Necroscope

to make.' He put away his gun, folded his slim fingers into his lap. His posture was unnatural, Gormley decided: very sinuous, almost feline, very nearly female. He didn't know what to make of Dragosani at all.

'Any more heroics,' Dragosani continued, 'will result in your death — immediately!' And Gormley knew he wasn't bluffing.

Carefully, he pushed the useless automatic back into its holster, said: 'What is it you want with me?'

'We want to talk to you,' said Dragosani. 'I wish to… to put some questions to you.'

'I've had questions put to me before,' Gormley answered, forcing a tight smile. 'I imagine they'll be very searching questions, eh?'

'Ah!' said Dragosani. Now he smiled, and it was ghastly. Gormley felt physically repulsed. His man's mouth gaped like a panting dog's, where elongated teeth gleamed sharply white. 'Ah, no. There'll be no bright lights in your eyes, Sir Keenan, if that's what you mean,' said Dragosani. 'No drugs. No pincers. No hose to fill your belly with water. Oh, no, nothing like that. But you will tell me everything I want to know, of that I can assure you…'

The train was slowing as it pulled into South Kensington. Gormley's heart gave a little lurch in his chest. So close to home, and yet so far. Dragosani had a light overcoat folded over his arm. He showed Gormley the silencer of his weapon, let it peep out of the folds of the overcoat for a moment, and reminded him: 'No heroics.'

There was a handful of people on the platform: young people mainly, and a pair of down-and-outs with a bottle in a paper bag between them. Even if Gormley looked for help, he couldn't find much here. 'Just leave the station by the same route you take every night,' said Dragosani at Gormley's shoulder.

Gormley's heart was hammering now. He knew full

well that if he went with these men it was all up with him. He was an older hand at this game than the two foreign agents. When Dragosani had told him his and his squat little companion's names, that had been as good as saying: 'But it won't do you any good, for you won't be around to tell anyone!' And so he must escape from them — but how?

They left the underground onto Pelham Street, walked down the Brompton Road to Queen's Gate. 'I cross here, at the lights,' Gormley said. But as they reached the parking lanes straddling the central reservation Dragosani's grip tightened on his arm.

'We have a car here,' he said, drawing Gormley to the right and along the line of parked vehicles towards an anonymous-looking Ford. Dragosani had bought the car second-hand (tenth-hand, he suspected) and cash down, no questions asked. It would last only as long as his and Max Batu's visit. Then it would be found burned-out in some suburban lane. But it was then, as they approached the car, that Gormley saw his chance.

Not twenty-five yards away a police patrol car pulled into an empty space and a uniformed constable got out and began checking the doors of the parked cars. A routine check, Gormley guessed. Or more properly, where he was concerned, a miracle!

Dragosani felt the sudden tension in Gormley, sensed his move before he could begin to make it. Batu had just opened the nearside front and rear doors of the Ford, was turning back towards Dragosani and Gormley, when his partner hissed: 'Now, Max!'

Unprepared, still Batu instantly adopted his killing crouch, his moon face undergoing its monstrous metamorphosis. Dragosani maintained his grip on Gormley, looked away at the last moment. Gormley had opened his mouth to yell for help, but all that came out was a croak. He saw Batu's face silhouetted against the night,

and one eye which was a yellow slit while the other was round and green and throbbing as if filled with sentient pus! Something passed from that face to Gormley as fast as the thrust of a mental knife; its razor edge located his spirit, his very soul, and opened them up! Except for what little traffic passed in the street, all was quiet, and yet Gormley heard the cacophonic gonging of some great cracked bell from deep inside himself, and knew it was his heart.

With that it should have been finished, but not quite. Thrown backward by the shock of Batu's awful power, Gormley slammed loudly against the wing of a car parked behind the Ford. Along the street the constable's face turned enquiringly in their direction as a second policeman got out of the patrol car. Worse, another vehicle, a blue Porsche, pulled in with a screech of brakes, its headlights dazzling where they picked the three figures out and pinned them against the darkness. In another moment the Porsche seemed to eject a tall young man into the street, his strong face concerned as he grabbed hold of Gormley to steady him.

'Uncle?' he said, staring into the other's bulging eyes, his blue face. 'My God! It must be his heart!' The two policemen were already hurrying to see what was happening.

Dragosani found himself almost paralysed by the changing situation. Everything was going wrong. He made an effort to regain control, whispered to Max Batu: 'Get into the car!' Then he turned to the stranger. By now the policemen were on hand, offering assistance.

'What happened here?' one of them asked.

Dragosani thought fast. 'We saw him stumble,' he said. 'I thought maybe he was drunk. Anyway, I went to help, asked if there was anything I could do. He said something about his heart…? I was about to take him to a hospital, but then this gentleman arrived and — '

Tm Arthur Banks,' said the man in question. 'This is Sir Keenan Gormley, my uncle. I was on my way to meet him at the station when I saw him with these two. But look, this isn't the time or place for explanations. He has a bad heart. We have to get him to a hospital. And I mean right now!'

The policemen were galvanised into action. One of them said to Dragosani: 'Perhaps you'll give us a ring later, sir? Just so we can get a few more details? Thanks.' He helped Banks get his uncle into the Porsche while his driver ran back to the patrol car and got the blue light going. Then, as Banks pulled away from the kerb and swung the Porsche around in a screeching half circle, the constable yelled: 'Just follow us, sir. We'll have him under care in two shakes!'

A moment later and he had joined his colleague in the patrol vehicle, by which time the siren was blaring its dee-dah, dee-dah warning to traffic. In a sort of numb disbelief Dragosani watched as the two cars moved off in tandem. He watched them out of sight, then slowly, unsteadily got into the Ford and sat there beside Batu trembling with rage. The door was still open. Finally Dragosani grabbed its handle and slammed it shut, slammed it so hard that it almost sprang from its fixings.

'Damn!' he snarled. 'Damn the British, Sir Keenan Gormley, his nephew, their bloody oh-so-civilised police — everything!'

'Things are not going well,' Max Batu agreed.

'And damn you, too!' said Dragosani. 'You and your bloody evil eye! You didn't kill him!'

'Allow me to know my business,' Batu quietly answered. 'I killed him all right. I felt it. It was like crushing a bug.'

Dragosani started the engine, pulled away. 'I saw him looking at me, I tell you! He'll talk…'

'No,' Batu shook his head. 'He won't have strength for

talking. He's a dead man, Comrade, take my word for it At this very moment, a dead man.'

And in the Porsche, suddenly Gormley choked out a single word — 'Dragosani!' which meant nothing at all to his horrified nephew — and slumped down in his seat with spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

Max Batu was right: he was dead on arrival.

Harry Keogh arrived at Gormley's house in South Kensington at about 3:00 p.m. the following day. Meanwhile Arthur Banks had been a very busy man. It seemed a year but in fact it was only yesterday when he'd driven up from Chichester with his wife, Gormley's daughter, on a flying visit. Then there had been his uncle's heart attack, since when the entire world seemed to have gone stark, staring mad! And horribly so.

First there had been the awful business of phoning his aunt, Jacqueline Gormley, from the hospital and telling her what had happened; then her breakdown when she arrived at the hospital; and her daughter consoling her all through the long night, when she had broken her heart as she wandered to and fro through the house looking for her husband. This morning she'd stayed at the house until they brought Sir Keenan from the hospital morgue. The mortician there had done a pretty good job with him, but still the old man's face had been twisted in a dreadful rictus. Funeral arrangements were swift — that was the way Gormley had always said he would want it: a cremation tomorrow — until when he would lie in state at his home. Jackie couldn't stay there, however, not with him looking like that. Why, it didn't look like him at all! So she had had to be taken to her brother's place on the other side of London. That, too, had been Banks' job; and finally he had driven his wife to Waterloo so that she could go back to Chichester to the children. She'd be back for the funeral. Until then he was stuck at the house