His new friends liked him right away, for he pretended to be innocent. Two periwigged old vampires even got into a quarrel as to which of them could better help him grow into his supposed inclinations. It astonished him how trusting they were — for had they not caught him in recent deception? But, as they remarked, we all die, pretenders or not. And I suspect that they so much enjoyed discovering likely young men, and advancing them on their way downward, that they frequently overlooked their own interests, like a multitude of frogs with whom a snake pretends to make friends, in order to swallow them one by one in secret. Moreover, accomplished fiends grow as egotistical as the living, and what can be more gratifying to a settled old soul for whom sinking two fangs into a strange throat has lost its thrill than imparting information to a wide-eyed yet stalwart type who once served the other side? For his part, the inspector was far too busy spying on them to feel indignant at their loathsomeness. In the first six weeks they taught him how to suck blood and how to frighten children to death. — But you’re still in your youth, they said. You don’t need to get serious yet. Why not run out and play a few pranks? For instance, you could hide in the bed of some lonely widow. Then you could kill her, rape her or both. It’s also great fun to come up through the crypt and throw corpse-fat at the altar. Don’t get too close or the cross will burn you.
He pretended to go along. In fact, even that medallion of Saint Polona held more power than they could conceive. It allowed him, although not without distress, to move about at dawn or dusk, and confer with Father Hauser in the church. The sexton had been laid under instructions to keep a mendicant’s hooded cloak in the tool shed, right behind the second-best shovel, so when the inspector slipped into this, it disguised him well enough from the living, and, moreover, kept the sun off. When he took up the pentangle of the sun, he could even go out in full daylight, which of course was safest, although it tired him a good deal. And so the authorities of H— finally began to hope for results. Richter von Lochner sent away to Prague for more silver bullets, and the town council required of every citizen three perfectly finished and sharpened vampire-stakes; while Hans Trollhand, hoping for the best, laid more firewood in stock.
Being the cause of their hopes, the inspector found himself feeling very free, even if he sometimes would have liked not to be dead. Father Hauser was sweeter with him than ever before. For a fact, he liked pretending to be what he was not, right down to effacing every indication of virtue — and who would not have considered it delicious to make friends, which policemen in uniform ordinarily find difficult? Moreover, he continued to condemn and despise them, so that he had the best of everything: the solace of virtue, the sweet thrills of vice, the comradeship of interesting creatures, the joy of keeping secrets from everybody, and, above all, the approbation of authority.
Why did you kill yourself? they asked him, and he replied: To defy God.
O brother! they shouted out in glee. Then let’s hear you curse Him.
This he did, secretly curling his fingers around the medallion of Saint Polona. The more he insulted God and the saints (even his beloved Saint Polona), the more loudly they laughed, sometimes even until they choked up their guts, not that they minded since they no longer troubled to breathe. The witch who once upon a time conjured worms into her husband’s stomach until one of them bit his heart, so that he fell dead (Trollhand broke her arms and legs on the ravenstone, then hung her up alive to be eaten by carrion crows), thought the inspector the most hilarious soul she had ever met; she offered to make a troll-baby with him anytime. The inspector had never considered himself a charming person before, and so their admiration gave him more pleasure than he had ever received, even when the colonel awarded him a medal during his term of military service. Although mere logic would indicate that there ought to be but scant prospects for an apprentice vampire without relatives, joviality goes far in every underworld, as was proved even during the private wars of the German states.
He was sitting on a tomb one night when he saw a certain green-eyed demon leaping toward him.
My plan, it explained, is certain as blood. All we need to do is slip through the wall of Doroteja’s house — you do slip through walls, don’t you?
Of course I do, my boy.
That’s good, since otherwise I’d know you were alive, and have to kill you.
Kill me? What the devil are you talking about? — And with his best ghoulish laugh, the inspector dug his sharp black fingernails into his own blue throat, and tore the dead veins to ribbons.
All right, all right; it’s just that we undead have to be careful these days. Now, come along and help me. This Doroteja is a hot-blooded widow, as you know, and rather simple. Since I’m the more handsome of us two, I’ll get her excited, while you figure out where she keeps her holy bric-a-brac. Once I get her to undressing, and that cross comes off her neck, if you have her other weapons out of reach, we’ll be set. Just give me first suck; that’s all I ask, for I could use a drop of the old red! Cross my moldering heart, I’ll pass her over to you before her heart stops beating. And once she’s buried and one of us, she’ll be quite the seductress.
Count on me, brother, said the inspector.
They darted over the cemetery wall like lizards. Within a quarter-hour they were making terrifying faces at Doroteja’s window — for monsters of this sort, as you have seen, tend to be quite high-spirited, even to their own detriment; they cannot help but lurch and caper.
On my faith as a throat-ripper, said the inspector, I believe you’ve forgotten to count some grains of barley.
(He had, of course, dribbled them out of a secret pocket in his shroud.)
At once the demon got lost in this task, and the inspector slipped away to rouse Father Hauser, who established himself in the outhouse with Hans Trollhand, each of them bearing a silver cross, a sharpened stake and an arquebus. Before Doroteja had finished screaming, they were torturing the monster into helplessness, and then Hans Trollhand, terrifying in his black-and-red cloak, served justice with a silver bullet from behind.
Frequenting the evilest shadows of that graveyard, the inspector succeeded in putting several more vampires out of the way. The trick was to get them before they tattled to the others. (It was unpleasant to imagine the glee of that subterranean crew if they could only neutralize him, preferably by draining his veins.) One night he lay chatting with a skeletal lad who had died some forty years before, and, like him, could creep around even in weak sunlight. When the inspector asked how he managed this, his new friend showed him a wrist-charm which he had gained from a witch in barter. — Who is she? asked the inspector. I’d love to give her a tickle. — And so the very next day, justice fell upon Old Hilda, who trafficked in the hair, bones, blood and fingers of the murdered. Before she could even call once upon Beelzebub, Hans Trollhand had gagged her and thrown her in a cage. By sunset the whole village was there, razing her house and helping themselves to whichever rags and crusts of hers they liked. Trollhand began singing his favorite song, the one about the brave soldier who kills his faithless betrothed. Then from the smoldering timbers they built a bonfire, and threw her on it, cage and all, so that once more heavenly virtue won the victory. The inspector kept prudently out of sight, but hearing the wailing and raging of his friends that night gave him the satisfaction he most certainly deserved.