I said, "Such things—can be killed."
"Not easily. Sandra Colter was a victim of his. After death she, too, became a vampire, sleeping by day and living only at night. The fire destroyed her, but there's no way to get into the vault under Futaine's house."
"I wasn't thinking of fire," I said. "A knife"
"Through the heart," Hardy interrupted almost eagerly. "Yes—and decapitation. I've thought of it myself, but I can do nothing, I—am his slave, Mart."
I said nothing, but pressed the bell. Presently the proprietor appeared.
"Can you get me a butcher-knife?" I measured with my hands. "About so long? A sharp one?"
Accustomed to strange requests, he nodded. "Right away, Mr. Prescott."
As I followed him out, Hardy said weakly, "Mart."
I turned.
"Good luck," he said. The look on his wrecked face robbed the words of their pathos.
"Thanks," I forced myself to say. "I don't blame you, Jack, for what's happened. I—I'd have done the same."
I left him there, slumped on the couch, staring after me with eyes that had looked into hell.
It was past daylight when I drove out of Culver City, a long, razor-edged knife hidden securely inside my coat. And the day went past all too quickly. A telephone call told me that Jean had not yet returned home. It took me more than an hour to locate a certain man I wanted—a man who had worked for the studio before on certain delicate jobs. There was little about locks he did not know, as the police had sometimes ruefully admitted.
His name was Axel Ferguson, a bulky, good-natured Swede, whose thick fingers seemed more adapted to handling a shovel than the mechanisms of locks. Yet he was as expert as Houdini—indeed, he had at one time been a professional magician.
The front door of Futaine's isolated canyon home proved no bar to Ferguson's fingers and the tiny sliver of steel he used. The house, a modern two-story place, seemed deserted. But Hardy had said below the house.
We went down the cellar stairs and found ourselves in a concrete-lined passage that ran down at a slight angle for perhaps thirty feet. There the corridor ended in what seemed to be a blank wall of bluish steel. The glossy surface of the door was unbroken, save for a single keyhole.
Ferguson set to work. At first he hummed under his breath, but after a time he worked in silence. Sweat began to glisten on his face. Trepidation assailed me as I watched.
The flashlight he had placed beside him grew dim. He inserted another battery, got out unfamiliar-looking apparatus. He buckled on dark goggles, and handed me a pair. A blue, intensely brilliant flame began to play on the door.
It was useless. The torch was discarded after a time, and Ferguson returned to his tools. He was using a stethoscope, taking infinite pains in the delicate movements of his hands.
It was fascinating to watch him. But all the time I realized that the night was coming, that presently the sun would go down, and that the life of the vampire lasts from sunset to sunrise.
At last Ferguson gave up. "I can't do it," he told me, panting as though from a hard race. "And if I can't, nobody can. Even Houdini couldn't have broken this lock. The only thing that'll open it is the key."
