A Werewolf Among Us

TEN: Another Corpse

An hour after the police had gone, shortly before nightfall, the house computer summoned St. Cyr to the telephone, where a call awaited him from the port offices of Worldwide Communications.

"St. Cyr speaking."

The woman on the other end of the line was genuine, not a tapedeck re-creation. She said, "We have a confidential light-telegram for you, Mr. St, Cyr."

"From whom?"

"Talmud Associates of Ionus." That would be the data that Talmud had gathered on Walter Dannery, the man whom Jubal's accountants had fired for embezzling funds.

"Stat it, please."

"It's labeled confidential," the woman said. "We have no authorization to stat the contents."

"Do you have a delivery service that could get the thing to me?"

"Tonight?"

"If possible."

"Not until morning," she said. "If you want it tonight, you'll have to come in to the office. You must sign for it."

'Never mind," he said. "Have it delivered first thing in the morning."

"Certainly, Mr. St. Cyr." She broke the connection.

Five minutes later, he announced himself at Tina Alderban's studio door, waited a full minute and then repeated his name. He knew that she was in the suite, for if she had not been, he would have been informed of that fact by the house computer, which could keep track of comings and goings. A moment later the concealed panel slid up, coded by her voice. He stepped through the entranceway and walked into the huge room, where she was working on a new canvas. The overhead lights were on, since only a haze of sunlight entered the room through the windows. Outside, it was almost dark.

"Am I disturbing you?"

Without looking up, she said, "Yes. But come in and sit down."

He did as she said, choosing a chair from which he could see the back of the easel and the front of her perfect, dark face.

She said, "Shouldn't you be out — detecting?"

"I am."

"You don't appear to be. Unless I'm a suspect."

"Everyone's a suspect."

For the first time since he had come in she looked at him, then quickly back to her canvas and worked a brush full of blue paint into the square surface. She said, "And why do I qualify?"

"Let's not talk about you just now," he said. "Tell me about Dane."

"Tell you what about him?"

"He seems quite superstitious."

She nodded, put down the blue brush, picked up a yellow.

"Doesn't that strike you as odd?" St. Cyr asked.

"Why should it?"

"Everyone in the family has had intense sleep-teach education, and all of you appear to have higher than average IQs."

"So?" She swirled the green.

"Generally speaking, an educated man is not superstitious. He scoffs at ghosts, gods, curses and spells — and werewolves."

"Blame the hypno-keying," she said, leaning closer to the painting. She was wearing a smock that came midway down her thighs. He wondered if she were wearing anything else under it.

"Why blame that?"

"I told you," she said, plopping the green brush into a jar of oil, picking up the blue again, "that hypno-keying can do strange things to you. It amplifies your imagination in certain areas. In Dane's case, it has greatly increased his sense of language and ability to deal with prose — but it has also tapped a well of imagination that probably runs deeper in him than in any of the rest of us. Read his books?"

"No."

"Some of them border on the mystical."

"I thought they were historicals."

"They are. But they still have qualities of mysticism in them. It's not at all odd that he should get hung up on this particular local legend, especially since he has been working on a novel that deals with the history of the Darmanian race."

"He never told me about that."

She made a bold stroke of blue, then edged it with more care. "He's secretive about his work."

"Did he ever mention a man named Salardi?"

"The archaeologist? Oh, he's spent a hundred hours interviewing him, gathering background for the novel." She was perched upon a high stool. She crossed her slim, brown legs, suddenly seemed to realize that she only made herself more attractive that way, uncrossed them and hunched closer to the canvas.

"We saw Salardi the other day, when we were up at the gypsy camp. Dane never mentioned that he had spent that much time with the man."

"Did you ask him?"

"No, but—"

She put down her brush and interrupted him. "Do you think Dane's the killer?"

"I suspect everyone."

"I guess that's the logical way to handle the situation." She was clearly scornful of him, and especially of the other half of his symbiote.

He got out of the shape-changing chair and walked to her stool, stood beside her. "Logic hasn't failed me yet."

"What logic is there in Dane's being the killer?"

"He could be psychopathic." He stepped behind her and, without her permission, put his hands on her shoulders. They both stared forward at the painting in progress, as if it were a mirror in which they could see each other. "But let's not talk about Dane anymore."

"What shall we talk about?"

"You."

"I'm not interesting."

"To me you are."

She turned around on the stool and faced him, raised a hand and pushed the long black hair away from her face. She said, "Take off that goddamned shell and go to bed with me." Her face was slightly lined about the mouth, though that was the only indication that she felt under any sort of strain. She was absolutely beautiful.

"Now? "he asked.

He did not know why he felt threatened by her proposal, especially since it was one that he had wanted to make to her for some days now, but he found it almost impossible to respond beyond the single adverb.

"Now," she said.

He hesitated, looked at the windows.

He said, "It's dark."

She said nothing.

He was sure that she was naked beneath the smock; and he was also certain that she had expected him tonight.

He said, "I've been here so long — to have accomplished so little. I've got to keep the symbiosis active; I have to come up with something soon."

She said, "Of course."

"No, look, Tina, I—"

The house computer interrupted him. "Mr. St. Cyr, you are wanted in the entrance foyer on the second floor. Urgent. Mr. St. Cyr, you are wanted—"

"What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know."

He bent and kissed her, felt her lips open beneath his as she responded emotionally despite her apparent resolve to shut him out unless he came around to her way of thinking. Then he turned and walked swiftly from the room.

When St. Cyr entered the short, paneled hallway that led to the circular foyer — not at all regretful that the house computer had interrupted the scene with Tina— he saw that Jubal, Dane and Teddy had gotten there ahead of him. He felt, suddenly, that the answer to the whole affair was again close to him, almost within his grasp… Also, he had a nagging feeling that he should have driven into the port to pick up the data on Walter Dannery, even if the man were the least suspect of suspects. Nothing should be overlooked. He thought of Tina, alone in her studio, and now he did regret leaving her there. More than he had wanted anything in years, he wanted to remove her smock and take her to bed, possess her and let her possess him. What had stopped him?

"What happened?" he asked Dane, who was nearest the entrance to the foyer.

When he stepped past the boy, he saw exactly what was the matter: Salardi lay dead in the center of the foyer floor.