useful in solving two problems at once; for with the secret watchers out there in the fields and lanes around Harkley, now was probably as good a time as any to make himself scarce for a while.
Except… first he would like to know what the real purpose of those watchers was. Were they merely suspicious, or did they actually know something? And if so, what did they intend to do about it? Yulian had already developed a plan to get those questions answered. It was just a matter of getting it right, that was all.
The sky was cloudy and the morning dull that Monday when Yulian rose up from his bed. He told Helen to bathe, dress herself prettily, go about the house and grounds just as if her life were completely normal, unchanged. He dressed and went down to the cellars, where he gave the same instructions to Anne. Likewise his mother in her room. Just act naturally and let nothing appear suspicious; indeed, Helen could even drive him into Torquay for an hour or two.
They were followed into Torquay but Yulian was not aware of it. He was distracted by the sun, which kept breaking through the clouds and reflecting off mirrors, windows and chrome. He still affected his broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses, but his hatred of the sun — and its effect on him — were much stronger now. The car's mirrors irritated him; his reflection in the windows and other bright surfaces disturbed him; his vampire ‘awareness' was playing hell with his nerves. He felt closed in. Danger threatened and he knew it — but from which quarter? What sort of danger?
While Helen waited in the car, three storeys up in a municipal car park, he went to a travel agency and made inquiries, then gave instructions. This took a little time, for the holiday he had chosen was outside the usual scope of the agency. He wanted to spend a week in Romania. Yulian might simply have phoned one of London's airports and made a booking, but he preferred to let an authorised agency advise him on restrictions, visas,
After making his travel arrangements (the agency would ring him within forty-eight hours and let him have all the details) Yulian took Helen for lunch. While she ate listlessly and tried desperately hard not to look fearful of him, he sipped a glass of red wine and smoked a cigarette. He might have tried a steak, rare, but food — ordinary food — no longer appealed. Instead he found himself watching Helen's throat. He was aware of the danger in that, however, and so concentrated his mind on the details of his plan for tonight instead. Certainly he did not intend to stay hungry for very long.
By 1.30 P.M. they had driven back to Harkley; and then, too, Yulian had briefly picked up the thoughts of another watcher. He'd tried to infiltrate the stranger's mind but it immediately shut him out. They were clever, these watchers! Furious, he raged inwardly through the afternoon and could scarcely contain himself until the fall of night.
Peter Keen was a comparatively recent recruit to INTESP's team of parapsychologists. A sporadic telepath, (his talent, as yet untrained, came in uncontrolled, unannounced bursts, and was wont to depart just as quickly and mysteriously) he'd been recruited after tipping off the police on a murder-to-be. He had accidentally scanned the mind — the dark intention — of the would-be rapist and murderer. When it happened just as he'd said it would, a high-ranking policeman, a friend of the branch, had passed details on to INTESP. The job in Devon was Keen's first field assignment, for until now all of his time had been spent with his instructors.
Yulian Bodescu was under full twenty-four hour surveillance now, and Keen had the mid-morning shift, 8.00 A.M. till 2.00 P.M. At 1.30 when the girl had driven Bodescu back through Harkley's gates and up to the house, Keen had been only two hundred yards behind in his red Capri. Driving straight past Harkley, he'd stopped at the first telephone kiosk and phoned headquarters, passing on details of Bodescu's outing.
At the hotel in Paignton, Darcy Clarke took Keen's call and passed the telephone to the man in charge of the operation, a jolly, fat, middle-aged chain-smoking ‘scryer' called Guy Roberts. Normally Roberts would be in London, employing his scrying to track Russian submarines, terrorist bomb squads and the like, but now he was here as head of operations, keeping his mental eye on Yulian Bodescu.
Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire's mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.
Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people:
Bodescu, his mother, his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu's dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was — simply ‘the Other'. Like Yulian himself, Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was — in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about — it was certainly there and it was alive.
‘Roberts here,' the scryer spoke into the telephone. ‘What is it, Peter?'
Keen passed his message.
‘Travel agency?' Roberts frowned. ‘Yes, we'll get on to it at once. Your relief? He's on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.' Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.
When he got an answer, Roberts held a handkerchief to his mouth, contrived a young voice. ‘Hello? Er, hello?'
‘Hello?' came back the answer. ‘Sunsea Travel, here — who's calling, please?' It was a male voice, deep and smooth.
‘Seem to have a bad line,' Roberts replied, keeping his voice to a medium pitch. ‘Can you hear me? I was in, oh, an hour ago. Mr Bodescu?'
‘Ah, yes, sir!' The booking agent raised his voice. ‘Your Romanian inquiry. Bucharest, any time in the next two weeks. Right?' Roberts gave a start, made an effort to keep his muffled voice even. ‘Er, Romania, yes, that's right.' He thought fast — furiously fast. ‘Er, look, I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but —‘
‘Yes?'
‘Well, I've decided I can't make it after all. Maybe next year, eh?'
‘Ah!' There was some disappointment in the other's tone. ‘Well, that's the way it goes. Thanks for
calling, sir. So you're definitely cancelling, right?'
‘Yes.' Roberts jiggled the phone a bit. ‘I'm afraid I have to… Damn bad line, this! Anyway, something's come up, and —,
‘Well, don't worry about it, Mr Bodescu,' the travel agent cut him off. ‘It happens all the time. And anyway, I haven't yet found the time to make any real inquiries. So no harm done. But do let me know if you change your mind again, won't you?'
‘Oh, indeed! I will, I will. Most helpful of you. Sorry to have been such a nuisance.'
‘Not at all, sir. Bye now.'
‘Er, goodbye!' Roberts put the phone down.
Darcy Clarke, who had been party to this exchange, said, ‘Sheer genius! Well done, Chief!'
Roberts looked up but didn't smile. ‘Romania!' he repeated, ominously. ‘Things are hotting up, Darcy. I'll be glad when Kyle gets his call through. He's two hours overdue.'
At that very moment the phone rang again.
Clarke inclined his head knowingly. ‘Now that's what I call a talent. If it doesn't happen — make it!'
Roberts pictured Romania in his mind's eye — his own interpretation, for he'd never been there — then superimposed an image of Alec Kyle over a rugged Romanian countryside. He closed his eyes and Kyle's picture came up in photographic — no, live — detail.
‘Roberts here.'
‘Guy?' Kyle's voice came back, crisp with static. ‘Listen, I intended to route this through London, John Grieve, but I couldn't get him.' Roberts knew what he meant: obviously he would have liked the call to be one hundred per cent secure.
‘I can't help you there,' he answered. ‘There's no one that special around right now. Are there problems,
