in wonder. ‘Coincidences’ was all he said.
“‘Are you ready to go?’ Mr. Aksoy waved aside Turgut’s offer of a seat in the parlor.
“‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind, I will see where Miss Rossi is and when she can join us.’
“Turgut nodded a little too guilelessly.
“I ran into Helen on the stairs-literally, for I suddenly found myself taking the steps three at a time. She grabbed the railing to keep herself from toppling down the staircase. ‘Ouch!’ she said crossly. ‘What in the name of heaven are you doing?’ She was rubbing her elbow, and I was trying not to keep feeling the brush of her black suit and firm shoulder against my arm.
“‘Looking for you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry-are you hurt? I just got a little worried because I’d left you alone up there so long.’
“‘I’m fine,’ she told me more mildly. ‘I’ve had some ideas. How long before Professor Bora arrives?’
“‘He’s here already,’ I reported, ‘and he brought a friend.’
“Helen recognized the young bookseller, too, and they talked, haltingly, while Turgut dialed up Mr. Erozan and shouted into the receiver. ‘There has been a rainstorm,’ he explained when he returned to us. ‘The lines get a little furry in this part of town when it rains. My friend can meet us at once at the archive. He sounded sick, actually, maybe with a cold, but he said he’d come right away. Do you want coffee, madam? And I will buy you some sesame rolls on the way.’ He kissed Helen’s hand, to my displeasure, and we all hurried out.
“I was hoping to keep Turgut back as we walked so that I could tell him privately about the appearance of the vicious librarian from home; I didn’t think I could explain this in front of a stranger, particularly one Turgut had described as having little real sympathy for vampire hunts. Turgut was deep in conversation with Helen before we’d walked a block, however, and I had the double misery of watching her bestow her rare smile on him and of knowing I was keeping back information I ought to give him at once. Mr. Aksoy walked next to me, casting a glance at me now and then, but for the most part he seemed so lost in his own thoughts that I didn’t feel I should interrupt him with observations on the beauty of the morning streets.
“We found the outer door to the library unlocked-Turgut said with a smile that he’d known his friend would be prompt-and went quietly in, Turgut ushering Helen gallantly before him. The little entrance hall, with its fine mosaics and the registration book lying open and ready for the day’s visitors, was deserted. Turgut held the inner door for Helen, and she had gone well into the hushed, dim hall of the library before I heard her intake of breath and saw her stop so suddenly that our friend almost tripped behind her. Something made the hair on the back of my neck rise even before I could tell what was happening, and then something quite different made me push rudely past the professor to Helen’s side.
“The librarian waiting for us stood motionless in the middle of the room, his face turned, as if eagerly, toward our arrival. He was not, however, the friendly figure we’d expected, nor was he already bringing out the box we’d hoped to examine again, or some pile of dusty manuscripts on Istanbul ’s history. His face was pale, as if drained of life-exactly as if drained of life. This was not Turgut’s librarian friend but ours, alert and bright-eyed, his lips unnaturally red and his hungry gaze burning in our direction. At the moment his eyes lit on me, my hand gave a throb where he had bent it back so hard in the library stacks. He was famished for something. Even if I’d had the tranquillity of mind in which to conjecture about that hunger-whether it was a thirst for knowledge or for something else-I would not have had time to form the thought. Before I could so much as step between Helen and the ghoulish figure, she pulled a pistol from her jacket pocket and shot him.”
Chapter 35
“Later, I knew Helen in a great range of situations, including those we call ordinary life, and she never stopped surprising me. Often what astonished me in her were the quick associations her mind made between one fact and another, associations that usually resulted in an insight I would have been slow to reach myself. She dazzled me, too, with the wonderful breadth of her learning. Helen was full of these surprises, and I grew to consider them my daily fare, a pleasant addiction I developed to her ability to catch me off guard. But she never startled me more than at that moment in Istanbul, when she suddenly shot the librarian.
“I had no time for astonishment, however, because he stumbled sideways and hurled a book toward us, just missing my head. It hit a table somewhere to my left, and I heard it fall to the floor. Helen fired again, stepping forward and aiming with a steadiness that took my breath away. Then the oddness of the creature’s reaction struck me. I’d never seen anyone shot before except in the movies, but there, alas, I had seen a thousand Indians die at gunpoint by the time I was eleven, and later every sort of crook, bank robber, and villain, including hosts of Nazis created expressly for shooting by an enthusiastic wartime Hollywood. The strange thing about this shooting, this real one, was that although a dark stain appeared on the librarian’s clothes somewhere below his sternum, he did not clutch the spot with an agonized hand. The second shot grazed his shoulder; he was already running, and then he bolted into the stacks at the rear of the hall.
“‘A door!’ Turgut shouted behind me. ‘There is a door there!’ And we all ran after him, tripping on chairs and darting among the tables. Selim Aksoy, slight and fleet as an antelope, reached the shelves first and disappeared among them. We heard a scuffle and a crash, then indeed the slamming of a door, and found Mr. Aksoy stumbling up out of a drift of fragile Ottoman manuscripts with a purple lump on the side of his face. Turgut ran for the door and I ran after, but it was shut tightly. When we got it open, we discovered only an alley, deserted apart from a pile of wooden boxes. We searched the labyrinthine neighborhood at a trot, but there was no sign of the creature or his flight. Turgut collared a few pedestrians, but no one had seen our man.
“Reluctantly, we returned to the archive through the back door and found Helen holding her handkerchief to Mr. Aksoy’s cheekbone. The gun was nowhere in sight, and the manuscripts were neatly stacked on the shelf again. She looked up when we came in. ‘He fainted for a minute,’ she said softly, ‘but he is all right now.’
“Turgut knelt by his friend. ‘My dear Selim, what a bump you have.’
“Selim Aksoy smiled wanly. ‘I am in good care,’ he said.
“‘I can see that,’ Turgut agreed. ‘Madam, I congratulate you for trying. But it is useless to attempt to kill a dead man.’
“‘How did you know?’ I gasped.
“‘Oh, I know,’ he said grimly. ‘I know the look of that face. It is the expression of the undead. There is no other face like that. I have seen it before.’
“‘It was a silver bullet, of course.’ Helen held the handkerchief more firmly on Mr. Aksoy’s cheek and eased his head back against her shoulder. ‘But, as you saw, he moved, and I missed his heart. I know I took a great risk’-she looked deeply at me for a moment, but I couldn’t read her thoughts-‘but you could see for yourselves that I was right in my calculation. A mortal man would have been seriously wounded by such shots.’ She sighed and adjusted the handkerchief.
“I looked from one to the other in bewilderment. ‘Have you been carrying around that gun all the time?’ I asked Helen.
“‘Oh, yes.’ She pulled Aksoy’s arm over her shoulder. ‘Here, help me get him up.’ Together we lifted him-he was light as a child-and steadied him on his feet. He smiled and nodded, shrugging off our assistance. ‘Yes, I always carry my pistol when I feel any sort of-uneasiness. And it is not so difficult to acquire a silver bullet or two.’
“‘That is true.’ Turgut nodded.
“‘But where did you learn to shoot like that?’ I was still stunned by that
