'Then tell me about him,' Harry answered. Tell me all you can of him, and I'll try to do the rest. You've bargained well. I can't refuse you.'

Again Faethor chuckled. And: Indeed your memory is short, he said. It will last only as long as your dream!

Harry saw that it was true and his frustration turned to anger. 'Then what has been the point? Did you only come to mock me after all?'

Not at all, I came to seal a bargain. And it is sealed. You will come to me where you know I lie, and we shall speak again - but the next time you'll remember!

'But I won't even remember this time!' Harry cried out.

Ah, but you will, you will, Faethor's fading voice came echoing out of the rolling fog. You'll remember something of it, at least. For I've seen to it, Harry. I've seen to it, Haaarry Keeooogh!

'Harry?' Someone stood beside him, bent over him.

'Harry' Sandra's urgent hand was on his arm; and Darcy Clarke hurrying to answer a banging at the door, where Manolis Papastamos was shouting to be let in; and a feeble dawn light struggling to find cracks in the louvres.

Harry leaped awake, lurched upright like a drunkard and almost overturned his chair. But Sandra was there to support him. He held her close, and in another moment Darcy and Manolis were in the room.

'A terrible thing! A terrible thing!' Manolis kept repeating, as Darcy opened a window and shutters to let in the pale light of a newly dawning day. But as the room sprang to life so Manolis's jaw fell open and he pointed a trembling hand at a huge Greek tapestry covering the better part of one entire wall. The tapestry was moving!

'God almighty!' Darcy gasped, as Sandra clung to Harry more tightly yet.

The tapestry was a panorama of banded blue sky over brown mountains and white villages, but printed on the sky in letters eighteen inches high was a name: FAETHOR. And it was printed in fur that crawled!

Already Harry's dream was forgotten, but he would never in a lifetime forget his waking conversations with this father of vampires. 'Faethor!' he gasped the word out loud. And as if it were some Word of Power, the name at once broke up the legend written on the tapestry - into a hundred individual bats! No bigger than winged mice, they released their hold on the fabric and whirled around the room once before escaping through the open window.

And: 'So, it's true,' said Manolis Papastamos, white and trembling, the first to regain command of his senses. 'It all comes together. I had thought Ken Layard and Trevor Jordan were the strange policemen, and you three stranger still. But of course, because you hunt the strange criminal!'

Sandra caught a telepathic glimpse of his mind, and knew that he knew.

'You should have told me from the beginning,' he said, flopping down into a chair. 'I am a Greek and some of us understand these things.'

'Do you, Manolis?' said Darcy. 'Do you?'

'Oh, yes,' said the other, nodding. 'Your criminal, your murderer, he is the Vrykoulakas. He is the vampire!'

9

Cat and Mouse

'I understand why you didn't trust me,' said Papastamos, 'but you should have. What? You think the Greeks are ignorant of these things? Greeks, of all people? Listen, I was a boy in Phaestos on the island of Crete, born and lived there until I was thirteen. Then I went to my sister in Athens. But I never forgot the myths of the islands, and I never forgot what I saw and heard there. Did you know that there are places in Greece even now where they put the silver coins on the eyes of the dead, to keep them closed? Hah! Those slits in the eyes of Layard. He kept opening his eyes!'

Darcy said to him: 'Manolis, how could we know? If you took a hundred people and told them you were hunting a vampire, how many do you think would believe you?'

'Here in Greece, in the Greek islands, ten or twenty,' the other answered. 'Not the young peoples, no, but the old ones who remember. And up in the mountains - in the mountain villages of Karpathos, for example, or Crete, or better still in Santorin - maybe seventy-five out of a hundred! Because the old ways die hard in such places. Don't you know where you are? Just look at a map. Six hundred miles away is Romania! And do you think the Romanian peoples don't know the Vrykoulakas, the vampire? No, no, we are not the innocent childrens, my friends!'

'Very well,' said Harry, 'let's waste no more time. You know, you understand, you believe - we accept that. But still we warn you that myths and legends can be very different from the real thing.'

'I'm not so sure,' Manolis shook his head. 'And in any case I have had the experience of the real thing. When I was a boy thirty years ago there was a sickness. The children were growing weak. An old priest had lived on the island in a remote place in the stony hills. He had lived there, all alone, for many years. He said he was alone for his sins, and dared not surround himself with the people. Recently he had been found dead in his place and they had buried him there. But now the village priest went there with the people - with the fathers of the sick children - and dug him up. They found him fat and red and smiling! And how did they deal with him? I heard it later - with a wooden spear through the heart. I cannot be sure, no, but that night there was a big bonfire in the hills, and its light was seen for miles around.'

'I think we should tell Manolis everything,' said Sandra.

'We will,' Harry nodded, 'but first he came here to tell us something.'

'Ah!' Manolis gave a start and stood up. 'My God, but now this vampire you hunt - there are two of them!'

Harry groaned. 'Ken Layard!'

'Of course, the poor Ken. This morning, one hour ago, I get the call. It is the morgue. They have found the naked body of a mortician. He is dead with a broken neck. And Ken Layard's body has disappeared. And then - ' he spoke directly to Harry,' - then I remember what you say about Layard being undead, and that you want him burned very quickly. And then I know. But this is not all.'

'Go on, Manolis,' Darcy prompted him.

'The Samothraki has been absent from the harbour since the night of the trouble under the old windmills, when I saved Layard from the sea. This morning the fishermen have brought in many pieces of burned wreckage. It is - it was - the Samothraki! And still there is more. A girl, a prostitute, died on the streets three, four nights ago. She has been examined. The doctor says it could have been anything: not eating - the, how do you say, malnutrition? - or perhaps she fainted and lay in the alley all night, and so died of the exposure. But most likely it is the anaemia. Hah! You know this anaemia? No blood in the body? My God - anaemia!'

'Like a plague.' Harry groaned. 'She must be burned, too.'

'She will be,' Manolis promised. 'Today. Believe me, I will see to it!'

Sandra said: 'And still we're no closer to discovering who the vampire is, or what he's done to Ken. And I for one would like to know how those bats got in here...'

Harry indicated a domed wood-burning fireplace where its flue went up into a brick wall. 'At least there's no great mystery there,' he said. 'As to Layard: he's now in thrall to this thing and, depending how strong his will is, serving it faithfully. And the vampire's identity? Well, there's a clue I can follow up. I think I may know someone who has the answer.'

'What clue?' Manolis faced him. 'Any clue - all clues -are for me. No more secrets. Also, I want to know about that word the bats made on the wall: what did it mean?'