A Question of Time d-7 Page 18

  "All right. Well, Cathy's back, apparently unharmed. My client is probably going to thank me for my trouble, pay me off, and send me on my way."

  "Yes, your mission seems to have been accomplished, Joseph. But I am not yet satisfied that I am free, in good conscience, to depart. Not yet."

  Joe did not hesitate. "What can I do to help?"

  "Yeah," seconded John.

  "I cannot say just yet, gentlemen. But the offer is gratefully accepted."

  In Joe's suite Sarah Tyrrell put down the borrowed phone, having just finished reporting to the law that her grandniece Cathy Brainard had returned safely, under her own power.

  The old lady commented: "They didn't sound very excited or surprised."

  Joe said: "A lot of runaways come back under their own power. Where's Cathy now?"

  "Getting some sleep." Sarah paused. "Where's Maria?"

  Joe didn't know. He looked at Bill, who was standing by. "And where's Brainard, by the way?"

  "Said he was going to the lobby to get some cigarettes. Didn't seem to want an escort."

  The day's snow showers were picking up in intensity as Gerald Brainard, wearing a winter coat, small suitcase in hand, turned from a pedestrian path into one of the small sightseers' parking lots scattered around the Village area. Looking left and right through the gloomy day, he pulled a set of car keys from his pocket as he approached a small snow-covered Pontiac.

  He had not looked in all the necessary directions, evidently. He barely had the car door open when a large form, wearing a fur-collared coat, loomed over him.

  "Think you're going somewhere?"

  A few minutes later, the Pontiac was parked again, this time in a snowy byway of the winter Park, a long, comparatively narrow expanse of paving, half drive, half parking lot, surrounded by pine woods, much used by summer crowds. Now the place was all but deserted; only one other car stood there, besides the Pontiac.

  Three men were sitting in this second vehicle; Smith was behind the wheel, Brainard beside him on the right, and Preston in the rear seat.

  "We're just gonna sit here for a while," Smith was saying. "No hurry, is there? We got all day, right?" He turned his head slightly. "Pres, was there anything else you wanted to do this afternoon?"

  "Nope." Preston was lighting a cigarette. He made no move to offer a smoke to anyone else. "I got all day. Nothing I want to do but sit here this afternoon and talk about money. How the man we work for is going to recoup a certain investment."

  Brainard had nothing to say. Pale and shivering, he was staring straight ahead of him, at the band of snowy woods some distance beyond the windshield.

  "I want some suggestions, Brainard. Deadbeat."

  "I don't have the money to pay you now. I—"

  The speech ended in a yelp. Preston had reached forward to burn the back of Brainard's neck with his cigarette.

  "Just sit still, sweetie. That's not what I call a suggestion. You're gonna come up with some better ones than that."

  "Nobody here in this part of the park," Smith remarked conversationally. "You couldn't plan to find a deserted place like this around here at the holiday season, could you? But it's our lucky day. I'm waiting, deadbeat. How are you going to come up with a hundred and twenty grand?"

  "I'll pay it," said Brainard. He started to pull his coat collar up, covering the back of his neck. Preston behind him pulled it down again.

  A moderate snow was falling. "They say," said Smith, "that sometimes the whole park gets snowed in for days."

  "No tourists in sight anywhere," said Preston from the rear. "No rangers. Nobody here but us. We're waiting, deadbeat."

  He burned Brainard again.

  And then, suddenly, they were not alone. The figure of a bearded man, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, was standing at the edge of the woods. And then purposefully approaching the occupied vehicle, passing the empty Pontiac.

  Brainard made a little sound, almost too faint to be called a groan, deep in his throat.

  "What the hell now?" remarked Smith.

  Drakulya stopped some twelve or fifteen feet in front of the car. He stood there motionless, hands in pockets. His lips moved and he was saying something.

  Smith ran a window partway down, and the voice of the man standing outside could be heard plainly. "Mr. Brainard, patience. You will shortly be free to leave."

  At those words Brainard made a convulsive effort to open his door. The man behind him grabbed him by the collar and pulled him forcibly back into his seat. Then Preston opened his rear door and got out of the car, which resettled itself on its springs with the removal of his considerable weight.

  "Get lost, punk," fur-collared Preston told Mr. Strangeways. "Go chase the squirrels somewhere. This is a private conversation."

  Brainard gave a desperate cry for help, a cry he choked off when the man in the driver's seat beside him jabbed him with an elbow.

  Drakulya looked from Brainard's captor behind the windshield to the other who stood in open air. "Mr. Smith, I presume? And Mr. Preston? I see it is too late to urge you to allow this man to leave the Park unharmed. Well, I suppose I must make allowances. I hesitate to interfere in the collection of a just debt. So may I ask—"

  "I already told you once," interrupted Preston. "I told you nice, go chase a squirrel. You wouldn't listen. Okay." He strode forward purposefully, heading straight for Mr. Strangeways.

  At the last moment, just before he reached his goal, a frown as of puzzlement appeared on Preston's face.

  Then he reached out for the waiting Strangeways. But the grip he wished to obtain had been pre-empted. Mr. Strangeways already had him with both hands by the front of his furred jacket, and a fraction of a second after that Mr. Preston squawked aloud, in sheer surprise that his body had so rapidly become airborne. He made a shrill noise for such a large man. And for a mere breather he was quite well-coordinated, able to execute a kind of dance step in middair, a doomed attempt to regain balance that had, alas, already been lost forever.

  His body, carefully aimed, smote with considerable force the front end of the occupied but motionless vehicle. In the first phase of the impact, the flying man's legs struck the hood. A fraction of a second later his bulky torso crashed into the sloping windshield. Strong glass caved in, but did not shatter. The hurtling body glanced from the deeply slanting surface, mounting almost straight up into the air for a distance of several car-heights before coming down on pavement covered with, so far, only a very inadequate padding of new snow.

  Even before Preston's body had undergone this secondary impact, Drakulya was standing beside the driver's door, pulling it open. Incautiously Mr. Smith had neglected to fasten his seat belt, a fact which did not escape his caller's notice.

  Taking the back of his second subject's neck firmly in one hand, and with the other seizing the steering column just below the wheel, Mr. Strangeways brought the two together with an effort that approached the maximum force he could exert.

  A fraction of a second later he was recoiling in startlement, and hissing his annoyance as he realized that this part of the exercise would have to be done over again. His effort with the steering column had only succeeded in popping an airbag, leaving Mr. Smith hardly worse than disconcerted, rather as if a shotgun loaded with cream puffs had been fired in his face. Smith tried to wave his arms, and let out a rabbit-like squeak that some listeners might have found comical.

  But Mr. Strangeways still had him by the back of the neck.

  Intent on concluding this distasteful business, the bearded man recovered his aplomb with commendable speed for one of his advanced years. The airbag had already deflated itself, and a second try with neck and steering column produced the desired result.

  Brainard, though physically almost intact, required help to leave of the battered vehicle.

  "Thanks. My God, how can I thank you?"

  "You have just done so. That is sufficient."

  "I didn't see either of 'em watching the hotel. I thought I'
d take a chance… now Cathy's back, I didn't want her getting messed up in my troubles."

  After advising his client to try some snow on his burned neck, Strangeways methodically but quickly went through the pockets of Brainard's tormentors. Preston, sprawled in the snow, still breathed, but painfully, and the examiner judged that that condition would not persist for long. In Smith it had already passed. Strangeways also rifled the more obvious places of storage in their car, looking for anything that might connect them with Brainard.

  He found nothing in that line, but did collect almost five thousand dollars in cash. Considering this the spoils of war, Strangeways handed it, in the form of an untidy bundle, to Brainard before sending him on his way.

  "Some of that's my own money. They took it away from me just now."

  "You may have the rest," the rescuer said.

  "Can I pay you something, for your help?"

  "Decent of you to offer. But no, thank you. The weather is turning bad. I advise you to drive carefully."

  "Thanks." Brainard gingerly scooped more snow onto the back of his neck. "God, maybe my luck is turning at last."

  When Strangeways arrived back at the hotel suite, Joe Keogh asked him if he had seen Brainard.

  The bearded man nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When last I saw him he was driving peacefully toward the main exit from the Park. I have little doubt that he will be well on his way before the worst of the storm arrives."

  "What about the people who were after him?"

  Strangeways looked at his well-kept nails. "Also on their way."

  After a pause Joe asked: "Still after Brainard?"

  "No. They had taken a different direction… careless, improvident men. I doubt that they have managed to get far. The roads are becoming treacherous." He made a sighing noise, faintly reptilian. "For the careless, accidents are almost inevitable in such conditions."

  "Oh," said Joe, with finality. He had known the other for many years. After a moment he said: "Oh," again.

  "Joseph?" the other asked him mildly.

  "Yes?"

  "Are a great many automobiles now equipped with airbags?"

  "Most of the new ones, I guess."

  Drakulya nodded thoughtfully. "Now I must rest. All this activity by day is wearing, even in weather so beautifully gray—I can see why my compatriot Tyrrell was so drawn to this country, dangerous as it is for us."

  "Why?"

  "The sun, Joseph. We, our kind, are much concerned with its presence, absence, and intensity."

  "With avoiding it, I'd think."

  "Yes, of course. Only with the full bulk of a planet between our bodies and the sun are vampires entirely shielded from all of the potentially harmful emissions and effects. Though it is still my contention that we may depend on some emission from the sun, as yet unknown to science, for much of our true nourishment…

  "But also we have no trouble in grasping the idea that something really odd might be expected to happen when the sun strikes directly, for the first time in a billion years, upon the freshly shattered surface of some deep rock.

  "Who can say, Joseph, what would happen then? Perhaps most likely nothing. On the other hand, I can visualize strange possibilities…"

  "And Tyrrell was thinking along those lines when he came here."

  "I am sure it was not idly, merely by chance, that he came to settle here in sun country, as it is called; on the contrary, anyone coming here as a vampire would require a strong reason."

  "Connected with Darwin, maybe?"

  "With life, Joseph. Connected with nothing less than life itself.

  Chapter 16

  Lying side by side in bed, almost silent and almost motionless, Jake and Camilla had clasped hands, his left holding her right. Both were listening intently to the normal noises of late night in the Deep Canyon. Something that sounded almost like a coyote was howling in the distance. Through the open window of their bedroom there drifted, reassuringly, the work-sounds made by the old man, demonstrating that he was on the job as usual.

  Neither Camilla nor Jake was anywhere near sleep, though hours had passed since either of them had whispered a word. The night had been hell, any kind of sleep all but impossible. Sleep had become nearly impossible anyway in recent nights, with neither of them able to guess when their demonic master might appear suddenly in their darkened bedroom, demanding the blood, the life, of one or both of them.

  Both Camilla and Jake were nearing the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion.

  Jake could only thank God that Tyrrell had not intruded on them during the night just past. There was no working timepiece in the cottage. Until the sun actually rose, the breathers had no choice but dumb endurance of the fear that the vampire had somehow discovered their plan. No relief from their suspicion that the satanic Tyrrell was only toying with them, that he would appear to confront them in the last hour, or perhaps even the last few minutes, before dawn. Jake kept going over and over in his mind everything that Tyrrell had said to him yesterday, every change of expression on the vampire's face—had Tyrrell guessed?

  One of the windows of the bedroom was on the east side of the house. Jake lay staring at the edge of the curtains, wondering for a long time whether the sky was really, at last, starting to lighten in that direction, or whether he was deluding himself with hope. When he was sure that the night was really fading, he reached out a hand silently and squeezed Camilla's wrist. Thank God, thank God, at last!

  Moments later, the sounds of Tyrrell's labors ceased. That was a sure sign that dawn was coming.

  Unless, this morning, he was quitting early to deceive them.

  "Listen!" Camilla had been lying as tautly awake as Jake.

  "Shh!"

  No more noise came from Tyrrell. Undoubtedly there was daylight in the east.

  Moments after reaching that decision, Jake was up and pulling on his clothes.

  The sun had still not cleared the canyon's eastern rim when Jake and Camilla began trying to break into the little shed in which the old man kept his explosives jealously, if not very effectively, locked up. Camilla said that she was certain, or almost certain, that Tyrrell usually wore the key to the explosives store on a chain around his neck. But the long crowbar in Jake's hands proved quite adequate for wrenching away the padlock and its hardware.

  Jake pulled open the door of the shed and took out the box of dynamite, stubby sticks wrapped in heavy, waxy paper which bore red warning labels. For a moment his heart sank as he thought the necessary blasting caps must have been hidden elsewhere; but no, there they were, another box, printed with warnings, way back on the top shelf. And there on the same shelf as the caps was the wire, several big spools of it; and down in the bottom of the cabinet the electric blasting machine, a little square box with a big handle sticking up on top, newer-looking than the one the CCC used.

  Why hadn't the old man locked this stuff up more securely? He supposed it was because Tyrrell didn't think his current slaves would have the wit and the nerve to do what they were doing.

  Now Jake could hear Camilla's hurrying footsteps. She had already drawn kerosene from the drum behind the house, and she was carrying two containers full of the smelly liquid when she met Jake on the way to the little cave across the creek where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep. One container was the two-gallon can normally used to bring kerosene to the house and fill the lamps, the other their biggest cooking pot.

  The plan, worked out over a period of days, was to drench the sleeping vampire with kerosene, running the liquid in on him with hoses or a length of metal pipe. Then they would use dynamite in an attempt to blast Edgar out of his snug sunless hiding place—the blast, Jake calculated, might itself set fire to the drenching liquid. If not, they would have to ignite the kerosene by tossing burning rags or torches into the recess.

  Jake started carrying the blasting materials to the slab of rock that shielded the vampire. Meanwhile Camilla was busy filling all the glass jars she could find in the
house with kerosene.

  As soon as she brought them across the creek, Jake took one, screwed the lid on tight, then hurled the container carefully into the vampire's shady recess. The glass shattered quite satisfactorily, and the liquid splashed and dribbled inside the shaded recess. Cam and Jake looked at each other. As far as they could tell, the stuff had gone right where they wanted it.

  No reaction had been provoked inside the miniature cave. The smell of kerosene, oily and pungent, quickly filled the air.

  "He's got to be covered with it now. He's got to be."

  "If he's there. If he's there."

  "He's there. He's got to be."

  Neither of them could be one hundred per cent sure of that. Yet there was nothing to be done but forge ahead. As Camilla tightened the lid on a second jar of kerosene, Jake wished aloud, not for the first time, that they had gasoline available.

  "Why?"

  "Burns hotter."

  "This won't work?"

  "Of course it'll work. Kerosene burns hot enough. I wouldn't be trying it otherwise. Give me that." Jake hurled another missile, scoring another direct hit.

  Gasoline just wasn't available, nor was diesel fuel. Tyrrell had no motor vehicles in the Deep Canyon, no need for the stuff, and so none was kept on hand. The generator ran on water power, and Jake had made sure that there was no auxiliary engine for it.

  He capped and hurled a third jar, and winced as this missile shattered on the stone atop the cave, wasting most if not all of the precious deadly stuff.

  Handing him the last filled jar, Camilla suddenly shouted a question. "Jake, goddam it, Jake, what if this doesn't work?"

  "Too late now to worry about that."

  "But what if—?"

  "You said you'd seen him hurt by burning."

  Camilla shuddered. "No, what I said was I never saw him stick his hand in the fire."