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

      Looking over his shoulder, John saw Mrs. Hassler beaming at him from across the kitchen. He smiled at her and continued talking into the phone. “His, uh, laryngitis is much better. One of those twenty-four-hour viruses, I guess.”

      Mrs. Hassler made no pretense of absenting herself or her attention, but continued to look on with approval.

      John thanked her and prepared to hurry back to Angie. As he stood on the point of opening the front door, he paused. “Mind if I take a look out there first?”

      “No, of course not.” His hostess seemed intrigued.

      John flicked on the viewer beside Mrs. Hassler’s front door.

      Someone, an ominous male shape, was standing guard in the hallway, obviously keeping an eye on the front approach to Uncle Matthew’s condo. At the distance John couldn’t tell if it was Valentine Kaiser or not, a vampire or a breather.

      Muttering some kind of feeble explanation to Mrs. Hassler, who appeared more intrigued than alarmed, he walked through her apartment to the back door, where he flicked another switch. The landing of the service stairs was also occupied by a male sentry. This man was closer, and John knew that he’d never seen him before. As for being nosferatu, well, that was still hard to tell on screen.

      His hostess had followed him, and stood with her arms folded, watching for whatever entertaining trick he might do next.

      John sighed. “Is that—do you know if that’s the back door to Mr. Maule’s apartment?” He gestured at the screen, which provided a great view of the closed door opposite.

      “It certainly is.”

      “It looks like Uncle Matthew’s place is being watched.”

      “It certainly does, doesn’t it?”

      “Would you mind—uh, would you mind if I waited here for a little while?”

      “Of course not! Would you like some coffee?”

* * *

      Angie, in an agony of fear, trying to recall the prayers that she’d been taught to say in childhood, had moved back into the corner of the bedroom farthest from the door. Her host, moving and working with amazing speed, though occasionally stumbling, had taken one of the dark glass jars out of the hidden compartment in the dresser. Now he was mixing some stuff—it looked a horrible brownish yellow—taken from the jar in a glass of water drawn in the bathroom. He hadn’t explained to Angie what he was doing, nor dared she speak to ask.

      Judging by what she could hear from beyond the door, in the outer reaches of the apartment, the people who had broken in the door were advancing only with extreme caution from room to room, as if they were wary of ambushes. As if they had an enormous respect for the one they were trying to find.

      At last Angie thought she could hear one of them, perhaps two, closely approaching the bedroom door on the hallway side. Whoever it was stood there for a time, evidently listening, and being very quiet.

      In another half minute, the doorknob was tried gently.

      Then whoever was just outside the bedroom door moved quietly away. Angie had the impression of a general conference being held at some distance, in the living room perhaps.

      Evidently now believing that he could move unheard by those outside, Matthew Maule glided across the room, silently closed the hidden cupboard, and lifted the dresser back against the wall. Then, to Angie’s astonishment, he handed her the drink he had just finished mixing. He made an urgent pantomime for her to swallow it.

      Having seen the mess from which the drink had been concocted, she held back. There was no particular odor rising from the glass she held, but the liquid in it looked like dirty dishwater. What was he planning for her, suicide? Death before dishonor? But the fierce liveliness of Maule’s expression and his gestures, even weakened as he was, made that suspicion an absurdity.

      The taste was not nearly as bad as she had expected. There were even pleasant overtones. Almost anything liquid would have felt good in her mouth dried out by fear.

      The next effect followed almost immediately. Angie’s senses reeled. “Now what?” she gasped.

      With one hand her protector—she hoped—once more gestured eloquently for silence, even as he took the glass in the other fist and moved in a few long, silent dance steps back into the bathroom. The unrinsed glass was stuffed into the medicine cabinet beside the electronic mirror.

      If his closing the medicine cabinet door made any sound at all, Angie only a few feet away was unable to detect it.

      Then Uncle Matthew was at her side again. Putting his lips very close to her ear, he whispered: “I must leave you here. There is no help for it. But I swear I shall return.”

      Angie couldn’t really understand. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. Her head was spinning with the drink, and she collapsed into a chair, on the brink of fainting. She murmured a protest against being poisoned, which he ignored.

      The one who some called the old man was already at one of the bedroom’s windows, where he was doing something to the metal frame. Angie in her dizzy astonishment saw the window turn, letting in a breath of chilly air—she had thought that in a high-rise like this one none of the windows could be opened.

      Curtains swirled, and a moment later the old man was gone. Angie began to whimper. He had left her totally alone.

      She gave a little cry. Something had just smashed, with tremendous violence, against the locked bedroom door from outside. It was a substantial door, but the one blow had started the wood splintering.

      Angie screamed.

* * *

      Clinging like a fly on the ledge outside the window, quivering under the malevolent influence of the sun beyond the clouds, shuddering in his feebleness from the small exertion he had made thus far, feeling weak as a small bat, he made no effort to close the window again behind him. Let the hunters discover at once which way he had gone. Let them pursue him, if they could be induced to do