Darker Than You Think (45 page)

His
breathing stopped as Quain nodded.

"Probably
you are, Barbee. While the human genes predominate, a thousand to
one, nearly every man alive carries some slight taint of
lycanthropus—enough to cause some unconscious conflict between
the normal human instincts and that alien heritage. That's something
the psychiatrists have overlooked, in all their theories of
psychopathology."

Barbee
tried to relax, and managed to breathe.

"Mondrick's
test indicated that you carry more lycanthropus genes than most men,"
Quain said. "I can see signs enough of the conflict within
you—but I don't believe the human part has yet surrendered."

"Thanks,
Sam!" A warm tightness hurt Barbee's throat. "I'll do
anything."

Sam
Quain frowned thoughtfully. The drum and rumble of the storm had
paused, and the slow drip of water seemed loud in the dark cave.
Barbee sat shivering from the damp chill, waiting breathlessly. A
pitiless illumination had dispelled the shadowy uncertainties of his
waking life and explained the haunting horror of his dreams. He
thought he understood the savage conflict in him, the war of humanity
and diabolic monstrosity. The human side had to win! He clenched his
fists and caught his breath and listened hopefully.

"Dr.
Mondrick had a plan," Sam Quain said quietly. "He tried to
take the witch clan by surprise—to broadcast a public warning
and gather the human masses behind him. He hoped to arouse the people
and their governments, and establish a scientific equivalent of the
Inquisition to stop the Child of Night. But the witches murdered him
and Nick and Rex—and now I think we must try a different plan."

He
rubbed his red-stubbled jaw, and peered hard at Barbee again.

"The
public war has failed, and now I think we must launch a private
campaign. I'm going to gather a small, secret group—one man at
a time. That doesn't require that I identify the hybrids, but merely
that I find a few who don't belong to that black clan. Any witch man
who learns about us must be eliminated."

Barbee
nodded mutely and closed his sagging mouth.

"Now
I want you to go back to Clarendon," Sam Quain said. "I
want you to make the first contacts for me with those we pick for our
own secret legion—I must stay here."

He
glanced at his precious box, and Barbee whispered, "Who?"

"We
must pick them as carefully as the Child of Night selects his witch
pack. They must have money or political influence or scientific
skill. They can't be weaklings—this job is tough enough to kill
the best man alive." His glittering eyes flashed back at Barbee.
"And—they had better not be witches!"

Barbee
tried to breathe.

"Have
you anybody—in mind?" He tried to think.

"How
about Dr. Archer Glenn? He's a scientist—a dogmatic
materialist. He has reputation and money."

Stubbornly,
Sam Quain shook his head.

"Precisely
the type we can't trust. The type who laughs at witches—perhaps
because he's a witch himself. No, Glenn would just lock us in his
disturbed ward, along with poor Mrs. Mondrick."

Barbee
stiffened and tried to relax, glad Quain hadn't heard of the blind
widow's death.

"We
must pick a different type," Quain was saying. "The first
man on my list is your employer."

"Preston
Troy?" Barbee blinked with astonishment, relieved to forget
Rowena Mondrick. "Troy does have millions," he admitted,
"and a lot of political drag. But he's no saint. He's boss of
the city-hall ring. He planned all the crooked work Walraven ever
did, and collected most of the loot. His wife has locked him out of
her room for the last ten years. He's keeping half the pretty women
in Clarendon."

"Including
some certain one?"

Quain's
face showed a passing glint of amusement.

"That
doesn't matter," he went on gravely. "Dr. Mondrick used to
say that most saints were about one-eighth lycanthropus—their
saintliness just an overcompensation for the taint of evil. Suppose
you tackle Preston Troy tonight?"

Barbee
started to shake his head. The police net he had just escaped would
be spread wide by now. Preston Troy himself would doubtless be eager
to detain him— and get an exclusive story for the
Star.
His
sick mind could already see the black headline:
star
nabs car
killer.

"Anything
wrong?" Quain was asking.

"Not
a thing!" Barbee stood up hastily. It was far too late for any
confession that he was wanted for running down Mondrick's widow. He
had to go back to Clarendon. But Nora Quain wouldn't have told the
police about the Foundation car, he thought hopefully.

He
might reach Preston Troy. He might even—just possibly—win
that brutally realistic prince of industry for Quain's strange case.
He tried to veneer his dread with a smile. Stiff with the cold in
him, stooping beneath the black roof of the cave, he put out his
hand.

"Two
of us," he whispered, "against the Child of Night!"

"We'll
find others—we most." Quain straightened wearily. "Because
hell itself—every legend of men degraded and tormented by
demons—is only one more radical memory of the witch people's
reign." Quain saw his offered hand, and gestured him back with
the ugly gun. "Sorry, Barbee, but you'll have to show me first.
Better get moving!"

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

On
Sardis Hill

Numbly
reluctant to face the flooded roads and the incredulous scorn of
Preston Troy and the things that would whisper to him after dark,
Barbee left Sam Quain crouching with his gun beside the wooden box
from Asia—how weary and feeble a champion of mankind against
those inhuman hunters!

The
rain had turned to icy mist, but a cold yellow torrent still poured
down from the cliffs, through the narrow rock chimney that was a
stair to the cave. He scrambled stiffly down through it, drenched and
shivering—yet queerly relieved to escape the presence of Sam
Quain and that ominous box.

The
dusk was thick by the time he came splashing through ice-cold water
to the parked Foundation car. It started easily, and the road was
better than he had hoped. He could hear the rumble of rolling
boulders as he crossed the Bear Creek ford, but the car plowed
steadily through the foaming water.

He
had to turn on the lights before he came back to the highway, but
nothing whispered from the dark. No sleek she-wolf sprang into the
road ahead, and no police siren wailed behind him. It was eight
o'clock when he parked the car on the drive beside Troy's long
mansion at Trojan Hills.

Barbee
knew his way about the house, for he had been here on political
stories. He let himself in through the side entrance. The dining
room, to his relief, was dark. He climbed the stairs silently and
rapped on the door of Troy's second-floor den. The publisher's
leather-throated voice asked who the devil he was.

"Chief,
it's Barbee," he whispered apprehensively.

"I've
got to see you right away—because I didn't run over Mrs.
Mondrick."

"So
you didn't?" Troy's voice, rasping through the door, sounded
unbelieving. After a brief delay it added, "Come in."

The
den was a huge room with a brass-railed bar across one end, decorated
with hunting trophies and long-limbed nudes in oil. The air had a
faint aroma of stale cigar smoke, leather upholstery, and financial
importance, and Troy had boasted that more history was made here than
in the governor's mansion.

The
first thing Barbee saw was a white fur jacket on the back of a chair.
A greenish glint caught his glance—the malicious malachite eye
of a tiny jade wolf pinned in the fur. The jacket was April Bell's.
His hands tried to clench, and it was a moment before he could go on
breathing.

"Well,
Barbee?" In shirt sleeves, with a fresh cigar in his mouth, Troy
stood beside a huge mahogany desk cluttered with papers and ash trays
and empty glasses. His massive, pink-jowled face had a look of wary
expectancy. "So your car didn't kill Mrs. Mondrick?"

"No,
Chief." Barbee made himself look away from April Bell's coat and
tried to smooth his shuddering voice. "They're trying to frame
me—just like they did Sam Quain!"

"They?"
Troy's reddish eyebrows lifted interrogatively.

"It's
a terrible, tremendous story, Chief—if you will only listen."

Troy's
eyes were pale and cold.

"Sheriff
Parker and the city police would be interested," he said. "And
your doctors out at Glennhaven."

"I'm
not—crazy." Barbee was almost sobbing. "Please,
Chief—listen to me first!"

"Okay."
Troy nodded, poker-faced. "Wait." He waddled deliberately
behind the bar and mixed two Scotch and sodas and brought them back
to the desk. "Shoot."

"I
did think I was going insane," Barbee admitted, "until I
talked to Sam Quain. Now I know I've been bewitched—"

He
saw Troy's wide-mouthed face turn harder and tried to slow his
nervous, hurried voice. He tried desperately to be convincing,
telling Sam Quain's strange story of the origin and extermination of
Homo lycanthropus and the rebirth of the witch folk from the genes.

He
watched intently, trying to see how Troy reacted. He couldn't be
sure. The thick cigar went out and the tall forgotten glass made a
wet ring on the desk, but Troy's shrewd, narrowed eyes told him
nothing. He caught his breath, and his dry, tight voice finished
urgently: "Believe me, Chief—you've got to believe!"

"So
Dr. Mondrick and the other Foundation men were murdered by these
witches?" Troy laced his pudgy fingers together in front of his
paunch, and chewed reflectively on his dead cigar. "And now you
want me to help you fight this Child of Night?"

Barbee
gulped, and nodded desperately.

Troy
peered at him with blank blue eyes.

"Maybe
you aren't crazy!" A slow excitement seemed to take fire behind
the stiff, ruddy mask of his face—and Barbee began to feel a
breathless agony of hope. "Maybe these witches are framing you
and Quain —because this theory of Mondrick's explains a lot.
Even why you like some people on sight and don't trust others—because
you sense that evil blood in them!"

"You
trust me?" Barbee gasped. "You'll help—" Troy's
bald, massive head nodded decisively. "I'll investigate,"
he said. "I'll go back with you to that cave tonight and listen
to Quain and maybe have a look in that mysterious box. If Quain's as
convincing as you are, I'm with you, Barbee—to my last cent and
my last gasp."

"Thanks,
Chief!" Barbee whispered huskily. "With you to help, we may
have a chance."