."
Childe wondered why the baron was so concerned with time, when, by his own admission, he seldom went any place or did anything particularly pressing. But he did not ask. The baron would have regarded such a question as too impertinent to answer with anything but cold silence.
Igescu stood up. Childe rose also. Magda Holyani finished her drink and got up from the chair. Glam appeared in the doorway, but Igescu said, "Miss Holyani will drive Mr. Wellston to the gate, Glam. I need you for another duty."
Glam opened his mouth as if he meant to object but shut it immediately. He said, "Very well, sir," and wheeled around and walked away.
Igescu said, "If you'd like some more material for your article, Mr. Wellston, you might look up Michel Le Garrault in the UCLA library. I have copies of two of his works, first editions, by the way. The old Belgian had some very interesting and original theories about vampires, werewolves, and other so-called supernatural phenomena. His theory of psychic imprinting is fascinating. Have you read him? Can you read French?"
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