A Matter of Taste

Chapter 10

It was Angie who picked up the phone first when Joe called Maule's apartment to report the results of his talk with Kaiser. She was able to tell Joe, in turn, some interesting bits of information regarding blood chemistry in vampires, that she'd picked up from listening to the old man's tape. She and John had decided that Joe ought to be told, whatever the possible eavesdroppers might make of the information.

It was about four in the afternoon when that call was completed. Sunset was still more than an hour away, but the cloudy sky, its brightness very gradually diminishing, made nightfall seem imminent.

Joe on the phone had been modestly reassuring, but he had been as insistent as ever that they stay in the apartment and remain on guard, crushing any hope that their problems might be over.

Within two minutes after Angie hung up the phone, the front door chime sounded, for the first time in many hours.

John and Angie were both in the old man's room at the time, occupying chairs, one on each side of his bed, and exchanging hopeful comments to the effect that he might soon be able to talk to them. His appearance, they agreed, had continued to improve, gradually but definitely. But he hadn't yet managed to say anything intelligible.

When the door chime sounded, the old man grunted. Both John and Angie, after uttering quick reassurances to their host, hurried to look at the front-door viewer.

Angie frowned at the small, bright image. "It's the lady we ran into last night," she said. "Isn't it?"

"What lady?" John sounded lost.

"The heavyset one who was just getting out of the elevator when the three of us were going up to the restaurant. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Maybe it is her. What does she want?"

"Better find out."

He flipped on the speaker. "Hello?" he inquired cautiously.

"Mr. Maule? It's Mrs. Hassler from down the hall." The voice was bright as a robin's, cheerful and enthusiastic though somewhat distorted by the speaker. It seemed to have as little connection with vampires as any sound that Angie had ever heard.

She and John looked at each other doubtfully.

The screen image spoke again. "Mr. Maule? Are you all right? I wanted to make sure you remembered the Residents' Association meeting tonight."

An incoherent groan drifted into the living room, from the direction of Uncle Matthew's chamber.

John whispered: "I wonder if there's some way that she can tell he's home?"

Angie hissed back: "Search me. But you answered her, now she knows there's someone here."

Again there was a faint sound, this time as of an intelligible voice, from the old man's bedroom. His two guardians looked at each other wide-eyed. A moment later, they were bursting in on him again.

He was sitting bolt upright in his bed, glaring at them, and to their great joy they heard him utter a few coherent words: "… admit… no one…"

"We won't!" Angie hastened to be reassuring. "We haven't let anyone in. No one but Joe. You know, Joe Keogh? He was here, but he's gone now to try to get help."

The old man nodded firmly. He was definitely coming around.

Now he pointed toward the living room. "Mrs.—Hassler."

"Yes, what about her?"

Maule enunciated carefully. "Genuinely… my neighbor. Try… keep her quiet. No police. Not yet."

"Yes, we understand about the police. No police yet. Angie, go back and talk to her. No, wait, you stay here. I'll go, just in case." And John went bounding out of the room again.

"Can I get you anything?" Angie asked the patient, joyfully.

"Tell me… what has happened?"

Angie did her best, pouring out the story in a jumble of words. She concluded: "If we could only phone Joe now and tell him you're coming out of it…"

The man sitting in the bed looked grimly worried "Yes… wait. If this phone is tapped… try to use—Mrs. Hassler's. Safer than—trying to reach—public phone. We do not want—the enemy to know—I am recovering."

Angie ran into the front room to communicate this idea to John. He had the front door open on its security holders, and was conversing warily with Mrs. Hassler through the narrow gap.

Angie joined him, hanging on his shoulder and smiling brightly, while thinking she must look a ghastly mess.

Introductions were quickly, if somewhat awkwardly, performed. Then Angie said, as sweetly as possible: "The phone's out of order here, on top of everything else—Mrs. Hassler, do you suppose we could use yours?"

"Of course, dear." If the smiling woman in the corridor was bothered by not being asked to step in, she didn't show it.

John stared at Angie, then caught the idea. With a muttered excuse he ran back to confer briefly with the old man. Moments later he was back at the front door, and a moment after that he was gone. Angie stuck her head out and watched him safely into Mrs. Hassler's apartment just down the hall.

Then she locked and bolted up the door again, turned off the viewer, and walked slowly back to talk to Uncle Matthew.

She found him out of bed, standing erect though he looked a bit unsteady, and wrapping himself in a white robe. As soon as Angie entered the room he asked her. "Where is Joseph now?"

"I don't know. He didn't want to tell us where he'd be. But we can call his regular number and leave messages on his answering machine; he can call in from somewhere else and have them played back. Shouldn't you sit down and rest?"

The old man muttered something—Angie felt sure it was profanity—in some unknown tongue, which had a Latinesque sound to it. But he nodded weakly and sat down.

He and Angie were still in the master bedroom, talking, a couple of minutes later, when a loud splintering crash resounded through the apartment, followed in an instant by a mutter of voices, unfamiliar and triumphant. Angie sprang up. The image conveyed to her mind by that sound was that either the front or back door had just been violently broken in.

It seemed to Angie that she was on her feet at once, but Uncle Matthew, who had shaken off his unsteadiness to move with startling speed, was already closing and locking the bedroom door. Then he turned and stood in front of it with his finger to his lips, gesturing her to silence.

The unfamiliar male voices, somewhere out there in the apartment, sounded again, low but victorious. Someone was being invited to come in.

John, invited to make himself at home in Mrs. Hassler's pleasant but somewhat overdecorated apartment, did the best he could to fend off the lady's kind attentions and bottomless curiosity, while using her generously offered telephone. He realized at once that he was going to have to give up all hope of speaking privately with Joe Keogh.

He had only one number to call, that of Joe's regular home phone.

The machine answered, as John had expected. After the recorded message had had its say, he cleared his throat and spoke: "Joe, this is John. I'm calling from the apartment next door. The phone here seems to be working without that trouble we had with Uncle Matthew's. Uh, I wanted you to know Uncle Matthew's up and about now, though he's still very weak."

Looking over his shoulder, John saw Mrs. Hassler beaming at him from across the kitchen. He smiled at her and continued talking into the phone. "His, uh, laryngitis is much better. One of those twenty-four-hour viruses, I guess."

Mrs. Hassler made no pretense of absenting herself or her attention, but continued to look on with approval.

John thanked her and prepared to hurry back to Angie. As he stood on the point of opening the front door, he paused. "Mind if I take a look out there first?"

"No, of course not." His hostess seemed intrigued.

John flicked on the viewer beside Mrs. Hassler's front door.

Someone, an ominous male shape, was standing guard in the hallway, obviously keeping an eye on the front approach to Uncle Matthew's condo. At the distance John couldn't tell if it was Valentine Kaiser or not, a vampire or a breather.

Muttering some kind of feeble explanation to Mrs. Hassler, who appeared more intrigued than alarmed, he walked through her apartment to the back door, where he flicked another switch. The landing of the service stairs was also occupied by a male sentry. This man was closer, and John knew that he'd never seen him before. As for being nosferatu, well, that was still hard to tell on screen.

His hostess had followed him, and stood with her arms folded, watching for whatever entertaining trick he might do next.

John sighed. "Is that—do you know if that's the back door to Mr. Maule's apartment?" He gestured at the screen, which provided a great view of the closed door opposite.

"It certainly is."

"It looks like Uncle Matthew's place is being watched."

"It certainly does, doesn't it?" "Would you mind—uh, would you mind if I waited here for a little while?"

"Of course not! Would you like some coffee?"

Angie, in an agony of fear, trying to recall the prayers that she'd been taught to say in childhood, had moved back into the corner of the bedroom farthest from the door. Her host, moving and working with amazing speed, though occasionally stumbling, had taken one of the dark glass jars out of the hidden compartment in the dresser. Now he was mixing some stuff—it looked a horrible brownish yellow—taken from the jar in a glass of water drawn in the bathroom. He hadn't explained to Angie what he was doing, nor dared she speak to ask.

Judging by what she could hear from beyond the door, in the outer reaches of the apartment, the people who had broken in the door were advancing only with extreme caution from room to room, as if they were wary of ambushes. As if they had an enormous respect for the one they were trying to find.

At last Angie thought she could hear one of them, perhaps two, closely approaching the bedroom door on the hallway side. Whoever it was stood there for a time, evidently listening, and being very quiet.

In another half minute, the doorknob was tried gently.

Then whoever was just outside the bedroom door moved quietly away. Angie had the impression of a general conference being held at some distance, in the living room perhaps.

Evidently now believing that he could move unheard by those outside, Matthew Maule glided across the room, silently closed the hidden cupboard, and lifted the dresser back against the wall. Then, to Angie's astonishment, he handed her the drink he had just finished mixing. He made an urgent pantomime for her to swallow it.

Having seen the mess from which the drink had been concocted, she held back. There was no particular odor rising from the glass she held, but the liquid in it looked like dirty dishwater. What was he planning for her, suicide? Death before dishonor? But the fierce liveliness of Maule's expression and his gestures, even weakened as he was, made that suspicion an absurdity.

The taste was not nearly as bad as she had expected. There were even pleasant overtones. Almost anything liquid would have felt good in her mouth dried out by fear.

The next effect followed almost immediately. Angie's senses reeled. "Now what?" she gasped.

With one hand her protector—she hoped—once more gestured eloquently for silence, even as he took the glass in the other fist and moved in a few long, silent dance steps back into the bathroom. The unrinsed glass was stuffed into the medicine cabinet beside the electronic mirror.

If his closing the medicine cabinet door made any sound at all, Angie only a few feet away was unable to detect it.

Then Uncle Matthew was at her side again. Putting his lips very close to her ear, he whispered: "I must leave you here. There is no help for it. But I swear I shall return."

Angie couldn't really understand. "Don't leave me," she pleaded. Her head was spinning with the drink, and she collapsed into a chair, on the brink of fainting. She murmured a protest against being poisoned, which he ignored.

The one who some called the old man was already at one of the bedroom's windows, where he was doing something to the metal frame. Angie in her dizzy astonishment saw the window turn, letting in a breath of chilly air—she had thought that in a high-rise like this one none of the windows could be opened.

Curtains swirled, and a moment later the old man was gone. Angie began to whimper. He had left her totally alone.

She gave a little cry. Something had just smashed, with tremendous violence, against the locked bedroom door from outside. It was a substantial door, but the one blow had started the wood splintering.

Angie screamed.

Clinging like a fly on the ledge outside the window, quivering under the malevolent influence of the sun beyond the clouds, shuddering in his feebleness from the small exertion he had made thus far, feeling weak as a small bat, he made no effort to close the window again behind him. Let the hunters discover at once which way he had gone. Let them pursue him, if they could be induced to do so, instead of…

Never mind, for now, the girl he was being forced to leave behind. He had to get away, to survive, if he was going to be of any help to anyone.

He had emerged on the north face of the building, well into the last daylight hour of a gray and misty, violently windy day. Steel and glass were slippery in their dampness, and the wind tugged at him erratically. He was going to need all of his diminished strength to keep himself from falling.

He started down, feeling his way from one infinitesimal toehold and handgrip to the next.

Tentatively he essayed a shape-change; but he could tell in an instant that it was not going to work. Daylight lingered still, and traces of the subtle drug persisted in his flesh. He was frozen in man-form. Well, then he would have to climb down in the shape of a man. He had managed more difficult feats in the past.

Not much more difficult, though. And not often.

The sides of the building, while extremely steep, yet deviated from the vertical by a few degrees, a deviation that very gradually increased toward the ground. Perhaps there were even a few breathing mountaineers who'd find the feat within the range of possibility. However that might be, a fearless though desperate vampire ought to be able to make the descent, clinging to damp and slippery glass and steel, where no merely breathing human would be likely to survive.

Back in Mrs. Hassler's apartment, John Southerland roamed from the front door to the rear, and back again. Both of the sentries were holding their positions. Something was up, something was going on over there at Uncle Matthew's. John couldn't actually see Uncle Matthew's front door from Mrs. Hassler's viewer; all the doors were slightly recessed from the corridor, which just cut off his view. He could see with certainty that Maule's door was being steadily watched, or guarded, and he was becoming more and more firmly convinced that the watcher was nosferatu. Probably it was the figure's abnormal stillness most of the time.

Could it be the police? John doubted it. At this stage he had to assume that such continuous surveillance must be hostile.

Minutes passed that seemed like hours. To his dismay, the unfamiliar vampires—the more John looked, the more certain he was of the classification of the watchers, front and back—maintained their vigil with perfect patience.

John fretted, and thought, but he considered he had no choice but to stay where he was for a time. If these newcomers were friendly—that was a possibility, if Joe had ever gotten through to Mina Harker—then someone ought to be coming along soon to let him know what was going on. The chance that they were friendly did not seem great enough to require serious consideration.

Should he try to call Joe again, leave another message to bring him up-to-date? Not yet, not with Mrs. Hassler listening. Maybe in a little while.

Mrs. Hassler, quietly but thoroughly enjoying the excitement, had a suggestion.

"Tell you what, young man. I'm planning to go down for my daily swim shortly—did you know we have a pool on the forty-fourth floor?—and I'll look over the man in the front hall as I go. You know, casually. If I discover anything about him that I think you should know, I'll call you from down there at poolside. So if my phone rings, answer it."

"Thanks. I'll do that."

John hesitated, wanting to warn his helpful hostess to be careful. But at the same time he was desperate for information. In the terse bits of conversation he'd shared with Mrs. Hassler, he'd been gradually elaborating somewhat on his and Angie's original story. The scenario as it now stood was based on certain unwelcome relatives of Mr. Maule having chosen this awkward time—awkward for unspecified reasons—to pay him a visit. Whether Mrs. Hassler believed this half explanation or not, she obviously loved the accompanying intrigue.

John's hostess retired into her bedroom, to emerge some five minutes later wearing a one-piece swimsuit half-covered by a kind of cape or robe, modestly concealing most of her heavy legs.

"Ta ta, young man. See you soon!" And with an almost flirtatious wink she was gone, fearlessly out the front door. John, holding his breath at the viewer, nerving himself to rush out and try to help her if need be, saw her exchange brief neighborly smiles with the vampire sentry and march briskly on, her gay cape swaying.

Angie, alone and terrified in Uncle Matthew's bedroom, could feel her brain whirling giddily from the unknown dose he had prescribed and administered.

Another hard blow came at the bedroom door, and she cried out in a low voice, knowing that with the next impact the lock was going to give way.