The Historian

The Historian Page 20

After Helen Rossi slammed the book Dracula - which she obviously thought was our bone of contention - onto the diner table between us, I half expected everyone in the place to rise and run, or someone to cry, "Aha!" and come over to kill us. Of course, nothing at all happened, and she sat there looking at me with the same expression of bitter pleasure. Could this woman, I asked myself slowly, with her legacy of resentment and her scholarly vendetta against Rossi, have injured him herself, caused his disappearance?

"Miss Rossi," I said as calmly as I could, taking the book off the table and putting it facedown beside my briefcase, "your story is extraordinary and I have to say it'll take me some time to digest all this. But I must tell you something very important." I drew in a deep breath, then another. "I know Professor Rossi quite well. He has been my adviser for two years now and we've spent hours together, talking and working. I'm sure if you - when you -  meet him you will find him a far better and kinder person than you can imagine at this point - " She made a movement as if to speak, but I rushed on. "The thing is - the thing is - I take it from the way you talked about him that you don't realize Professor Rossi - your father - has disappeared."

She stared at me, and I couldn't detect any guile in her face, only confusion. So this news was a surprise. The pain over my heart lessened a little. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I mean - three nights ago I was talking with him as usual, and by the next day he had vanished. The police are looking for him now. He apparently disappeared from his office, and was maybe even injured there, because they found blood on his desk." I recounted briefly the events of that evening, beginning with my bringing him my strange little book, but said nothing about the story Rossi had told me.

She looked at me, her face twisted with perplexity. "Is this some kind of trick you are playing on me?"

"No, not in the least. It really isn't. I've hardly been able to eat or sleep since it happened."

"Don't the police have any idea where he is?"

"None, as far as I can tell."

Her look was suddenly shrewd. "Do you?"

I hesitated. "Possibly. It's a long story, and it seems to be getting longer by the hour."

"Wait." She looked hard at me. "When you were reading those letters in the library yesterday, you said they had to do with a problem some professor was having. Did you mean Rossi?"

"Yes."

"What problem was he having? Is he having?"

"I don't want to involve you in unpleasantness or danger by telling you even what little I know."

"You promised to answer my questions after I answered yours." If she'd had blue eyes instead of dark ones, her face would have been the twin of Rossi's at that moment. I imagined I could see a resemblance now, an uncanny molding of Rossi's English crispness into the strong, dark frame of Romania, although it could merely have been the effect of her assertion that she was his daughter. But how could she be his daughter if he had stoutly denied having been in Romania? He had said, at least, that he'd never been to Snagov. On the other hand, he had left that brochure on Romania among his papers. Now she was glaring at me, too, something Rossi had never done. "It is too late to tell me I shouldn't ask questions. What did those letters have to do with his disappearance?"

"I'm not sure yet. But I may need the help of an expert. I don't know what discoveries you've made in the course of your research - " Again, I received her wary, heavy-lidded look. "I'm convinced that before he vanished Rossi believed he was in personal danger."

She seemed to be trying to take all of this in, this news of a father she had known for so long only as a symbol of challenge. "Personal danger? From what?"

I took the plunge. Rossi had asked me not to share his insane story with my colleagues. I hadn't done that, but now, unexpectedly, I had available to me the possibility of assistance from an expert. This woman might know already what it would take me many months to learn; she might be right, even, in thinking she knew more than Rossi himself. Rossi always emphasized the importance of seeking expert help - well, I would do that now. Forgive me, I prayed to the forces of good, if this endangers her. Besides, it had a peculiar kind of logic. If she was actually his daughter, she might have the greatest right of all to know his story. "What does Dracula mean to you?"

"Mean to me?" She frowned. "As a concept? My revenge, I suppose. Eternal bitterness."

"Yes, I understand that. But does Dracula mean anything more to you?" "What do you mean?" I couldn't tell whether she was being evasive or simply honest.

"Rossi," I said, still hesitating, "your father, was - is - convinced that Dracula still walks the earth." She stared at me. "What do you make of that?" I asked. "Does it seem insane to you?" I waited for her to laugh, or stand up and leave as she had in the library.

"It's funny," Helen Rossi answered slowly. "Normally I'd say that was peasant legend - superstition about the memory of a bloody tyrant. But the strange thing is that my mother is absolutely convinced of the same thing."

"Your mother?"

"Yes. I told you, she is a peasant by birth. She has a right to these superstitions, although she is probably less convinced of them than her parents were. But why an eminent Western scholar?" She was an anthropologist, all right, despite her bitter quest. The detachment of her quick intelligence from personal questions was astonishing to me.

"Miss Rossi," I said, making up my mind suddenly. "I somehow don't have the smallest doubt that you like to examine things for yourself. Why don't you read Rossi's letters? I'm giving you my frankest warning that everyone who has handled his papers on this topic has been subjected to some kind of threat, as far as I can tell. But if you aren't afraid, read them for yourself. It'll save us the time of my trying to persuade you that his story is true, which I firmly believe it is."

"Save us time?" she echoed contemptuously. "What are you planning for my time?"

I was too desperate to be stung. "You'll read these letters with a better-educated eye, in this case, than mine."

She seemed to be thinking over this proposal, her chin in her fist. "All right," she said finally. "You have got me in a vulnerable spot. Of course I cannot resist the temptation to learn more about Father Rossi, especially if it puts me ahead of his research. But if he seems to me merely insane, I warn you that you will not get much sympathy from me. That would be just my luck, for him to be shut away in an institution before I have my fair chance to torture him." Her smile was not a smile.

"Fine." I ignored the last remark and the ugly grimace, forcing myself not to glance at her canine teeth, which I could already see plainly weren't longer than normal. Before we concluded our transaction, however, I had to lie on one point. "I'm sorry to say I don't have the letters with me. I was afraid to carry them around today." Actually, I'd been thoroughly afraid to leave them in my apartment, and they were hidden in my briefcase. But I'd be damned - literally, maybe - if I pulled them out in the middle of the diner. I had no idea who might be there, watching us - the creepy librarian's little friends, for example? I had another reason, too, which I had to test even if my heart sank under its unpleasantness. I had to be sure Helen Rossi, whoever she was, was not in league with - well, wasn't it just possible that the enemy of her enemy was already her friend? "I'll have to go home and get them. And I'll have to ask you to read them in my presence; they're fragile and very precious to me."

"All right," she said coolly. "Can we meet tomorrow afternoon?"

"That's too late. I'd like you to see them immediately. I'm sorry. I know it

sounds odd, but you'll understand my sense of urgency once you've read them."

She shrugged. "If it will not take too long."

"It won't. Can you meet me at - at Saint Mary's Church?" This test, at least, I could perform with Rossi's own thoroughness. Helen Rossi looked unflinchingly at me, her hard, ironic face unchanged. "That's on Elm Street, two blocks from - "

"I know where it is," she said, gathering her gloves and putting them on very neatly. She rewound the blue scarf, which shimmered around her throat like lapis lazuli. "What time?"

"Give me thirty minutes to get the papers from my apartment and meet you there."

"At the church. All right. I will stop by the library for an article I need today. Please be on time - I have a lot to do." Her black-coated back was lean and strong, moving out the diner door. I realized too late that she had somehow paid the bill for our coffee.