Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/33

 to be on the network, M.C. of one of those quiz shows, until the scandals broke last year. Then he'd disappeared.

Things began to click into place now. Click-click-click, a tinkling sound, like the rattle of little silver bones jangling in the night-wind.

I stooped and searched his pockets, knowing what I'd find. My key, of course. And the rough objects the size of robins' eggs. They were grimy and encrusted, but as I turned them the light caught a hint of green flame.

Roxie lay back on the bed, breathing stertorously. But she still breathed and that was all I needed to know. I could call the police, now. They'd send an ambulance over, take care of her.

I made the call hastily, and hung up when they asked my name.

It would have been fine if I could have stayed with her until they arrived, but there wasn't time. And it wasn't safe; not with the unconscious man on the floor and that other man—the dead man—discovered out there in the big house on Azure Drive.

So I left, hastily, running down the street until I found another cab. Then I made the driver wait while I located my address-book and found the name I sought.

I gave him a number out on the Strip. Funny that I should be retracing my route again. But then it was all very funny, all very coincidental—until one stopped to think, stopped to realize that there was no coincidence involved at all.

This time we drove back through dusk, and the lights began to blaze up—the enchanted lights of an enchanted city. The wonderful lights of a world of magic, blazing forth from all of those wonderful, magic clip-joints and gay bars and mortuaries which make up the romantic spectacle of Hollywood by night. The vampires would be abroad, now. The bloodsuckers. And there was one bloodsucker in particular whom I was seeking.

We came to the building; one of those two-story layouts divided up into small cubicles where little men spend their days barking into their telephones, where the air is filled with stale cigar-smoke and the endless babble of darling, sweetheart, lover-boy, let's get together for lunch, let's make a deal, let's sign quick before they change their minds.

I didn't know if I'd find THE SCREAMING PEOPLE