was forgotten, but he would never in a lifetime forget his waking conversations with this father of vampires. 'Faethor!' he gasped the word out loud. And as if it were some Word of Power, the name at once broke up the legend written on the tapestry - into a hundred individual bats! No bigger than winged mice, they released their hold on the fabric and whirled around the room once before escaping through the open window.
And: 'So, it's true,' said Manolis Papastamos, white and trembling, the first to regain command of his senses. 'It all comes together. I had thought Ken Layard and Trevor Jordan were the strange policemen, and you three stranger still. But of course, because you hunt the strange criminal!'
Sandra caught a telepathic glimpse of his mind, and knew that he knew.
'You should have told me from the beginning,' he said, flopping down into a chair. 'I am a Greek and some of us understand these things.'
'Do you, Manolis?' said Darcy. 'Do you?'
'Oh, yes,' said the other, nodding. 'Your criminal, your murderer, he is the Vrykoulakas. He is the vampire!'
Chapter 9
9
Cat and Mouse
'I understand why you didn't trust me,' said Papastamos, 'but you should have. What? You think the Greeks are ignorant of these things? Greeks, of all people? Listen, I was a boy in Phaestos on the island of Crete, born and lived there until I was thirteen. Then I went to my sister in Athens. But I never forgot the myths of the islands, and I never forgot what I saw and heard there. Did you know that there are places in Greece even now where they put the silver coins on the eyes of the dead, to keep them closed? Hah! Those slits in the eyes of Layard. He kept opening his eyes!'
Darcy said to him: 'Manolis, how could we know? If you took a hundred people and told them you were hunting a vampire, how many do you think would believe you?'
'Here in Greece, in the Greek islands, ten or twenty,' the other answered. 'Not the young peoples, no, but the old ones who remember. And up in the mountains - in the mountain villages of Karpathos, for example, or Crete, or better still in Santorin - maybe seventy-five out of a hundred! Because the old ways die hard in such places. Don't you know where you are? Just look at a map. Six hundred miles away is Romania! And do you think the Romanian peoples don't know the Vrykoulakas, the vampire? No, no, we are not the innocent childrens, my friends!'
'Very well,' said Harry, 'let's waste no more time. You know, you understand, you believe - we accept that. But still we warn you that myths and legends can be very different from the real thing.'
'I'm not so sure,' Manolis shook his head. 'And in any case I have had the experience of the real thing. When I was a boy thirty years ago there was a sickness. The children were growing weak. An old priest had lived on the island in a remote place in the stony hills. He had lived there, all alone, for many years. He said he was alone for his sins, and dared not surround himself with the people. Recently he had been found dead in his place and they had buried him there. But now the village priest went there with the people - with the fathers of the sick children - and dug him up. They found him fat and red and smiling! And how did they deal with him? I heard it later - with a wooden spear through the heart. I cannot be sure, no, but that night there was a big bonfire in the hills, and its light was seen for miles around.'
'I think we should tell Manolis everything,' said Sandra.
'We will,' Harry nodded, 'but first he came here to tell us something.'
'Ah!' Manolis gave a start and stood up. 'My God, but now this vampire you hunt - there are two of them!'
Harry groaned. 'Ken Layard!'
'Of course, the poor Ken. This morning, one hour ago, I get the call. It is the morgue. They have found the naked body of a mortician. He is dead with a broken neck. And Ken Layard's body has disappeared. And then - ' he spoke directly to Harry,' - then I remember what you say about Layard being undead, and that you want him burned very quickly. And then I know. But this is not