I pulled my Gladstone from below the bed, strapped and locked it.
Then for a moment I stared at my typewriter. It was doubtful that I
would ever use her again, and she'd make an extra burden which I could
scarcely afford to carry with me. I hated the thought of someone else's
fingers on her keys. I had loved that cranky, faithful old mill. I
opened her case and raising the machine above my head brought her face
down onto a bedpost. Two crashes were plenty. They'd never repair my
old girl now. I put her gently on the bed.
"Sleep well, lady." I said, and was obscurely glad to find that my
metamorphosed self could still be whimsically sentimental.
I brushed the water glasses off the window sill, threw up the sash and
climbed onto the fire escape, Gladstone in hand. I took off my felt hat
and skimmed it out and down; it fell in the middle of the alley where
anyone would be sure to see it. Then I climbed upward until I reached
the roof. They would suppose I had lost my hat while running away down
the alley.
Leaving the fire escape, brushing its flaky rust from my palm, I
walked across the flat roof. The moon, very low in the gray-black sky,
showed me the age-battered forms of chimneys and ventilators, with a
shack-like structure looming foursquare among them: the entrance to the
hotel. I thought of waiting till the searchers hared off on my false
trail, then leaving by this obvious route. No good: my face and build
were becoming too well known. I looked about me, deciding what to do.
And it seemed to me that I was not on the roof of a dingy third-rate
hotel in an American city, but somewhere entirely different.
The cries of pursuers echoed in my brain. I was crouching amid tall
buttress-tops, gargoyled rainspouts, coned tower-peaks; ancient tiles
were slippery beneath my feet. I was scrambling round the roof of a
castle, or at least what seemed a massive and castle-like building.
Peering over the edge of the gutter, I could make out the sheen of
moon-silvered water lying far below, with tiny wind-ripples on its
surface. A moat?
No weapons were in my hands. I was hunted by fierce enemies. Yet I
was not afraid. I was only hideously angry. I longed to get at them,
but there were too many. Just let them come three or four at a time,
armed however they wished, and I would meet them. But no, they must
needs draw their game in great packs of howling humanity. Humans! How I
loathed them!
What was I? I was myself, Bill Cuff, some centuries before. My vision
was strangely two-fold. I could see the sooty hotel chimneys and could
realize where I stood, and at the same time I was again creeping round
among the gables and towers of the medieval castle. I could hear the
cries of my seekers. A word was repeated over and over until it stood
out from all the hubbub.
_Vampire ... vampire ... vampire...._
I knew I was no such thing. The undead--a superstition.
But they _thought_ me a vampire. I had slain and slain, brutally,
and--yes, and lapped up blood from torn throats, hot and bubbling
between my lips. Was I a vampire? Were my kind the origin of that
legend?
* * * * *
The race-recollection died away. I heard the shouts of my twentieth
century foeman, who had found the two dead policemen. I walked to the
edge of the roof and gauged the distance to the next building, which
was several feet lower than this one. There was a gap of no more than
ten feet. I threw the suitcase across. Men appeared eighty feet below,
running through the alley. I watched them, leaning fearlessly over the
low parapet. Like single-minded hounds, they never looked up. I laughed
and gathered myself and jumped across the yawning void, alighting
easily on the next roof.
I was beginning to take a keen gratification in my agility. Even the
lifting of my Gladstone, the feel of sentient muscles gliding over one
another to apportion the work between them, gave me intense pleasure.
Thus must an animal feel when he moves about his small enterprises,
knowing his body will answer any call he cares to make upon it.
I crossed this roof and leaped again and crossed a third, and found
myself overlooking a wide street. The sky was growing more gray than
black, and the lamps were beginning to take on the futile appearance
they have in the half-light of earliest dawn. I wanted to put plenty of
distance between me and this city that was too aware of me within it.
There was a rickety ladder leading down the side to a fire escape. I
descended it one-handed, jumped to the metal framework, trotted-down
to the street. Cars lined it, and the third I checked was unlocked.
There are ways to start a car without the key. I hummed peacefully
out of town. The sun found me driving along a broad straight highway
between fields of shocked grain, singing a tuneless song. There was
happiness in the song, and hatred; and I thought suddenly that I was
happy because of the hatred, which I had found again after many years
of ignorance and futility.