The single figure now occupying the queen-sized bed was sprawled across it diagonally and concealed up to the armpits by a sheet. The rumpled cover left bare the pale and wiry arms, the muscle-rounded shoulders. Uncle Matthew's head lifted slightly when the light came on. He turned his face away from the brighter light and toward the visitors.
Or—was this really Uncle Matthew? Angie, coming closer to the bed, paused suddenly, for a moment doubting whether she was looking at the same man. This face looked altogether too young, and at the same time too unhealthy. The pallor of this face was intense, the features somehow altered. The glossy dark hair, now entirely free of gray, was wildly tousled. Angie saw that Uncle Matthew's gaze, pointed in the general direction of his visitors, was unresponsive, his eyes glassy, hardly more than half open. If she hadn't just seen the body move, she might well have thought the face before her now was dead.
And Elizabeth was right, those certainly looked like bloodstains on his lips and chin and cheeks. As if he had been drinking clumsily, or sucking blood—Angie giggled suddenly, a strained and awkward sound.
No one took any notice.
"Uncle Matthew?" There was horror in John's voice. He was wide awake now. As he leaned forward, closer to the bed, something crackled faintly beneath his hand pressing down the sheets. Puzzled, John shifted his weight and pushed again, testing. The effort produced a renewed crunching sound. "Oh," he said then, as if he had just remembered something.
The man who was lying across the bed suddenly rolled over on his back, an abrupt, almost convulsive movement. His eyes opened a little wider, and then sought those of the younger man. The gory lips twitched, revealing stark white, pointed teeth. It looked as if he were trying, so far without success, to communicate something to John.
"Sir? What is it?"
A straining, an evident attempt to answer, but no speech, hardly any sound.
Angie chimed in, pleading, "Uncle Matthew?"
The man in the bed gurgled, gasped for air, and murmured something. It was at last a response, but far from intelligible. He made an abortive effort to raise himself, but could get his head no more than a couple of inches from the pillow before falling back.
Elizabeth the waitress had followed John and Angie into the bedroom and had been hovering uneasily in the background. Now she said: "At first I thought he was just drunk, but—I don't remember that he even had a drink. We'd better call a doctor. If he's bleeding like that around his mouth." She giggled inappropriately. Unlike Angie's nervous laughter earlier, Elizabeth's went on for some time.
But John was shaking his head emphatically before Elizabeth had even finished speaking. "No," he said decisively. "No doctors."
Angie looked at him with a questioning frown, but said nothing for the moment.
"Well, he's your relative. Me, I don't like the way he looks. In fact I think I'm getting out of here. Where'd he put my coat? In the front closet, I suppose." The woman was obviously growing more and more upset every time she looked at Uncle Matthew in the bright light.
"I'll help you find your coat," said Angie, turning away from the bed. Meanwhile she was wondering whether she ought to try to break it gently to Elizabeth that her throat was bleeding slightly, but before she could decide the doorbell chimed.
"Who could that be?" asked Elizabeth automatically. Angie thought that after several hours of quiet it wasn't likely to be the neighbors complaining about noise.
All three of Uncle Matthew's guests moved into the living room, approaching the front door and its closed-circuit color video.
John turned on the viewer beside the door, and all three looked at the little wall-mounted screen. Angie started to speak, then bit her tongue. From the corner of her eye, she saw Elizabeth raise her fingers to her mouth; then the women looked at each other in puzzlement at their shared reaction.
Before either of them could decide what to say, John made his own comment. "Some young guy," he muttered. "Whoever it is, I never saw him before."
"I think I have," said Angie timidly.
Valentine Kaiser, wearing a trench coat, was standing there front and center, posing accommodatingly right in front of the electronic eye so anyone inside could get a look at him. Somewhat vague in the background was the figure of another man, who appeared just about tall enough to look over Kaiser's shoulder. Angie couldn't be sure, but she didn't think the second man was anyone she'd ever seen.
Despite the hour the celebrity publicist appeared cheerful, clean-shaven, and wide awake, swinging his arms a little, shifting his weight restlessly as he waited. As she watched, Kaiser extended his arm and pressed the chime again.
John was looking at her now, and she turned slowly away from the viewer, trying to think of how to explain to him who Kaiser was. "I think I—" Angie began, and then was distracted by Liz.
The waitress had already retrieved her coat from the front closet and put it on. In the act of adjusting a scarf she paused, dabbed with her hand at her shapely neck, then looked at her fingers. "Oh, my God, I'm bleeding too," she murmured. Eyeing her companions she giggled once more, and Angie wondered suddenly if Liz might be drunk or high on some other drug.
"Angie," John was asking, an edge in his voice, "do you know who this guy is out in the hall?"
Elizabeth, with coat and scarf now firmly on, was holding her right hand stiffly out in front of her. For the moment, as she regarded the fingers marked with pinhead red spots from her throat, she looked completely sober. "I don't want to meet him," she muttered. "Is there a back door?" she asked distractedly. "A service door? I'm going to just slip out that way, if…"
"Wait," said John sharply. He looked from one to the other with a hard gaze that puzzled Angie, then concentrated on her: "Were you going to say you know him?"
"I recognize him," she admitted in annoyance. If he would only give her the time to explain properly…
"You do? Who is he, then?"
"Tell you in a minute." Angie, her anger suddenly flaming because of being barked at, stepped quickly to the door and started to open the locks while keeping the security fasteners in place. Two of these, designed to allow the door to open no more than about six inches, guarded the front portal of Uncle Matthew's residence. Both were made of thicker steel, were more elaborate in design, and looked much stronger than the usual door chains that served as household protectors in the city.
John at first moved as if he would prevent her from opening the door, but then stepped back. "All right," he muttered. "I want to get a look at him directly."
In another moment, confronting Valentine Kaiser face-to-face through a six-inch gap, Angie tried to summon up her best skill at vituperation, but found that any talent she might ordinarily possess along that line had deserted her. "What in the world do you want?" was the nearest thing to scathing words that she could think of. "At this hour?" She did her best to make her tone compensate for the deficiency.
Seen directly, Kaiser looked worried, or at least concerned, rather than jaunty. Not that he was lacking confidence. Sounding almost cheerful, he answered her question with one of his own. "How's Mr. Maule doing?"
"What do you want?"
Their visitor looked grave. "I had an impression that he might be ill. One gets these feelings sometimes, you know, when one has known someone for a very long time. May I talk to him, please?"
"No. Go away." Angie paused. "You say you know him?"
"For a very long time, as I say." As if in afterthought he pointed behind him with a thumb. "Forgive me, this is my associate, Mr. Stewart." The trench-coated figure nodded. Kaiser gave Angie a reassuring smile. "Now, may we come in?"