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body, swathed in a kind of robe or housecoat Joe could never remember all the
exact classifications for the things that women wore suggested that it was
well maintained, if not
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exactly shapely.
She opened her door quickly and came out, light on her feet despite her heft,
bumping into Joe as he moved to step around her.
"Excuse me, I'm sorry!" Her voice was soft and pleasant, her smile a real
charmer. "Were you by any chance in Mr. Maule's apartment?"
No, she's not
. That was all that Joe could think of in the first moment, looking the woman
over carefully. He mumbled some kind of an apology for bumping into her.
"I'm Mrs. Hassler?" As if she felt rebuffed by his failure to answer her
question, the lady now seemed to be asking him if her name was quite
acceptable. "It's really none of my business, but I know Mr. Maule slightly.
Through the
Residents' Association. And I was wondering if he's all right."
Getting too rude with the neighbors could be a bad mistake; if none of them
had called in the cops yet, after a night of strange disturbances in the
corridor, one of them might easily be on the brink of doing so.
"Mrs. ah, Hassler, did you say?" Joe wondered fleetingly whether to introduce
himself, and if so what name to use. He put off the decision. "Yes, I just
came from Maule's place. He's okay. Was there something that alarmed you?"
"Well& " Now the lady was going to be reluctant to commit herself. From his
police days Joe could recognize the type, desperately curious but not wanting
to be involved. She went on: "There were some people in the hallway last
night, in front of his door. I don't know who they were& I don't know if you
could really
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call it a disturbance, but it was unusual."
Joe shrugged lightly. "I wasn't here last night. Actually, yes, he's a little
under the weather today, in fact he's asleep right now. But he's going to be
all right."
"He's a nice gentleman," she said softly, fixing him with a dark-eyed, liquid
stare. "It's none of my business, but I wondered."
"Yes. Well. He's quite all right."
Still Mrs. Hassler was not ready to be reassured and take herself away. "In
the city it seems you never know your neighbors. At least rarely. You'd think
that in this building we'd be a community. Or at least here on this floor. But
it doesn't seem to work that way."
"It would be nice if it did." Joe gave the lady his best, most reassuring
smile and a little nod. Then he turned away and moved on. He could hear her
door close softly before he'd gone a dozen steps. She thought the old man was
a nice gentleman. The way she said it meant she didn't know him all that
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well which was no surprise. A much less experienced seducer than the old man
would know enough to keep his affairs at a reasonable distance from where he
lived.
Before Joe had gone twenty more steps he passed a man and a woman walking in
the other direction. Their goal, at this point, could have been any of half a
dozen apartments, including Maule's or Mrs. Hassler's. As the couple drew to
one side of the corridor to pass him, Joe gave each of them brief but intense
scrutiny. He'd be willing to bet his right arm that both these people were
breathers. He didn't think he could be fooled, not after knowing the old man
so many years, and after certain other encounters less benign. Of course these
two
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innocent-looking breathers still might be agents of the enemy. But Joe didn't
think so.
There were about fifty elevators in the building altogether, distributed in
several banks, and his wait in this lobby for a descending car was mercifully
brief. In another moment he was on his way down. But he hadn't started to
relax yet, and it was just as well, because Hie elevator stopped at the next
floor below, and another well-dressed couple got aboard. The woman was on the
small side, age hard to guess, hair blond, eyes gray, face strikingly
attractive if not conventionally pretty. The man was big, a little taller than
Joe, and perfectly matched Angle's description of Valentine Kaiser. Even if
the match hadn't been so good, Joe thought he would have known these two at
once for what they were.
Not that there was anything gross or overt in their appearance to
differentiate them from the common run of humanity; with vampires there very
seldom was.
Corpselike complexions and needle fangs could be considered racial
stereotypes, the exception and not the rule.
Broad daylight or not, being cooped up with two of them in the little space,
spending long, long seconds well out of public view, was enough to make Joe
sweat. No one said anything, but the couple both looked at Joe, and he was
sure they knew he knew what they were.
Valentine Kaiser turned away from Joe as soon as the doors closed. Somehow in
the next moment he had snapped open the maintenance panel beside the
elevator's long row of buttons. Reaching inside, he did something. The
elevator stopped right where it was between floors, then, smoothly, with
scarcely a pause, it was going up again.
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Only when they were ascending did Kaiser break the silence. "We ought to have
a talk," he said, smiling at Joe.
"Okay."
"I am Valentine Kaiser. And you ?"
"Joe Keogh."
The other nodded, as if that was the answer he had been expecting. "I've heard
the name." He moved his head slightly in the direction of his companion. "This
is Lila," he said. Lila stood by smiling at Joe. There were moments when her
smile looked kindly, and others when it seemed utterly vacant.
Presently Kaiser reached inside the open panel to manipulate the wiring again. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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