A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

      When the door chime sounded, the old man grunted. Both John and Angie, after uttering quick reassurances to their host, hurried to look at the front-door viewer.

      Angie frowned at the small, bright image. “It’s the lady we ran into last night,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

      “What lady?” John sounded lost.

      “The heavyset one who was just getting out of the elevator when the three of us were going up to the restaurant. Remember?”

      “Oh, yeah. Maybe it is her. What does she want?”

      “Better find out.” He flipped on the speaker. “Hello?” he inquired cautiously.

      “Mr. Maule? It’s Mrs. Hassler from down the hall.” The voice was bright as a robin’s, cheerful and enthusiastic though somewhat distorted by the speaker. It seemed to have as little connection with vampires as any sound that Angie had ever heard.

      She and John looked at each other doubtfully.

      The screen image spoke again. “Mr. Maule? Are you all right? I wanted to make sure you remembered the Residents’ Association meeting tonight.”

      An incoherent groan drifted into the living room, from the direction of Uncle Matthew’s chamber.

      John whispered: “I wonder if there’s some way that she can tell he’s home?”

      Angie hissed back: “Search me. But you answered her, now she knows there’s someone here.”

      Again there was a faint sound, this time as of an intelligible voice, from the old man’s bedroom. His two guardians looked at each other wide-eyed. A moment later, they were bursting in on him again.

      He was sitting bolt upright in his bed, glaring at them, and to their great joy they heard him utter a few coherent words: “…  admit … no one…”

      “We won’t!” Angie hastened to be reassuring. “We haven’t let anyone in. No one but Joe. You know, Joe Keogh? He was here, but he’s gone now to try to get help.”

      The old man nodded firmly. He was definitely coming around.

      Now he pointed toward the living room. “Mrs.—Hassler.”

      “Yes, what about her?”

      Maule enunciated carefully. “Genuinely … my neighbor. Try … keep her quiet. No police. Not yet.”

      “Yes, we understand about the police. No police yet. Angie, go back and talk to her. No, wait, you stay here. I’ll go, just in case.” And John went bounding out of the room again.

      “Can I get you anything?” Angie asked the patient, joyfully.

      “Tell me … what has happened?”

      Angie did her best, pouring out the story in a jumble of words. She concluded: “If we could only phone Joe now and tell him you’re coming out of it…”

      The man sitting in the bed looked grimly worried. “Yes … wait. If this phone is tapped … try to use—Mrs. Hassler’s. Safer than—trying to reach—public phone. We do not want—the enemy to know—I am recovering.”

      Angie ran into the front room to communicate this idea to John. He had the front door open on its security holders, and was conversing warily with Mrs. Hassler through the narrow gap.

      Angie joined him, hanging on his shoulder and smiling brightly, while thinking she must look a ghastly mess. Introductions were quickly, if somewhat awkwardly, performed. Then Angie said, as sweetly as possible: “The phone’s out of order here, on top of everything else—Mrs. Hassler, do you suppose we could use yours?”

      “Of course, dear.” If the smiling woman in the corridor was bothered by not being asked to step in, she didn’t show it.

      John stared at Angie, then caught the idea. With a muttered excuse he ran back to confer briefly with the old man. Moments later he was back at the front door, and a moment after that he was gone. Angie stuck her head out and watched him safely into Mrs. Hassler’s apartment just down the hall.

      Then she locked and bolted up the door again, turned off the viewer, and walked slowly back to talk to Uncle Matthew.

      She found him out of bed, standing erect though he looked a bit unsteady, and wrapping himself in a white robe. As soon as Angie entered the room he asked her. “Where is Joseph now?”

      “I don’t know. He didn’t want to tell us where he’d be. But we can call his regular number and leave messages on his answering machine; he can call in from somewhere else and have them played back. Shouldn’t you sit down and rest?”

      The old man muttered something—Angie felt sure it was profanity—in some unknown tongue, which had a Latinesque sound to it. But he nodded weakly and sat down.

* * *

      He and Angie were still in the master bedroom, talking, a couple of minutes later, when a loud splintering crash resounded through the apartment, followed in an instant by a mutter of voices, unfamiliar and triumphant Angie sprang up. The image conveyed to her mind by that sound was that either the front or back door had just been violently broken in.

      It seemed to Angie that she was on her feet at once, but Uncle Matthew, who had shaken off his unsteadiness to move with startling speed, was already closing and locking the bedroom door. Then he turned and stood in front of it with his finger to his lips, gesturing her to silence.

      The unfamiliar male voices, somewhere out there in the apartment, sounded again, low but victorious. Someone was being invited to come in.

* * *

      John, invited to make himself at home in Mrs. Hassler’s pleasant but somewhat over-decorated apartment, did the best he could to fend off the lady’s kind attentions and bottomless curiosity, while using her generously offered telephone. He realized at once that he was going to have to give up all hope of speaking privately with Joe Keogh.

      He had only one number to call, that of Joe’s regular home phone.

      The machine answered, as John had expected. After the recorded message had had its say, he cleared his throat and spoke: “Joe, this is John. I’m calling from the apartment next door. The phone here seems to be working without that trouble we had with Uncle Matthew’s. Uh, I wanted you to know Uncle Matthew’s up and about now, though