The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

THE SECOND DRUG by Richard A. Lupoff

Richard A. Lupoff (b.1935) first established his reputation as a writer of uncategorizable science fiction and fantasy, influenced by but clearly not imitating the early pulp adventure writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Doc Smith. However, no one reading One Million Centuries (1967) or Into the Aether (1974) would regard the stories as looking backward, and others, like Sword of the Demon (1978) and Lovercraft’s Book (1985) establish their own niches. More recently Lupoff has turned to writing crime novels featuring San Franciscan insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey. The first was The Comic Book Killer (1988). The following story features a new detective, Abel Chase, and hopefully will be the first of a series.

The great Bosendorfer piano responded eagerly to Abel Chase’s practised hands, its crashing notes echoing from the high, raftered ceiling of the music room. Beyond the tall, westward-facing windows, the January night was dark and wind-swept. The warm lights of the college town of Berkeley sparkled below, and beyond the black face of the bay the more garish illumination of San Francisco shimmered seductively.

The sweet tones of the Guarnarius violin bowed by Chase’s confidante and associate, Claire Delacroix, dashed intricately among the piano chords. Clad in shimmering silver, Claire offered a dramatic contrast to Chase’s drab appearance. Her platinum hair, worn in the soft style of an earlier age, cascaded across the gracefully rounded shoulders that emerged from her silvery, bias-cut gown. A single diamond, suspended from a delicate silver chain, glittered in the hollow of her throat. Her deep-set eyes, a blue so dark as at times to appear almost purple, shone with a rare intelligence.

Abel Chase’s hair was as dark as Claire’s was pale, save for the patches of snow which appeared at the temples. Chase wore a neatly-trimmed black moustache in which only a few light-coloured hairs were interspersed. He was clad in a pale, soft-collared shirt and a tie striped with the colours of his alma mater, a silken dressing gown and the trousers of his customary midnight blue suit. His expression was saturnine.

“Enough, Delacroix.” He ceased to play, and she lowered her bow and instrument. “Stravinsky has outdone himself,” Chase allowed. “A few corrections and suggestions, notably to the second eclogue, and his manuscript will be ready for return. His cantilène and gigue are most affecting, while the dithyrambe is a delight. After his more ambitious orchestral pieces of recent years, it is fascinating to see him working on so small a canvas.”

Chase had risen from the piano bench and taken two long strides toward the window when the room’s freshly restored silence was shattered by the shrilling of a telephone bell. Chase whirled and started toward the machine, but his associate had lifted the delicate French-styled instrument from its cradle. She murmured into it, paused, then added a few words and held the instrument silently toward her companion.

“Yes.” He held the instrument, his eyes glittering with interest. He raised his free hand and brushed a fingertip along the edge of his moustache. After a time he murmured, “Definitely dead? Very well. Yes, you were right to re-seal the room. I shall come over shortly. Now, quickly, the address.” He continued to hold the telephone handset to his ear, listening and nodding, then grunted and returned it to its cradle.

“Delacroix, I am going to the city. Please fetch your wrap, I shall need you to drive me to the dock. And perhaps you would care to assist me. In that case, I urge you to dress warmly, as a light snowfall has been falling for several hours – a most unusual event for San Francisco.” Without waiting for a response he strode to his own room, hung his dressing gown carefully in a cedar-lined closet and donned his suit coat.

Claire Delacroix awaited him in the flagstone-floored foyer. She had slipped into a sable jacket and carried an elegant purse woven of silvery metal links so fine as to suggest cloth. Chase removed an overcoat from a rack beside the door, slipped into its warm confines, and lifted hat and walking stick from their places.

Shortly a powerful Hispano-Suiza snaked its way through the winding, darkened roads of the Berkeley hills, Claire Delacroix behind the wheel, Abel Chase seated beside her, a lap robe warming him against the wintry chill.

“I suppose you’d like to know what this is about,” Chase offered.

“Only as much as you wish to tell me,” Claire Delacroix replied.

“That was Captain Baxter on the telephone,” Chase told her.

“I knew as much. I recognized his gruff voice, for all that Baxter dislikes to speak to women.”

“You misjudge him, Delacroix. That’s merely his manner. He has a wife and five daughters to whom he is devoted.”

“You may be right. Perhaps he has his fill of women at home. I suppose he’s got another juicy murder for you, Abel.”

Chase’s moustache twitched when Claire Delacroix called him by his familiar name. He was well aware that it would have been futile to ask her to address him by his given name, Akhenaton, and Claire Delacroix knew him far too intimately to refer to him as Doctor Chase. Still, “Abel” was a name few men were permitted to use in conversation with him, and no woman save for Claire Delacroix.

“The man is distraught. He seems to think that a vampire has struck in San Francisco, draining the blood of a victim and leaving him for dead.”

Claire Delacroix laughed, the silvery sound snatched away on the wind. “And will the victim then rise and walk, a new recruit to the army of the undead?”

“You scoff,” Chase commented.

“I do.”

There was a momentary pause, then Chase said, “As do I. Baxter is at the site. He has studied the circumstances of the crime and concluded that it is impossible, by any normal means. Therefore and ipso facto, the solution must be supernatural,”

“You of course disagree.”

“Indeed. The very term supernatural contradicts itself. The natural universe encompasses all objects and events. If a thing has occurred, it is necessarily not supernatural. If it is supernatural, it cannot occur.”

“Then we are confronted with an impossible crime,” Claire Delacroix stated.

Abel Chase shook his head in annoyance. “Again, Delacroix, a contradiction in terms. That which is impossible cannot happen. That which happens is therefore, by definition, possible. No,” he snorted, “this crime is neither supernatural nor impossible, no matter that it may seem to be either – or both. I intend to unravel this tangled skein. Remain at my side if you will, and be instructed!”

The dark, winding road had debouched by now into the town’s downtown district. On a Saturday night during the academic year warmly clad undergraduates stood in line to purchase tickets for talkies. The young intellectuals in their cosmopolitanism chose among the sensuality of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, the collaborative work of the geniuses Dali and Buñuel in L’Age d’Or, the polemics of the Ukrainian Dovzhenko’s Zemlya, and the simmering rage of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar.

Young celebrants gestured and exclaimed at the unusual sight of snowflakes falling from the January sky. Their sportier (or wealthier) brethren cruised the streets in Bearcats and Auburns. The Depression might have spread fear and want throughout the land, but the college set remained bent on the pursuit of loud jazz and illicit booze.

Claire Delacroix powered the big, closed car down the sloping avenue that led to the city’s waterfront, where Abel Chase’s power boat rode at dock, lifting and falling with each swell of the bay’s cold, brackish water.

Climbing from the car, Chase carefully folded his lap robe and placed it on the seat. He turned up the collar of his warm overcoat, drew a pair of heavy gloves from a pocket and donned them. Together, he and Claire Delacroix crossed to a wooden shed built out over the bay. Chase drew keys from his trouser pocket, opened a heavy lock, and permitted Claire to enter before him. They descended into a powerful motor boat. Chase started the engine and they roared from the shed, heading toward the San Francisco Embarcadero. The ferries had stopped running for the night. Tramp steamers and great commercial freighters stood at anchor in the bay. The powerboat wove among them trailing an icy, greenish-white wake.

Steering the boat with firm assurance, Chase gave his assistant a few more details. “Baxter is at the Salamanca Theatre on Geary. There’s a touring company doing a revival of some Broadway melodrama of a few years back. Apparently the leading man failed to emerge from his dressing room for the third act, and the manager called the police.”

Claire Delacroix shook her head, puzzled. She had drawn a silken scarf over her platinum hair, and its tips were whipped by the night wind as their boat sped across the bay. “Sounds to me like a medical problem more than a crime. Or maybe he’s just being temperamental. You know those people in the arts.”

Chase held his silence briefly, then grunted. “So thought the manager until the door was removed from its hinges. The actor was seated before his mirror, stone dead.” There was a note of irony in his soft voice.

“And is that why we are ploughing through a pitch black night in the middle of winter?” she persisted.

“The death of Count Hunyadi is not a normal one, Delacroix.”

Now Claire Delacroix smiled. It was one of Abel Chase’s habits to drop bits of information into conversations in this manner. If the listener was sufficiently alert she would pick them up. Otherwise, they would pass unnoted.

“Imre Hunyadi, the Hungarian matinee idol?”

“Or the Hungarian ham,” Chase furnished wryly. “Impoverished petty nobility are a dime a dozen nowadays. If he was ever a count to start with.”

“This begins to sound more interesting, Abel. But what is this about a vampire that makes this a case for no less than the great Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase rather than the San Francisco Police Department?”

“Ah, your question is as ever to the point. Aside from the seemingly supernatural nature of Count Hunyadi’s demise, of course. The manager of the Salamanca Theatre states that Hunyadi has received a series of threats. He relayed this information to Captain Baxter, and Baxter to me.”

“Notes?”

“Notes – and worse. Captain Baxter states that a dead rodent was placed on his dressing table two nights ago. And finally a copy of his obituary.”

“Why didn’t he call the police and ask for protection?”

“We shall ask our questions when we reach the scene of the crime, Delacroix.”

Chase pulled the powerboat alongside a private wharf flanking the San Francisco Ferry Building. A uniformed police officer waited to catch the line when Chase tossed it to him. The darkly-garbed Chase and the silver-clad Claire Delacroix climbed to the planking and thence into a closed police cruiser. A few snowflakes had settled upon their shoulders. Gong sounding, the cruiser pulled away and headed up Market Street, thence to Geary and the Salamanca Theatre, where Chase and Delacroix alighted.

They were confronted by a mob of well-dressed San Franciscans bustling from the theatre. The play had ended and, as with the younger crowd in Berkeley, the theatregoers grinned and exclaimed in surprise at the falling flakes. Few of the men and women, discussing their evening’s entertainment, hailing passing cabs or heading to nearby restaurants for post-theatrical suppers, took note of the two so-late arrivers.

A uniformed patrolman saluted Abel Chase and invited him and Claire Delacroix into the Salamanca. “Captain Baxter sends his compliments, Doctor.”

“Nice to see you, Officer Murray. How are your twins? No problems with croup this winter?”

Flustered, the officer managed to stammer, “No, sir, no problems this year. But how did you-?”

Before Murray could finish his question he was interrupted by a stocky, ruddy-complexioned individual in the elaborate uniform of a high-ranking police officer. The Captain strode forward, visibly favouring one leg. He was accompanied by a sallow-faced individual wearing a black tuxedo of almost new appearance.

“Major Chase,” the uniformed police official saluted.

Chase smiled and extended his own hand, which the Captain shook. “Clel. You know Miss Delacroix, of course.”

Claire Delacroix extended her hand and Captain Cleland Baxter shook it, lightly and briefly.

“And this is Mr Quince. Mr Walter Quince, wasn’t it, sir?”

Walter Quince extended his own hand to Chase, tilting his torso at a slight angle as he did so. The movement brought his hatless, brilliantined head close to Chase, who detected a cloying cosmetic scent. He shook Quince’s hand, then addressed himself to Baxter.

“Take me to the scene of the incident.”

Baxter led the Chase and Delacroix through the now-darkened Salamanca Theatre. Quince ran ahead and held aside a dark-coloured velvet curtain, opening the way for them into a narrow, dingy corridor. Abel Chase and Claire Delacroix followed Baxter into the passage, followed by Quince.

Shortly they stood outside a plain door. Another police officer, this one with sergeant’s chevrons on his uniform sleeve, stood guard.

“Hello, Costello,” Chase said. “How are your daughter and her husband doing these days?”

“Doctor.” The uniformed sergeant lifted a finger to the bill of his uniform cap. “They’ve moved in with the missus and me. Times are hard, sir.”

Chase nodded sympathetically.

“This is Count Hunyadi’s dressing room,” Quince explained, indicating the doorway behind Costello.

Chase asked, “I see that the door was removed from its hinges, and that Captain Baxter’s men have sealed the room. That is good. But why was it necessary to remove the hinges to open the door?”

“Locked, sir.”

“Don’t you have a key, man?”

“Count Hunyadi insisted on placing a padlock inside his dressing room. He was very emphatic about his privacy. No one was allowed in, even to clean, except under his direct supervision.”

Abel Chase consulted a gold-framed hexagonal wristwatch. “What time was the third act to start?”

“At 10:15, sir.”

“And when was Hunyadi called?”

“He got a give-minute and a two-minute call. He didn’t respond to either. I personally tried to summon him at curtain time but there was no response.”

Abel Chase frowned. “Did you then cancel the rest of the performance?”

“No, sir. Elbert Garrison, the director, ordered Mr Hunyadi’s understudy to take over the role.”

“And who was that fortunate individual?”

“Mr Winkle. Joseph Winkle. He plays the madman, Renfield, And Philo Jenkins, who plays a guard at the madhouse, became Renfield. It was my duty to take the stage and announce the changes. I made no mention of Count Hunyadi’s – illness. I merely gave the names of the understudies.”

“Very well. Before we proceed to examine the victim and his surroundings, I will need to see these so-called threatening notes.”

Captain Cleland Baxter cleared his throat. “Looks as if the Count was pretty upset by the notes. Everybody says he destroyed ’em all. He complained every time he got one but then he’d set a match to it.”

An angry expression swept across Chase’s features.

Baxter held up a hand placatingly. “But the latest – looks like the Count just received it tonight, Major – looks like he got riled up and crumpled the thing and threw it in the corner.”

Baxter reached into his uniform pocket and extracted a creased rectangle of cheap newsprint. “Here it is, sir.”

Chase accepted the paper, studied it while the others stood silently, then returned it to the uniformed captain with an admonition to preserve it as potentially important evidence.

Next, he removed the police seal from the entrance to the dressing room and stepped inside, followed by Claire Delacroix, Captain Baxter, and the theatre manager, Walter Quince.

Chase stood over the still form of Imre Hunyadi, for the moment touching nothing. The victim sat on a low stool, his back to the room. The head was slumped forward and to one side, the forehead pressed against a rectangular mirror surrounded by small electrical bulbs. His hands rested against the mirror as well, one to either side of his head, his elbows propped on the table.

“We observe,” Chase stated, “that the victim is fully dressed in formal theatrical costume, complete with collar and gloves.”

“And ye’ll note that he’s deathly pale, Major,” the police Captain put in. “Deathly pale. Drained by the bite of a vampire, I say.”

Chase pursed his lips and stroked his dark moustache. “I would not be so quick to infer as much, Captain,” he warned. “The victim’s face is indeed deathly pale. That may be stage makeup, however.”

Chase lifted an emery board from the dressing table and carefully removed a speck of makeup from Hunyadi’s cheek. “Remarkable,” he commented. “You see-” He turned and exhibited the emery board to the room. “It is indeed pale makeup, appropriate, of course, to the Count’s stage persona. But now, we observe the flesh beneath.”

He bent to peer at the skin he had exposed. “Remarkable,” he said again. “As white as death.”

“Just so!” exclaimed the Captain of homicide.

“But now I let us examine the victim’s hands.”

With great care he peeled back one of Hunyadi’s gloves. “Yet again remarkable,” the Abel Chase commented. “The hands are also white and bloodless. Well indeed, there remains yet one more cursory examination to be made.”

Carefully tugging his trousers to avoid bagging the knees of his woollen suit, he knelt beside Count Hunyadi. He lifted Hunyadi’s trouser cuff and peeled down a silken lisle stocking. Then he sprang back to his full height.

“Behold!”

The Count’s ankle was purple and swollen.

“Perhaps Miss Delacroix – Doctor Delacroix, I should say – will have an explanation.”

Claire Delacroix knelt, examined the dead man’s ankles, then rose to her own feet and stated, “Simple. And natural. This man died where he sits. His body was upright, even his hands were raised. His blood drained to the lower parts of his body, causing the swelling and discoloration of the ankles and feet. There is nothing supernatural about post-mortem lividity.”

Chase nodded. “Thank you.”

He turned from the body and pointed a carefully manicured finger at Quince. “Is there any other means of access to Hunyadi’s dressing room?”

“Just the window, sir.”

“Just the window, sir?” Abel Chase’s eyes grew wide. “Just the window? Baxter-” He turned to the Captain of police. “Have you ordered that checked?”

Flustered, Baxter admitted that he had not.

“Quickly, then. Quince, lead the way!”

The manager led them farther along the dingy corridor. It was dimly illumined by yellow electrical bulbs. They exited through the stage door and found themselves gazing upon a narrow alley flanked by dark walls of ageing, grime-encrusted brick. To their right, the alley opened onto the normally busy sidewalk, now free of pedestrians as San Franciscans sought cover from the chill and moisture of the night. To the left, the alley abutted a brick wall, featureless save for the accumulated grime of decades.

“There it is, sir.”

Chase raised his hand warningly. “Before we proceed, let us first examine the alley itself,” Chase instructed. Using electric torches for illumination, they scanned the thin coating of snow that covered the litter-strewn surface of the alley. “You will notice,” Chase announced, “that the snow is undisturbed. Nature herself has become our ally in this work.”

Chase then stepped carefully forward and turned, surveying the window. “Fetch me a ladder,” he ordered. When the implement arrived he climbed it carefully, having donned his gloves once again. He stood peering through a narrow opening, perhaps fourteen inches wide by six inches in height. A pane of pebbled glass, mounted on a horizontal hinge in such a manner as to divide the opening in half, was tilted at a slight angle. Through it, Chase peered into the room in which he and the others had stood moments earlier.

From his elevated position he scanned the room meticulously, dividing it into a geometrical grid and studying each segment in turn. When satisfied, he returned to the ground.

Walter Quince, incongruous in his evening costume, folded the ladder. “But you see, sir, the window is much too small for a man to pass through.”

“Or even a child,” Chase added.

There was a moment of silence, during which a wisp of San Francisco’s legendary fog descended icily from the winter sky. The rare snowfall, the city’s first in decades, had ended. Then a modulated feminine voice broke the stillness of the tableau. “Not too small for a bat.”

They returned to the theatre. Once again inside the building, Chase doffed his warm outer coat and gloves, then made his way to the late Count Hunyadi’s dressing room, where the cadaver of the emigré actor remained, slowly stiffening, before the glaring lights and reflective face of his makeup mirror. Irony tingeing his voice, Chase purred, “You will note that the late Count casts a distinct reflection in his looking glass. Hardly proper conduct for one of the undead.” He bent to examine the cadaver once more, peering first at one side of Hunyadi’s neck, then at the other.

Chase whirled. “Was he left-handed?”

Walter Quince, standing uneasily in the doorway, swallowed audibly. “I – I think so. He, ah, remarked something about it, I recall.”

Abel Chase placed the heels of his hands on the sides of Hunyadi’s head and moved it carefully to an upright position. He made a self-satisfied sound. “There is some stiffness here, but as yet very little. He is recently dead. Delacroix, look at this. Clel, you also.”

As they obeyed he lowered Hunyadi’s head carefully to his right shoulder, exposing the left side of his neck to view above the high, stiff collar of his costume shirt.

“What do you see?” Chase demanded.

“Two red marks.” Captain Cleland Baxter, having moved forward in his rolling, uneven gait, now leaned over to study the unmoving Hunyadi’s neck. “He played a vampire,” the police captain muttered, “and he carries the marks of the vampire. Good God! In this Year of Our Lord 1931 – it’s impossible.”

“No, my friend. Not impossible,” Chase responded. “Supernatural? That I doubt. But impossible? No.” He shook his head.

Claire Delacroix scanned the dressing room, her dark, intelligent eyes flashing from object to object. Sensing that the attention of the theatre manager was concentrated on her, she turned her gaze on him. “Mr Quince, the programme for tonight’s performance includes a biography of each actor, is that not correct?” When Quince nodded in the affirmative, she requested a copy and received it.

She scanned the pages, touching Abel Chase lightly on the elbow and bringing to his attention several items in the glossy booklet. Chase’s dark head and Claire Delacroix’s platinum tresses nearly touched as they conferred.

Chase frowned at Walter Quince. “This biography of Mr Hunyadi makes no mention of a wife.”

“Imre Hunyadi is – was – unmarried at the time of…” He inclined his own head toward the body.

“Yes, his demise,” Chase furnished.

Quince resumed. “Theatrical biographies seldom mention former spouses.”

“But gossip is common within the theatrical community, is it not?”

“Yes.” There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Quince added, “I believe he was married twice. The first time in his native Hungary. To one Elena Kadar.”

“Yes, I have heard of her,” Chase furnished. “A brilliant woman, sometimes called the Hungarian Madame Curie. She was engaged for some years in medical research, in the field of anesthesiology. I’ve read several of her papers. Apparently she treated Habsburg soldiers who had been wounded in the Great War and was greatly moved by their suffering. Hence the direction of her experiments. She ended her life a suicide. A tragic loss.”

“Ach, Major, Major, you know everything, don’t you?” Captain Baxter exclaimed.

“Not quite,” Chase demurred. Then, “Under what circumstances, Quince, was the Hunyadi marriage dissolved?”

The theatre manager reddened, indicating with a minute nod of his head toward Claire Delacroix that he was reluctant to speak of the matter in the presence of a female.

“Really,” Claire Delacroix said, “I know something of the world, Mr Quince. Speak freely, please.”

“Very well.” The manager took a moment to compose himself. Then he said, “Some years before the Great War, Mr Hunyadi travelled to America as a member of a theatrical troupe. Magyar Arte, I believe they were called. They performed plays in their native language for audiences of immigrants. While touring, Hunyadi took up with his Hungarian leading lady. A few years later they moved to Hollywood to pursue careers in motion pictures. The woman’s name was-” He looked around furtively, then mentioned the name of a popular film actress.

“They had one of those glittering Hollywood weddings,” he added.

“With no thought of a wife still in Hungary?” Claire Delacroix inquired.

Quince shook his head. “None. Count Hunyadi made several successful silents, but when talkies came in, well, his accent, you see… There are just so many roles for European noblemen. Word within our community was that he had become a dope fiend for a time. He was hospitalized, then released, and was hoping to revive his career with a successful stage tour.”

“Yes, there were rumours of his drug habit,” Captain Baxter put in. “We were alerted down at the Hall of Justice.”

Abel Chase looked around. “What of-” He named the actress who had been Imre Hunyadi’s second wife.

“When her earnings exceeded his own, Count Hunyadi spent her fortune on high living, fast companions and powerful motor cars. When she cut him off and demanded that he look for other work, he brought a lawsuit against her, which failed, but which led to a nasty divorce.”

“Tell me about the other members of the cast.”

“You’re thinking that his understudy might have done him in?” Baxter asked. “That Winkle fellow?”

“Entirely possible,” Chase admitted. “But a premature inference, Clel. Who are the others?”

“Timothy Rodgers, Philo Jenkins,” Quince supplied. “Estelle Miller and Jeanette Stallings, the two female leads – Lucy and Mina. And of course Samuel Pollard – Van Helsing.”

“Yes.” Abel Chase stroked his moustache thoughtfully as he examined the printed programme. “Captain Baxter, I noticed that Sergeant Costello is here tonight. A good man. Have him conduct a search of this room. And have Officer Murray assist him. And see to it that the rest of the theatre is searched as well. I shall require a thorough examination of the premises. While your men perform those tasks I shall question the male cast members. Miss Delacroix will examine the females.”

Baxter said, “Yes, Major. And – is it all right to phone for the dead wagon? Count Hunyadi has to get to the morgue, don’t you know, sir.”

“Not yet, Clel. Miss Delacroix is the possessor of a medical education. Although she seldom uses the honourific, she is entitled to be called doctor. I wish her to examine the remains before they are removed.”

“As you wish, Major.”

Chase nodded, pursing his lips. “Delacroix, have a look before you question the women of the cast, will you. And, Quince, gather these persons, Rodgers, Pollard, Winkle, and Jennings for me. And you’d better include the director, as well, Garrison.”

Claire Delacroix conscientiously checked Hunyadi for tell-tale signs, seeking to determine the cause of the Hungarian’s death. She conducted herself with a professional calm. At length she looked up from the remains and nodded. “It is clear that the immediate cause of Count Hunyadi’s death is heart failure.” She looked from one to another of the men in the dressing room. “The puzzle is, for what reason did his heart fail? I can find no overt cause. The death might have been natural, of course. But I will wish to examine the marks on his neck. Definitely, I will wish to examine those marks.”

“I think they’re a mere theatrical affectation,” Walter Quince offered.

“That may be the case,” Claire Delacroix conceded, “but I would not take that for granted. Then -” she addressed herself to Captain Baxter “- I would urge you to summon the coroner’s ambulance and have the remains removed for an autopsy at the earliest possible moment.”

“You can rest assured of that,” Captain Baxter promised. “Nolan Young, the county coroner, is an old comrade of mine.”

Shortly the men Chase had named found themselves back on the stage of the Salamanca Theatre. The setting held ever the ominous, musty gloom of a darkened Transylvanian crypt. All had changed from their costumes to street outfits, their dark suits blending with the dull grey of canvas flats painted to simulate funereal stone.

A further macabre note was struck by their posture, as they were seated on the prop caskets that added atmosphere to the sepulchral stage setting.

Rather than a dearth, Abel Chase found that he was confronted by a surfeit of suspects. Each actor had spent part of the evening on-stage; that was not unexpected. As the hapless Jonathan Harker, Timothy Rodgers had won the sympathy of the audience, and Abel Chase found him a pleasant enough young man, albeit shaken and withdrawn as a result of this night’s tragedy.

Joseph Winkle, accustomed to playing the depraved madman Renfield, tonight had transformed himself into the elegant monster for the play’s final act. Philo Jenkins, the shuffling, blustering orderly, had stepped into Winkle’s shoes as Renfield. It had been a promotion for each.

Yet, Abel Chase meditated, despite Captain Baxter’s earlier suggestion that Winkle might be a suspect, he would in all likelihood be too clever to place himself under suspicion by committing so obvious a crime. Philo Jenkins was the more interesting possibility. He would have known that by murdering Hunyadi he would set in motion the sequence of events that led to his own advancement into Winkle’s part as Renfield. At the bottom of the evening’s billing, he had the most to gain by his promotion.

And Rodgers, it was revealed, was a local youth, an aspiring thespian in his first significant role. It appeared unlikely that he would imperil the production with no discernible advantage to himself.

The director, Garrison, would have had the best opportunity to commit the crime. Unlike the other cast members, who would be in their own dressing rooms – or, for such lesser lights as Rodgers, Winkle and Jenkins, a common dressing room – between the acts of the play, Garrison might well be anywhere, conferring with cast members or the theatre staff, giving performance notes, keeping tabs, in particular, on a star known to have had a problem with drugs.

“Garrison.” Abel Chase whirled on the director. “Had Hunyadi relapsed into his old ways?”

The director, sandy-haired and tanned, wearing a brown suit and hand-painted necktie, moaned. “I was trying to keep him off the dope, but he always managed to find something. But I think he was off it tonight. I’ve seen plenty of dope fiends in my time. Too many, Doctor Chase. Haven’t you come across them in your own practice?”

“My degree is not in medicine,” Chase informed him. “While Miss Delacroix holds such a degree, my own fields of expertise are by nature far more esoteric than the mundane study of organs and bones.”

“My mistake,” Garrison apologized. “For some reason, powder bouncers seem to gravitate to the acting profession as vipers do to music. Or maybe there’s something about being an actor that makes ’em take wing. They start off sniffing gin and graduate to the needle. I could tell, Mister Chase, and I think Hunyadi was OK tonight.”

Chase fixed Garrison with a calculatedly bland expression. Unlike the actors Winkle and Jenkins, the director lacked any obvious motive for wishing Hunyadi dead. In fact, to keep the production running successfully he would want Hunyadi functional. Still, what motive unconnected to the production might Garrison have had?

And there was Samuel Pollard. As Van Helsing, Chase knew, Pollard would have appeared with the lined face and grey locks of an aged savant, a man of five decades or even six. To Chase’s surprise, the actor appeared every bit as old as the character he portrayed. His face showed the crags and scars of a sexagenarian, and his thin fringe of hair was the colour of old iron.

In response to Chase’s questions, Pollard revealed that he had spent the second intermission in the company of the young actress who had appeared as the character Mina, Jeanette Stallings.

“Is that so?” Chase asked blandly.

“We have – a relationship,” Pollard muttered.

Chase stared at the grizzled actor, pensively fingering his moustache. He restrained himself from echoing John Heywood’s dictum that there is no fool like an old fool, instead inquiring neutrally as to the nature of the relationship between Pollard and the actress.

“It is of a personal nature.” Pollard’s tone was grudging.

“Mr Pollard, as you are probably aware, I am not a police officer, nor am I affiliated with the municipal authorities in any formal capacity. Captain Baxter merely calls upon me from time to time, when faced with a puzzle of special complexity. If you choose to withhold information from me, I cannot compel you to do otherwise – but if you decline to assist me, you will shortly be obliged to answer to the police or the district attorney. Now I ask you again, what is the nature of your relationship with Miss Stallings?”

Pollard clasped and unclasped his age-gnarled hands as he debated with himself. Finally he bowed his head in surrender and said, “Very well. Doctor Chase, you are obviously too young to remember the great era of the theatre, when Samuel Pollard was a name to conjure with. You never saw me as Laertes, I am certain, nor as Macbeth. I was as famous as a Barrymore or a Booth in my day. Now I am reduced to playing a European vampire hunter.”

He blew out his breath as if to dispel the mischievous imps of age.

“Like many another player in such circumstances, I have been willing to share my knowledge of the trade with eager young talents. That is the nature of my relationship with Miss Stallings.”

“In exchange for which services you received what, Mister Pollard?”

“The satisfaction of aiding a promising young performer, Doctor Chase.” And, after a period of silence, “Plus an honorarium of very modest proportions. Even an artist, I am sure you will understand, must meet his obligations.”

Chase pondered, then asked his final question of Pollard. “What, specifically, have you and Miss Stallings worked upon?”

“Her diction, Doctor Chase. There is none like the Bard to develop one’s proper enunciation. Miss Stallings is of European origin, and it was in the subtle rhythms and emphases of the English language that I instructed her.”

With this exchange Abel Chase completed his interrogation of Rodgers, Winkle, Jenkins, Pollard, and Garrison. He dismissed them, first warning them that none was absolved of suspicion, and that all were to remain in readiness to provide further assistance should it be demanded of them.

He then sought out Claire Delacroix. She was found in the office of the theatre manager, Walter Quince. With her were Estelle Miller and Jeanette Stallings. Chase rapped sharply on the somewhat grimy door and admitted himself to Quince’s sanctum.

The room, he noted, was cluttered with the kipple of a typical business establishment. The dominant item was a huge desk. Its scarred wooden surface was all but invisible beneath an array of folders, envelopes, scraps and piles of paper. A heavy black telephone stood near at hand. A wooden filing cabinet, obviously a stranger to the cleaner’s cloth no less than to oil or polish, stood in one corner. An upright typewriter of uncertain age and origin rested upon a rickety stand of suspect condition.

Claire Delacroix sat perched on the edge of the desk, occupying one of the few spots not covered by Quince’s belongings. One knee was crossed over the other, offering a glimpse of silk through a slit in the silvery material of her skirt.

She looked up as Abel Chase entered the room. Chase nodded. Claire introduced him to her companions. “Miss Miller, Miss Stallings, Doctor Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase.”

Chase nodded to the actresses. Before another word was uttered the atmosphere of the room was pierced by the shrill clatter of the telephone on Walter Quince’s desk. Claire Delacroix lifted the receiver to her ear and held the mouthpiece before her lips, murmuring into it. She listened briefly, then spoke again. At length she thanked the caller and lowered the receiver to its cradle.

“That was Nolan Young, the coroner,” she said to Chase. “I think we had best speak in private, Abel.”

Chase dismissed the two actresses, asking them to remain on the premises for the time being. He then asked Claire Delacroix what she had learned from the county coroner.

Claire clasped her hands over her knee and studied Abel Chase’s countenance before responding. Perhaps she sought a sign there of his success – or lack thereof – in his own interrogations. When she spoke, it was to paraphrase closely what Nolan Young had told her.

“The coroner’s office has performed a quick and cursory postmortem examination of Imre Hunyadi. There was no visible cause of death. Nolan Young sustains my preliminary attribution of heart failure. But of course, that tells us nothing. There was no damage to the heart itself, no sign of embolism, thrombosis, or abrasion. What, then, caused Hunyadi’s heart to stop beating?”

Abel Chase waited for her to continue.

“The condition of Hunyadi’s irises suggests that he was using some narcotic drug, most likely cocaine.”

“Such was his history.” Chase put in. “Nevertheless, Elbert Garrison observed Hunyadi closely and believes that he was not under the influence.”

“Perhaps not,” Claire acceded. “An analysis of his bloodstream will tell us that. But the two marks on his neck suggest otherwise, Abel.”

Chase glanced at her sharply. He was a man of typical stature, and she a woman of more than average height. As he stood facing her and she sat perched on the edge of Walter Quince’s desk, they were eye to eye.

“Study of the two marks with an enlarging glass shows each as the locus of a series of needle-pricks. I had observed as much, myself, during my own examination of the body. Most of them are old and well healed, but the most recent, Nolan Young informs, is fresh. It had apparently been inflicted only moments before Hunyadi’s death. If those marks were the sign of a vampire’s teeth, then the creature more likely administered cocaine to his victims than extracted blood from them.”

“You are aware, Delacroix, I do not believe in the supernatural.”

“Not all vampires are of the supernatural variety,” she replied.

Abel Chase ran a finger pensively beneath his moustache. “What is your professional opinion, then? Are you suggesting that Hunyadi died of erythroxylon alkaloid intoxication?”

“I think not,” frowned Claire Delacroix. “If that were the case, I would have expected Nolan Young to report damage to the heart, and none was apparent. Further, the condition of the needle-pricks is most intriguing. They suggest that Hunyadi had received no injections for some time, then resumed his destructive habit just tonight. I suspect that a second substance was added to the victim’s customary injection of cocaine. The first drug, while elevating his spirits to a momentarily euphoric state, would have, paradoxically, lulled him into a false sense of security while the second killed him.”

“And what do you suppose that fatal second drug to have been?”

“That I do not know, Abel. But I have a very strong suspicion, based on my conversation with the ladies of the company – and on your own comments earlier this night.”

“Very well,” Chase growled, not pleased. He knew that when Claire Delacroix chose to unveil her theory she would do so, and not a moment sooner. He changed the subject “What did you learn from the Misses Miller and Stallings?”

“Miss Miller is a local girl. She was born in the Hayes Valley section of San Francisco, attended the University of California in Los Angeles, and returned home to pursue a career in drama. She still lives with her parents, attends church regularly, and has a devoted boyfriend.”

“What’s she doing in a national touring company of the vampire play, then? She would have had to audition in New York and travel from there.”

“Theatre people are an itinerant lot, Abel.”

He digested that for a moment, apparently willing to accept Claire Delacroix’s judgment of the ingenue. “Her paramour would almost certainly be Timothy Rodgers, then.”

“Indeed. I am impressed.”

“Rodgers did not strike me as a likely suspect,” Chase stated.

“Nor Miss Miller, me.”

“What about Miss Stallings?” he queried.

“A very different story, there. First of all, her name isn’t really Jeanette Stallings.”

“The nom de theatre is a commonplace, Delacroix. Continue.”

“Nor was she born in this country.”

“That, too, I had already learned. That was why Pollard was coaching her in diction. Where was Miss Stallings born, Delacroix, and what is her real name?”

It was the habit of neither Abel Chase nor Claire Delacroix to use a notebook in their interrogations. Both prided themselves on their ability to retain everything said in their presence. Without hesitation Claire stated, “She was born in Szeged, Hungary. The name under which she entered the United States was Mitzi Kadar.”

“Mitzi Kadar! Imre Hunyadi’s Hungarian wife was Elena Kadar.”

“And Mitzi’s mother was Elena Kadar.”

“Great glowing Geryon!” It was as close to an expletive as Abel Chase was known to come in everyday speech. “Was Jeanette Stallings Imre Hunyadi’s daughter? There was no mention of a child in any biographical material on Hunyadi.”

“Such is my suspicion,” Claire Delacroix asserted.

“You did not have the advantage of reading the threatening note that Captain Baxter found in Hunyadi’s dressing room, Delacroix.”

“No,” she conceded. “I am sure you will illuminate me as to its content.”

“It was made up to look like a newspaper clipping,” Chase informed. “But I turned it over and found that the obverse was blank. It appeared, thus, to be a printer’s proof rather than an actual cutting. Every newspaper maintains obituaries of prominent figures, ready for use in case of their demise. When the time comes, they need merely fill in the date and details of death, and they’re ready to go to press. But I don’t think this was a real newspaper proof. There was no identification of the paper – was it the Call or the Bulletin the Tribune or the Gazette? The proof should indicate.”

Abel Chase paused to run a finger beneath his moustache before resuming. “The typographic styles of our local dailies differ from one another in subtle but significant detail. The faux obituary came from none of them. It was a hoax, created by a malefactor and executed by a local job printer. It was cleverly intended as a psychological attack on Hunyadi, just as was the dead rodent that was found in his dressing room.”

“And for what purpose was this hoax perpetrated?” Delacroix prompted.

“It did not read like a normal newspaper obituary,” Abel Chase responded. “There is none of the usual respectful tone. It stated, instead, that Hunyadi abandoned his wife in Hungary when she was heavy with child.”

“An act of treachery, do you not agree?” Claire put in.

“And that his wife continued her career as a medical researcher while raising her fatherless child until, the child having reached her majority, the mother, despondent, took her own life.”

“Raising the child was an act of courage and of strength, was it not? But the crime of suicide – to have carried her grief and rage for two decades, only to yield in the end to despair – who was more guilty, the self-killer or the foul husband who abandoned her?”

Chase rubbed his moustache with the knuckles of one finger. “We need to speak with Miss Stallings.”

“First, perhaps we had best talk with Captain Baxter and his men. We should determine what Sergeant Costello and Officer Murray have found in their examination of the premises.”

“Not a bad idea,” Chase assented, “although I expect they would have notified me if anything significant had been found.”

Together they sought the uniformed police captain and sergeant. Costello’s statement was less than helpful. He had examined the inner sill opening upon the window through which Abel Chase had peered approximately an hour before. It was heavily laden with dust, he reported, indicating that even had a contortionist been able to squeeze through its narrow opening, no one had actually done so.

“But a bat might have flown through that window, sir, without disturbing the dust,” the credulous Costello concluded.

Murray had gone over the rest of the backstage area, and the two policemen had examined the auditorium and lobby together, without finding any useful clues.

“We are now faced with a dilemma,” Abel Chase announced, raising his forefinger for emphasis. “Count Hunyadi was found dead in his dressing room, the door securely locked from the inside. It is true that he died of heart failure, but what caused his heart to fail? My assistant, Doctor Delacroix, suggests a mysterious drug administered along with a dose of cocaine, through one of the marks on the victim’s neck.” He pressed two fingers dramatically into the side of his own neck, simulating Hunyadi’s stigmata.

“The problem with this is that no hypodermic syringe was found in the dressing room. Hunyadi might have thrown a syringe through the small open window letting upon the alley. But we searched the alley and it was not found. It might have been retrieved by a confederate, but the lack of footprints in the so-unusual snow eliminates that possibility. A simpler explanation must be sought.”

Abel Chase paused to look around the room at the others, then resumed. “We might accept Sergeant Costello’s notion that a vampire entered the room unobtrusively, in human form. He administered the fatal drug, then exited by flying through the window, first having taken the form of a bat. It might be possible for the flying mammal to carry an empty hypodermic syringe in its mouth. This not only solves the problem of the window’s narrow opening, but that of the undisturbed dust on the sill and the untrampled snow in the alley. But while I try to keep an open mind at all times, I fear it would take a lot of convincing to get me to believe in a creature endowed with such fantastic abilities.”

Accompanied by Claire Delacroix, Chase next met with Jeanette Stallings, the Mina of the vampire play. Jeanette Stallings, born Mitzi Kadar, was the opposite of Claire Delacroix in colouration and in manner. Claire was tall, blonde, pale of complexion and cool of manner, and garbed in silver. Jeanette – or Mitzi – sported raven tresses surrounding a face of olive complexion, flashing black eyes, and crimson lips matched in hue by a daringly modish frock.

Even her makeup case, an everyday accoutrement for a member of her profession, and which she held tucked beneath one arm in lieu of a purse, was stylishly designed in the modern mode.

“Yes, my mother was the great Elena Kadar,” she was quick to admit. In her agitation, the nearly flawless English diction she had learned with the assistance of Samuel Pollard became more heavily marked by a European accent. “And that pseudo-Count Hunyadi was my father. I was raised to hate and despise him, and my mother taught me well. I celebrate his death!”

Abel Chase’s visage was marked with melancholy. “Miss Stallings, your feelings are your own, but they do not justify murder. I fear – I fear that you will pay a severe penalty for your deed. The traditional reluctance of the State to inflict capital punishment upon women will in all likelihood save you from the noose, but a life behind bars would not be pleasant.”

“That remains to be seen,” Jeanette Stallings uttered defiantly. “But even if I am convicted, I will have no regrets.”

A small sigh escaped Chase’s lips. “You might have a chance after all. From what I’ve heard of the late Count Hunyadi, there will be little sympathy for the deceased or outrage at his murder. And if you were taught from the cradle to regard him with such hatred, a good lawyer might play upon a jury’s sympathies and win you a lesser conviction and a suspended sentence, if not an outright acquittal.”

“I told you,” Jeanette Stallings replied, “I don’t care. He didn’t know I was his daughter. He pursued the female members of the company like a bull turned loose in a pasture full of heifers. He was an uncaring beast. The world is better off without him.”

At this, Chase nodded sympathetically. At the same time, however, he remained puzzled regarding the cause of Hunyadi’s heart failure and the means by which it had been brought about. He began to utter a peroration on this twin puzzle.

At this moment Claire Delacroix saw fit to extract a compact from her own metallic purse. To the surprise of Abel Chase, for until now she had seemed absorbed in the investigation at hand, she appeared to lose all interest in the proceedings. Instead she turned her back on Chase and Jeanette Stallings and addressed her attention to examining the condition of her flawlessly arranged hair, her lightly rouged cheeks and pale mouth. She removed a lipstick from her purse and proceeded to perfect the colouring of her lips.

To Abel Chase’s further consternation, she turned back to face the others, pressing the soft, waxy lipstick clumsily to her mouth. The stick of waxy pigment broke, smearing her cheek and creating a long false scar across her pale cheek.

With a cry of grief and rage she flung the offending lipstick across the room. “Now look what I’ve done!” she exclaimed. “You’ll lend me yours, Mitzi, I know it. As woman to woman, you can’t let me down!”

Before Jeanette Stallings could react, Claire Delacroix had seized the actress’s makeup case and yanked it from her grasp.

Jeanette Stallings leaped to retrieve the case, but Abel Chase caught her from behind and held her, struggling, by both her elbows. The woman writhed futilely, attempting to escape Chase’s grasp, screeching curses all the while in her native tongue.

Claire Delacroix tossed aside her own purse and with competent fingers opened Jeanette Stallings’ makeup case. She removed from it a small kit and opened this to reveal a hypodermic syringe and a row of fluid-filled ampoules. All were of a uniform size and configuration, and the contents of each was a clear, watery-looking liquid, save for one. This container was smaller than the others, oblong in shape, and of an opaque composition.

She held the syringe upright and pressed its lever, raising a single drop of slightly yellowish liquid from its point.

“A powerful solution of cocaine, I would suggest,” Claire ground between clenched teeth. “So Imre Hunyadi behaved toward the women of the company as would a bull in a pasture? And I suppose you ministered to his needs with this syringe, eh? A quick way of getting the drug into his bloodstream. But what is in this other ampoule, Miss Kadar?”

The Hungarian-born actress laughed bitterly. “You’ll never know. You can send it to a laboratory and they’ll have no chance whatever to analyze the compound.”

“You’re probably right in that regard,” Claire conceded. “But there will be no need for that. Anyone who knows your mother’s pioneering work in anesthesiology would be aware that she was studying the so-called spinal anesthetic. It is years from practical usage, but in experiments it has succeeded in temporarily deadening all nerve activity in the body below the point in the spinal cord where it is administered.”

Jeanette Stallings snarled.

“The danger lies in the careful placement of the needle,” Claire Delacroix continued calmly. “For the chemical that blocks all sensation of pain from rising to the brain, also cancels commands from the brain to the body. If the anesthetic is administered to the spinal cord above the heart and lungs, they shortly cease to function. There is no damage to the organs – they simply come to a halt. The anesthetic can be administered in larger or smaller doses, of course. Mixed with a solution of cocaine, it might take several minutes to work.”

To Abel Chase she said, “In a moment, I will fetch Captain Baxter and tell him that you are holding the killer for his disposition.”

Then she said, “You visited your father in his dressing room between the second and third acts of the vampire play. You offered him cocaine. You knew of his habit and you even volunteered to administer the dose for him. He would not have recognized you as his daughter as he had never met you other than as Jeanette Stallings. You injected the drug and left the room. Before the spinal anesthetic could work its deadly affects, Count Hunyadi locked the door behind you. He then sat at his dressing table and quietly expired.”

Still holding the hypodermic syringe before her, Claire Delacroix started for the door. Before she had taken two steps, Jeanette Stallings tore loose from the grasp of Abel Chase and threw herself bodily at the other woman.

Claire Delacroix flinched away, holding the needle beyond Jeanette Stallings’ outstretched hands. Abel Chase clutched Stallings to his chest.

“Don’t be a fool,” he hissed. “Delacroix, quickly, fetch Baxter and his men while I detain this misguided child.”

Once his associate had departed, Abel Chase released Mitzi Kadar, stationing himself with his back to the room’s sole exit.

Her eyes blazing, the Hungarian-born actress hissed, “Kill me now, if you must. Else let me have my needle and chemicals for one moment and I will end my life, myself!”

Without awaiting an answer, she hurled herself at Abel Chase, fingernails extended liked the claws of an angry tigress to rip the eyes from his head.

“No,” Chase negatived, catching her once again by both wrists. He had made a lightning-like assessment of the young woman, and formed his decision. “Listen to me, Mitzi. Your deed is not forgivable but it is understandable, a fine but vital distinction. You can be saved. You had better have me as a friend than an enemy.”

As suddenly as she had lunged at the amateur sleuth, Mitzi Kadar collapsed in a heap at his feet, her hands slipping from his grasp, her supple frame wracked with sobs. “I lived that he might die,” she gasped. “I do not care what happens to me now.”

Abel Chase placed a hand gently on her dark hair. “Poor child,” he murmured, “poor, poor child. I will do what I can to help you. I will do all that I can.”