Thugs they were, by all means, but they'd been no match for Faethor Ferenczy. Each of them had a broken right arm and a broken left leg, and their intended victim was responsible! Think of his strength Dragosani! The police were too grateful to him to go into the matter too deeply, Widow Luorni said - and after all, he had only been protecting his life and property - but she was there when the brothers were carted away a few hours later, and it was plain to her that her employer had scared the daylights out of them.
'Anyway, I've said that Ferenczy was in the act of taking his captives to the cellar. For what purpose? A place to detain them until help arrived? Possibly
'Or a place to keep them, like a cool pantry, until they were... required, eh?' said Dragosani.
Giresci nodded. 'Exactly! Anyway, shortly after that the Widow stopped working there.'
'Hmm!' Dragosani mused. 'It surprises me he let her go. I mean, she must have suspected something. You said yourself that she was "disenchanted", that a feeling of unease had grown in her until she could take no more. Wouldn't he worry that she'd talk about him?'
'Ah!' Giresci answered. 'But you've forgotten something, Dragosani. What about the way he controlled me -with his eyes and his mind - on the night of the bombing, the night he died?'
'Hypnotism,' said the other at once.
Giresci smiled grimly, nodded. 'It is an art of the vampire, one of many. He simply commanded her that so long as he lived she would remain silent. While he lived, she would simply forget all about him, forget that she had ever seen anything sinister in him.'
'I see,' said Dragosani.
'And so strong was his power,' the other continued, 'that she actually did forget - until I questioned her about him all those years later. For, of course, by then Ferenczy was dead.'
Giresci's manner was beginning to irritate Dragosani. The man's air of self-satisfaction - his smugness - his obviously high opinion of his own detective skills. 'But of course this is all conjecture,' the necromancer finally said. 'You don't know any of it for a certainty.'
'Oh, but I do,' answered the other at once. 'I know it from the Widow herself. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that she simply volunteered all of this. It wasn't that we had a good gossip session or anything like that. Far from it. No, for I had to really sit down with her and ask her about him, repeatedly, until I'd dug it all out. He was dead and his power gone, certainly, but still something of it lingered over, do you see?'
Dragosani grew thoughtful. His eyes narrowed a little. Suddenly, surprisingly, he felt threatened by this man. He was too clever by far, this Ladislau Giresci. Dragosani resented him - and at once wondered why. He found it hard to understand his own feelings, the sudden surge of emotion within. It was too enclosed in here, claustrophobic. That must be it. He shook his head, sat up straighter, tried to concentrate. 'Of course, the Widow is long dead now.'
'Oh, yes-years ago.'
'So you and I, we're the only ones who know anything at all about Faethor Ferenczy?'
Giresci peered at the younger man. Dragosani's voice had sunk so low that it was little more than a growl, almost sinister. There seemed something wrong with him. Even under Giresci's questioning gaze he gave himself another shake, rapidly blinking his eyes.
That's right,' Giresci answered, frowning. 'I've told no one else in - oh, longer than I can remember. No point telling anyone else, for who'd believe? But are you all right, my friend? Are you well? Is something bothering you?'
'Me?' Dragosani found himself leaning forward, as if drawn towards Giresci. He deliberately forced himself upright in his chair. 'No, of course not. I'm a little drowsy, that's all. My meal, I suppose. The good food you've served me. Also, I've driven a long way in the last few days. Yes, that's it: I'm tired.'
'You're sure?'
'Yes, quite sure. But go on, Giresci, don't stop now. Please tell me more. About Ferenczy and his forebears. About the Ferrenzigs. The Wamphyri in general. Tell me anything else you know or suspect. Tell me everything.'
'Everything? It could take a week, longer!'
'I have a week,' Dragosani answered.
'Damn, I believe you're serious!'
'I am.'
'Well now, Dragosani, doubtless you're a nice enough young fellow, and it's good to talk to someone who's genuinely interested and knows something about one's subject - but what makes you think I'd care to spend a whole week like that? At my age time's important. Or maybe you think I have the same kind of longevity Ferenczy had, eh?'
Dragosani smiled, but thinly. On the point of saying, you can talk to me here or in Moscow, he checked himself. That wasn't necessary. Not yet, anyway. And it might let Borowitz in on his big secret: how he came to be a necromancer in the first place. 'Then how about the next hour or two?' he compromised. 'And, since you've suggested it, we can start with Ferenczy's longevity.'
Giresci chuckled. 'Fair enough. Anyway, there's whisky left yet!' He poured himself another shot, made himself comfortable. And after a moment's thought:
'Ferenczy's longevity. The near-immortality of the vampire. Let me tell you something else the Widow Luorni
said. She said that when she was a small girl, her grandmother had remembered a Ferenczy living in the same house. And her grandmother before her! Nothing strange about that, though - son follows father, right? There were plenty of old Boyar families round here whose names went back to time immemorial. There still are. What's strange is this: to the Widow's knowledge there had never been any female Ferenczys. And how does a man pass on his name if he never takes a wife, eh?'
'And of course you looked into it,' said Dragosani.
'I did. Records were scarce, however, for the war had destroyed a great deal. But certainly the house had been the seat of the Ferenczys as far back as I could trace it, and never a woman among 'em! A celibate lot, eh?'
Without understanding his outrage, Dragosani suddenly felt that he himself had been insulted. Or perhaps it was only his natural intelligence which felt slighted. 'Celibate?' he said stiffly. 'I think not.'
Giresci nodded. In fact he was well aware of the Wamphyri's rapacious nature. 'No, of course not,' he confirmed Dragosani's denial. 'What? A vampire celibate? Ridiculous? Lust is the very force that drives him. Universal lust - for power, flesh, blood! But listen to this:
'In 1840 one Bela Ferenczy set off across the Meridi-onali to visit a cousin or other relative in the mountains of the northern Austro-Hungarian borders. Now this much is well documented; indeed, old Bela seems to have gone to a deal of trouble to let people know he was going visiting. He installed a man to look after the place while he was away - not a local man, incidentally, but someone of gypsy stock - hired a coach and driver for the early stages of the journey, made reservations for connections through the high passes, and completed all of the preparations necessary to travel in these parts in those days.
And he put it about locally that this was to be a journey of valediction. He had seemed to grow very old very quickly in the last year or two, and so it was accepted that he went to say his last farewells to distant relatives.
'Now remember, we were still very much Moldavia-Wallachia at that time. In Europe the Industrial Revolution was in full swing - everywhere but here! Insular as ever, we were so backward as to seem almost retarded! The Lemberg-Galatz railway, skirting the mountains, was still more than a decade away. News travelled extremely slowly, and records were hard to keep. I mention this to highlight the fact that in this case there was good communication, and that a record did survive.'