A Matter of Taste

Chapter 12

As the wood shattered around the lock on the bedroom door, Angie shrank back as far as she could, cowering behind the old man's bed. Knowing what the sheer drop was like outside the window, she couldn't even think of trying to follow him that way. In the next moment the door burst open inward—a final blow had torn it from its lock and hinges alike—and monsters appeared.

The pair of them looked like men, dressed in ordinary casual clothing, men who might pass by on the street at any time. But Angie knew them for monsters nonetheless. Their actions, and the way they smiled at her, betrayed the fact. Both, judging by appearance, were in their thirties. One was tall, one short, the tall one black, the short one white. Neither, in a written description, would show any resemblance to Valentine Kaiser or Matthew Maule. But there was something, an attitude, a presence, an essence, that all four men had in common.

The two invaders advanced slowly, silently, warily into the room, looking around them at every step.

Despite her drugged state Angie was completely terrified, too much afraid to make a noise. Now, following the first two men, another couple of the enemy, this pair a man and a woman, stepped cautiously into the doorway of Uncle Matthew's bedroom. Angie felt sure, somehow, with her first look at them, that these two were breathers.

The first of the enemy to reach Angie was the taller, black vampire. Hands of incredible power seized her and secured her, binding her hand and foot with strips quickly torn from the old man's rumpled sheets and expensive coverlet.

"Don't make no noise," her captor said, and threw her carelessly on the bed. But still she had no more than a small part of his attention, or his partner's. It was the hidden corners of the closet and the bathroom, and the space under the bed, that drew their primary interest.

Plainly they were looking for the old man. The plastic bags of earth, and the spilled earth on the carpet, were important finds.

The vampires talked between themselves. "This is definitely his room, then."

"Looks like it. But where is he?"

Angie trembled, fearing interrogation. But at the moment the enemy were relying on what they could discover for themselves.

They searched the bathroom, warily, a second time.

"Look at this." The white vampire paused in front of the video screen, as if he had not seen his own face for a long time. He did not look entirely happy with what he saw.

The other joined him in the bathroom to check out the electronic mirror. He too seemed briefly fascinated with his own image, but fought free of the distraction. "Yes, this must be his room. But where is he?"

At last their attention came back to Angie.

The short man demanded of her "Where is he, the old one?'

The tall one echoed: "Where is he?"

Her head was spinning. She mumbled something.

Weren't they capable of discovering the open window for themselves?

It was one of their breathing attendants who called their attention to it.

The vampires themselves had seen and disregarded it. The tall, dark-skinned one said: "Bah, he left that open to mislead us."

The short one said: "It's still daylight, he can't change shapes and fly."

Angie, still too high on the old man's drink to feel the full measure of terror she should have felt, kept looking toward the doorway. She was starting to wonder where Valentine Kaiser was.

Now panic was starting to set in among the invaders. Enlisting the breathers' help, the two vampires launched a frantic, though still cautious, search for the old man, which swept once more through the whole apartment. The intruders grew more frantic rather than less with their continued failure to locate their quarry.

Angie, her mind drifting off in an amazing way, thought that perhaps Uncle Matthew should have hidden himself in the secret little cabinet, inside the back of the bedroom dresser. He might have done it, made himself small enough to fit in there, if he'd really tried. She almost giggled aloud, because the ones who were looking for him so frantically never thought that there might be such a secret place inside a piece of furniture. They never came close to discovering it.

When they had gone over the entire apartment again, they came back to the bedroom and looked at her. Now they were having to face the fact that they weren't going to find the old man in any of the rooms or closets, or under any of the furniture. He simply wasn't in the apartment any longer.

One of the vampires looked at his fellow. "Can he be out of man-shape?"

The other snarled back: "Not so soon after he was drugged. It's just not possible." Then the same man looked at Angie, and demanded: "Where is he?"

Automatically she looked toward the window, reacting to the question without thought.

Silently, warily, suspiciously—we want none of your tricks!—they all four of them, breathers and vampires together, went to look at the window again, and out of it.

Meanwhile Angie, hands bound behind her, ankles tied, lay helplessly on the old man's rumpled bed, and could feel herself continuing to get higher and higher. Brandy was like milk compared to the loathsome yellowish brown powder in that little jar of odd-shaped glass. Angie giggled again, finding her situation hopelessly amusing. But her captors, clustered at the open window, being forced to the realization that that was where the old man had gone, failed to pay any attention to the oddities of her behavior.

"How long," one of the vampires asked the other, "until the Duke gets up here?"

The other shook his head. "He didn't know, he wasn't sure. He wanted to stay with the breather who uses wooden bullets, until he had a chance to finish him."

Listening, Angie understood vaguely that Valentine Kaiser must be the Duke, and that for some reason he had left the storming of the apartment to these people. But it hadn't gone as expected, and now they didn't quite know what to do, and they were afraid of doing the wrong thing.

One of the vampires picked up Uncle Matthew's phone, listened to it, shook his head, and put the instrument down again. "It's dead now," he complained. "Now that we might have got some use out of it."

At the same time the other vampire ordered the two breathers to commence an immediate hunt for Dracula.

"Look upstairs, look in Val's place. Get everyone down on the street and look for him. Got your wooden knives?"

The breathing woman murmured a timid protest.

"Don't be afraid, he'll be very weak if he's lying down there somewhere. Take the people who're standing guard in the hallways. We don't need them here anymore."

As soon as the breathing couple had gone, the two nosferatu took turns leaning out of the window, gazing alternately upward and downward. Angie had looked out earlier, and she knew what there was to see, and could imagine how it appeared now with darkness falling: The surrealistic, slightly concave plain of steel and glass stretching away to right and left and up and down, vanishing indeterminately behind wreaths of darkening fog before the end of it became visible in any direction.

One of the vampires said at last: "Well, he's not hanging on a ledge out here. There really aren't any ledges to speak of."

"I don't expect he's hanging on to anything. I expect he's lying dead or crippled down there on the plaza." Evidently even vampire eyes could not see that distance clearly in this fog. "Even this length of fall upon concrete would probably not completely kill him—on wood, of course, it would have been a different matter."

"We've got to find him, finish him off—"

"He might have crawled into an alley somewhere—"

"He might have tried to climb up, instead of down. But I don't see how he could have gotten far—"

Angie was now experiencing a wave of nausea; but this reaction, like her others, passed unnoticed.

The two vampires were trying to think of everything important.

"Did someone block up the door? We don't want people just wandering in."

"I put it back in place again, just now when I let the breathers out. From out in the corridor you can hardly tell that it was broken in."

"What else should we do?"

"You and I wait here for Val. He should be coming soon."

"Meanwhile—"

The two of them had the same idea simultaneously. They turned their faces toward Angie and began looking at her hungrily.

The shorter man said; "He said we could have the blood, if there was any here."

The other was already on the bed, snapping off the strips of cloth with which he'd tied her. And now her clothes were going.

Angie screamed, once, and then a hand came smothering over her nose and mouth.

Before Mrs. Hassler had started down to the pool for her swim, she'd urged John to make himself at home. So far he'd poured himself a glass of low-fat milk from her refrigerator, and was nervously eyeing the bananas on the table. The last time he'd checked on the sentinels in the hallway, they were still there.

When the phone rang he jumped to answer it, hoping it was his helpful hostess, calling to report on what she had observed of the watcher in the hallway.

His hopes were realized. Mrs. Hassler's voice, sounding indignant, commented: "The one in the front hall, at least, seems a really unpleasant type of person—are the two of them still there?"

"I'm afraid so. At least they were the last time I looked." John took another gulp of milk.

Sounds of tsk-tsking came over the wire. "Isn't it a shame?" his confederate sympathized. "Not that it's any of my business, of course, but—"

"Not at all," John reassured her hastily. "We're grateful for your help."

The inane conversation went on. John accepted, for the moment anyway, the urgings of his absentee hostess to help himself to some health food from the pantry and refrigerator. He urged her in turn to enjoy her swim.

"I'm going to do just that, John—may I call you John?—thank you."

As soon as she was off the phone he hung up and ran again to look out. He chose the back-door viewer this time, but he saw the same thing as before.

He still couldn't be sure, with only electronic images to look at, whether the watchers were vampires or not.

He paced.

Worry about Angie threatened to overwhelm him from time to time, but in his cooler moments he saw no reason to doubt that she would be okay if she just sat tight in the apartment. The old man, recovering, was with her. And it might be important to keep the enemy from discovering that he, John, had slipped out.

Several times John considered trying to phone Uncle Matthew's apartment. But in doing so he might be passing more useful information to the enemy than to Angie.

Would Angie understand why he wasn't coming back? Of course, as soon as she looked into the hallway. But she would be worrying about him. Well, for the moment it couldn't be helped.

Once, John's restless pacing took him into Mrs. Hassler's bedroom, where she had star charts, zodiacs, the tools of astrology taped up on her walls. Small fireplace, with a sealed vase centered on the mantel. Some husband's ashes, maybe? She had seemed to have no qualms about leaving this nice young man alone in her apartment. Perhaps she had been reassured by her stars or oracles.

John paced from room to room, wondering what he was going to do next.

And the next time he looked out the front-door viewer, the sentry who had been there was gone.

The old man had endured a long, tryingly difficult climb down the slippery, all-but-vertical north face of the great building. The range of his descent had so far been something like forty stories, approximately four hundred feet, and in his present condition this journey had taken him the better part of an hour.

When he had swung himself out of his bedroom window, he had had basically two choices of direction open to him—up or down. But he had not hesitated for a moment. The various points of entry to the building, those accessible to a vampire who found himself locked temporarily into human shape, had all been charted by him years ago. Over the centuries, advance preparation for emergencies had become an ingrained habit.

Fortunately—and not entirely by accident, for the old man had a certain knack for influencing the weather—the fog had come back thicker than ever, deep and high and solid enough to protect him from any but the most unlucky observation by the mundane on the street below or in some other building.

To keep his mind off his exhaustion and other difficulties as he went down, he allowed himself to wonder whether anyone inside the windows he was passing might be able to catch a glimpse of his wiry figure, swathed in a white bathrobe, slipping by. A lot of curtains were open, here on the residential levels. But it would not be a particularly scenic day for looking out. People who caught sight of him would rub their eyes, and blink, and decide they could not have seen what their eyes reported. Office workers, like schoolchildren, tended to gaze out the windows of their daily prisons whenever they had the chance. But in this building most of the office space lay below the level of the swimming pool and health club.

For a time the descending vampire set his course along one of the huge external cross-braces that went diagonally down across the building's flank. The giant girder screened him partially from inside observation, and provided something large and relatively easy to hold on to in his weakness. The chief disadvantage of this route was that the total distance to be covered rather alarmingly increased.

On reaching the corner of the building, he switched back to the next diagonal cross-brace, angling down in the opposite direction, remaining on the north side of the building, where fortunately he was shadowed from the day's last traces of sunlight. Today's sun in any case was so muffled by fog that it presented only a minor danger, aside from preventing any change of shape that he might contemplate. Having followed this second girder for some distance, at the proper moment he slid off, and carefully resumed his progress straight down, window ledge by window ledge, supporting his weight by toes and fingertips. He knew precisely which window he was aiming for.

Methodically he had been counting floors during the whole descent, and he was below the fiftieth level now.

Shortly after resuming his straight-down descent he was able to hear, faintly, unfamiliar voices above him. Someone was leaning out of his window and speculating audibly on where he might have gone. Knowing he was down too deep in fog for them to see him now, the old man grinned mirthlessly and did not bother to look up.

The street, now not much more than four hundred feet below him, had grown much easier to hear, and the conglomerate glow of headlights was beginning to be visible.

Far enough. He reached the window that he wanted, on the forty-fourth floor. The broad, high inside surface of its double glazing was faintly steamed by warmth and moisture, and beyond that heavily screened by live plants, growing in a kind of artificial ditch stuffed deeply with loam and neatly drained. It was unlikely that anyone inside was going to observe his entrance. In a moment his fingers had found the concealed catch whose installation, along with the necessary hinges, had taken him so much time and effort to arrange; and in another moment one vertical edge of the aluminum frame had silently swung out.

The climber listened carefully, then eased the weak, weighty, and comparatively fragile solidity of his body in through the narrow gap. Once inside, he pulled the window shut again immediately, then took the opportunity to rest his trembling arms. He was standing in the men's locker room, at the end farthest from the doors that led out to what they called the health facilities, on the right to the pool, on the left to something known as the fitness room, a chamber filled with exercise machines that impressed the old man as depressingly grotesque and ugly.

At the moment Fate was smiling upon him, and he had the locker room, or this aisle of it anyway, entirely to himself. Safely indoors, standing on a firm floor again, even swaying a little as he was with weakness, he felt that the most difficult part of his escape had been accomplished.

All around him, occupying more than half of the forty-fourth floor, were locker rooms, exercise facilities, showers, and toilets, and his senses informed him that at this predinner hour they were all practically unoccupied. Those among the building's tenants who enjoyed daytime leisure and cared to exercise, or most of them, had been here in the morning; the folk who toiled from nine to five in offices were not here yet, though their vanguard ought to be hitting the locker rooms at any minute now. He had no time to waste.

In another moment he was swiftly dialing the combination on his own locker, seldom visited but well stocked for emergencies.

The locker provided several items of which he stood in immediate need—swimming trunks to go on under his bathrobe, shower clogs, and so on. It held a full set of street clothes also, but for the moment they could wait.

Small change, also, of course. A public phone was available nearby and he made some calls. His first was to Joe Keogh, but he had to be content with leaving a message on the answering machine in Joseph's house. The second call went to Mrs. Hassler's apartment—fortunately her number was available in the public directory beside the phone. But, ominously enough, this effort went unanswered.

Where was John? Matthew Maule considered phoning his own apartment; if he got through, he'd give whatever villain might answer something to think about. But his phone had been dead, and he saw no reason to think service might have been restored.

Wasting no time, he hung up the receiver and moved on with unhurried speed, down the corridor in the direction of the pool. He had avoided the blow struck by his enemies, and now he would strike back—as soon as he was strong enough.

To accomplish that, there was one more thing he needed, the most vital resource, which neither his carefully prepared locker nor the telephone had been able to provide him. One thing he required, above all, to cure his trembling weakness. Forcing his legs to carry him with long, firm strides, he walked on toward the source of small watery sounds. Deliberately he inhaled, treating himself to the smell of dampness.

On entering the natatorium, he was not surprised to behold Mrs. Hassler alone in the pool at this off-hour. Several times she had, all unbidden, described her daily habits to him.

Smiling, he approached.

He remained unobserved until he reached the actual water's edge, because the lady was not dallying idly in the pool, but doing laps with her goggles and noseclip on, her face submerged. When she became aware of his presence she ceased this drill at once, made for the side, and pulled herself out lithely—displaying an energy, if not a shape, that would have been admirable in a woman half her age. Sitting on the damp rim, she caught the towel the visitor had just picked up from one of the nearby lawn chairs, and began to dab her shoulders with it.

She was disturbed by his unexpected presence, delighted, almost frightened. "Mr. Maule! I had almost despaired of ever persuading you to join me."

He smiled. He actually bowed. "And I, dear lady, of ever finding the right opportunity to do so."

She kicked at the water, demonstrating energy, struggling almost like a child to repress excitement.

Suddenly he could find her attitude endearing.

Worriedly she asked him: "But are you quite well enough to swim? Your nephew gave me to understand that the flu, or something like it, had—"

"My nephew?"

"When he came to use the phone in my apartment—because there was something wrong with your phone, you know—?"

"Yes, of course. Many thanks. If there is ever anything I can do for you—but you were kind enough to ask about my health. I fear I am not as strong as I might be. But so far, strong enough." He smiled. "And not at all contagious."

"I was just speaking to your nephew again on the phone a couple of minutes ago—he's a very nervous young man, isn't he?"

"Poor John. I'm afraid he has been going through a great deal of personal stress lately. May I ask the subject of this recent phone conversation?" Here he tossed his robe casually aside and sat down on the edge of the pool beside her.

"It was about those men—those people in the hallway. The ones who were watching your apartment. But you must have seen them when you came out."

"Ah yes, of course. And did John have success with the other phone calls you so kindly allowed him to make—?"

"I'm afraid there was no one at the number he really wanted to reach, and all he could do was leave a message."

"Too bad." The vampire dabbled his pale feet in the water, beside those of his new companion. Making strategic plans had never been his strong point, but with half a millennium of experience to draw upon, one became adept in some things at least.

Drawing a breath with which to sigh, he said: "I suppose John explained to you something of our difficulties. Surely we owe you an explanation, at least, in return for your kind assistance."

"He said your phone wasn't working…"

"Yes, of course. That complicated matters inordinately. But I meant—the other, more basic difficulty?"

"Yes, well, I can understand. I've had some relatives myself that I spent a good deal of time trying to avoid—they were my first husband's, mostly. Yes, of course, I understand very well, and it's really none of my business."

He smiled, taking her right hand, gently but firmly, and raised it toward his lips for a symbolic kiss. He said, with heartfelt gratitude: "The perfect neighbor. One who helps one through one's difficulties, even when it must be quite impossible to understand them." His smile was sad, warm, appreciative, all at the same time.

The lady, for the moment, could not find a word to say. But her pulse, in the hand that he still held, had quickened quite remarkably.

As a rule this courteous vampire preferred to seek his nourishment, not to mention romance, at a much greater distance from where he slept. The waitress had represented something of a major exception in that regard; I am old enough to know better, he chided himself in bitter silence. Well, I did know better. And he had made the blunder anyway, and now he had paid for it.

It was of no comfort to the vampire's feelings to reflect that another exception was about to be made. Well, in this case there was no help for it. Others, to whom he owed a great responsibility, were depending on him for their very lives, and he must waste no time in regaining his strength. If the estimate he had now formed of the nature of his enemy was correct, all the strength that he could summon up was going to be needed.

'Mr. Maule—it's Matthew, isn't it?"

"It is indeed." Both of their apartments were for the moment unavailable. He looked thoughtfully about the natatorium.

In a voice still fluttered by that Continental hand-kiss, the dear lady asked him: "If I wouldn't be taking you away from your swim, or exercise—well, would you like to come up to my place for a bite of lunch? You and your nephew both, of course. Or a drink? Or is it too early in the day for that?"

"Dear Margot—it is not at all too early in my day to have a drink. But by the way, have you seen the moon tonight?"

"The moon?" She was almost whispering, ready for a revelation.

Which he thought he was certainly going to provide. "Ah yes, despite the fog, and all the many lights of the great city. Here." He extended a hand and she took it, and a moment later she was standing beside him, dripping, on the slippery tile. "If we could step over to the windows here—behind the tall plants, where the glass is somewhat shadowed—"