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The party was dull. I had come too early. There was a preview that night at Grauman’s Chinese, and few of the important guests would arrive until it was over. Jack Hardy, ace director at Summit Pictures, where I worked as assistant director, hadn’t arrived—yet—and he was the host. But Hardy had never been noted for punctuality.

I went out on the porch and leaned against a coctail and looking down at the lights of Hollywood. Hardy’s place was on the summit of a hill overlooking the film capital, near Falcon Lair, Valentino’s famous turreted castle. I shivered a little. Fog was sweeping in from Santa Monica, blotting out the lights to the west.

Jean Hubbard, who was an ingenue at Summit, came up beside me and took the glass out of my hand.

“Hello, Mart,” she said, sipping the liquor. “Where’ve you been?”

“Down with the Murder Desert troupe, on location in the Mojave,” I said. “Miss me, honey?” I drew her close.

She smiled up at me, her tilted eyebrows lending a touch of diablerie to the tanned, lovely face. I was going to marry Jean, but I wasn’t sure just when.

“Missed you lots,” she said, and held up her lips. I responded.

After a moment I said, “What’s this about the vampire man?”

She chuckled. “Oh, the Chevalier Futaine. Didn’t you read Lolly Parsons’, write-up in Script'? Jack Hardy picked him up last month in Europe. Silly rot. Bill it’s good publicity.”

“Three cheers for publicity,” I said. “Look what it did for Birth of a Nation. But where does the vampire angle come in?”

“Mystery man. Nobody can take a picture of him, scarcely anybody can meet him. Weird tales are told about his former life in Paris. Going to play in Jack , Red Thirst. The kind of build-up Universal gave Karloff for Frankenstein. Our Chevalier Futaine”—she rolled out the words with amused relish—“is probably a singing waiter from a Paris cafe. I haven’t seen him—but the deuce with him, anyway. Mart, I want you to do something for me. For Deming.”

“Hess Deming?” I raised my eyebrows in astonishment. Hess Deming, Summit’s biggest box-office star, whose wife, Sandra Colter, had died two day before. She, too, had been an actress, although never the great star her husband was. Hess loved her, I knew—and now I guessed what the trouble was. I said, “I noticed he was a bit wobbly.”

“He’ll kill himself,” Jean said, looking worried. “I—I feel responsible for him somehow, Mart. After all, he gave me my start at Summit. And he’s due for the DTs any time now.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can,” I told her. “But that isn’t a great deal. After all, getting tight is probably the best thing he could do. I know if I lost you, Jean—”

I stopped. I didn’t like to think of it.

Jean nodded. “Sec what you can do for him, anyway. Losing Sandra that way was—pretty terrible.”

“What way?” I asked. “I’ve been away, remember. I read something aboul it, but—”

“She just died,” Jean said. “Pernicious anemia, they said. But Hess told me the doctor really didn’t know what it was. She just seemed to grow weaker and weaker until—she passed away.”

I nodded, gave Jean a hasty kiss, and went back into the house. I had just seen Hess Deming walk past, a glass in his hand. He turned as I tapped his shoulder.

“Oh, Mart,” he said, his voice just a bit fuzzy. He could hold his liquor, but I could tell by his bloodshot eyes that he was almost at the end of his rope. He was a handsome devil, all right, well-built, strong-featured, with level gray eyes and a broad mouth that was usually smiling. It wasn’t smiling now. It was slack, and his face was bedewed with perspiration.

“You know about Sandra?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, Hess.”

He drank deeply from the glass, wiped his mouth with a grimace of distaste. “I'm drunk, Mart,” he confided. “I had to get drunk. It was awful—those last few days. I’ve got to burn her up.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Burn her up. Oh, my God, Mart—that beautiful body of hers, crumbling to • In i -and I’ve got to watch it! She made me promise I’d watch to make sure they burned her.”

I said, “Cremation’s a clean ending, Hess. And Sandra was a clean girl, and a damned good actress.”

He put his flushed face close to mine. “Yeah—but I’ve got to burn her up. It’ll kill me, Mart. Oh, God!” He put the empty glass down on a table and looked around dazedly.

I was wondering why Sandra had insisted on cremation. She’d given an interview once in which she stressed her dread of fire. Most write-ups of stars are applesauce, but I happened to know that Sandra did dread fire. Once, on the set, I’d seen her go into hysterics when her leading man lit his pipe too near her face.

“Excuse me, Mart,” Hess said. “I’ve got to get another drink.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, holding him. “You want to watch yourself, Hess, you’ve had too much already.”

“It still hurts,” he said. “Just a little more and maybe it won’t hurt so much." But he didn’t pull away. Instead he stared at me with the dullness of intoxication in his eyes. “Clean,” he said presently.

“She said that too. Mart. She said burning was a clean death. But, God, that beautiful white body of hers—I can’t stand it, Mart! I’m going crazy, I think. Get me a drink, like a good fellow."

I said, “Wait here, Hess. I’ll get you one.” I didn't add that it would be watered—considerably.

He sank down in a chair, mumbling thanks. As I went off I felt sick. I’d seen too many actors going on the rocks to mistake Hess’s symptoms. I knew that his box office days were over. There would be longer and longer waits between features, and then personal appearances, and finally Poverty Row and serials. And in the end maybe a man found dead in a cheap hall bedroom on Main Street, with the gas on.

There was a crowd around the bar. Somebody said, “Here’s Mart. Hey, come on and meet the vampire.”

Then I got a shock. I saw Jack Hardy, my host, the director with whom I'd on many a hit. He looked like a corpse. And I’d seen him looking plenty Ixitl before. A man with a hangover or a marijuana jag isn't a pretty sight, but I’d never seen Hardy like this. He looked as though he was keeping going on his nerve alone. There was no blood in the man.

I’d last seen him as a stocky, ruddy blond, who looked like nothing so much as a wrestler, with his huge biceps, his ugly, good-natured face, and his bristling crop of yellow hair. Now he looked like a skeleton, with skin hanging loosely on the big frame. His face was a network of sagging wrinkles. Pouches bagged beneath his eyes, and those eyes were dull and glazed. About his neck a black silk scarf was knotted tightly.

“Good God, Jack!” I exclaimed. “What have you done to yourself?”

He looked away quickly. “Nothing,” he said brusquely. “I’m all right. I want you to meet the Chevalier Futaine—this is Mart Prescott.”

“Pierre,” a voice said. “Hollywood is no place for titles. Mart Prescott—the pleasure is mine.”

I faced the Chevalier Pierre Futaine.

We shook hands. My first impression was of icy cold, and a slick kind of dryness—and I let go of his hand too quickly to be polite. He smiled at me.

A charming man, the chevalier. Or so he seemed. Slender, below medium height, his bland, round face seemed incongruously youthful. Blond hair was plastered close to his scalp. I saw that his cheeks were rouged—very deftly, but I know something about makeup. And under the rouge I read a curious, deathly pallor that would have made him a marked man had he not disguised it. Some disease, perhaps, had blanched his skin—but his lips were not artificially reddened. And they were as crimson as blood.

He was clean-shaved, wore impeccable evening clothes, and his eyes were black pools of ink.

“Glad to know you,” I said. “You’re the vampire, eh?”

He smiled. “So they tell me. But we all serve the dark god of publicity, eh Mr. Prescott? Or—is it Mart?”

“It’s Mart,” I said, still staring at him. I saw his eyes go past me, and an extraordinary expression appeared on his face—an expression of amazement, disbelief. Swiftly it was gone.

I turned. Jean was approaching, was at my side as I moved. She said, “Is this the chevalier?”

Pierre Futaine was staring at her, his lips parted a little. Almost inaudibly he murmured, “Sonya.” And then, on a note of interrogation, “Sonya?”

I introduced the two. Jean said, “You see, my name isn’t Sonya.”

The chevalier shook his head, an odd look in his black eyes.

“I once knew a girl like you,” he said softly. “Very much like you. It’s strange.”

“Will you excuse me?” I broke in. Jack Hardy was leaving the bar. Quickly I followed him.

I touched his shoulder as he went out the French windows. He jerked out a snarled oath, turned a white death mask of a face to me.

“Damn you, Mart,” he snarled. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

I put my hands on his shoulders and swung him around.

“What the devil has happened to you?” I asked. “Listen, Jack, you can’t bluff me or lie to me. You know that. I’ve straightened you out enough times in the past, and I can do it again. Let me in on it.”

His ruined face softened. He reached up and took away my hands. His own were ice-cold, like the hands of the Chevalier Futaine.

“No,” he said. “No use, Mart. There’s nothing you can do. I’m all right, really. Just—overstrain. I had too good a time in Paris.”

I was up against a blank wall. Suddenly, without volition, a thought popped into my mind and out of my mouth before I knew it.

“What’s the matter with your neck?” I asked abruptly.

He didn’t answer. He just frowned and shook his head.

“I’ve a throat infection,” he told me. “Caught it on the steamer.”

His hand went up and touched the black scarf.

There was a croaking, harsh sound from behind us—a sound that didn’t seem quite human. I turned. It was Hess Deming. He was swaying in the portal, his eyes glaring and bloodshot, a little trickle of saliva running down his chin.

He said in a dead, expressionless voice that was somehow dreadful, “Sandra died of a throat infection, Hardy.”

Jack didn't answer. He stumbled back a step. Hess went on dully.

“She got all white and died. And the doctor didn’t know what it was, although the death certificate said anemia. Did you bring back some filthy disease with you, Hardy? Because if you did I’m going to kill you.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “A throat infection? I didn’t know—”

“There was a wound on her throat—two little marks, close together. That wouldn’t have killed her, unless some loathsome disease—”

“You’re crazy, Hess,” I said. “You know you're drunk. Listen to me: Jack couldn’t have had anything to do with—that.”

Hess didn’t look at me. He watched Jack Hardy out of his bloodshot eyes. He went on in that low, deadly monotone:

“Will you swear Mart’s right, Hardy? Will you?”

Jack’s lips were twisted by some inner agony. I said, “Go on, Jack. Tell him he’s wrong.”

Hardy burst out, “I haven't been near your wife! I haven’t seen her since I got back. There’s—”

“That’s not the answer I want,” Hess whispered. And he sprang for the other IIMII reeled forward, rather.

Hess was too drunk, and Jack too weak, for them to do each other any harm, but there was a nasty scuffle for a moment before I separated them. As I pulled them apart, Hess’s hand clutched the scarf about Jack’s neck, ripped it away.

And I saw the marks on Jack Hardy’s throat. Two red, angry little pits, white rimmed, just over the Iclt jugular.