June, gasping and tired, at last gave up, and breathed out a prolonged whine of frustration.
"Phil, do something!"
He grunted and strained again and muttered a few obscenities and oaths. But this time his heart wasn't really in it. He understood, as he sat waiting for his lungs and heart to slow to normal, that he might as well have saved his energy.
Glaring at their captor, June said: "I don't see how you think you can just come into the car and—and…"
"But I can." His voice was calm, infuriatingly parental. "Depend upon it. Nevertheless, you have nothing to fear from me."
So, it seemed that they were well and truly kidnapped. Philip in the back of his mind was already running through a mental list of people who might be expecting to hear soon from either one of them. The list was short, and offered no comfort. The Radcliffes could be out of communication with the world for a long time before anyone else became alarmed.
After a few seconds of silence, the girlish-looking vampire in the front seat turned her head long enough to call back cheerily: "Call me Connie. And you're Phil and June. But you already know that." And she giggled.
"You may call me Mr. Graves," said the somber man who sat, apparently relaxed but watchful as a statue, between his captives in the rear.
"You're hurting me," June told him, in a tone of voice that suggested it was mainly her sensibilities which had been injured.
"My apologies," said Mr. Graves, sounding in fact not all that sorry. His voice suggested that of some Middle European diplomat with faultless yet not native English, and his dark suit did nothing to dispel this impression. He turned his face toward June. "I shall release you. But only on the condition that you must, for a while, accept my presence, and my guidance."
Evidently she gave some sign of her acceptance. Radcliffe, feeling like a fool in his helplessness, looked across and saw that his wife was now indeed free. She was rubbing her slender arms and shoulders, inspecting her wrists and hands, with a puzzled look, as if she were sure there must be someplace where she was really hurt.
Phil let out a breath of partial relief. "Put on your seat belt," he reminded his wife mechanically.
She pulled the strap into place, and snapped the buckle, in a kind of reflex action.
Graves had now turned his dark, compelling gaze to his left. "Mr. Radcliffe, will you also ride peacefully beside me?"
"Doesn't seem like I have much choice," Phil gritted through his teeth.
"An intelligent observation," his seatmate observed.
The numbing grip relaxed. It was Philip's turn to rub his arms and shoulders, and to feel puzzled at the lack of damage. All that strength should have left something bruised or strained; but he felt only a faint tingling, like the aftermath of a good massage.
No one man, especially one so thin, could be that strong. It had to have been some trick…
"Please put on your seatbelt," the trickster urged him solicitously.
Radcliffe clicked the halves of the buckle into place. Then, summoning up his not inconsiderable courage, he demanded of his kidnapper: "And who the hell are you?"
"You may call me Graves," the dark-suited man repeated patiently. "Mr. Graves, if you are in a mood for formality. When we have reached our destination, we are going to discuss my identity more fully. It has a certain bearing on our business." For the first time he smiled faintly, showing a glimpse of white teeth.
Connie in the front seat turned her head briefly, glancing at Phil. Then she remarked: "He does look like him, doesn't he, Vla… doesn't he, Mr. Graves?"
"A definite resemblance," Graves agreed.
"Who do I look like?" Radcliffe demanded.
"You look a whole lot like a certain ancestor of yours," Connie remarked; over her shoulder. "One who lived about two hundred years ago."
Philip, his mind still numb, mental faculties staggering off-balance and scrambling through trivia to try and find a foothold, decided that Connie appeared to be about a decade younger than Mr. Graves, who had to be at least thirty. And she sounded like a native English-speaker, which the male intruder did not.
* * *
The man who called himself Mr. Graves had turned his gaze upon his male captive, and was studying him intently. Philip was the one, by all indications, in whom Graves was really interested. He didn't know whether to be pleased or not that June was being virtually ignored.
Connie, without looking round again, remarked: "Yes, this has to be the one that Radu wants."
"Really there can be no doubt." Graves was nodding slowly. The resemblance is definitely there. The eyes, the mouth. Unusually strong, after so many generations."
"So I look like my ancestor?" Radcliffe's own voice seemed surprisingly loud in his ears. "Does this mean I inherit the whole fortune?"
Ignoring his comment and facetious question, the woman said: "I agree, as to that. And I have an excellent memory for faces."
June piped up: "So, you're taking us to someone called Radu?"
"Taking you to him? On the contrary!" Graves, turning his head to look at her, smiled in some private amusement.
Connie, her mind still off on another pathway, muttered musingly: "I wonder—to how many 'greats' should that ancestor of his now be entitled?"
June said: "Phil?" in a small, lost voice. But then she let it go at that. He looked past their kidnapper at her, and was vaguely relieved to see that she was bearing up, so far—and that she had her seat belt on.
Connie drove on for more than an hour, heading generally west and north, steering from one small road to another, never seeming to have the least doubt as to where she was going. They passed through no towns; here and there a lighted window appeared only in the distance, and other traffic was nonexistent. Phil kept formulating plans for sudden violence, for taking their captor by surprise—and giving them up. The attitude of the man beside him, the memory of that grip, were thoroughly discouraging.
Twice he was on the point of telling Connie to turn the headlights on, and twice he held back. Let her hang up the car on one of these roadside rocks, if she thought she could see in the dark—anything to disrupt the kidnappers' plan. But though the darkness deepened steadily, the driver proceeded unerringly and at the same speed.
Now and then she turned her head to smile solicitously at her victims. Meanwhile Graves spent most of the time sitting motionless, as if lost in thought.
Eventually, flicking on headlights at last, she pulled the convertible into what was obviously a prearranged rendezvous. A kind of rude driveway, no more than a set of rutted tracks, curved away from the thin road, leading behind a rocky outcropping to a building, some kind of abandoned shed, whose location effectively hid its presence from casual traffic. Here the deceptively flat-looking landscape had put up enough of a bulge to conceal till the last moment an isolated shed, surrounded by a small grove of trees. A dusty Suburban, two or three years old, was parked just beyond the shed.
As the car braked to a stop, Phil started at the sight of a small handful of masked figures, men and women, who suddenly appeared in the glare of his car's headlights, standing around the shed. Radcliffe saw with a chill that these people, dressed in nondescript clothing, were wearing rubber Halloween masks over their heads; ghosts and witches were represented, smiling, along with Frankenstein's monster, whose rubber features looked less happy. Radcliffe's uneasy attention took note also of a mummy and a werewolf.