“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.