He sank down in a chair, mumbling thanks. As I went off I felt sick. I’d seen too many actors going on the rocks to mistake Hess’s symptoms. I knew that his box office days were over. There would be longer and longer waits between features, and then personal appearances, and finally Poverty Row and serials. And in the end maybe a man found dead in a cheap hall bedroom on Main Street, with the gas on.
There was a crowd around the bar. Somebody said, “Here’s Mart. Hey, come on and meet the vampire.”
Then I got a shock. I saw Jack Hardy, my host, the director with whom I'd on many a hit. He looked like a corpse. And I’d seen him looking plenty Ixitl before. A man with a hangover or a marijuana jag isn't a pretty sight, but I’d never seen Hardy like this. He looked as though he was keeping going on his nerve alone. There was no blood in the man.
I’d last seen him as a stocky, ruddy blond, who looked like nothing so much as a wrestler, with his huge biceps, his ugly, good-natured face, and his bristling crop of yellow hair. Now he looked like a skeleton, with skin hanging loosely on the big frame. His face was a network of sagging wrinkles. Pouches bagged beneath his eyes, and those eyes were dull and glazed. About his neck a black silk scarf was knotted tightly.
“Good God, Jack!” I exclaimed. “What have you done to yourself?”
He looked away quickly. “Nothing,” he said brusquely. “I’m all right. I want you to meet the Chevalier Futaine—this is Mart Prescott.”
“Pierre,” a voice said. “Hollywood is no place for titles. Mart Prescott—the pleasure is mine.”
I faced the Chevalier Pierre Futaine.
We shook hands. My first impression was of icy cold, and a slick kind of dryness—and I let go of his hand too quickly to be polite. He smiled at me.
A charming man, the chevalier. Or so he seemed. Slender, below medium height, his bland, round face seemed incongruously youthful. Blond hair was plastered close to his scalp. I saw that his cheeks were rouged—very deftly, but I know something about makeup. And under the rouge I read a curious, deathly pallor that would have made him a marked man had he not disguised it. Some disease, perhaps, had blanched his skin—but his lips were not artificially reddened. And they were as crimson as blood.
He was clean-shaved, wore impeccable evening clothes, and his eyes were black pools of ink.
“Glad to know you,” I said. “You’re the vampire, eh?”
He smiled. “So they tell me. But we all serve the dark god of publicity, eh Mr. Prescott? Or—is it Mart?”
“It’s Mart,” I said, still staring at him. I saw his eyes go past me, and an extraordinary expression appeared on his face—an expression of amazement, disbelief. Swiftly it was gone.
I turned. Jean was approaching, was at my side as I moved. She said, “Is this the chevalier?”
Pierre Futaine was staring at her, his lips parted a little. Almost inaudibly he murmured, “Sonya.” And then, on a note of interrogation, “Sonya?”
I introduced the two. Jean said, “You see, my name isn’t Sonya.”
The chevalier shook his head, an odd look in his black eyes.
“I once knew a girl like you,” he said softly. “Very much like you. It’s strange.”
“Will you excuse me?” I broke in. Jack Hardy was leaving the bar. Quickly I followed him.
I touched his shoulder as he went out the French windows. He jerked out a snarled oath, turned a white death mask of a face to me.
“Damn you, Mart,” he snarled. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
I put my hands on his shoulders and swung him around.
“What the devil has happened to you?” I asked. “Listen, Jack, you can’t bluff me or lie to me. You know that. I’ve straightened you out enough times in the past, and I can do it again. Let me in on it.”
His ruined face softened. He reached up and took away my hands. His own were ice-cold, like the hands of the Chevalier Futaine.
“No,” he said. “No use, Mart. There’s nothing you can do. I’m all right, really. Just—overstrain. I had too good a time in Paris.”
I was up against a blank wall. Suddenly, without volition, a thought popped into my mind and out of my mouth before I knew it.
“What’s the matter with your neck?” I asked abruptly.
He didn’t answer. He just frowned and shook his head.
“I’ve a throat infection,” he told me. “Caught it on the steamer.”
His hand went up and touched the black scarf.
There was a croaking, harsh sound from behind us—a sound that didn’t seem quite human. I turned. It was Hess Deming. He was swaying in the portal, his eyes glaring and bloodshot, a little trickle of saliva running down his chin.
He said in a dead, expressionless voice that was somehow dreadful, “Sandra died of a throat infection, Hardy.”
Jack didn't answer. He stumbled back a step. Hess went on dully.
“She got all white and died. And the doctor didn’t know what it was, although the death certificate said anemia. Did you bring back some filthy disease with you, Hardy? Because if you did I’m going to kill you.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “A throat infection? I didn’t know—”
“There was a wound on her throat—two little marks, close together. That wouldn’t have killed her, unless some loathsome disease—”
“You’re crazy, Hess,” I said. “You know you're drunk. Listen to me: Jack couldn’t have had anything to do with—that.”
Hess didn’t look at me. He watched Jack Hardy out of his bloodshot eyes. He went on in that low, deadly monotone:
“Will you swear Mart’s right, Hardy? Will you?”
Jack’s lips were twisted by some inner agony. I said, “Go on, Jack. Tell him he’s wrong.”
Hardy burst out, “I haven't been near your wife! I haven’t seen her since I got back. There’s—”
“That’s not the answer I want,” Hess whispered. And he sprang for the other IIMII reeled forward, rather.
Hess was too drunk, and Jack too weak, for them to do each other any harm, but there was a nasty scuffle for a moment before I separated them. As I pulled them apart, Hess’s hand clutched the scarf about Jack’s neck, ripped it away.
And I saw the marks on Jack Hardy’s throat. Two red, angry little pits, white rimmed, just over the Iclt jugular.
CHAPTER II.
THE CREMATION OF SANDRA
It was the next day that Jean telephoned me.
“Mart,” she said, “we’re going to run over a scene for Red Thirst tonight at the studio—Stage 6. You’ve been assigned as assistant director for the pic, so you should be there. And—I had an idea Jack might not tell you. He’s been—so odd lately.”
"Thanks, honey,” I said. “I’ll be there. But I didn’t know you were in the flicker.”
“Neither did I, but there’s been some wire-pulling. Somebody wanted me in it—the chevalier, I think—and the big boss phoned me this morning and let me in on the secret. I don't feel up to it, though. Had a bad night.”
“Sorry,” I sympathized. “You