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THE HOLLOW-EYED ilass was a sinister version of Escott&039;s sharp face I settled in opposite hilanced at me, then contemplated my apparently empty chair reflected in the een us Beyond it the last lights of Chicago sped or dawdled past, depending on their distance fro car to ourselves and Escott puffed on a final pipe while the porter was busy elsewhere ht

"So funny?" I asked when the corner of his mouth curled briefly

For hiestured at the ith the pipe steht I first noticed this about you at the train station and what a shock it had been"

"Yeah, ere you doing there, anyway?"

"At the station? Using the train, of course I had returned from the completion of some minor out-of-town case It was quite a shock to look up and see so that wasn&039;t there" His eyes traveled to theagain

"Most people would have figured they were seeing things and shrugged it off"

"Most people see s, but few ever draw sensible conclusions froht away you concluded I was a vareed "I&039;ll admit I did initially think your lack of a reflection was frolass, but eliminated that option after a few moments of observation The conclusion that you were a va Improbable, but obviously not impossible I&039;ve read my share of lurid literature"

I looked at the e the feeling of eeriness mirrors now inspired in me After nearly a noredreminder of my isolation fro particularly low, it was as if I no longer existed at all

"And after all that reading you still wanted to riskme?"

He rested his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes "There were many small indications that it was less of a risk than you would think Trifles, really, but important trifles A person&039;s posture and movements reveal his soul far more clearly than his words, and once one has studied this alphabet of expression, the thoughts flashing through a man&039;s mind are as easy to read as a child&039;s priure all this?"

"My theatrical background: in order to imitate life, one must first study it When I first noticed you, your ested a deep preoccupation with soness to face it"

"Maybe I orried about finding a victi your purposeful walk to the stockyards, I concluded you had no need to subsist exclusively on hu up soo there whenthe crowded streets? If it were very difficult to isolate a pedestrian for so would be strangely low"

"I hadn&039;t thought of it that way"

"After you eed You still had a probleer At that point I kneanted to arrange to meet you and to find out more, so I intruded myself--&039; "I wouldn&039;t call it an intrusion now You just wanted to geton that point"

"Why not? I got ot your questions answered

Everything turned out all right"

"True" A lazy puff of blue s and his eyes opened a crack, studyingif everything was all right now"

It was pretty vague and at the same time a pretty personal question, at least for hi about your physical and ht?"

A simple yes would have been the easy and obvious answer, but he wasn&039;t one to ask casual questions, so I thought things over until I concluded I felt fine It was crazy, too, considering I&039;d been staked in the heart and left to die by inches in my own blood

Without passion I reony in the blackness, the near-insanity, and the final icy cold creeping up to claim me forever Ultimately, in my mind, I saould-be killer as I&039;d left hi pinpoints, and hisslack I&039;d left him as he had left me, except no one would come by to save hiht be a popular conception in some circles that vampires are selfish creatures of pure appetite, that we can only take In the brief time since ive of ourselves I believe it&039;s a way of venting off all the negative stuff that gets stored up in theonly the iven mine away to a htrets

"I&039; ?"

"I did that on our way to the station"

"Yeah? So what trifles did you observe and conclude from them?"

He kept his eyes on the darkened city slipping past ourHis tone was kindly and aentleman just does not discuss and still expect to be considered a gentleman"

I went a little red in the face "What about you? Are you okay?"

He diss with a decisive wave of his pipe It hat he didn&039;t say that filled my head now He&039;d read the papers and talked to the cops and doctors By now he knew all about what I&039;d done to the rets, either

We&039;d booked a double, but Escott had it all to himself My place of rest was elsewhere on the train, and I reone off to bed It was lonely; no die-hard insos to do than keepa fresh copy of Jibaro Death that I&039;d bought at the station newsstand It kept h it was poor occupation when compared to my recent time with Bobbi Sometimes I&039;d drift out of the plot entirely and catchin particular, no doubt with a sappy smile on e car and slipped inside without getting caught Buried deep ae was htproof and very sturdy trunk It was large enough to hold some extra clothes, a sack filled with h it was less than co vertically as it was now, I&039;d have to restup bythe day the aardness of the position hardlyas the earth was next to my body I slept the sleep of the dead

No joke

Outside the car I could sense the searing, blinding sun start to roll above the horizon line I quickly folded awaymotion of the train ease me safely out of the world for another day

I&039;d been alive once, in the normal sense of the word In that time, I&039;d met a woman and fallen in love All the cliches I&039;d ever read about the subject had turned out to be absolutely correct Floating--not walking--around in a gauzy pink haze of giddy happiness, I could charitably understand how the power of love had changed the course of hu couples and pity for those ere still searching

Maybe Maureen&039;s nature set us apart and made us feel unique from all the others who&039;d ever been in love, but I didn&039;t see it at the time and still don&039;t Love is love and I&039;d have felt the same about Maureen no matter what You see, Maureen Dumont was a vampire

Of course, she wasn&039;t the kind of white-faced, blood-obsessed zombie found on the screen at the Bijou down the street; she wasn&039;t the freckled girl next door, either She was rare and special and so was our relationship, and ere sh to know it We took steps then in the hope ofour love last beyondthe books and ht is our method of reproduction; it takes a vauarantee it ork You can get into bed, e won&039;t necessarily happen or there&039;d be a lot more of us around Maybe it&039;s like a rare disease and nearly everyone is immune to it

In ht I woke up dead--only Maureen wasn&039;t there to see it happen Five years ago she&039;d packed a few things together and vanished, leaving me a cryptic note with a proain She never returned

I&039;d waited and then searched for her Not knowing if she&039;d been caught by the people she&039;d feared or if she&039;d grown tired ofpain was still inside me, fresh and harsh after all the years in between

I&039;d finally decided to try to leave it behind, desperate enough to quit my job with a New York paper in the middle of the Depression to atteht the attention of the people who had also been hunting her One of theer sister Gaylen, who had been as entle

Escott and I had ed to survive that encounter, and noere outward bound to pick up where he&039;d left off on his trail after Maureen

He was a professional, and das on his own, but he insisted I coree to render whatever help he thought I could offer, but doubting our chances of success

We arrived in New York during the day, so I was cos while Escott took care of the business of getting us routed to our hotel His plan was to check in, then hop a train up to Kingsburg

Maureen had had Gaylen confined to an expensive asyluain He must have had a hectic time before he took off; when I came to at sunsetA sloppy wooziness sloshed between my ears and I felt oddly heavy all over

Outside the trunk, a door opened slowly and closed abruptly and Escott muttered a pithy exclamation My confined world lurched, tilted, and whumped solidly onto the floor He clicked the key in the lock and pushed the lid up

"M on my head

"Terribly sorry, old man I didn&039;t have time to see you to your room

The train schedule was just too close I distinctly told the felloanted your trunk placed and he deigned not to listen"

"Welcome to New York," I said philosophically and winced at the blinding dregs of a new dusk burning through the thin curtains The sun was officially down, but ered in the sky to be painful I fulasses and found they&039;d slipped fro into my ribs One earpiece was bent, but they were still serviceable, and I slipped the up

"How are you?" he asked, walking to the openand considerately pulling down the shade A stale breezecity, but sorees cooler than the stuff we&039;d left behind in Chicago

I rubbed the sore place onof soil trickled to the floor "Gritty"

He liked puns, but only when he wasthem "Facilities are just over there if you wish to refresh yourself"

I did and got untangled froered into the bathroo?"

He dropped into a fat chair, stretched his long legs out straight, and looked s "I have the address of Gay ten&039;s next of kin--"

"Next of kin?"

"--to be notified in the event of an eency"

"It&039;s not Maureen, is it?" I&039;d read that from his attitude

"No, it is not Maureen, but some other woman named Edith Sedlock"

I&039;d never heard of her and said as much "Where is she? Have you checked on her?"

"She lives here in Manhattan, and I&039;ve not had tih , then"

He held up a cautionary hand "You&039;d create a better impression if you had a quick wash and brush-up"

"Daht; I looked ru twelve hours packed in a trunk does that to a person

He checked his watch "There&039;s a cafe off the lobby just left of the elevator I&039;ll wait for you there Thirty minutes?"

"Fifteen"

He&039;d just finished his sandwich and I gave hiuide for a change, I led the way to the nearest subway station, taking the fastest route to the address anted

"How did you h for hiht doctors were first cousins to clareat deal"

"The Ronald Colman bit, huh?"

"Hardly I merely told them the truthsome of it, anyway"

"How much is some?"

"That I was hired by an interested third party to search for Gaylen&039;s hter,&039; Maureen I had only to show the letter of reference"

"Letter of-- &039; Then the dawn ca all that stuff from the blackmail list?"

"I haven&039;t had tiood cause"

"But how could it be used?" I wasn&039;t accusatory, just curious about hisconsisted of nothing but e photos and indiscreet letters and documents

"There are ways I simply hinted around that my client was very prominent, but wished to remain anonymous When pressed, I reluctantly revealed an important name on aseries It was child&039;s play to keep inal addressee"

"Jeez, don&039;t you take the cake What did you learn from them about this Edith Sedlock?"

"They believe her to be Gaylen&039;s other daughter"

"Other--Maureen&039;s got another sister?"

"Possibly"

"She&039;d have to be a younger woht her to be Gaylen&039;s daughter Then she could be--"

"Like you, yes, but I am not inclined to think so"

"Yeah? Why?"

"Because she was able to answer the phone during the day when they called to tell her of Gaylen&039;s escape"

"Maybe she was roo with a human friend"

"There&039;s that," he conceded "She instructed them to keep her informed on the situation, and that&039;s all they were able to tell me about her"

"Would they phone her about you?"

"I&039; for Gaylen would certainly be of interest to the next of kin"

"Did Maureen leave any other address for theave to me All the bills for Gaylen&039;s care were sent there and promptly paid via Western Union Did Maureen always pay in cash?"

"As far as I knohen she did buy anything We didn&039;t exactly spend a lot of ti"

"Yes, and I know you hardly keep banker&039;s hours I did find out so: the date of Gaylen&039;s escape coincides exactly to the date you found Maureen&039;s note"

That was no real surprise and made a lot of sense "I wish she could have found so"

"Perhaps she once tried"

"What d&039;ya mean?"

"In the same situation, ould you have done to neutralize Gaylen as a threat?"

"Sauess"

"But no ht have been most reluctant to do so with her own sister You weren&039;t happy with the idea yourself"

"Yeah"

"Or perhaps Gaylen&039;s will h for her to resist such an i her oay and quite ths she went to to finally achieve her goal"

"Tellof guilt over what she&039;d been put through "I hope to God we can clear this up now"

"As do I," he agreed, and left hts until our stop caed in the east fifties and walked a couple of blocks south to Forty-eighth and a pro-class neighborhood with a few shops along the street, a drugstore on one corner, and a quiet little tavern at the other We found the right number and went up

Edith Sedlock lived in the back corner flat on the third floor, and her door remained firmly locked as she asked our business

"My nah the plain panel of wood

"I&039;m a friend of Maureen Dumont--"

"Maureen?"

"Yes, we&039;ve just co--"

A key clicked and the door opened exactly four inches Two dark brown eyes glared at us suspiciously She hadbrown hair, bobbed short, and was nearer thirty than forty Aside fro and fast heartbeat She was definitely not a vampire

"What&039;s this about?" she demanded

"May we come in and tell you, Miss Sedlock?" Escott asked politely, his hat in hand I took the hint and grabbed ing the door wide and leaving it open after alked in She looked us over carefully, frowning, but apparently eren&039;t too threatening She gestured us to a small lumpy sofa