Robert Bloch: The Dead Don't Die!

This is a story that never ends.

This is a story that never ends, but I know when it started. Thursday, May 24th, was the date. That night was the beginning of everything for me.

For Cono Colluri it was the end.

Cono and I were sitting there, playing two-handed stud poker. It was quiet in his cell, and we played slowly, meditatively. Everything would have been all right except for one thing. We had a kibitzer.

No matter how calmly we played, no matter how unemotional we appeared to be, we both were aware of another presence. The other, the kibitzer, stayed with us all night long.

His name was Death.

He grinned over Cono's shoulder, tapped him on the arm with a bony finger, selected the cards for every shuffle. He tugged at my hands, poked me in the back when I dealt.

We couldn't see him, of course. But we knew he was there, all right. Watching, watching and waiting; those big blind holes in the skull sneaking a look at the clock and counting the minutes, those skeleton fingers tapping away the seconds until dawn.

Because in the morning, no matter what cards turned up and no matter how much money changed hands, Death would win the game. The game, and Cono Colluri.

It's funny, looking back on it now, to figure out how the three of us happened to get together that particular evening - Cono, myself, and Death.

My story's straight enough. About six months beforehand I'd taken a Civil Service exam and ended up for a probationary period as a guard at State Pen. I wasn't too excited about the job when I got it, but I felt it might give me routine, a small but steady income, and a chance to turn out a book on the side. By the time a few months had passed, I knew I was wrong. The idea of turning out a novel in a background of security sounded fine when I started, but there was no security in a guard's life. I found I couldn't write. The bars and the concrete penned me in just as much as any of my charges. And I began to develop my own sense of guilt.

I guess my trouble was too much empathy. That's a big word -meaning the ability to put yourself in the other fellow's place. "There but for the grace of God go I" - you know that feeling. I had it, but double. Instead of writing at night, I tossed around on my bunk and suffered the torments of the thousand men under my charge.

That's how I got friendly with Cono, I guess - through empathy.

Cono came to the death cell in an awful hurry. His had been a short trial and a merry one - the kind of thing the newspapers like to play up as an example of "quick justice". He'd been a professional strong man with a carnival - the James T. Armstrong Shows. The story was that he got too jealous of his wife and one of the other performers. At any rate, one morning they found Cono lying dead drunk in his trailer. His wife was with him, but she wasn't drunk - merely dead. Somebody had pressed two thumbs against the base of her neck, and something had snapped.

It was an ideal setup for "quick justice" and that's just what Cono Colluri got. Within three weeks he was on his way to the death-house, and for the past two weeks he'd been a guest of the state. A temporary guest. And he was moving out tomorrow morning - for good.

That, of course, explains why Death showed up at our little card party. He belonged there.

Oh, perhaps not for the entire night. He undoubtedly had rattled down the short - oh so terribly short! - corridor to the little room with the big chair. He'd probably peered and eaves-dropped on the electricians who tested the switches. He'd certainly have stopped in at the warden's office to make sure that the mythical pardon from the Governor wasn't on its way.

Yes, Death must have checked all those things to make certain that this was really a farewell card party. And now the uninvited guest was kibitzing as Cono and I dealt our hands.

I knew he was there, and Cono knew it too, but I have to hand it to the big man. He was cool. He'd always been cool; on the stand, swearing his innocence, he'd never lost his temper. Here in the cell, talking to the warden, to the other guards, to me, he'd never broken down. Just told his story over and over again. Somebody had slipped a Mickey in his drink and when he woke up, Flo was dead. He'd never harmed her.

Of course, nobody believed him at the trial. Nobody believed him in the prison, either; the warden, the guards, even the other convicts knew that he was guilty and ready to fry.

That's why I had the honour of spending the last night with him - he'd made a special request for my presence. Because, believe it or not, I believed him.

Blame it on empathy again, or on the very fact that I noticed he never lost his temper. The way he talked about the case, the way he talked about his wife, the way he talked about the execution -everything was out of character for a "crime of passion" murderer. Oh, he was a big brute, and a rough looking one, but he never acted on impulse.

I guess he took to me right away. We used to talk, nights, after I drew guard assignment on his bloc. He was the only prisoner awaiting execution, and it was natural that we'd get to talking.

"You know I didn't do it, Bob," he'd tell me - over and over again, but there was nothing else to talk about, for him - "It must have been Louie. He lied at the trial, you know. He had been drinking with me, no matter what he says, and he offered me a slug out of the bottle behind the cookhouse, after the last show. That's the last thing I remember. So I figure he must have done it. He was always hanging around Flo anyway, the little crumb. The Great Ahmed warned me, said he saw it in the crystal. But of course, he came into court with this alibi and - oh what's the use?"

There was no use at all, and he knew it. But he told me over and over again. And I believed him.

Now, this last night, he wasn't talking. Maybe it was because Death was there, listening to every word. Maybe it was because they'd shaved his head and slit his trouser legs and left him to wait out these last few hours.

Cono wasn't talking, but he could still grin. He could and he did - smiling at me and looking like a great big overgrown college boy with a crew haircut. Come to think of it, he wasn't much more than just that; only Cono had never gone to college. He went with his first carney at fifteen; married Flo when he was twenty-three, and now he was going to the chair two days before his twenty-fifth birthday. But he smiled. Smiled, and played poker.

"My king is high," he said. "Bet a quarter." "See you," I answered. "Let's have another card."

"King still high. Check. Funny thing, aces aren't coming up much tonight."

I didn't answer him. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I was cheating. I'd taken the Ace of Spades out of the pack and put it in my pocket before the game started. I didn't want him to get that particular card on the table tonight of all nights.

"Fifty cents on the king," said Cono.

"See you," I said. "I've got a pair of nines."

"Pair of kings." He turned up his cards. "I win."

"You're just naturally lucky," I told him - and wished I hadn't.

But he smiled. I couldn't face that smile, so I looked at my watch. That was another mistake, and I realized it as soon as I made the gesture.

His smile didn't alter. "Not much time left, is there?" he said. "Seems to be getting light."

"Another hand?" I suggested.

"No." Cono stood up. Shaved head, slit trousers and all, he was still an impressive sight. Six feet four, two hundred and ten pounds, in the prime of life. And in just an hour or so they would strap him into the chair, turn on the juice, twist that smile into a grimace of agony. I couldn't look at him, thinking those thoughts. But I could feel Death looking; gazing and gloating.

"Bob, I want to talk to you."

"Shall we order breakfast? You know what the warden said - anything you want, the works."

"No breakfast." Cono put his hand on my shoulder. The fingers that were supposed to have broken a woman's neck barely pressed my skin. "Let's fool 'em all and skip the meal. That'll give the nosey reporters something to talk about."

"What's up?"

"Nothing much. But I got things to tell you."

"Why me in particular?"

"Who else is there left? I got no friends. Got no family I know of. And Flo's gone…"

For the first time I saw a look of anger flicker across the big man's face. I knew then that whoever had killed Flo was lucky when Cono got the chair.

"So it has to be you. Besides, you believe me."

"Go on," I said.

"It's about the dough, see? Flo and me, we were saving for a house. Got better'n eight grand stashed away. Somebody's gonna, get it, so why not you? I wrote this here letter, and I want you to have it."

He pulled the envelope out from under his bunk. It was sealed, and scrawled across its face in the sprawling handwriting of a schoolboy was the name, "The Great Ahmed".

"Who's he?"

"I told you, he's the mitt reader with the carney. A nice guy, Bob. You'll like him. He stuck up for me at the trial, remember? Told about Louie hanging around Flo. Didn't do any good because he couldn't prove nothing, but he was - what did the lawyer say? - a character witness. Yeah. Anyhow, he banks for all us carneys with the show.

"Take the letter. It says to give you the money. He'll do it, too. All you got to do is look him up."

I hesitated. "Wait a minute, Cono. You'd better think this over. Eight thousand dollars is a lot of money to pass out to a virtual stranger - "

"Take it, pal." Again he smiled. "There's a string tied to the bundle, of course."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to use some of that dough to try and clear me. Oh, I know you haven't got much of a chance, and nothing to work on. But maybe, with the dough, you'll get an angle, turn something up. You're leaving this joint anyway."

I jerked my head at that. "How did you know?" I asked. "Why, I only told the warden yesterday afternoon - "

"Word goes around." Cono smiled. "They give me the office that you're springing yourself out of here this Saturday. That you aren't satisfied to be a screw the rest of your life. So I says to myself, why not give him the eight grand as a kind of going-away present? Seeing as how we're both going away."

I balanced the envelope on my palm. "The Great Ahmed, eh? And you say he's with the show?"

"Sure. You'll find their route in Billboard" Cono smiled. "They must be somewhere around Louisville right now. Heading north as it gets warmer. I'd sort of like to see the old outfit again, but…"

The smile faded. "One more favour, Bob."

"Name it."

"Scram out of here."

"But - "

"You heard me. Scram. I expect visitors pretty soon, and I don't want you to stick around."

I nodded, nodded gratefully. Cono was sparing me that final ordeal - the warden, the priest, the mumbling farewell, the shuffling down the corridor.

"Goodbye, Bob. Remember, I'm depending on you."

"I'll do what I can. Goodbye, Cono."

The big hand enveloped mine. "I'll be seeing you around," he said.

"Sure."

"I mean it, Bob. You don't believe this is the end, do you?"

"Maybe you're right. I hope so." I had no intention of getting into a discussion about the after-life with Cono, in his situation. Personally, I had a pretty good idea that once the juice was turned on, Cono would be turned off- forever. But I couldn't tell him that. So I just shook hands, put the letter in my pocket, unlocked the cell, and walked out.

At the end of the corridor I turned around and looked back. Cono stood against the bars, his body outlined against the yellow light but blending into the shadows that come with dawn. There was another shadow behind him - a big, black shadow outlining a ghost of a figure.

I recognized the shadow. Old Man Death.

That was the last I saw -just the two of them, waiting together. Cono and Old Man Death.

I went downstairs, then, to my bunk. The night shift came off and the day shift went on. They were all talking about the execution. They tried to pump me, but I didn't say anything. I sat there on the edge of the bunk, looking at my watch and waiting.

Upstairs they must have gone through the whole routine, just the way you always see it in the B movies. Opening the door. Handcuffing him to a guard on either side. Marching down the corridor. Yes, just about now it would be happening. The night shift went outside to get the news, leaving me alone on my bunk. I looked at my watch again. Now was the time.

They'd be strapping him down now, putting that damned black cloth over his eyes. I could see him sitting there; a big, gentle hulk of a man with a tired smile on his face.

Maybe he was guilty, maybe he was innocent - I didn't know. But the whole stupid business of execution, of "justice" and "punishment" and "the full penalty of the law" hit me in the pit of the stomach. It was cruel, it was senseless, it was wrong.

The seconds ticked away. I watched the little hand crawl around the face of the watch and tried to figure it out. One minute Cono would be alive. A jolt of electric current and he'd be dead. Trite idea. But it's the eternal mystery all of us live with. And die with.

What was the answer? I didn't know. Nobody knew. Nobody except the kibitzer. Old Man Death knew the answer. I wondered if he had a watch. No, why should he? What's Time to Death?

Thirty seconds.

Sure, I'd quit my job. I'd try to clear Cono. But what good would it do him? He'd never know. He'd be dead.

Twenty seconds.

The hand crawled around, and the thoughts crawled around. What's it like to be dead? Is it a sleep? Is it a sleep with dreams? Is it just dreams but no rest, no peace?

Ten seconds.

One moment you're alive, you can feel and hear and smell and see and move. And the next - nothing. Or - something. What's the change like? Like suddenly turning out the lights?

Now.

The lights went out.

First they dimmed, then they flickered, then they went out. Only for a second, mind you. But that was long enough.

Long enough for Cono to die.

Long enough for me to shudder.

Long enough for Death to reach out, grinning, and claim his prey in the dark…

I was still in a daze when I hit the railroad station on Saturday morning. So much had happened in the last two days I still couldn't figure it out.

First of all, there was that business about Cono's body. I'd gone to the warden, of course, with the story about the money, and I more or less expected to handle funeral expenses from Cono's funds when I got them.

"His cousin will bury him," the warden told me. "Got a call this morning."

"But I thought he had no relatives."

"Turns out he has, all right. Fellow named Varek. Oh, it's legitimate, we always check. The Doc insists - makes him mad every time somebody shows up and cheats him out of an autopsy."

The warden had chuckled, but I didn't laugh.

And the warden hadn't chuckled long. Because the next day, Louie had confessed.

Louie the contortionist, that is - the man Cono claimed had given him the knockout drops in his drink. The warden got a wire, of course, but the whole story hit the papers that afternoon. It seems he'd just walked into the station-house in Louisville and confessed. Came out with the entire statement without a sign of emotion. Said he just wanted to clear his conscience once he knew Cono was dead. He'd hated Cono, wanted Flo, and when she repulsed him he rigged up the murder to get revenge on both of them.

The story was lurid enough, but it had gaps in it. The report I read claimed Louie was a hophead. He was too calm, too unemotional. "Glassy-eyed" was the way they put it. They were going to give him a psychiatric test.

Well, I wished them luck, the whole lot of them - psychiatrists and district attorneys and smart coppers and penologists. All I knew was that Cono was innocent. And he was dead.

By this time I'd already checked on the Armstrong Shows through Billboard. They were playing Louisville this week, all right. I sent through my wire Friday afternoon. Saturday morning I got a telegram signed by the advance agent in Paducah.

GREAT AHMED LEFT SHOW THREE WEEKS AGO STOP OPENING OWN MITT CAMP IN CHICAGO STOP WILL CHECK FORWARDING ADDRESS AND NOTIFY LATER

So I was on my way to Chicago and eight thousand dollars. I'd hole up in some hotel and wait for news on the Great Ahmed. And after that - well, with the money, my writing problems would be solved.

Actually, I should have been happy enough at the way it had all turned out. Cono's name was cleared, I was out of the whole sordid grind forever, and I had eight grand coming, in cash.

But something bothered me. It wasn't just the irony of Cono Colluri's innocence. It was the inexplicable feeling that things weren't settled, that they were only beginning. That I had somehow been caught up in something that would sweep me along to -

"Chicago!" bawled the conductor.

And there I was, in the Windy City at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 25th. It wasn't windy today. As I lugged my grip out of the LaSalle Street Station I walked straight into a pouring rain.

There's something about a storm in Chicago. It seems to melt all the taxicabs away. I stood there, contemplating the downpour, watching the cars inch along under the El tracks. The sky was dark and dirty. The water dribbled ink stains along the sides of the buildings. I couldn't stand watching it in my present mood.

So I walked. I turned corners several times. Pretty soon there was a hotel. It wasn't a good hotel. It was located too far south to be even a decent hotel. But that didn't matter. I needed a place to stay in for a couple of days until the money was located. And right now, I had to get out of the rain. My suit was soaked, and the cardboard in the luggage had taken a beating.

I went in, registered. A bellboy took me up to my room on the third floor. Apparently he hadn't expected me. At least, he didn't know about my coming in time to shave. But he opened my door, deposited my luggage and asked if there'd be anything else now. Then he held out his hand. It would have taken me all day to give him a decent manicure, so I put a quarter in his palm instead. He was just as happy with that.

Then he left, I opened my grip, changed clothes, and went out to eat. The rain had moderated to a drizzle. I stopped in the lobby long enough to get eyed by the night clerk, the house dick, and a woman with improbable red hair.

During the pause I managed to send off a telegram to the advance man of the carney, giving him my new address and requesting action on locating the Great Ahmed. That concluded my business for the day.

At least, I thought it did at the time.

Nothing happened to change my mind during supper. I ate at a fish joint and contemplated the delightful prospect of returning to my crummy room and holing up for the weekend.

I don't know if you've ever spent a Sunday alone in downtown Chicago, but if you haven't, I offer you one word of advice.

Don't.

There's something about the deserted canyons on a Sunday that tears the heart out of a man. Something about the grey sunlight reflected from grimy roofs. Something about the crumpled bits of soiled paper flopping listlessly along empty streets. Something about the mournful rattle of the half-empty elevated trains. Something about the barred shop-windows and chained doors. It gets to you, does things to your insides. You start wondering whether or not, in the midst of all this death and decay, you're really alive.

The prospect didn't please me at all. I finished my meal, put another quarter in another palm, and wandered out down the street.

After all, it was still Saturday night. And Saturday night was different. The rain had definitely stopped now, and the street was black and gleaming. Neon light reflections wriggled like crimson and gold serpents across my path.

You know what serpents do, of course. They tempt you. These particular neon serpents were saying, "Come in. Have a drink. You've got nothing to do tonight anyway, and nobody to do it with. Sit down. Place your order. Relax. You're due for a little relaxation after six months in prison. It's a long sentence. You know what a con does after he's sprung. You're entitled to a little fun."

There were serpents all around me. Serpents spelling out the names of taverns, night-clubs, come-on joints, clips, dives. All I had to do was take my choice.

Instead, I walked back to the hotel, went in the lobby, and checked with the night clerk to make sure my telegram was really on the way to the carney. Then I went up to my room and rid myself of all money except for a ten-dollar bill. I wasn't taking any chances on getting rolled.

The night was still young. I'd probably feel young myself with a few drinks in me. I went back down to the lobby and toyed with the notion of the hotel bar.

The improbable redhead had disappeared, and so had the house dick. The place was almost deserted now. Almost, but not quite. There was a blonde sitting in a chair near the elevator. I'd looked at her once when I'd come downstairs and now I looked at her again.

She was worth a second look.

Genuine. That's the only word to describe her. Genuine. To begin with, she was a real blonde. No peroxide glint, no unnatural accent in makeup. The fur she wore was real, and so were the diamonds.

Those diamonds really stopped me. The ring was too big to be phoney. Even if the stone were flawed, it must have set her (or somebody) back a pretty penny. And the same went for the big choker that clung to her neck in a glittering caress.

Her smile seemed genuine, too.

And that was the phoney part.

Why should she smile at me? Me, with my forty-dollar suit and my ten-dollar bill tucked away in its watch pocket?

I didn't get it. And I didn't want it. I walked towards the lobby entrance to the hotel bar. She stood up and followed.

I walked into the dimly-lit bar, around it, and out the front door to the street. I'd do my drinking somewhere else, thank you.

There was a little place across the street down the block. I ran into it, crossing in mid-traffic. Before I opened the door I glanced back to make sure that she wasn't following. Then I went in.

The joint was small - an oval bar and five or six booths grouped on either side of a juke-box. The bartender on duty was lonesome.

"What'll it be, Mac?"

"Rye. Top shelf."

He poured. I drank. Just like that. Fast. The stuff was bonded, like a bank messenger.

"Refill, please."

He poured. I watched his black bowtie. It was beginning to wobble in anticipation of the conversation forming in his larynx. Abruptly it stopped wobbling.

Because the door opened and she came in. Big as life, and even blonder. The neon on the juke-box did things to her diamond choker.

There was no place to hide. No real reason for me to hide, for that matter. She came right over, sat down, motioned to the bartender. "The same," she said. Nice, rich, husky voice.

She watched the man pour, then transferred her gaze to me. Her eyes matched the diamonds she was wearing.

"Let's sit in a booth," she suggested.

"Why?"

"We can talk there."

"What's wrong with right here?"

"If you prefer."

"What's the proposition?"

"I want you to come with me, to meet somebody."

"You'll have to talk plainer than that, lady."

"I said we should take a booth."

"Nothing wrong with mentioning names right here in the open."

"No." She shook her head. Those diamonds shed enough light to blind a pedestrian walking across the street. "I am not permitted to mention names yet. But it will be to your advantage to come with me."

"Sorry, lady. I'd have to know more about it." I looked down at my glass. "For example, who sent you to me. How you found me. Little details like that. Maybe they're nothing to you. Me, I find them fascinating."

"This is no time to make jokes."

"I'm serious. And I say I'm not playing unless you tell me the name of the team."

"All right, Bob. But - "

That did it. The name. Of course, she could have picked it up off the hotel register easily enough. But it jarred me more than anything else up to that point. It jarred me right on down to my feet.

"Good-night," I said.

She didn't answer. As I walked out, she was still staring at me. Blue diamond eyes winked me out of the tavern.

I walked out. I didn't go back to my room and I didn't go to another tavern. I headed north, crossed under the El tracks into the Loop. There was a burlesque show. I bought a ticket and sat through a dreary performance of which I remember nothing except the old blackout skit about the photographer in the park who complained that the squirrels were nibbling his equipment.

I spent my time trying to fit the pieces together. Who was this girl? A friend of Cono's? A friend of Flo's? A friend of the Great Ahmed's? A friend of the carney advance man? Or just a friend?

Cono was dead and Flo was dead. They couldn't tell her where to find me. Ahmed didn't know I existed, let alone where I was. The carney advance man wouldn't know my address until the telegram arrived.

Could it be that she had a line into the prison and had learned I was about to receive eight thousand dollars?

Was she simply working the hotel, picking my name from the register at random?

But if so, what was this story about a proposition, and meeting somebody?

It didn't make sense. I sat there a while and tried to figure the deal out, then I left.

Eleven o'clock. I headed back to the hotel. This time I peeked into the lobby before entering. She wasn't around. I slid unobtrusively past the entrance so the night clerk wouldn't pay attention. He was reading a science fiction magazine and didn't look up.

The elevator operator took me to the fifth floor without removing his eyes from the Racing Form. Quite a bunch of students in this hotel. Probably working their way through mortician's school.

I walked down to the door of my room very quietly. I listened at the keyhole before I unlocked the door. Then I opened it fast and switched on the light.

No blonde.

I examined the closet, the washroom. Still no blonde. Then and only then I went to the phone, called room service, and ordered a pint of rye and some ice.

It was still Saturday night and I was still entitled to a drink, without strange blondes butting in.

But when the drinks came, I found the blonde was still with me. Prancing around inside my skull, making propositions, winking her diamonds at me.

It didn't take me long to finish the bottle and it didn't take the bottle long to finish me.

Somewhere along the line I managed to undress, don pyjamas, and slump across the bed. Somewhere along the line I drifted off to sleep.

And that's when it started.

I was back in the burlesque house, sitting in the crummy seat, watching the stage. This time the performance was more interesting. There was a new comic in the cast - a tall fellow with a shaved head. He looked something like Cono. In fact, he was Cono. Big as life. A chorus line danced out behind him; eight, count 'em, eight nifty little numbers. They danced, kicked, whirled. Cono noticed them. He did a little shuffling dance of his own, gyrating to the end of the line. Then he reached out - in the old familiar gesture used by the late Ted Healy in chastising his stooges - and flicked them across the neck. One by one. As his fingers touched each girl in turn, she changed.

Heads dangled limply from broken necks. The eight dancing girls became eight dancing cadavers. Eight, count 'em, eight. The dancing dead. The dancing dead, with skulls for heads. Skulls with diamond eyes.

Dead arms reached out and scrabbled in dead skull-sockets. They picked out the diamonds and threw them at me. I twisted and turned, sweated and squirmed, but I couldn't dodge. The diamonds hit me, seared me with icy fire.

Cono laughed. The girls danced off stage and he was all alone. All alone except for the chair. It stood there in the centre of the stage and the lights went down. As the spotlight narrowed, Cono moved towards its centre, closer to the chair. He had to stay within the circle of light or die.

Then the circle narrowed still further and he was sitting in the chair. As if by magic, squirrels danced out on the stage. They each carried a tiny thong, and each bound the thong around Cono's arm or leg or neck until he sat there crisscrossed with thongs that lashed him to the chair.

I don't have to tell you what kind of a chair it was. What else would it be?

And I don't have to tell you what was going to happen next. Even in my dream I knew it, and I struggled frantically to wake up.

But I couldn't. I couldn't even leave my seat in the theatre. Because while I had been watching Cono getting bound into the chair, somebody had bound me!

Now I was sitting in an electric chair, hands tied, feet tied, electrodes clamped and ready. I tugged and tore, but I couldn't move. They had me, all right. It had all been a trick, a dirty trick to get my attention away from myself.

I knew that now. Because suddenly Cono burst his bonds with a flick of his fingers, the same fingers that had killed the dancing girls. He stood up and laughed because it was a joke. A joke on me.

He wasn't going to die. I was. He'd live. He'd get the eight thousand dollars and the blonde, and I'd fry. Just as soon as they turned on the juice. The bonded juice. The neon lights were winking now and the bartender was ready to pull the switch as soon as the conductor called out "Chicago!" and now they were getting ready to give the signal. While waiting, Cono stood on the stage and amused me with card tricks. He pulled the Ace of Spades out of his mouth and held it up for me to see.

Then it was time. Somebody came onstage and handed him a telegram from the carney and that was the signal for them to yell "Chicago!"

The switch was ready. I felt the cold sweat running down my spine, felt the electrodes bite into the side of my leg, the side of my head. And then, they pulled the switch -

I woke up.

I woke up, sat up in bed and stared out the window.

Through the windowpane, the blonde stared back at me.

I could only see her face, and that was funny, because it was a full window. Then I realized it was because she wasn't vertical, but horizontal. And only her face was pointed towards me.

Shall I make it plainer?

I mean she was floating in empty air outside my window.

Floating in empty air and smiling at me with her icy eyes aglitter.

Then I really woke up.

The second dream, or the second part of the dream, was so real I had to stagger over to the window and convince myself that there was no one outside. It took me a minute before my trembling legs would support me and carry me that distance, so if she really had been at the window there'd have been enough time for her to get back down the fire escape and disappear.

Of course she wasn't there.

And she couldn't have been, because there was no fire escape. I gazed down at a sheer drop of five floors to the closed and empty courtyard below. It was black down there, black as the Ace of Spades.

I don't know what I should have done under the circumstances; all I know is what I did do.

I shoved my head under the cold water faucet, towelled my face dry, dressed, and rushed out of my room in search of a drink.

And that's when the next nightmare started.

There was this little joint three blocks south of the hotel. I ran all the way, couldn't stop running until I'd covered that much distance. The street was deserted and it was dark, and only this little joint had a rose light burning in the window. It was the light that drew me, because I was afraid of the dark.

I opened the door and a blast of smoke and sound hit me in the face but I ploughed through it blindly to the bar.

"Shot of whiskey!" I said, and meant it.

The bartender was a tall, thin man and he had a glass eye that almost fell out as he bent his head while pouring my drink. I didn't pay very much attention to it at the time; I was too busy getting the drink down.

Then it fascinated me. I didn't want to stare at it, so I looked away - looked down the bar, into the seething centre of smoke and sound.

That was a mistake.

Sitting on the stool next to me was a little man who was sipping a glass of beer. He had to sip, because he had no arms. He lapped at the glass the way a cat laps at a saucer of cream. Watching him was a blind man. Don't ask me how I knew he could see, but I got the impression of watching from the tilt of the head, the focus of the dark glasses.

I whirled around and nearly collided with the man on crutches. He was standing there arguing with the man on the floor - the one without legs. Down the bar a way; somebody was banging with a steel hook affixed to his elbow. I could scarcely hear the thumping because the juke box was playing so loudly. Sure enough, there were dancers present; the inevitable two women, both of them engrossed in their movements. They had to watch carefully, because both of them were on crutches.

There were others present, too - others in the booths. The man with the bandaged head. The man with the hole where his nose should be. The man with the great purple growth bulging over his collar. The lame, the halt, the blind.

They didn't pay any attention to me. They were having fun. And in a moment I realized what I'd stumbled into. It was a street beggar's tavern. I saw the tin cup set alongside the shot glass, the placard resting against the beer bottle. What was the name of the dump in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris? "The Court of Miracles" he called it. And this was it.

They were happy enough, drinking. They forgot their physical ills. Maybe liquor would cure me of my mental ills. It was worth a try. So I had another drink.

Along about the third drink somebody must have slipped out. Along about the fourth drink somebody must have come back. And in a minute or two, she walked in.

I didn't see her, at first. The reason I sensed her presence was because the noise cut down. The juke box stopped and didn't start again. The conversation dropped to a hush.

That's when I looked around and noticed her. She was sitting in a booth, all alone, just watching me.

She made a little gesture of invitation and I shook my head. That was all. Then she raised her glass and offered me a silent toast.

I turned, noted my re-filled glass, and toasted her. Then I downed my drink. The bartender with the glass eye had another waiting for me.

"On the lady," he said.

"No thanks, chum."

He looked at me. "Whats a matter? She's a nice lady."

"Sure she is. Nobody's questioning that."

"So whyn'cha drink it?"

"I've had enough, that's why." I had, enough and to spare, I suddenly realized. The room was beginning to spin a little.

"Come on, drink up. We're all friends here."

The bartender didn't look friendly. Neither did anyone else. For the first time I grew aware of the fact that everyone was looking at me. Not at her - at me. The legless, the armless, the blind. In fact, the blind man took off his dark glasses in order to see me better, and one of the crowd slapped his crutch on the bar and walked a little closer.

The Court of Miracles! Where the blind see and the lame walk! Of course it was; and half of these beggars were fakes. They were as sound as I was - sounder, perhaps.

And there was a whole roomful of them, all looking at me. None of them seemed happy any longer. They were quiet; so quiet I could hear the click of the key in the lock as the armless man locked the door.

Oh, he had arms now; they'd emerged from beneath a bulky vest. But I wasn't interested in that. I was interested in the fact that the door was locked. And I was here, inside.

She stared and they stared.

The bartender said, "How about it, chum?"

"Not today." I stood up. That is, I tried to stand up. My legs were wobbly. Something was wrong with them. Something was wrong with my eyes, too.

"What's the trouble?" drawled the bartender. "Afraid of being slipped a Mickey?"

"No!" It was hard to talk. Only gasps came out. "You already slipped me one the drink before this. When she came in, and gave you the signal."

"Wise guy, huh?"

"Yes!" I managed to spin around, fast. Fast enough to grab the whiskey bottle off the bar and hold it cocked. My other hand supported me.

"Now - open that door or I'll let you have it," I panted. "Come on, move fast."

The bartender shrugged. There was neither fear nor malice in his glass eye.

My own eyes were turning to glass. I tried to focus them on the bartender, tried not to look at the creeping, crawling cripples that slithered closer all around me, brandishing canes and crutches and uttering little grunts and whimpers and moans.

"Open that door!" I wheezed, while they crept closer and closer, stretching out their arms and tensing to spring.

"All right, chum!"

That was the signal for them to rush me. Somebody swung a crutch, somebody clawed at my legs. I began to spin and go down.

I swung the bottle, clearing an arc, and they fell back, but only for a moment. The bartender aimed a punch, so I swung the bottle again.

Then they came back. It was like fighting underwater, like fighting in a dream. And this was a dream, a nightmare of crawlers, of slithering shapes tearing at me, dragging me down.

The bartender hit me again, so I raised the bottle and brought it down. It landed on his head with a dull crunch.

For a moment he stood there, and the glass eye popped out of its socket and rolled along the bar. It stared up at him and watched as he sagged slowly and fell.

Then it stared at me as the man with the artificial arm hit me across the neck with the hook.

I felt the blow land and melt my spine.

The glass eye watched as I collapsed into roaring darkness and when I went down, it winked.

When I woke up, she was stroking my forehead.

Not bad. Lots of men would have traded places with me at the moment - lying there in the cool dusk, on a comfortable bed, with a beautiful blonde stroking my forehead.

Too bad some other guy didn't show up, because I would have traded him in a flash.

I'd have thrown in a splitting headache, free of charge, and a taste in the mouth like the bottom of the Chicago Drainage Canal.

But nobody showed up to take my place, so I just stayed there. When she said, "Drink this," I drank. When she said, "Close your eyes and wait for the pain to go away," I closed my eyes and waited.

Miraculously, the pain went away.

The headache and the taste vanished. I opened my eyes again, wiggled my fingers and toes.

I was lying on this bed in a darkened room. The shades were drawn, but enough light filtered through to bring life to the diamond choker and the diamond ring and the diamond eyes. The diamond eyes regarded me candidly.

"Feel better now?"

"Yes."

"That's good. Then there's nothing to worry about."

How right she was. Nothing to worry about except where I was, and why. I suppose a little of my bitterness crept over into my reply.

"Thanks," I said. "Thanks for everything you've done for me. Including getting me knocked out."

"That's no way to look at it," answered the blonde. "After all, I saved your life."

"You mean those beggars would have killed me?"

"No. But the police might."

"Police?"

"Yes." She drew a long breath. "After all, you did murder that bartender."

"What?"

"You hit him with the bottle. He's dead."

I sat up, faster than I would have believed possible. "Come on, let me out of here," I snapped.

"They'll be on the lookout for you," she told me. "It's not safe for you to go just now. You're among friends here."

"Friends!"

"Don't misunderstand. If you'd only listened to me in the first place and come along sensibly, all this would never have happened."

I had no answer for that one. All I knew was that if she spoke the truth, I was a murderer. And I knew what they did to murderers. They sat them down in a chair and turned on the juice and fried them. A faint odor of singed flesh tainted my nostrils.

"How do I know you're not lying?" I asked.

"I can furnish proof if you like, later. Right now, I want you to meet a friend." She put her hand on my shoulder and even through the shirt I could feel the icy coldness of her flesh. She was cold and hard, like a diamond.

"As long as I'm meeting friends, we might as well establish a few facts," I suggested. "You know my name. Now, what's yours? And where am I?"

She smiled and stood up. "My name is Vera. Vera LaValle. We are in a home on the South Side. And, although you didn't think to ask me, it's Monday evening. You've been unconscious for almost forty-eight hours."

I stood up, then. It wasn't a spectacular performance. I glanced down at myself in the dim light and what I saw wasn't pretty.

"Why don't you go in and bathe, clean up a bit?" Vera suggested. "I'll go out and bring back some food. You can eat it before our meeting."

Without waiting for my reply, she went out. Went out and locked the door.

It was getting to be a habit. Everybody that I met locked me in. Of course, that's what you do with murderers. Dangerous people to have around. Always killing bartenders, for instance. And if I was a murderer…

I doubted it. The whole thing was phoney from start to finish. Things like that just didn't happen to me. I was the original timid soul. Couldn't lick my weight in wild flowers.

Then, again…

There was blood on my suit. Blood on my shirt. Blood on the back of my neck, crusted blood from where the steel hook had landed.

I went into the bathroom, filled the tub, undressed, bathed. There was a nice array of soap and towels, all laid out and waiting for me.

I even found an electric shaver to plug in. I felt a lot better once I was cleaned up.

When I dressed, I was surprised to discover a fresh white shirt conveniently placed on top of a clothes hamper. My genial host or hostess thought of everything.

By the time I stepped out of the bathroom she had returned. She had four sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, a double cardboard cup of coffee, and a wedge of pie. She didn't say anything while I ate. It only took me about six minutes to dispose of the meal and latch onto a cigarette from my pocket. I offered her one.

"No, thanks. I do not smoke."

"Funny. I thought all women did nowadays."

"I tried it once. Many years ago. Of course, it wasn't a cigarette."

This didn't seem to be getting me anywhere. "About that friend I was going to meet. Where is he?"

"Waiting outside the door," she said. "Shall I ask him in?"

"By all means. Don't keep the gentleman waiting." My tone was facetious, but I didn't feel very gay. I don't know what I really expected. Years of reading - and writing - horror fiction had conditioned me to almost everything. A Mad Doctor, perhaps, coming to recommend a certain brand of cigarettes. A Mad Scientist with a beaker-full of monkey glands. A Mad Professor with a driver's license for a flying saucer.

The last person I expected to see when the door opened was a friend. But it was a friend who walked in. It was Cono.

Cono Colluri. The man who died in the electric chair.

He stood there in the twilight and looked at me. He wore a battered trench-coat with the collar turned up, and he had a hat pulled down over his eyes like a movie gangster, but I recognized him. It wasn't a double, or a stooge, or somebody made up to resemble him. It was Cono. Cono in the flesh. The dead flesh -reanimate and alive!

Changed? Of course he had changed. There was a dreadful facial tic, where the muscles had been pulled and torn by the convulsive spasm of the shock. And he was pale. Pale as death. But he lived. He walked. He talked…

"Hello, Bob. I've been waiting for you."

"She - she told me."

"Too bad you wouldn't come at once. I should have used more sense, let her tell you who wanted to see you. But I figured you wouldn't of believed her."

"Yes. I guess that's right." I fumbled for words while he stood there, stood there looking at me. "How - how are you?"

That was a fine thing to ask. But he didn't seem to mind.

In fact, he smiled. The smile creased the side of his face and got tangled up in the tic, but he made it. "Oh, I'll live," he said. "I'll live forever."

"What?"

"That's the pitch, Bob. That's why I had to see you. I'm going to live forever. Varek fixed that."

Varek? Where had I heard that name before?

"He's the one who claimed my body. You remember."

Yes, I remembered. The mysterious cousin. "But how did he know you weren't dead, and how did he revive you?"

"I was dead, Bob. Deader'n a doornail. And he fixed me up. He can fix anybody up, Bob. Bring them back. Make it so's they never die. And that's where you come in."

"Me?"

"I been telling him about you. About how smart you are, all that stuff you write. He needs somebody like you for the outside - to front. Somebody with brains. Young. And alive."

Alive. I was alive, all right, but I wondered if I was awake and sane. Talking to a dead man…

"Come here, Bob. I can see you don't believe me."

I moved closer to Cono.

"Feel my skin. Go ahead."

I put my hand on his wrist. It was cold. Cold, but solid. Up close I could see the waxen pallor of Cono's face. Cono's death-mask. The tic rippled across it and he smiled again.

"Don't be scared. I'm real. It's real. He can do it. He can bring back the dead. Don't you see what it means? What a big thing it is, if it's handled right?"

"I see. But I still can't understand where I fit in."

"Varek will tell you all about it. Come on, I want you to talk to him."

I followed Cono Colluri out of the room. Vera smiled and nodded as we left, but she didn't accompany us as we walked down the long corridor to a stairway. Descending the stairs into the soft, subdued light of the parlours below, I became conscious of a peculiar odor. It smelled like stale air, steam heat and the scent of mingled flowers.

"Say, just where are we, anyway?" I asked.

"Funeral home," Cono answered. "Didn't you know?"

I hadn't known. But I might have guessed. Living quarters upstairs and down here the parlours. The parlours, the soft lights and the scent of flowers.

We walked across a carpeted hallway, and I glanced around me. It was the way Cono had said; this was a funeral home, and a rather shabby one. Perhaps that's why there were no bodies lying in state, no mourners. Varek had set this up for a front, and I rather suspected that if I made a dash for it and tried the front door I would find it locked.

But I didn't make a dash for it. I followed Cono into the darkened parlor to the left, to meet Mr Varek.

I walked in and Cono lumbered over to the corner. He walked stiffly, awkwardly. The muscles in his body were taut with shock. But he did pretty well for a dead man.

He was turning on a lamp in the corner, he was closing the door behind us. I paid no attention. I was staring down at the coffin on the trestle. Staring down at the body in the coffin. The body of the man with the glass eye.

It was the bartender I'd killed.

He lay there on the cheap satin, dressed in a worn black suit. Somebody had put the glass eye back in place and it stared up at me sardonically. The other eye was closed, and the general effect was that of a wink.

There we were - me and the man I'd killed. I looked at him, and he looked at me.

He looked at me!

Yes. It happened. The eyelid rolled back. The eye opened. It focussed on me. And the mouth, the bound mouth, relaxed its smirk. The lips parted.

And from the corpse came the voice: "Hello, Bob. I'm Nicolo Varek."

"You - "

"Oh, I'm not the bartender you killed. He's dead enough, as you can see for yourself. His body isn't breathing."

It wasn't, either. The corpse was still a corpse, but something was alive, something lived inside it. Lived and looked and talked.

"I'm just taking temporary residence. So that I can talk to you, without having to travel a great distance. You can appreciate the convenience."

I couldn't, at that moment. I could only stand and gape and feel the sweat trickling down under my armpits.

"You've been a long time coming, Bob. But it was inevitable that we should meet. Cono has told me all about you, and of course I have other ways of gaining information. Many ways."

"I'm sure." It came out before I could stop it, but the corpse chuckled. The sound was a death-rattle.

"How typical of you to say that. How characteristic! Ah, yes, I've studied your background, your work. You interest me greatly. That is why I have gone to all this trouble to arrange our meeting."

I nodded, but said nothing. I was waiting.

"I'm inclined to give Cono credit for finding you. It's quite true, I can use you."

"Dead or alive?" That remark came out before I could stop it, too.

"Alive, of course. But don't think I'm not appreciative of the distinction. You're a man of keen wit, sir. And I admire you for it. One seldom finds acerbity in these decadent days."

"Look," I said, beginning to recover a little composure. "I'm not used to indulging in character analysis with a corpse. Just what do you want of me?"

"Your services, sir. Your professional services. For which, needless to say, you will be generously rewarded. In perpetuity, I might add."

"Cut the double-talk. I've had enough from Vera, and from poor Cono - "

"Poor Cono? I would hardly endorse the adjective. Were it not for me, my dear sir, Cono would be languishing in an unmarked grave. Whereas, thanks to my efforts, he is among the quick rather than the dead. And if you wish plain talk, sir, you shall have it.

"I am Nicolo Varek, man of science. I have perfected a means, a methodology, a therapy if you like, which defeats what men call death. Defeats death? It goes beyond that, far beyond. For those whom I revive also possess the boon of eternal life. Eternal life!"

Crazy talk. But it was coming from the mouth of a corpse, and I believed it. There was no hint of fakery or collusion - no ventriloquist could open that cadaver's eye, manipulate his dead lips. I saw, and I heard. And I believed.

"Yes, I can give life to the dead. As to the how and the why of it, well, that's my secret. My priceless, precious, perfect secret.

"And what do you think the use of that secret is worth, Sir? What is the proper fee for the boon of eternal life? A million dollars, perhaps?

"There are many men with a million dollars in this world, my friend. Do you think any of them would hesitate to part with that sum if I could assure them of continued existence?

"But there's the rub. They must be assured. And at the same time the secret must remain a secret. For this reason I must continue to operate anonymously. There is nothing men would stop at in order to extract my secret from me - if I were known to them as its possessor. How often I've faced torture and death myself at the hands of those who suspected I might save them!

"You say I have helpers aplenty? That I can summon up an army of the dead, if need be, to assist me in my aims? That is true -but only within certain limits. The dead must be controlled. And I cannot carry out my plans completely without the aid of living humanity. I need a man of prescience, a man of integrity. Such as yourself, sir."

"I don't see what you're driving at."

"A business arrangement. You might even go so far as to call it a partnership. With myself as the silent partner. You as the go-between. Our product: Eternal life. Our goal: Unlimited wealth, unlimited power."

"Sounds a bit too easy."

"Do not mistake it, my friend. There are innumerable obstacles to overcome, many problems to face and to solve. I can provide for them all, however. This has been a cherished dream of mine for centuries. Yes, centuries."

"Who are you, anyway?"

The corpse chuckled. "So many men have asked that question of me, so many times! Yet I find it best not to answer. My handiwork is proof that I speak truth, and that is all you need. Trust me, and we shall rule.

"Yes, rule! Surely you can see what power lies in my secret. The hold it will give us both over the great ones of this world, now and forever! We'll seek our fortunes first, and the rest shall come.

"I have the plans well laid. You will be able to go forth and proclaim the gift of eternal life to the world. Nor shall you lack for assistance. I can summon a host to your command, to do your bidding and mine. We shall broadcast the tidings: There is no more death, for those who can pay the price! Eternal life, and more; special powers, new powers.

"But you'll learn all this and more in time to come. You'll learn the methods I've devised for bringing the news to the world. Of course, it would never do to make a really public announcement or statement; it must all be cloaked in mysticism and the proper formulae. We'll start a cult, attract the wealthy, and reveal the truth only to the select few.

"Now, sir, how does my proposal strike you? Eternal life, eternal riches, eternal power?"

I didn't say anything for a long moment. I stared at the corpse that told me men could live forever.

"Silence means consent," said the voice.

"Not necessarily. I was just wondering - what if I refuse?"

"I'm sorry you even mention the possibility. For it forces me to remind you that you really have no choice in the matter."

"You mean you'll kill me if I don't? Kill me and animate my corpse, I suppose?"

"Come now, surely you give me credit for more subtlety than that? I've already gone to a great deal of trouble and risk to bring you here, as you know. I cannot jeopardize my plans to any further extent. And you would be of no use to me as a corpse. Besides, there is no need for me to kill you. If you walk out of here, you're as good as dead anyway."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you are wanted for murder. For killing this poor one-eyed citizen of a free republic. The bartender."

"But he's alive, you've revived him - "

"Not like the others. It's purely temporary, you understand. I can keep him animated as long as I choose, and I will do so if you consent. I'll even put him back to work in the bar." Again the chuckle. "It won't be the first time a dead man has walked abroad with none the wiser. If only you knew or even suspected how many of the dead presently mingle with the living, thanks to the Varek method!"

I shuddered. The single eye of the corpse was omniscient. The voice purred on: "If you refuse, he becomes a corpse again. With a dozen witnesses to swear you killed him. I'll not wreak vengeance - the full majesty of the law will attend to that. And your story of mysterious women and corpses that talk and a walking dead man will not help you or save you. I believe you realize that.

"But you won't refuse. Because you can see what I'm offering you. Wealth and power. The goals, the dreams of every man. A chance for eternal life yourself, such as I enjoy. Think it over, sir, think well upon it. Life or death?"

I thought. I thought well upon it. And everything within me clamoured for assent. Oh, it's easy enough to be a hero when there's no temptation. But the cynic who said every man has his price knew human nature. There aren't many who wouldn't settle for eternal life, eternal wealth and eternal power even at the price of their souls - and the souls of everyone else, for that matter.

The souls of everyone else…

I looked at Cono. My friend, Cono Colluri. The late Cono Colluri who went to his death looking like an overgrown college boy. Cono, who left me eight thousand bucks and a promise to clear his name.

Where was Cono now?

He wasn't here in this room. His body was here, and it moved and it talked, but the soul…

There was a tic, there was torment, there was twisting torture. Not real life. This was a stranger, a bulking walking corpse. No emotions, no warmth, no humanity.

Sure, I could sell myself out. But I couldn't sell out the world.

So I stared down at the corpse and I said, "No. I'm sorry, Varek. I've got to refuse, and take my chances."

"The decision is final?"

"Final."

"Very well. You've had your chance."

The mouth shut. The eye closed. The dead bartender was truly dead again. I saw the light fade away from the countenance, then I moved back. Back, into Cono Colluri's arms.

I might have known Varek would lie. That he'd never let me out of that room alive. If I hadn't realized it before, I knew it now. Because the cold arms wrapped around me. And the great thumbs rose up to my neck, ready to press and squeeze.

"Cono!" I gasped. "It's me - your friend - don't - "

You can't argue with a corpse.

You can only fight. Fight and pant, and try to keep the strangling hands away from your throat. I hit him with everything I had. Nothing happened. Nothing happened, except that he bent me back, back…

I sagged then. Sagged so suddenly that he went down with me. As I fell, I twisted. His grip broke. I rolled under the trestle. He groped after me. I dumped coffin and all on his head. He went down. Blind corpse-eyes sought me. I ran. I made it down the hall with no one to stop me. He lumbered to his feet, came groping after me.

I knew the front door would be locked. But there was a glass panel, and next to it in the hall somebody had placed a large urn.

I grabbed it up, smashed the glass, and stepped through.

Then I was out on the street, running. It was night. The air was cool.

It was good to be free.

Free, and wanted for murder.

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a murderer?

I can tell you.

It feels like rabbits who bear the baying of a hunting dog. It feels like lying in bed with the covers pulled over your head and Pa coming up the stairs to give you a spanking. It feels like waiting for the Doctor to sterilize the instruments.

You don't walk down the street when you're a murderer. You skulk through the alleys. You don't take the streetcar and you don't pass any cops. And when you finally get down-town to your hotel, you walk a long time before you go inside the lobby. You look around very carefully to make sure it's deserted.

And when you do go in, you don't ask for the key to your room. The police might be waiting up there. Or somebody else. Somebody that's dead, but alive. Waiting to grab you and -

I had the feeling, but I kept it out of my face and voice long enough to ask the clerk and the desk whether or not there had been any message for me.

You see, I had to play one hunch; that the hotel hadn't been tipped off. Varek wouldn't, as long as he thought I was coming in with him. And now, there was still that chance. If I could only get the message…

It was waiting for me, the precious little yellow envelope stuck in the pigeonhole. The telegram from the carney. I ripped it open and read:

GREAT AHMED AT FORTY THREE EAST BRENT STREET UNDER NAME RICHARDS.

That was all, and it was enough. Brent was a street on the near North side. Walking distance, I could take an El and bypass the Loop, if I was willing to risk it.

I was. Ahmed, or Richards, had the money.

I had to. Ahmed, or Richards, could save me.

I did. Ahmed, or Richards, was the answer.

Brent Street was about a mile across the bridge after I left the El. It was a long, hard mile, I kept to the shadows, kept my face averted from passersby. But nothing happened. I stopped in front of the dingy old brownstone frost that was graced with the numerals 43, lit my last cigarette, and went up the steps to preas the buzzer.

Then I waited.

It was a good two minutes before the door opened. During that time I speculated quite a bit about the man I was going to meet.

Would it be the Great Ahmed in a turban? A swarthy man with a pointed beard, deepset burning eyes and a singsong voice?

Would it be the suave, cultivated, cosmopolitan Mr Richards, a con man from the carney, dressed a little too garishly, with a voice too soft and smooth?

It was important for me to know. Because I'd have to throw myself on the man's mercy.

The door opened to answer my question.

"The Great Ahmed?" I asked.

"Yes. Please come in."

I came in. Into the light of the hall-way, where I could see my host.

He wasn't Ahmed and he wasn't Richards, either.

He was nobody.

A small man of about fifty, with thin, greying hair. Wrinkled face, watery blue eyes, almost grey. Come to think about it, his skin was grey, too. And he wore a grey suit. Quiet and inconspicuous. About as far away from a carney type as I could have possibly imagined.

How to describe him? In Hollywood, he'd be what they'd call a Barry Fitzgerald type without the smile and the brogue. Somebody's uncle. The kindly bachelor uncle.

I hoped he'd be mine.

"You are the Great Ahmed?" I asked, still not sure, still not sold.

"Yes. You want a reading?"

"Uh… yes."

I might as well stall for a while until I was sure. The way things had been happening, I wouldn't have trusted my own brother.

It was a big house, an old house, one of those places built for people to live in at a time when most families had eight or nine children instead of a television set.

The Great Ahmed led me down a long hallway, past two or three doors leading, inevitably, to a sun porch, a parlour, a library. The room he ushered me into was a sort of secondary parlour, towards the rear of the house. It had plenty of solid mahogany in it; old pieces, but durable. There was a massive centre table and the inevitable grouping of chairs as if for a seance. But there was nothing of the medium's workshop or the clairvoyant's clip-joint about this place.

I took advantage of the light in the room to study my host a little more closely, but I can't say I learned much. He was just a tired, middle-aged man, and I wondered how he managed the grift with a tough carney outfit. He didn't look the part of an Oriental mystic at all.

Even when he told me to sit down and produced a crystal ball from a cupboard, I wasn't impressed. The ball itself was small, and a trifle dusty. As a matter of fact, he brushed it off with his sleeve, smiling sheepishly as he did so.

Then he sat down, stared into the ball, and smiled again.

"The reading is three dollars," he said. "An offering, you understand, not a fee. Fee's against the law here."

"Shoot the three bucks," I said.

"Very well." His eyes left my face. They focussed on the ball. Grey eyes, a trifle bloodshot.

I sat very quietly while he stared. He cleared his throat. He fidgeted. Then he spoke.

He told me my name.

He told me where I'd been working.

"You are a friend of the late Cono Colluri," he said, his eyes downcast. "And you are here to collect his money. A sum amounting to eight thousand, two hundred and thirty-one dollars."

He paused. I felt the perspiration running along the collar of my nice white shirt - the one from the funeral parlor, probably stolen off a stiff.

He paused, and I stared at him. Nice little man in grey, but he knew too much. I'd never believed in "occult powers", and yet here he was, telling me these things.

After what I'd gone through in the past three days, I felt that I couldn't take much more. My whole concept of the universe was shattering, and along with it, my sanity. Dead men walking, me a murderer, and now a man who actually reads minds. It was too much…

"Take it easy, friend." The Great Ahmed stood up, slowly. "I didn't mean to upset you so. It was a cheap trick, I guess."

His hands moved upwards from under the table. They held an envelope and a sheet of paper.

With a start, I recognized Cono's letter.

"Picked it out of your pocket when I brushed against you in the hall," smiled the little man. "Then held it under the table and read it while you thought I was reading the crystal. Old bit of business, but effective."

I nodded, and tried to smile in a way that conveyed my relief.

"So you're Cono's friend," said the Great Ahmed. "He wrote me about you, you know. A couple of weeks ago. Didn't mention the money, though. It was a tragedy, wasn't it?"

"Then you know about the confession?"

"Yes. Louie was a rat." The smile left his face. "Too bad, a messy business. I'm glad I left the show."

He walked around to the cabinet, stooped, and opened the lower drawer with a small key. He took out a big black tin box. Another key opened it. He began to pile bills on the table - big bills, hundreds and thousands.

"Here's your money," he said, sorting a pile and pushing it across to me.

"But… don't you want some kind of paper, some kind of identification or signature?"

"You're Cono's friend. I trust you."

He smiled shyly, and his hands made a gesture of dismissal.

"You trust me, eh?"

"Why not?"

I took a deep breath and came out with it. I had to come out with it to somebody, or go crazy. "Because I'm wanted for murder, that's why!"

The Great Ahmed sat down again, still smiling. "And you want to tell me all about it, is that it? Well, go ahead. I'm listening."

I went ahead, and he listened. It took up a long time, but I told him the whole story - from the time I hit town until the time Cono hit me.

He sat there, a little grey idol, quietly gazing off into the gloom.

"And so now you want to clear your name, eh? And rescue Cono, I suppose? And put the finger on this man Varek, whoever he may be?"

I nodded.

"That's a big order. A mighty big order, friend. You know, of course, that your whole story sounds a bit implausible?"

"It sounds screwier than blazes," I told him. "But it's true. Every word of it."

"Granted. So the problem arises, where do we go from here?"

I glanced at the eight grand plus, lying before me on the table. Suddenly I shoved it back across to him.

"Will this help you to figure things out for me?" I asked. "Because if it will, take it. Part of it or all of it. Whatever it may cost to clear me, to save Cono. To pin a rap on that rat, Varek."

"You trust me to come in with you?" he asked.

"I've trusted you with my story. With my life. The money isn't important. If you're Cono's friend, you'll help."

"Good enough." The Great Ahmed sorted the bills and stacked them up next to the tin box. "From now on, I'm your man. Full time. Now to our problem." He pushed the crystal ball aside. "This won't help us any, I'm afraid. We have to face facts."

"Fact number one," I said, "is that the heat is on me."

"Which means you'll have to lay low. That makes me the outside man," he said.

"Correct. So it's your move."

"My move is to the hotel," Ahmed answered. "To your room. Sooner or later somebody is going to show up there, looking for you. The law will be around. But so will your blonde charmer, and some of the rest of Varek's friends. Perhaps even Cono himself. At any rate, chances are I'll find someone to tail; someone who will lead me to the funeral home or wherever else Varek hides out. He probably has a dozen or more places to hang his hat. If he wears a hat."

"I keep wondering," I mused. "What kind of a creature is this man? And his secret of eternal life - "

"He may have it," Ahmed retorted, "but you don't. And from the looks of you, a little sleep is in order. I'll take you upstairs to a bedroom. You might as well get a good night's rest while I go to work."

I didn't argue with him. The weariness pulled at my knees as I followed him up the stairs.

"You'll have to trust to me and to luck," said the little grey man. "Right now all I can tell you is I'm playing a hunch. That I can go back to the hotel, pick up the trail, and somehow have it lead me to Cono. He's the weak spot in the whole setup, for us. If I can handle him, he'll tell me what we have to know about Varek. Then we'll figure out how to deal with him."

"Sounds logical," I said, as we entered a small bedroom at the end of the corridor.

"Sounds mighty weak and flimsy, to tell the truth," replied my host. "But it's all we have to work on right now. I hope that by the time I return there'll be a little more to work on. Now - here we are. You don't fit into my pyjamas, but I think you'll find the bed is comfortable enough. I'll be on my way. Go to sleep, and pleasant dreams to you."

He waved and went out. I sank back on the bed, scarcely mindful of the click of the key in the lock. Then I sat up. "Here we go again!" I muttered.

My voice must have carried, because he called from beyond the door. "Locking you in. Got a cleaning woman who gets here in about an hour, and I don't want to take any chances. If your description has been broadcast, that is."

"Good enough," I answered. "But you'd better come back."

"I'll be back: And with good news. Don't you worry about a thing. When the Great Ahmed takes over, he takes over."

I lay back, kicked off my shoes, loosened my tie and belt, and then crawled under the covers. His footsteps receded into silence.

Here I was, in a strange house, in a strange bed, my future dependent on the integrity and the ability of a man I hadn't known a half hour.

Somehow, though, I trusted him. I had to trust him, of course, because there was nobody else. I wondered about the Great Ahmed, or Richards - if that was his real name. What he'd been doing hanging around a carney. Why he'd set up a three-dollar-a-throw crystal reading parlour here. Little colourless middle-aged nobody, without even a good line of patter to hand out. But the son-of-a-gun knew how to pick pockets!

That reassured me. He wasn't the schmoe he appeared to be. But was he good enough to handle a man who raised the dead?

I couldn't answer that one now. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and rest. Rest and sleep.

The room was dark. The night came in at me through the window. I got up and pulled the shade. I didn't want the night. It contained too much that could hurt me. Police, detectives, Varek and the walking dead. Better the special darkness of the room, the special darkness behind my closed eyes. The darkness of sleep.

The darkness of dreams…

Funny, the people you run into when you're asleep. Like this negro, for instance. He was just a common citizen, like hundreds of thousands of others on Chicago's South Side. He was riding on the El and I was riding on the El, hanging on the strap next to him.

I wouldn't have even given him a second glance, except for one little thing.

He was dead.

Yes, he was dead. When the El lurched, and he toppled against me, and I saw the rolling whites of his empty eyes, felt the cold, the ebon coldness of his black skin, I knew he was dead. A black corpse, hanging to a strap in the El.

I knew he was dead, and he knew I knew it. Because he smiled. And the deep bass voice rumbled up from the depths - from the depths of his empty grave, his plundered and cheated grave - and he said, "Don't look at me. 'Cause I ain't the only one. They's a lot of 'em dead around heah. A lot of 'em. Look!"

I looked. I gazed down the aisle of the lurching El and I saw them, recognized them. Some of the passengers were alive, of course, and I could tell that at a glance. But there were others. Many others. The quiet ones. The ones with the fixed, cold stares. The ones who didn't talk. Who sat alone. Who carefully avoided touching other bodies. They were pale, they were stiff, they were dead.

Most of the men wore their good suits, because that's the way they were dressed in the undertaking parlours. Most of the women wore too much powder and rouge, because the morticians fixed them that way. Oh, I recognized them. And the Negro nudged me with his icy finger and grinned a grin that held neither mirth nor malice nor any human emotion.

"Zombies," he said. "Tha's what they calls us. Zombies. Walkin' dead. Walkin', talkin' dead. Walkin' and talkin' because the Man say so. The Man. The Big Voodoo Man."

"Varek!" I said.

The El lurched again. The lights went out. Something was happening to the power. Maybe because I'd spoken the name.

The black corpse thought so. In the darkness all I saw was eye-white and tooth-white, flashing at me. "You went and done it," the voice rumbled. "Sayin' the name!"

And all the corpses in all the cars groaned and murmured, "He said the name!"

Suddenly the car gave a sickening lurch and I knew we were going off the track, going over. The corpses rolled against me in waves, and we were twisting and turning, falling, falling…

I landed. You're supposed to wake up before you land, but I didn't. Because I went too deep. The car crashed down into the sewers. I wasn't hurt. I was flung free. And I crawled along in the darkness, without eye-white and tooth-white flashing. Just red, this time. Little red lights.

"Rats," I told myself. "Rat eyes."

"We take the form of rats, yes. And of bats. And of other things. But we are not animals. We are not men either." The voice at my ear was soft but imperative. "They call us - vampires!"

I couldn't see him, or the others, but I heard the chittering laughter rise all around me, rise and turn to metallic mockery as it boomed off the sewer walls.

"Vampires. He raised us from the dead, he made us. In the big church up on Division Street, Father Stanislaus makes the Holy Sign against us. But we do not care. He is fat and old, that priest, and he will die. We can never die. We walk the night, we feast, and we own the world below."

Another voice droned in: "It's like this under the whole city, did you know that? And under every city. There's always places to hide, if you're clever. You can tunnel from place to place, come and go as you please, and nobody knows. Nobody sees. Nobody hears. And you can lift the manhole covers, drag down what you want, and dispose of what's left without leaving any evidence. Oh, it's clever and no mistake, and we can thank the Master for it all."

I nodded. "You mean Varek," I said.

They howled at that, and the sound nearly tore my head in two as the echo hammered from the metal walls. They howled, and then they scrabbled towards me in the darkness, but I ran. I ran and waded and crawled and swam through muck and filth, seeking an opening, seeking a light, seeking an escape from the world of death and darkness here below.

I found it, found it at last. The round metal lid above my head which led to safety. Safety and the cool darkness of a cellar. A chink of light guided me to a stairway and the door above. I came out into a kitchen, moved past to the bedroom, and peered through the door.

Edgar Allan Poe sat by the bedside and made strange motions with his slim white hands. Two doctors were in attendance, and all focussed their gaze on the apparition lying on the bed; the gaunt, skeletal countenance peered up from the pillows with glazed and glassy eyes.

The patient had white whiskers and incongruously black hair; outside of the animation in his eyes he might have passed for dead, and none would be the wiser.

But Poe's hands moved, commanding the sleeper to awake, and as I watched, he awakened.

Ejaculations of "Dead! dead!" absolutely burst from the tongue and not the lips of the sufferer, and his whole frame at once -within the space of a single minute or even less, shrunk - crumbled - absolutely rotted away. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome, of detestable putridity.

Then I fled, screaming, from the house of M. Valdemar.

But wherever I went, there were the dead.

Poe couldn't raise Valdemar. But Varek could. And he had. In my dream, I saw the proof. I tramped the streets of Chicago and recognized the faces. That stiff-lipped, unsmiling doorman in front of the ritzy Gold Coast hotel - he was dead. The black-haired girl on the end of the switch-board at the Merchandise Mart, the one who said, "Number please?" in such a mechanical fashion - she was Varek's puppet, too. There was an elevator operator at Field's and three men who worked the night shift at a big steel plant out near Gary. An old precinct sergeant over in Garfield Park was a walking corpse and even his wife didn't suspect. But what the precinct sergeant didn't know was that his captain was also a cadaver, and neither of them knew the secret of one of the Cook County judges.

The dead - there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Because Chicago isn't the only city in the world, and Varek had been everywhere.

I walked along, and then I ran. Because I couldn't stand it any longer, couldn't stand to see the faces, the empty eyes. I couldn't stand being jostled by a corpse in the crowded Loop. I ran and I ran until I came to the Great Ahmed's house and I came up to the bedroom, battered down the locked door, and crawled in bed here with myself again, knowing that I was safe at last, I was here, I could wake up into a world of reality - where dead men still walked]

"And they have other powers, too."

Who had told me that? Varek himself, in the bartender's body. Other powers. Powers like levitation - like floating through space, through windows high off the ground…

It had happened once before in a dream, and now it was happening again.

I could see her face at the bedroom window. Vera's face. The pale blonde hair. The diamond choker. Floating outside the window, bumping against it. Her hands groped out. She was opening the window from outside.

Funny that I should see it that way, because I'd pulled the shade down, and it was up now. So was the window. She was coming into the room, floating in gently, softly, ever so quietly. And now she landed, without a bump or a thump or a shudder, on the tips of her delicate toes. She was dead, too, of course. I knew it now. Her stare was glassy. She moved by automatic compulsion only. It was like a hypnotic trance, with every motion directed by an outside, an alien force.

Glassy-eyed, like a drugged Assassin. And like an Assassin, she drew the dagger from her waist. It was a long, slim, feminine-looking weapon, but it was deadly. The steel was diamond-bright. Why did she remind me of diamonds? Because of the choker. I gazed at the choker now as she tiptoed over to the bed. I wanted to watch it.

Better than watching the dagger. Because the dagger was a menace. It was coming up over my throat. In a moment it would come down, the point would bury itself in my neck, over the jugular.

All I had to do was watch the diamonds in her choker. And in a minute it would be all over. The knife was coming down, the knife that would end my life, the knife that would make me one with Varek's army - the army of the dead.

It came down, fast.

The glitter of that frantically falling blade broke the spell. Instantaneously, I realized that I was seeing it. There was a knife, and it was coming down at my throat.

I jerked my head to one side on the pillow and slammed my body forward, upward. My hands closed around solid flesh. Cold flesh.

Vera LaValle twisted wildly in my arms.

I sat up, hands moving to her wrist. I pressed it back until the knife dropped to the carpet. She fought me silently, her face a Medusa's mask, blonde curls tumbling like serpents over her cold, bare shoulders.

Suddenly her head dropped. I caught a glimpse of strong white teeth grimacing towards my neck. Vampire teeth, seeking my jugular.

I tore at her throat. My hands ripped the choker, dug beneath it. It came free, and fell. My hands closed around her neck, then came away.

I could not touch the thin red line, the scar that encircled her neck completely.

My hands came away, and I slapped her, hard.

Abruptly, she sank to the bed. The glassiness left her eyes and something like recognition flooded her face.

"Where am I?" whispered Vera LaValle.

"In a bedroom on Brent Street," I answered. "The Great Ahmed's place. You floated through the window and tried to kill me."

"He put me under," she murmured. "Then he sent me here and levitated me. I didn't know."

I nodded, but said nothing.

"You believe me, don't you?" she implored. "I didn't know. He promised me that he'd never make me do that again. But he did. He always does. Even now, I can't trust him. He can do anything he likes with me, because I'm - "

She stopped abruptly, and I filled it in for her.

"Because you're dead," I told her. "I know."

Her eyes widened. "How did you find out?"

For answer, I pointed at her throat. She noticed then that the choker had been torn away. Her hands covered the red scar on her neck and she stared at me for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, she swept her hair back into place.

"Tell me about it," I said. "Maybe I can help."

"Nobody can help. Nobody."

"I can try. And the more you tell me, the more I have to work with. That is, if it's safe to talk."

She thought that one over for a moment. "Yes, it will be, for at least a half hour now. He goes into a sort of coma when he levitates one of us; it requires terrific concentration. But if he comes out of it and discovers I've failed, anything can happen."

The fear was coming back into her eyes, and I sought to capture her attention again, quickly.

"Half an hour," I said. "That's time enough. Tell me about it from the beginning. What happened to you?"

Vera LaValle sighed. Her hands stroked the scar, softly. "All right," she said.

I lighted a cigarette and sat up, offering her the pack. She shook her head and I said. "Oh, that's right, I remember now. You don't smoke, do you?"

"I can't," said Vera LaValle. "I haven't been able to smoke, or drink, or eat. Not since I was beheaded - in 1794."

In 1794, the Terror ruled France. You could run into almost anything under the Terror. You might encounter a Citizen Robespierre or a man called - ironically enough - St Just.

If you did so, the chances were that they would introduce you to still another man with a more apt name - Samson, the executioner.

And Samson, in turn, would direct you to La Guillotine.

Everybody in France knew La Guillotine. Despite the feminine appellation, La Guillotine was not a giddy female - although she turned a lot of heads.

La Guillotine was the Terror incarnate. The head-chopping Terror. The beheading blade that waited until you were ripe for it, then chopped and filled the basket beneath it with rich and rotting fruit.

In 1794, the Terror ruled France, and you might run into almost anything. If you were Vera LaValle, age 20, daughter of Lucien LaValle the wealthy merchant, you walked in constant danger of your life.

Wealthy merchants were not popular these days. Wealthy merchants had to twist and turn, fawn and cringe, resort to almost any stratagem in order to try and escape from Paris before the order came - the fatal summons to the Tribunal. Better to ride out of the city in a dung-cart than to the Place de la Concorde in a tumbril.

No wonder Lucien LaValle betook himself to desperate measures and consorted with strange people in an effort to procure a means of deliverance before it was too late. Paris was aswarm with rogues and adventurers, thieves and sharpers who fattened on the misery of the remaining members of the nobility or the well-to-do. Some of them, for a price, could procure passports or arrange an unauthorized passage across the border or the English Channel.

Lucien LaValle, wealthy widower with a handsome, marriageable daughter, thought that he had found a solution.

Somewhere, somehow, in heaven knows what den or dive or stew, he encountered Nicolo Varek. Varek, the friend of the illustrious Comte St Germain. Varek, the confidant of the mighty Cagliostro. Varek, the alchemist, the mystic, the seeker of the Philosopher's Stone. Varek who boasted of powers greater than those of the two great charlatans he claimed to have known - and taught. Varek, the unsmiling, the cold, the ageless. But - and this was the crux of the matter - Varek the foreigner. Varek, the holder of the priceless possession, the Russian visa. The passport to freedom for himself and family.

Varek had no family, now. But Vera LaValle was young, she was chic, she was eminently well dowered. If she were a wife, and Lucien LaValle an official member of Varek's family - then what would there be to stop the menage from leaving France?

It was a reasonable proposition, and Lucien LaValle presented it to Varek on many occasions.

He shrugged. There was work to be done here in Paris, he said. Great things were afoot. He had never been presented to Mademoiselle LaValle, and no doubt she was all her fond father proclaimed her to be but still… A man in Varek's position is above matrimony and the calls of the flesh. And as to money (and here Varek shrugged again), he fortunately was in a position to command a fortune whenever he wished. No, it would not be advisable to leave the country now. As a matter of fact, everything depended upon remaining.

Lucien LaValle was eloquent. When eloquence fell upon deaf ears, he was insistent. When insistence failed, he resorted to tears. He sank to his knees. He wept and implored. And in the end, Nicolo Varek consented to meet the merchant's daughter, to talk to her.

That was enough for La Valle. He returned home elated, and put his case to Vera.

"Consider now how much depends upon your conduct," he told her. "Be charming - sprightly - gay. This Varek, he has a long face. He needs cheering. He needs your youth."

Vera LaValle nodded dutifully. No need to instruct her in coquetry. Long before he revealed his hopes and plans, she was miles ahead of her father. He had found a man who could save them - at a price. What the price was did not matter. Her father would pay his share and she would gladly pay hers.

She bathed, dressed, perfumed and painted for the interview. The meeting took place in the parlour and it was unchaperoned. A carriage drove up in the dusk, and Vera LaValle met Nicolo Varek under candlelight.

And it was thus that Varek, the friend of the nobility, the mentor of magicians, the peer of alchemists - Varek, the man who was above matrimony or the commonplace emotional reactions of ordinary men - fell in love.

Candlelight and coquetry definitely won the day, and the night. The suave, cold middle-aged man became a stammering, intense importuner. As to the matter of age, Varek was quite explicit on that point.

"Do not think of me as old, my dear," he reassured her. "For I am truly ageless. There are secrets I possess, secrets you shall share with me. Oh, we will share a great deal, you and I!"

He began to boast then, like any love-sick youth, and to confide.

Varek was Russian by birth, but the date of that birth and the details of his parentage would (he smirked) astound her. Suffice for him to say that he came of noble blood. He had been educated at the leading universities of Europe, but the bulk of his learning came from extended sojourns in Mongolia and Hindustan where he had studied occultism and the forbidden mysteries. Upon his return to Europe, he had visited Italy and imparted some of his wisdom to Cagliostro - wisdom which Cagliostro misused in his unscrupulous career. Varek, still seeking disciples, later gave instruction to the Comte de St Germain, whose mastery of mass illusion and the principles of levitation enabled him to win fame and fortune.

But he, Varek, was not interested in such trivia. True, as an alchemist he had sought to transmute baser metals to gold. But he soon realized that cultivation of other powers was more important.

Once he had developed them, fame and fortune would be his for the asking.

There were two secrets, and two only, which were worth possessing. One of them was the secret of eternal youth, and the other, the secret of eternal life.

To the discovery of these secrets, Varek had dedicated himself for scores of years.

It was a costly study, an expensive search. In order to finance himself he had, at times, resorted to base means. As an alchemist he was acquainted with the group that centred around La Voisin, and he admitted assisting that notorious female in her preparation of poisons. He had also been familiar with the clique surrounding the infamous de Montespan.

"But that was ages ago!" cried Vera, when she heard him. "Over a hundred years!"

Nicolo Varek, the unsmiling one, smiled. "Exactly," he said. "You see, I succeeded in at least part of my quest. I did discover the secret of eternal youth. Discovered it and possessed myself of it."

"You are over a hundred?" Vera murmured.

Varek inclined his head. "I assure you, time is a relative concept. You will not find me less ardent a lover due to my age, no less honourable a man because of my past associations. As you realize, we who seek the mysteries have always been on the fringes of society. We skulk in darkness, we consort with the underworld, we compound with the charlatans simply because we have never been accepted by the scholars and the savants. They are jealous of our achievements, these so-called "men of science" - although virtually all they know or hope to know has come from our work.

"Yes, it is we alchemists who have given them their chemistry, we sorcerers who have preserved what little is known of medicine and physiology and biology, we mystics who have the only knowledge which can develop into a science of the mind."

"I don't understand," Vera said. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"I'm telling you not to be afraid of me." he answered. "It has been said that I am a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a scoundrel, a magician, a murderer. Very well - I am all these things, but to a purpose. That purpose is power, power greater than you can dream!

"I've played my part behind the scenes these years past, my dear - and you've seen the result! I've had my interview with Mademoiselle Charlotte Corday, and Marat died. I've talked to Citizen Robespierre's brother, and Danton is no more. I've ways and means to pull the strings and make the puppets dance. And the end will be power. Great power. Once France is properly disrupted, there are other lands ripe for revolution.

"Revolution, my dear, always ends in dictatorship. Dictatorship, my dear, always ends in megalomania on the part of those who rule. And what would a megalomaniac do for the secret of eternal youth or the secret of eternal life - or both?

"Ah, yes, it will end only one way: My way. I shall rule the rulers! Think of that, my dear. Within a few years, Nicolo Varek will be the unseen ruler of the world. And you, his empress, his queen."

Varek came closer, and Vera could see the paper thinness of his bloodless lips. He might have been forty, he might have been four hundred. "The secret of eternal youth. How does that please you, my little one? To be always young, always as you are today? To live, to rule, to enjoy the senses to the full forever? I have that gift for you, that dowry.

"And soon - sooner than I dare tell you - I shall have the other, too. The Great Secret. Eternal life! I've a laboratory here - you must see it - where I experiment. In times like these, there is no shortage of subjects. Samson sells me the unclaimed ones every day." The bloodless lips formed a bloody smile. "I'm getting closer and closer to the solution," Varek told her. "And once it's gained, the world is mine. Ours!"

It was mawkish melodrama, but it was also naked nightmare. For the little lisping, whispering, sniggering creature came closer and closer, and then he was no longer braggart or stammerer but merely a lustful automaton. He pawed at Vera LaValle and she endured his carrion breath upon her neck for a moment. But only for a moment. Then she wrenched free, and Varek, losing his balance, tumbled grotesquely to the floor.

Vera LaValle laughed.

She didn't refuse his offer of marriage. She didn't call him an old man, a liar, a murderer, a repulsive fool. She didn't do anything but laugh.

Her laugh said all those things.

Nicolo Varek rose, tugged at his ruffled clothing, and bowed coldly. "Adieu," he said. And left.

Vera LaValle waited. She waited for Lucien to scamper in, rubbing his hands briskly in anticipation. She waited for the effect of her story upon him; his crestfallen stare, his agitation, his frantic reiteration of, "Why, why, why? He was our only hope, out only chance! Why?"

She waited, then, for the summons. It came soon enough.

Somebody had denounced Citizen LaValle and his daughter. As usurers, as enemies of the People.

She waited for the trial, and it was short. Lucien sobbed when he heard the verdict, but she shrugged.

She waited, then, for the tumbril.

Waited, those last few days, alone. For Lucien LaValle hung himself one gloomy Sunday morning and she was left alone.

She was alone, and waiting, that last night when Varek came.

Citizens were not allowed to visit with prisoners in their cells on the eve of execution. But Varek was not a citizen. He was not a man at all in the ordinary concept of the word. He was a mocking shadow that glided silently to her cell.

One moment nothing, and the next, Varek was there. Whispering in the darkness.

"Vera, Vera LaValle, listen to me! I have news for you. Great news!"

Silence, as he waited for a reply. But she said nothing. After a moment, he continued: "Remember what I told you? About the laboratory, the experiments, the secret of eternal life? I have it at last, Vera - I have it at last! Oh, it's not exactly all I'd hoped, and much remains to be done in refining the method. But it's the goal of sorcery through the ages, the dream of science. And I have it. For you. For us!"

Silence once more. Vera LaValle did not move. He spoke again: "Eternal life, Vera! I swear it's the truth; I can give you eternal life. All you need do is say the word and you're free. I can get you out as easily as I got you in. And now you can be young forever, alive forever! You must believe me, you must!"

Vera turned and faced him through the bars of the cell. She could not see his face in the darkness of the corridor, but he could see her countenance - and the lineaments of loathing.

"I do believe you," she said. "And I tell you that I prefer to die tomorrow morning rather than spend eternity - or a single living moment - with you."

Varek's laugh grated through the gloom. "A plain answer, Mademoiselle LaValle. But I wonder if you have rightly considered what's in store for you. When the tumbril rolls and the sun is gleaming, gleaming on the bright blade of the guillotine? Have you see the heads in the basket, Mademoiselle? Have you seen Samson lift them by the hair and exhibit them to the crowd?"

"You can't frighten me," she whispered.

"Do you know what it's like to be dead? Dead forever and ever?

They'll put you in the ground, Mademoiselle, in the cold wet ground. You'll lie there in eternal darkness, lie there and rot and decay into slime and dust. And the lips that you withhold from me will feed kisses to the worms.

"Aren't you afraid of death, Mademoiselle LaValle?"

She shook her head and smiled into the blackness beyond the bars. "Not as much as I fear life with you," she said. "Now, go and leave me in peace."

He broke down, then. The creature cried and begged. "I don't understand, it's never happened before - that a woman, a girl, a mere child should do this to me! I thought I was immune to folly, but since the moment I laid eyes on you I cannot endure the thought of not possessing you. You are a burning in my blood, you must know that and you cannot refuse - you cannot! But you must be mine of your own free will, not by force. I want you willingly, and I must have you." Varek sobbed, and it was the dry and dusty sobbing of a reanimated mummy, rustling in the darkness.

Once again, Vera LaValle shook her head. "No," she said.

Varek's sob held not grief but rage. "Good enough," he cried. "If I'm not fit for you, I commend you to a new lover. To Death! Death shall embrace you, twine his bony fingers in your curls, take your head as a souvenir of his conquest. Adieu - I leave you to hold tryst with your beloved. He'll not be long now!"

And he left her.

Then and only then did Vera break down. For she had lied. She did fear death. The thought of dying terrified her past all comprehension, and now in the darkness she could almost see the grinning presence of Death incarnate; the skeleton in the black coat, the grinning skull covered with a cowl.

He was still with her the next morning, when the guards came. He walked with her to the tumbril, and as she and five other weeping and bedraggled women took their places, Death climbed in beside them.

Death grinned at Vera LaValle as she rode through the streets of Paris to the site of execution. Death pointed his finger at the roaring crowd, the prancing Citizen Samson and his grimacing assistants. Death showed her the shrieking silhouette of the knife against the dawn-drenched sky.

Death was with her as she walked to the platform. Death helped her up the stairs, and it seemed to Vera in the delirium of the last few moments that not Samson but Death himself was the executioner - removing her cloak, binding her arms forcing her to kneel and gaze down at the bottom of the basket when all the time she wanted to gaze up; gaze up at the knife, the bright blade of the knife which was the only real thing left in the world.

Then, as the roar of the crowd came up, the blade of the guillotine came down.

Death took Vera LaValle in his arms.

And - released her!

"You want to know what it's like, of course," she told me, sitting there on the bed, thousands of miles and lifetimes later. "But I don't remember. There was no pain, no sensation, and yet I felt, I was conscious in a new way. There was no sense of duration, either.

"Then the pain came back, and I was alive.

"I had this pain in the throat, and in the head.

"I opened my eyes. I saw the bandage on my neck. I saw the silver tube coiling to the top of my spine. And I saw Varek.

"You know what happened, of course. Samson had sold me to Varek after the execution. He took me to his laboratory and brought me back to life.

"I realized it, naturally, at once. But I can never convey to you the horror of that moment - when I discovered that he had sewed my head back on my body!

"It was grotesque, it was ludicrous, and it was somehow blasphemous. But despite it all, in the weeks to come, I learned to respect the power, the wisdom, the genius of Nicolo Varek.

"My convalescence, if you can call it that, was slow. It was not easy, with the crude techniques he had painfully evolved, for Varek to keep me alive and nurse me back to a semblance of health and sanity. But he did it. Since that time I've learned a great deal about what he does to reanimate the dead, and still I haven't grasped the true secret."

She paused, and I cut in: "You say he sewed your head back on? But that's… incredible."

Vera pointed at the scar and smiled wanly. "Would you find it equally incredible if I told you that there's a metal plate covering half of my skull - that there is metal, some sort of machinery, extending down the neck and into the upper spine? That Varek, in 1794, was using electrical voltage and a sort of miniature dynamo for metabolic regulation? That the control he exercised and still exercises is a combination of hypnotism and an extension of brain-waves transformed into electric current? Yet it's true, all of it. I am an automaton - operating on the power generated from within plus the current fed me by Varek at a distance. I'm alive yet not alive. I do not age or change, I do not eat or sleep. But there's something worse than sleep. Something much worse." She shuddered. "That's when he turns me off."

Either she was crazy or I was. Or both of us. This I knew. But I believed her. I believed the cold-eyed, cold-skinned creature with the livid scar who talked to me across the centuries.

"He's done it to me, many times, temporarily and to suit his convenience or his needs. But I've seen him do it to others - permanently. It's horrible. They die, then; die a second death. A hideous death, forever.

"That's the hold he has over me, over all of us. The ability to turn us off. Because there's something inside that wants to live, fights to live. Oh, how can I tell you the story of what took a hundred and sixty years to live?" Vera glanced around the room, and for a moment her agitation seemed completely human. "There's not time; he'll come out of it now, hear us."

I pressed her. I had to know the rest. "Quickly, then," I urged. "What happened after you recovered?"

"He was still experimenting. I was his first complete success. There were other… corpses… that he revived temporarily. But they were damaged, warped. Completely insane. At the time, he hadn't perfected his methodology of control. Several escaped. There was an ugly scandal. And Robespierre's dictatorship fell. He went to the guillotine himself. Varek no longer had protection in Paris. So we fled.

"The Embargo was on, and the only ship we could find was bound for the colonies. We ended up in Haiti, just the two of us.

"It was a strange relationship. He no longer desired me, of course - and I think he almost regretted his monstrous act of revival. Gradually he set about to make me his servant. And of course, he succeeded. I was alone, helpless, literally dependent on him for my existence.

"I offer no apologies for serving Varek. I had no choice. And he was master.

"It didn't take long for him to establish himself in Haiti and in San Domingo. He had brought money and jewels. We took a mansion; he posed as a planter. And immediately set about fomenting an insurrection. You know what happened to Haiti a few years later, when Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines and Christophe revolted against the French. Varek played his part. Blood flowed, and there were bodies for Varek's new laboratories. Black bodies to experiment upon. Black bodies to toil on the plantations.

"It was at this time that a new superstition arose. The one about zombies. The walking dead. Can you understand now just why and how this belief was born?"

I nodded, thinking of my dreams. There was a horrid logic and conviction behind her words. Varek had created the concept of the zombie. His creatures walking the world.

"The blacks were primitive, simple. Varek bungled often. He was still groping, evolving methods and techniques. The botched jobs were the zombies.

"And the vampires - that was Hungary, of course."

I raised an eyebrow. "But Varek isn't responsible for the belief in vampires. That's an ancient superstition."

"Correct," answered Vera. "But we went to Hungary from Haiti because of the belief. Because, there, tales of the walking dead would be ascribed to superstition and no one would investigate too closely if some of Varek's experiments moved freely over the countryside. Also, Varek wished to follow the latest developments in European scientific research. Even before the Revolution, he had worked briefly with Anton Mesmer in the development of hypnotism. Now he was interested in the new psychology.

"You see, attaining the power he dreams of is a long and a complicated process. It involves much more than merely the ability to control the reanimated bodies of the dead. At first, Varek could not keep a corpse alive except by constant hypnotic control. He had to focus his own energies every moment. Then he reached a stage were he could fix a behaviour pattern for hours, or days, and turn to other matters. But that is not enough.

"Each reanimated corpse must be provided for - given a new identity, a new life, a new rote to play. Varek moulds the puppets, breathes life into them, and then he must manipulate the strings. Dozens, scores of puppets, on dozens of separate stages; all play their part in one involved drama.

"He had to enter into scientific fields, enter into politics. How much of the intrigue behind the Third Empire in France was due to his work, I'll never know. For in 1847 I rebelled; I tried to get away. And as punishment he turned me off for seventy years!"

Vera's white death-mask contorted in remembered agony. "For seventy years I followed Varek across the world as baggage - in an ice-packed coffin. And meanwhile he meddled with science, he pulled strings, and he waited. What's time to Varek?

"I awoke in Russia, during the Revolution. By this time he'd come to realize that he needed living allies; men to work in front of the public. Dupes and spies. He'd made some connection with a monk, Rasputin. There was a plan to kill the young Tsarevitch and then bring him back to life again; the Czar and Czarina would be at his mercy, from that point on. But somebody murdered Rasputin, and we fled Russia for a spell. That's when I was reanimated again.

"Varek believes in Revolution, you know. A time of turmoil and disruption is what he needs; it gives him an opportunity to profit by confusion. New and untried leaders arise, and he comes to them with hints of what he can do. He presents plans and attempts to gain control of those who form governments.

"We returned to Russia, and I aided him. I had no choice. It was that or lying in darkness - refrigerated darkness, now, thanks to modern conveniences." She smiled wryly. "You can guess what he's been up to since then. You can guess who was behind the scenes in some of Pavlov's experiments. Varek reached members of that group. You can guess that sooner or later the Comintern got wind of it. But what you do not know - and what history does not show - is just how perilously close Russia came to developing a truly mechanized army in the 1930's. An army of the dead!"

I lit a cigarette and tried not to look at the clock on the bureau; the clock that was ticking the minutes away.

"We were in Germany, then, and Varek attempted to sell his notion to the New Order. But his spokesmen fell out of power, and in 1939 we fled again. We were in Canada for a few years, in Manitoba and further north. Varek waited out the war. But he has infinite patience, infinite cunning.

"He can afford to wait - wait for centuries, if necessary. He's a strange man, Varek. He has possessed vast wealth, and lost it time and time again fleeing from country to country. He has a chameleon-like ability to alter his personality his appearance. He is - But what's the use of telling you? You're doomed."

I crushed out the cigarette.

"Now let's get down to cases," I suggested. "He sent you to kill me. Why?"

"Because you know about Cono. His offer was genuine, at first. He is still looking for a man, for many men, who will serve him as living allies. But you refused, and because you understand his power, you must die."

"Yet, Cono is such an insignificant cog in his machine," I persisted. "A dumb strong-man from a carnival. I can't see why a man with Varek's gigantic plans would bother with such a trivial matter."

"Then you don't know Varek. He has plans within plans. He's not lived quietly for the past few years for nothing. He's been waiting - waiting for the next war. The big one. The one his plans have indirectly fomented.

"There's a great laboratory set up already, somewhere in Sorora. It is capable of… processing… the dead almost on a factory assembly line. Its services will be offered to the highest bidder when the time comes. Whichever side runs out of manpower and needs a new army of workers, a new army of fighters. Don't you understand? That's where it all leads to, Varek's dream; to create a world run by slaves - by the dead!"

"He'll never get away with it."

"I'm not so sure. The past few years have brought the scientific developments he needs. There are new methods of controlling bodies en masse. Radio, electronics, blood plasma all play a part in his schemes.

"For years now he's been in the background, waiting for the right time. When war comes he will have emissaries ready to approach the new leaders. He knows how to get to the wealthy, the powerful, and intrigue them. That has been my job in the past. He intended to have your help, too - and probably the help of a hundred men like you."

"That's the one point that isn't clear to me yet," I told her. "Just exactly how does he manage to insinuate himself into the confidence of the men on top?"

Vera smiled. The ghost of a smile, the smile of a ghost. "Simple. Have you ever heard of the Fox sisters? Or D. D. Home or Angel Annie or Madame Blavatsky?"

I nodded. "Spiritualist mediums or mystics, weren't they?"

"Yes. During my… sleep… Varek was able to hit on that gambit. The same one used earlier by St Germain and Cagliostro. Through the ages the wealthy, the powerful have always had one weakness. A belief in superstition. A longing to pierce the veil of the Mysteries. They've always followed the seers, flocked to the occultists, confided in them. No need to explain the phenomenon. It exists."

"True enough." I said. "So Varek allies himself with the mediums. They act as his front men. They attract the rich. And Varek watches, waits, chooses those he wants or can use, and then steps into the picture and reveals his plans."

"Exactly." Vera sighed. "It was that way with Rasputin, if you remember. He was the key to the Czar's influence. And he's ready to start again."

"But the mediums aren't trustworthy, many are frauds," I argued.

"And many are not. Take D. D. Home, for example. No less a scientist than Crookes verified the fact that Home levitated himself out of a third storey window and floated back in through another. It actually happened, time and time again. But what Crookes didn't know is that little, tubercular, wan Mr Home had been dead for a year - and Varek animated him, hypnotized him, and then levitated him by concentration. Just as he levitated me tonight and sent me to kill you."

Vera paused. I stared at her white face in the gloom. And as I stared, something happened. A spasm contorted her countenance, the same dreadful tic that had afflicted Cono. I watched her as her mouth opened and a voice came out. But it was not Vera LaValle's voice. It was the voice of the dead bartender, the voice of Varek.

"Yes," it told her, as much as it told me. "I sent you to kill him. And you failed. Failed and then talked. I cannot afford to have you talk any more, Vera. I'm going to turn you off. Forever."

The voice shut off abruptly. It had to shut off, for there was no longer a means of utterance. The spasm in Vera's face swept down over her body in a single hideous horripilation. For a moment she swayed there, shuddering convulsively. Then - she melted.

There was a change, and it wasn't a collapse. It was a running together, as though flesh were falling in on splintering bone. She shrank, dwindled before my eyes - and then she crumbled.

Somebody had taken the wax doll that was Vera LaValle, and held it over a roaring flame. In an instant she ran together, fused.

I stared at the floor, stared at the heap of fine white ash surrounding a charred and twisted cluster of wires linked to a metal plate.

Vera LaValle was gone.

Vera was gone and I was alone in the bedroom. Or was I?

If I'd had any doubts about Varek's power, they were gone now. They'd vanished with Vera, and taken a part of my sanity with them.

Let's face it; I was panicked. Varek knew where I was, and that meant I would no longer be safe here. Not safe from him, not safe from the police. I wondered what had happened to Ahmed. For all I knew, Varek had attended to him, too. And I couldn't stick around and wait.

I went over to the door. It was locked, of course, and I'd have to force it. I gave it the old college try. You see them do it every day in the movies and on television. Brawny, broad-chested hero puts his shoulder to the locked door. The door gives way. Simple.

Try it sometime. Desperate as I was, all I managed to gain was a bruised shoulder. Then I picked up a chair. That was a better deal. The panel splintered. I broke the lock.

Then I was running down the hall in darkness, groping at the head of the stairs, clumping down them, racing through the hall to the front door. If a cleaning woman had showed up, she didn't show.

I made the door, opened it. The night air hit me. So did a hand.

"What's the rush, friend?"

I gasped with panic, then with relief.

Ahmed bustled in, rubbing his hands. "Hold it," he said. "I've got news for you."

I shook my head. "I've got news for you, too," I said.

"What do you mean?"

I decided to risk it. He had to be shown. I took him by the arm and steered him back up the stairs. If you think it wasn't hard for me to force myself into that room again, you've got another guess. But it had to be done that way.

"Take a look," I said.

His little gray eyes examined the charred ashes on the floor. He stooped and picked up the metal plate, contemplated the dangling wires protruding from it.

"What's this?"

"All that remains of Vera LaValle. She visited me with a knife. I got her to talk and then she was… shut off."

"I don't follow you."

"Sit down," I sighed. "I'll have to explain, but I want to make it fast."

I did. The Great Ahmed nodded. He wasn't upset, he wasn't alarmed, he wasn't horrified. Somehow, his very calmness managed to reassure me.

"It ties together," he said, as I concluded. "It fits. Every bit of it."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've seen Cono. You were right about the hotel, friend. He came back. And when he found me hiding in the closet he tried to kill me." Ahmed smiled and help up a skeleton key. "I needn't tell you how I got in the room," he grinned. "But to make a long story short, the same thing happened as must have happened to you and Vera here. I managed to calm him down - he recognized me, of course. To be brutally frank, I resorted to an old Varek trick; a little hypnosis of my own. Varek must have been directing his own energies elsewhere, possibly to levitate Vera LaValle.

"At any rate, Cono talked, Of course, he's newly reborn, as it were, and he doesn't have too many details. Also, he's not the best example of a scientific mind." Ahmed smiled, briefly. "Still, he told more than he thought he was telling.

"Did you know that Varek has hideouts established in almost every principal city in the world? And that each of them contains anywhere from a dozen to several hundred bodies under refrigeration, ready for reanimation at any time? A sort of dead storage.

"Also, there are the walkers. More of them than you'd suspect. Although it's really quite easy to detect them because they all have one thing in common - the red scar on the neck."

I started at that. "You mean, he cuts off their heads before he revives them?"

Ahmed shrugged. "Not completely, now. But an operation is performed. A deep incision is made at the base of the brain. The metal plate is grafted into place and the wires" - here he picked up the charred mass from the floor and waved it - "are put into place. Meanwhile, the hypnotic control is being established."

"It's a form of hypnotism, then? But I don't get it."

The Great Ahmed shook his head. "It isn't easy. But then, what do any of us understand about the life process? We don't know what governs our physiological continuity; makes our hearts beat and our lungs take in and expel air without conscious control. You might say we operate our own bodies through autohypnosis and that keeps us alive.

"And what's death? Various organs 'die' at different times after the heart stops. We can understand the process of decay, but we can't define or truly measure death. Why, I defy anyone to tell me exactly what sleep is, let alone death!

"Sleep - that's a form of hypnosis, too.

"And, somehow, Varek has harnessed that portion of the mind which functions automatically in life, in sleep; kept it going in the state we describe as death. The common denominator is electrical energy; brain-waves, which can be measured electrically, you know. Varek has managed to apply hypnotic principles to the electric current of the body; magnetism controlling magnetism. That's why he performs the operation, inserts the metal plates in the brain and the spine. To alter the 'hookup', you might say."

The little man spoke earnestly, as though he were lecturing a backward pupil. I listened with equal earnestness now as he waved his finger at me.

"Let me put it simply. You might compare the human body to a radio set, and Varek to a radio station. His operation consists of putting in the proper tubes and condensers to make the set forever receptive to his hypnotic wave-length. It's all electrical. Once control is established, he can broadcast impulses forever. That's a vast oversimplification, but you get the idea."

"Not completely," I said. "What about the bartender?"

"Oh, there are exceptions. The bartender was one. There Varek resorted to a temporary hook-up. Probably gave his entire concentration to animating him temporarily, just to talk to you. As he concentrated entirely to levitate Vera. Those special things require special efforts. But with the vast army of dead, Varek - to return to our little analogy of a radio station - merely sends out a host of previously prepared 'transcriptions' in the shape of hypnotic suggestions. The dead then 'play' the hypnotic suggestions through for hours. And Varek need pay no more attention to them than an engineer who puts on long-playing records for broadcasting. They operate automatically.

"And that, of course, is the weakness. Sometimes Varek doesn't pay attention; or he watches the wrong body. Then it's possible for someone else with a stronger hypnotic wavelength to 'jam' reception in a corpse - capture its attention, divert its purpose. As I did with Cono tonight at the hotel. And as you did with Vera."

"Lucky for both of us we did," I said. "But what else happened? What else did you find out? Why is Varek operating in Chicago now? And - this is the jackpot question - what's the secret of his own eternal life?"

The Great Ahmed smiled. "You want a lot for a few hours' work, friend," he answered gently. "Some of those questions you'll have to find out about for yourself. All I can do is give you that opportunity."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I made a deal with Cono. And I think he can be trusted - as long as Varek doesn't get to him. Cono has promised to lead you direct to Varek himself tonight."

"Now?" I was genuinely startled.

Ahmed glanced at his wristwatch. "In about three quarters of an hour. You're to meet him in the lobby of the Wrigley Building at eleven-thirty. Alone."

I didn't like that at all, and he could see it even before I spoke. "What's the big idea?" I asked. "Why aren't you coming along?"

The little man returned my gaze with unmoved composure. "For a very obvious reason; it might be a trap. Then Varek'd have both of us. As it is, you'll have to take your chances. And if anything does go wrong, I'll still be able to carry on, to follow through. After all, that's why you hired me. And I aim to finish the job."

He was silent for a moment. "Think it over," he said. "You don't have to go, you know. And I don't mind telling you I'd hesitate before taking such a risk."

I nodded. "Somebody's got to do it," I said. "So if you'll call a cab for me…"

Ahmed smiled and held out his hand. "Good boy," he said. He turned and led the way downstairs. He phoned for a cab in the hall.

"I don't know where you're going or what you'll get into," he mused. "And of course, under the circumstances, you can't have the cops tagging along. You'll just have to use your head. Try and keep in touch with me, tip me off what's going on and what to do."

"Why don't you follow me in another cab?" I suggested. "Then, no matter where Cono takes me, you'll at least have the address."

"Good idea." Ahmed stepped to the phone and put in another call. Then he nudged me. "And here's a little idea of my own," he said.

He held out his hand next to my pocket and dumped something cold and hard. I reached for it and came up with a.38 fully loaded.

"Just in case," he told me. "I'll feel better if you have something along for company."

I grinned my gratitude as we walked out of the door of 43 East Brent and waited for the cabs to arrive. Mine rolled up first, but his turned the corner a moment later.

"Let's go," he said. "Be careful now."

"Same to you," I answered. Then, "Wrigley Building," I told the driver. And we were off.

It was a nice, warm, moonless night. I leaned back in the cab as we jolted downtown and tried to relax. I'll give you three guesses how well I succeeded.

We kept stopping at corners, corners with cops on them. I hid my face and thanked my lucky stars there was no moon.

When we hit Chicago Avenue and a red light, I took a long chance. I leaned out of the cab, yelled at a newsboy, and bought a paper. Just idle curiosity. I wanted to see if they had my picture in today. With some of the latest gossip. Such as the offering of a reward, dead or alive.

I riffled through the pages rapidly, but no success greeted my efforts. Maybe they didn't care. Maybe they were used to killing bartenders in Chicago.

Killing -

The little squib caught my eye. With the Louisville dateline. James T. Armstrong Shows… Louis Preusser, 43… Confessed murderer of… Psychiatrists declared under influence of hypnosis and drugs…

It was the follow-up on the story of Louie's confession. He'd walked in, glassy-eyed, and confessed. I wondered what the whole deal was. The Great Ahmed would know. Maybe I'd better ask him before I went on.

I glanced behind to see if his cab was trailing mine. Nothing was in sight. Maybe his driver had taken Clark Street instead. He'd catch up to me. Nobody seemed to have any trouble at all catching up to me whenever they wanted to.

Take Vera LaValle, for instance. She'd found me at the Great Ahmed's after I'd been there for less than an hour. That was one question I needed an answer for. How did she - and Varek - know I was there?

I'd remember to ask Ahmed that.

But - would he tell me?

Maybe you're a scientist, a great scientist. Maybe you're a sorcerer too, a wizard. You can raise the dead, and you stay alive yourself. But it's still quite a trick to pick one person out of four million and send a killer right to his door. Unless somebody tips you off.

The tipoff That was it.

Ahmed goes out. Ahmed sells out. Of course! He went to the hotel, just as he said he would, with the eight grand in his pocket. Maybe he saw Cono there, maybe he saw somebody else. Maybe he even saw Varek himself. And he made a deal. He told Varek where I was. Varek sent Vera to kill me.

When enough time had passed, Ahmed came back to see if the job was accomplished. It must have surprised him to find me alive.

So he came up with the story about meeting Cono. Why? It hadn't, come to think of it, sounded too good at the time. This business about winning Cono over with hypnosis. And Cono leading me to Varek.

But seeing me alive, he'd told me the story for a purpose. Ahmed was a great guy for purposes, all right. He must even have given me the gun for a purpose.

I tried to figure it out as we roared down Michigan. I could see the gleaming lighted spire that chewing gum built, right ahead. I'd be there in a minute now.

What had Varek said? Something about not bothering to kill me because the law would do it.

And here I came riding up to the Wrigley building, with a gun in my pocket. An armed murderer.

I knew what to look for now. It wouldn't be Ahmed's cab; he wouldn't show up at all, I was sure. I was looking for a black prowl car.

I wouldn't see Cono standing in the lobby with a white carnation in his buttonhole, ready to guide me on a conducted tour of Varek's snug harbour. I was more likely to see a couple of downtown boys with their hands in their topcoat pockets. The reception committee from the downtown station.

We started to edge towards the curb, and I added up my score. Exactly 100 per cent right. There was the squad car, there were the boys. They stood patiently, just waiting for somebody to show up. If I knew Ahmed, I felt sure he'd furnish them with a very good description.

We nosed in, slowing down. "Here we are - " the driver began.

"No, we're not," I cut in. "Back to 43 East Brent. And fast. I have another appointment."

We kept going, over the bridge. Nobody looked up. Nobody followed. I kept my hand on the butt of the.38 all the way back. I didn't want to lose it, you see.

It was the Great Ahmed's, and I intended to make sure that I gave it to him.

The house was dark, but then it was always dark. I had the cab park around the corner because I didn't mind walking. In fact, I preferred it. Preferred it so much I went around to the back of the house - the long way around, mind you. Didn't bother me a bit. Nor did it bother me to climb in through a rear bedroom window on the first floor.

I was quiet. Very quiet. Sort of a slow, seething quiet. Little thoughts kept bubbling up in me about what I'd do to Ahmed when I got my hands on him.

So he wasn't the type for a carney grifter, eh? Well, he'd taken me in soon enough. And sold me out even sooner.

I landed on the bedroom floor and padded out, down the hall. No cleaning woman was around and I knew now that there never had been. Ahmed had locked me in to keep me on ice for Vera LaValle or whoever Varek might send.

Ahmed and Varek - a good team. Maybe Ahmed was the guy Varek needed for a front man!

Of course, he wouldn't look quite so presentable after I got through with him…

I tiptoed down the hall, peeked into the library. It was dark. The whole house was dark. I stopped, listened. After a long moment, I became convinced of the truth. I was alone. Ahmed had gone out in his cab but he hadn't returned.

I reached a stairway going up - that led to the bedroom and the other rooms on the second floor. But behind it was another set of stairs, going down. I decided to have myself a look. Curiosity killed a cat of course - but this cat carried a.38.

The basement was big and dusty. Old fashioned furnace, the usual stationary washtubs, a coal-bin, a fruit cellar. I pushed open the door and stared at the usual assortment of dusty, empty jars in the light thrown by a naked bulb dangling from the centre of the small room.

Nothing in the cellar to interest me. My hunch was cold.

I was cold!

Standing in the deserted fruit cellar a little past midnight of a warm May evening, I was cold. Cold as ice! I felt the cold air all around me. But where was it coming from?

A draft blew against my trouser cuffs. I looked down.

There was a round metal lid set in the floor of the fruit cellar. I stooped, touched it. The iron was icy. I groped for the ring, lifted the lid. I gazed down into darkness.

Then I walked away, making a circuit of the cellar until I found what I needed and expected to find - the inevitable handy flashlight.

I returned to the fruit cellar and pointed the beam down. It focussed on the iron rungs of a ladder. I took the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, and left enough fingers free on both for me to cling to the rungs as I descended.

I lowered myself into icy cold - the coldness of a vast black refrigerator. I went down, down, rung after rung. Finally my feet hit slimy, damp stone. I joggled the flashlight until it bisected a wall with its beams. Eventually I located a light switch.

I flicked it. The light went on, and I saw everything.

I was standing in the centre of Varek's laboratory.

Varek - Ahmed. Ahmed - Varek.

It all added up now. More lights went on.

They went on in the little room with the big filing cabinets. I pried open a lot of drawers that night; the drawers containing the certificates, the visas, the affidavits, the fake credentials, the diplomas, the letters of identity (hadn't Varek convinced the warden he was Cono's cousin?) and all of the mingled memorabilia of hundreds of years of impersonations, imposture, and disguise. Floods, tons of paper. The dust fairly flew.

And more light was shed. I found the long closet with the wardrobe; the Ahmed wardrobe, the sportsman's garments, the shabby workman's garb complete even to the battered tin initialled lunchbox and the union button. The accoutrements of Varek the wealthy man of the world were there, too - and a box containing diamonds and other gems that reminded me of poor Vera LaValle.

Then there was another room, with more files. Letters and newspaper clippings. Ads from the Personal columns of ten thousand papers, in a score of languages. Help Wanted notices. Lonely Hearts messages. And letters, letters, letters - messages from the millions who later turned up missing. Those who answered Varek's appeal for a wife, a husband, an employee. I got a picture of him sitting there, year after year, sending out his letters, interviewing prospects, recruits for his army of the dead. Recruits who would not be missed, searched for.

There were more lights in other rooms. The big surgery, with the gigantic autoclave; completely modern, completely equipped. I wondered how he'd managed to assemble it here, and then I thought of the dead; the tireless dead who steal, who strain, who slave day and night.

Beyond the modern surgery was medieval horror.

The round, dungeon-like room, dominated by the huge table on which rested the alembics and retorts of an ancient alchemist. The beaker filled with the brownish-red, crusting liquid. The herbs and powders on the shelves; the dried roots in bottles, and the great jars filled with monkeys floating in a nauseous liquid, and other things that looked like monkeys but weren't. The stock of chalk and powders. The great circle drawn upon the floor with the zodiacal signs inscribed in blue before it. The jar of combustible powder -that was used to make the circle of fire inside a pentagon, according to the thaumaturgists. And on the iron table rested the iron book; the Grimoire of the sorcerer.

* * *

Sorcery and science! Surgery and Satanism! That was the link, the combination! Sorcery had led to science, as Varek said. His original alchemic experiments had brought him to actual research and enabled him to perfect his method of reanimating the dead.

But that didn't explain his own continued life, his boasts of eternal youth. That was sorcery. That was selling your soul, after lighting the fires and invoking the Author of All Evil.

The rooms, the lighted rooms, seemed to present a panorama of Varek's entire existence across the centuries. Everything was her - and I wondered, now, if he'd told me the truth. If in every great city, unsuspected, beneath a house or a factory or a tenement there existed a duplicate of this place. What had he said? A sort of "dead storage", that was it.

"Dead storage." But where were the dead?

There was another room, beyond the alchemic chamber. I entered it, and the coldness engulfed me. This was it. The refrigerator storage space. Where you keep the cold meat.

The cold meat…

They lay on slabs, but they weren't sheeted. I could see them all, see their staring faces. Men, women, children, young, old, rich, poor - lavish your categories upon them, they were all here. A host, a hundred or more. Silent but not sleeping, inert but not immovable, rigid without rigor. They lay there, waiting, like toys that would soon be wound up by cunning hands and set about to walk in make-belief of life.

It was cold in that room, but cold alone did not make me shiver. I walked through rows of dead, staring into the faces that stared into mine. I don't know what I expected to see. None of them looked familiar - except, perhaps one little blonde who reminded me of someone I'd run into before somewhere.

Then, all at once, I knew what I must do. There was fire outside, and it would serve more purposes than that of conjuring up demons. It could also be used to put them to rest.

I walked back into the other room and picked up the powder box which, when its contents were kindled, traced a pattern of flame on the floor. A circle of fire protected you from demons, it was said, after you evoked them.

I ripped the lid off the box and began to sprinkle the powder about. I worked quickly, but not quickly enough..

Because when I looked up, somebody was standing in the room. He only stood there for a moment, and then he started for me.

It was Cono.

* * *

He didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. He came on and I backed away. The cold arms reached out; I'd felt them before. The tic like grimace leered, and I knew it would keep on leering no matter how many bullets I might waste.

Because the dead don't die.

Because this was the end.

Because he was coming at me like a demon.

But demons can be warded off with fire.

I pulled out the.38 and pressed the trigger. I didn't aim at Cono; I aimed at the powder on the floor.

A circle of flame shot up, almost in Cono's face. He stopped. Dead or alive, fire destroys flesh. And he couldn't get through. Not as long as the fire flared.

I wondered how long that would be. When would the powder's potency be exhausted? Ten minutes, five, two? Whatever the time, I had that long to live and no longer - unless I could convince him.

I talked then. Told him what I thought he'd understand. About Varek being the Great Ahmed, hiding out with the carney for a while and perfecting plans. About seeing Cono and deciding to make him a recruit, then rigging up the murder charge by hypnotizing Louie, getting him to drug Cono and kill Flo.

I told him something about what Varek was, what he planned, what he'd do to Cono, to me, to the whole world if he wasn't stopped and stopped soon. I told him about the sorcery and the science and the bodies that walked everywhere in every city.

The fire began to flicker, to fade, to die down. I talked louder, faster.

And it didn't do any good.

It was like talking to a stone wall.

It was like talking to a dead man.

With a sickening feeling, I realized I'd been in this spot once before. I'd tried then, tried to tell Cono I was his friend, tried to reach his heart, his soul. But dead men have no hearts. Varek was his heart. And I knew of nothing that could touch his soul. Nothing he cared for, nothing he loved. Except Flo!

Then I remembered, remembered the next room and the blonde on the slab. The little blonde with the familiar face - Flo!

"Cono," I said. "Listen to me. You've got to listen. She's in there, too. You didn't know that, did you? He didn't tell you. But he's greedy, he wants them all. He not only took your body, he took Flo's too. She's in the next room. Cono. He cut off her head, put in his damned wires and plates, and now she'll walk for him forever!

He was blind. Blind and deaf. The flames died, he moved towards me, he caught me up in his arms. I waited for the squeezing strength of his fingers to wrench my life away. But he merely held me, held me and lumbered across the ashes into the next room.

"Show me where," he said, and the tic rippled horribly across his face.

I pointed. Pointed at the face I remembered from a photograph he'd shown me.

Cono saw her. He released me, and his hands went to his head. He kept staring at her, staring and staring, even after Varek came into the room.

That's how it happened. One second we were alone and the next moment he was there - little grey shadow, silent and suave.

No emotion, no surprise, no tension.

Just his soft, quiet voice saying, "Kill him, Cono."

He might have been asking the big man for a match.

But as I stared at Varek - stared at the quiet little middle-aged man with the paper-thin lips - I saw many things.

I saw a vulgar charlatan in a carnival who was in turn a gypsy in Spain who was in turn a Polish count who was in turn a Haitian planter who was a London barrister who was a Polynesian trader who was a Tulsa wildcatter who was a physician in Cairo who was a trapper with Jim Bridger who was a diplomat of Austria who was - it went on and on that way, a hundred incarnations and a hundred lives and all of them were evil.

He faced us with all of that evil, the evil of a hundred and a thousand men, concentrated but quietly so, and he said to Cono again in the voice that could not be denied because it was the voice of mastery, the voice of life over death - "Kill him, Cono."

Cono set me down and I felt his arms close about my body, his hands grasp my throat. He was a robot, an automaton, he could not refuse; he was a zombie, vampire, all the evil legends, all the fear of the dead that return, the dead that never die.

Cono bent me back. And Varek, with a look in his eyes that was a grey ecstasy, came closer and waited for Cono to finish.

That's what Cono wanted, too.

For when Varek came close, Cono moved. One instant he held me - the next, I was free and those huge arms had reached out to engulf Varek.

The little grey man rose, shrieking, in the air. Cono squeezed -there was a sound like somebody stepping on a thin board - and the body of Varek writhed and twisted on the floor like a snake with a broken back.

Cono helped me with the powder, then. There were chemicals, too; enough to start a good-sized blaze.

"Come on," I said. "Time to get out of here."

"I'm staying," he said. "I belong here."

I had no answer to that one. I turned away.

"You got to go now," Cono told me. "Leave me the gun to start the fire. I give you five minutes to get out."

The thing on the floor was mewing. Neither of us looked at it.

"One thing," Cono said. "I want you should know it so you'll maybe feel better. About that bartender. You didn't knock him off. You hit him with a bottle, but that didn't kill him. Varek killed him, later, when they dragged him in back to see how bad he was hurt. But he was going to pin the rap on you. I found out at the funeral home."

"Thanks," I said.

"Now go away," said Cono.

And I went. I walked through the rooms and didn't look back. I climbed the ladder back to the basement. When I reached the top I heard the muffled sound of a shot from below me, far away.

Long before the flames spread, I was out of the house and on my way to the Loop.

Next morning I read about the place burning to the ground, and that was the end.

But this is a story that never ends.

I keep thinking of those "dead storage" places in other cities. I keep wondering if Varek had turned everybody off that night - or if others walked in other places. The way he and Cono and Vera had all told me. "If you only knew how many…"

That's what frightens me.

That's why, wherever I go now, I'm afraid of women wearing high collars and chokers. Men in turtleneck sweaters or even a clergyman's collar. I think of the red scar under the scarf. And I wonder.

I wonder when someone or something will float through my window again. I wonder what walks abroad at night and waits to drag me down.

I wonder how I, or you, or anyone can tell, as we go about our daily rounds, which are the living and which are the dead. For all we know, they may be all around us. Because:

The dead don't die!