The Avenger 33 - The Blood Countess Read Online Free PDF Page A

at him. “My . . . spells or whatever you want to call them are getting worse. Lately . . . the information I have to pass on to you . . . I can’t seem to remember most of it any more.”

CHAPTER VIII

The Blood Countess
    It took the old professor nearly a minute to catch his breath after he stopped beside Dick Benson. He’d been sitting at an outdoor café, having a very late breakfast of coffee and sweetbread toast, when the Avenger had passed by on the opposite side of the street. “I have made an amazing discovery,” he was able to say at last. Held against his narrow chest was an old briefcase fat with papers and clippings. “Truly, it is most staggering, senhor.”
    Benson asked, “Has something to do with vampires, doesn’t it?”
    “Sim,” answered Dr. Bouchey, making another wheezing effort to take a full breath. “I feel now my trip here has indeed been worthwhile. And yet, I can’t quite decide . . . But let me tell you of what I have discovered.”
    Benson was due to see Elizabeth again this afternoon. He’d been returning from another visit to the local police headquarters when the wrinkled little Bouchey had hailed him. “Do you want to go back to your table and finish your meal?”
    “No, I’m actually too keyed up at the moment to eat. Besides, I don’t wish anyone else to hear what I have to say.”
    “There’s a small park at the foot of this street,” said Benson. “We can sit there,” he suggested.
    “Yes, and walking downhill is always more enjoyable than climbing uphill when one is my age.”
    When they were seated on a white-painted wrought-iron bench in the center of the triangular little patch of greenery, Benson said, “What have you learned, doctor?”
    Taking a breath, Dr. Bouchey said, “A bit of a preamble first, senhor, if you will be patient. Early this morning I hired a car and had myself driven out to the ruined temple I talked to you about on the train. At least, I was driven as far as a motor vehicle can travel. Then my driver guided me on foot along a forest path. At one point we happened to pass quite close to the Pedra Negra castle, and I chanced to see two young women walking together on a path that led from the castle. I was only a few feet from them as we passed on our way to the temple. So I am certain my identification of the woman is accurate.”
    Benson was sitting up straight, frowning. “Which woman?”
    “A girl, actually, at least in appearance. But appearances in a case like this . . . It was a dark-haired girl, very lovely, very pale. Pale as death, as we say. But then they are always pale.”
    “You’d seen this girl before?”
    “Not the girl, a picture of her.” Dr. Bouchey reached into his battered briefcase. “A painting I was shown many years ago . . . yes, here is a print of it. This was painted in the sixteenth century by the noted Hungarian master Alexander Toth.”
    “Sixteenth century?”
    The professor found the print he was seeking. “Yes, here is the portrait. Her name is Elizabeth Bathory.”
    Benson took the picture. He looked at it for several quiet seconds, then rested it on his knee. The girl in the portrait, in the dress of the sixteenth-century ruling class, did look very much like Elizabeth Bentin. “Things like this sometimes happen,” he said slowly. “Every so many generations, a child will grow up to look exactly, or nearly so, like a grandparent or even a more remote ancestor.”
    “No, you do not understand,” said the doctor. “This girl who lives in the castle . . . she isn’t a descendant of Elizabeth Bathory. She is Elizabeth Bathory.”
    The Avenger looked from the portrait to the lined face of the professor. “She’d be nearly four hundred years old. Not a very likely possibility.”
    Leaning closer, old Bouchey said, “She had another name then, when she lived in Castle Csejthe in northwestern Hungary. They called her the Blood Countess. Elizabeth Bathory, senhor, is a vampire.”

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