Shea shrugged. He stood back and drew his revolver. The shot resounded, the lock shattered. I held Tommy tightly and pushed him through the gateway.
After that I took the lead. Up the steps, through the door, down the hall. It was slow going in the gathering twilight. We stumbled along toward the room behind the staircase.
“Here,” I said. “Here’s where I found him.” I opened the door. The light was still on. I pointed to the floor. “Here,” I said.
“Yeah?” grunted Shea. “Where is he?”
The room was empty. The rug was on the floor, but Petroff was not. I stared, and the room began to whirl. I took a deep breath and inhaled fresh air.
It was coming from the open French windows at the end of the room.
Of course! The windows were open. I had made some kind of a mistake. Petroff had been breathing. He had fainted, or something. After I left he recovered, went for a stroll on the porch beyond the open windows, and locked his gate. The holes in his throat. Maybe he’d cut himself while shaving.
I was a fool. A glance at Sheriff Shea confirmed the suspicion. He grinned at me.
But Tommy was not grinning.
“You were here before,” he murmured. “You saw him lying here with holes in his throat.”
“I – I made a mistake,” I mumbled.
“No. When you were here it was still daylight. Now it’s dusk. When you were here he was still asleep. But he comes alive at night.”
“What do you mean? Who comes alive at night?”
“The vampire,” he whispered. “He comes alive. And at night he flies. Look!”
Tommy screamed. His finger stabbed at the dusk beyond the opened windows.
We stared out into the night and saw the black shadow of a bat skimming off into the darkness, a mocking squeak rising from its throat.
In just a little while there was the devil of a lot of activity. The ambulance I had sent for finally arrived, and Shea had to stall them off with a trumped-up excuse about a fainting fit. Then Shea wanted to play detective and go over the place. Personally, I think he was dying to case the joint merely to collect some gossip.
I won’t bother remembering the bawling-out he handed me. I had to take it, too. After all, my story sounded pretty phony now.
Tommy was the only one who believed me. And his support was not much help. A half-wit’s comments on vampires don’t make good testimony.
While Shea handled the ambulance men, Tommy kept talking.
“Look at the garlic wreaths on the doors,” he said. “He must have been trying to keep them out. They can’t bear garlic.”
“Neither can I,” I answered. “And I’m no vampire.”
“Look at the books,” Tommy exclaimed. “Magic.”
I stepped over to the built-in bookshelves. This time Tommy really had something. There were rows of blackbound volumes; musty, crumbling treatises in Latin and German. I read the titles. It was indeed a library of demonology. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.
But what did that prove? Occultism isn’t a rare hobby on the Coast. I knew half a hundred crackpots who belonged to “secret cults,” and down Laguna way there was a whole colony of them.
Still, I ran my eyes and fingers along the rows. One of the books on the lower shelf protruded a bit more than was necessary. It offended my sense of neatness. As I reached in to push it back, a card slipped out from between yellowed pages. I palmed it, turned around just as Sheriff Shea re-entered the room.
“Come on,” he sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”
Driving back to town, with Tommy wedged between us on the front seat, Shea gave me another going over. “I don’t understand all this monkey business,” he declared.
“I don’t know what you were doing in that house in the first place. Least I can do is hold you on suspicion of illegal entry. As for Tommy here, he’s liable to get booked on the same charges. I’m gonna see his folks about this. But what I want to know is – where’s Petroff?”
“I shot him.” I grinned. “But the bats flew off with his body.”
“Never mind that,” Shea snapped. “You smart-aleck reporters aren’t tampering with the law down here. I’d like to get the DA in on this, but there’s nothing to go on, yet. Maybe after I hold you on suspicion a few days you’ll be ready to talk. I want to know how you cut those telephone wires, too.”
“Now listen,” I said. “I’ve got work to do. I’m willing to play ball on this thing and help straighten matters out. If Igor Petroff has disappeared and I’m the last man who saw him alive – or dead – that’s important to me, too. The paper’ll want the story. But I’m down here on an assignment. I’ve got to move around.”
“No, you don’t. Case I didn’t mention it, you’re under arrest right now, Mr Kirby.”
“That,” I sighed, “is all I want to know.”
I eased the car door open gently and swiftly. We were going thirty, but I took my chances. I jumped and hit the road.
Shea swore. He brought the rattling Chevvy to a halt, but by that time I was running along the ditch on the other side of the road. It was good and dark.
Shea bawled and waved his revolver, but he couldn’t spot me. Then he turned the car around and zoomed back up the road. I went into the field, kept going. In a few minutes the road was far behind me, and I headed across to the other side of the field and another dirt road running parallel.
Here I found the truck that took me back to LA. I hopped off downtown, found a drugstore, and called Lenehan at the office.
“Where in thunder are you?” he greeted me. “Just had this hick sheriff on the wire. He’s bawling you’re a fugitive from justice. And what’s all this business about a disappearing body? Give.”
I gave. “Hold the yarn,” I pleaded. “I’ve got a new angle.”
“Hold it?” yelled Lenehan. “I’m tearing it up! You and your disappearing Dracula! Petroff was drunk on the floor when you found him and you were drunk on your feet. He had the decency to wander off and sober up, but you’re still drunk!”
I hung up.
Then I fished around in my pocket and pulled out the card I had snatched from the book in Petroff’s library.
It was nicely engraved:
HAMMOND KING
Attorney at Law
I turned it over. A man’s heavy scrawl spidered across the back read:
You may be interested in this volume on vampirism.
The plot was thickening. Hammond King? I knew the name. A downtown boy. Wealthy attorney. What was the connection?
I called Maizie at the office.
“Hammond King,” I said. “Check the morgue.”
She got me the dope. I listened until she came to an item announcing that Hammond King was attorney for the Irene Colby Petroff estate. I stopped her and hung up.
It was eight o’clock. Not likely that Hammond King would still be at his office, but it was a chance worth taking. The phone book got me the number and I deposited my third nickel.
The phone rang for a long time. Perhaps he was going over a tort or something. Then a deep voice came over the wire.
“Hammond King speaking.”
“Mr King – this is Dave Kirby, of the Leader. I’d like to come over there and talk to you.”
“Sorry young man. If you’ll phone my office tomorrow for a more definite appointment—”
“I thought we might have a little chat about vampires.”
“Oh.”