and fast - probably a sight faster than me - and he would know where he was going. Three, I was sure he'd have some previous; I could find out all about him from police records in Newcastle or New Scotland Yard). So ... I had another drink, hung about for fifteen minutes or so, finally went back out into that lousy night.
And I think that was my second mistake. I should have got straight out of there. See, these new gangs are more audacious than the old crowd. In Geordie King's day ifaperp thought the filth had locked-on, he'd head for the hills and keep right on going.
But nowadays ... I'd made him, so he would make me.
As Banks paused, Harry turned up his colar against a sudden squal of wind and drizzle. It had occurred to him that if anyone should see him sitting here on this slab and talking to himself, they'd think he was out of his mind and probably cal the police!
I am the police, Banks reminded him, with an entirely immaterial, totally humourless grin that Harry sensed rather than saw. And you probably are out of your mind! Why didn't you come to see me in daylight?
'Because I wanted to get on with this,' the Necroscope answered. 'See, I've got problems of my own, and this should help me to forget about them. For a while, anyway.'
So talking to dead people is therapeutic, is it? ... But in the next moment, in a far more conciliatory tone: What sort of problems are we talking about, Harry? Bad ones?
'Not desperate,' Harry told him. Not as bad as being dead, anyway! Even though that last thought was ful of his usual compassion, stil it Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I might sound flippant; and so Harry kept it to himself. And: 'Go on with what you were telling me,' he said.
When I left the pub I had a tail, Banks went on. / wasn't sure about it then, but! am now. I mean, I've had lots of time to think things out, you know? And that was when it all started to go weird on me. It was like ... I don't know ... in a way it was pretty much like this, like talking to you. It felt like - how can I explain it? - like I wasn't alone ... inside!
'Inside?'
Inside my head.
'You were talking to someone in your mind?'
(The shake of an incorporeal head). No, not talking, listening! And not me, someone else. As if someone - a stranger - was in there! Sitting there grinning to himself, in a comer of my mind, listening to me think and ... watching me! That's what it felt like, Harry: I just knew / was being observed! It was a feeling that grew on me from then until... well, right to the bitter end. Weird, eh?
In his time Harry had come across weirder things; for the moment he would keep those to himself, too. But having listened carefully to all Banks had told him so far, it struck him that Darcy Clarke was probably right, and on both counts.
For one: he was already engrossed with the case, to such an extent he was sure it would divert his mind from the psychological pitfalls of constantly querying who or what or where he was. And two: it looked like this really was something he would have to follow through to the end, a job that only the Necroscope himself (but himself, Harry Keogh's self) was qualified to handle.
And the more he listened to Jim Banks - and felt of his shock, his horror - the more convinced he would become ...
That was how it started, and pretty much how it stayed, Banks continued in a while. It wasn't with me all the time, only when I was actually working on the case. But the closer I got, the more I was aware of its presence. Except it wasn't an 'if, it was a him! Someone as real as you are, Harry, and as real as I... was.
'You're talking about a telepath,' Harry told him. 'A mentalist. Someone who can get into a man's mind like that has got to be - '
- A figment of his own imagination? Yeah, I know, Banks stopped him short. Or I thought I did. But:
'Not. . . necessarily,' said Harry, thoughtfully. For the Necroscope remembered Boris Dragosani's story: how the vampire Thibor Fer-enczy, the old Thing in