By 1.30 P.M. they had driven back to Harkley; and then, too, Yulian had briefly picked up the thoughts of another watcher. He’d tried to infiltrate the stranger’s mind but it immediately shut him out. They were clever, these watchers! Furious, he raged inwardly through the afternoon and could scarcely contain himself until the fall of night.
Peter Keen was a comparatively recent recruit to INTESP’s team of parapsychologists. A sporadic telepath, (his talent, as yet untrained, came in uncontrolled, unannounced bursts, and was wont to depart just as quickly and mysteriously) he’d been recruited after tipping off the police on a murder-to-be. He had accidentally scanned the mind — the dark intention — of the would-be rapist and murderer. When it happened just as he’d said it would, a high-ranking policeman, a friend of the branch, had passed details on to INTESP. The job in Devon was Keen’s first field assignment, for until now all of his time had been spent with his instructors.
Yulian Bodescu was under full twenty-four hour surveillance now, and Keen had the mid-morning shift, 8.00 A.M. till 2.00 P.M. At 1.30 when the girl had driven Bodescu back through Harkley’s gates and up to the house, Keen had been only two hundred yards behind in his red Capri. Driving straight past Harkley, he’d stopped at the first telephone kiosk and phoned headquarters, passing on details of Bodescu’s outing.
At the hotel in Paignton, Darcy Clarke took Keen’s call and passed the telephone to the man in charge of the operation, a jolly, fat, middle-aged chain-smoking ‘scryer’ called Guy Roberts. Normally Roberts would be in London, employing his scrying to track Russian submarines, terrorist bomb squads and the like, but now he was here as head of operations, keeping his mental eye on Yulian Bodescu.
Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire’s mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.
Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people:
Bodescu, his mother, his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu’s dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was — simply ‘the Other’. Like Yulian himself, Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was — in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about — it was certainly there and it was alive .
‘Roberts here,’ the scryer spoke into the telephone. ‘What is it, Peter?’
Keen passed his message.
‘Travel agency?’ Roberts frowned. ‘Yes, we’ll get on to it at once. Your relief? He’s on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.’ Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.
When he got an answer, Roberts held a handkerchief to his mouth, contrived a young voice. ‘Hello? Er, hello?’
‘Hello?’ came back the answer. ‘Sunsea Travel, here —who’s calling, please?’ It was a male voice, deep and smooth.
‘Seem to have a bad line,’ Roberts replied, keeping his voice to a medium pitch. ‘Can you hear me? I was in, oh, an hour ago. Mr Bodescu?’
‘Ah, yes, sir!’ The booking agent raised his voice. ‘Your Romanian inquiry. Bucharest, any time in the next two weeks. Right?’ Roberts gave a start, made an effort to keep his muffled voice even. ‘Er, Romania, yes, that’s right.’ He thought fast — furiously fast. ‘Er, look, I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but —‘
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I’ve decided I can’t make it after all. Maybe next year, eh?’