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.