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beneath the covering was much torn and mangled.
    There had been an accident, then. He controlled his patience as best he might and waited while the long file of men and their burden moved on toward the streets of Lugos. The priest concluded his business with the sledge-driver at the end, drew himself up, looked at Coleridge with deep-set melancholy eyes above the greying stubble of beard, and made the sign of the cross in the air.
    Coleridge received the benediction with another courteous half-bow and shifted awkwardly beneath his thick coverings as he watched the priest hurry off to rejoin the others. The driver was silent too as he stared after him in turn. There was an odd interval, broken only by the impatient snorting of the horses. The guide turned in the seat of the sleigh and answered his passenger’s unspoken question.
    ‘There has been another death. Father Balaz is extremely perturbed.’
    He shrugged.
    ‘The people hereabouts are very superstitious, you see.’
    Coleridge found impatience welling up within him, cutting through the numbing cold.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, more irritably than he had intended.
    The driver crossed himself, still staring after the dark figure of the priest, now a black speck on the icy road before he too turned an angle of a building and was lost to sight.
    ‘Another killing, sir,’ he said, lowering his voice as though they might be overheard in that remote place. ‘The third this year.’
    Coleridge looked at him sharply.
    ‘What do you mean, killing?’
    The guide put his lips together in a straight line.
    ‘A local villager. A woodman. Torn to pieces by a wolf.’
    The driver could not stop the trembling which visibly agitated his frame now.
    ‘A great black wolf which leads a pack hereabouts.’
    He fixed the professor with mournful eyes.
    ‘The villagers say there is something supernatural about it. The beast has been sighted and shot at on a number of occasions, but it seems to have a miraculous ability to avoid bullets.’
    As an expert on the folklore of Europe the professor was intensely interested in what the man was saying, but his commonsense side was momentarily in conflict with the academic in his nature. A grain of sense told him that there could be nothing miraculous about a wolf and its ability to avoid bullets; nothing, that is, but animal cunning.
    But his special interests were aroused. This was really the raw stuff of folklore, and it was ironic that the two sides of his nature should be tested in this way; he had not come across it before.
    But his manner was noncommittal as he replied.
    ‘I am sorry you have such troubles in Lugos. Perhaps I could help. I am an expert shot.’
    The driver shook himself as though he were emerging from a bad dream.
    ‘The authorities would be grateful for your assistance, sir. I believe the Count has also offered the family’s help to the local Chief of Police.’
    His eyes were grim as he turned back to the reins.
    ‘The soldiers have been out already. They saw no sign of the beast. It is cunning, you see. But it had returned to the body when our people came across our poor friend, the woodman. They were unable to hit it, according to Father Balaz, though it was less than a hundred yards away, in clear snow.’
    He whipped up the horses, and the sledge creaked on toward the Castle. Coleridge felt a bleakness in his soul that was far more searing than the cold.

CHAPTER 4: THE CASTLE
    The castle rose above them, gilded silver by the moonlight and looking as unlikely as some eccentric iced cake, Coleridge thought. As they drew nearer, the splintering passage of the sledge was echoing back from the street of small houses which led up to the main entrance, and mingled with it was something else. At first it sounded like the magnification of their own passage, but he then became aware that there were other horses and vehicles approaching from the opposite direction.
    The first visible indication was two great