'Salem's Lot(91)

She colored a little. 'No, no - don't misunderstand me, please. I'm convinced that something is going on in town. Something . . . horrible. But . . . this . . . '

He put his hand out and covered hers with it. 'I under?stand that, Susan. But will you do something for me?'

'If I can.'

'Let us . . . the three of us . . . proceed on the premise that all of this is real. Let us keep that premise before us as fact until - and only until - it can be disproved. The scientific method, you see? Ben and I have already dis?cussed ways and means of putting the premise to the test. And no one hopes more than I that it can be disproved.'

'But you don't think it will be, do you?'

'No,' he said softly. 'After a long conversation with myself, I've reached my decision. I believe what I saw.'

'Let's put questions of belief and unbelief behind us for the minute,' Ben said. 'Right now they're moot.'

'Agreed,' Matt said. 'What are your ideas about pro?cedure?'

'Well,' Ben said, 'I'd like to appoint you Researcher General. With your background, you're uniquely well fitted for the job. And you're off your feet.'

Matt's eyes gleamed as they had over Cody's perfidy in declaring his pipe off limits. 'I'll have Loretta Starcher on the phone when the library opens. She'll have to bring the books down in a wheelbarrow.'

'It's Sunday,' Susan reminded. 'Library's closed.'

'She'll open it for me,' Matt said, 'or I'll know the reason why.'

'Get anything and everything that bears on the subject,' Ben said. 'Psychological as well as pathological and mythic. You understand? The whole works.'

'I'll start a notebook,' Matt rasped. 'Before God, I will!' He looked at them both. 'This is the first time since I woke up in here that I feel like a man. What will you be doing?'

'First, Dr Cody. He examined both Ryerson and Floyd Tibbits. Perhaps we can persuade him to exhume Danny Glick.'

'Would he do that?' Susan asked Matt.

Matt sucked at his ginger ale before answering. 'The Jimmy Cody I had in class would have, in a minute. He was an imaginative, open-minded boy who was remarkably resistant to cant. How much of an empiricist college and med school may have made of him, I don't know.'

'All of this seems roundabout to me,' Susan said. 'Es?pecially going to Dr Cody and risking a complete rebuff. Why don't Ben and I just go up to the Marsten House and have done with it? That was on the docket just last week.'

'I'll tell you why,' Ben said. 'Because we are proceeding on the premise that all this is real. Are you so anxious to put your head in the lion's mouth?'

'I thought vampires slept in the daytime.'

'Whatever Straker may be, he's not a vampire,' Ben said, 'unless the old legends are completely wrong. He's been highly visible in the daytime. At best we'd be turned away as trespassers with nothing learned. At worst, he might overpower us and keep us there until dark. A wake-up snack for Count Comic Book.'

'Barlow?' Susan asked.

Ben shrugged. 'Why not? That story about the New York buying expedition is a little too good to be true.' The expression in her eyes remained stubborn, but she said nothing more.

'What will you do if Cody laughs you off?' Matt asked.

'Always assuming he doesn't call for the restraints immedi?ately.'

'Off to the graveyard at sunset,' Ben said. 'To watch Danny Glick's grave. Call it a test case.'

Matt half rose from his reclining position. 'Promise me that you'll be careful. Ben, promise me!'

'We will,' Susan said soothingly. 'We'll both positively clank with crosses.'

'Don't joke,' Matt muttered. 'if you'd seen what I have - ' He turned his head and looked out the window, which showed the sun-shanked leaves of an alder and the autumn-bright sky beyond.

'If she's joking, I'm not,' Ben said. 'We'll take all pre?cautions.'

'See Father Callahan,' Matt said. 'Make him give you some holy water . . . and if possible, some of the wafer.'

'What kind of man is he?' Ben asked.

Matt shrugged. 'A little strange. A drunk, maybe. If he is, he's a literate, polite one. Perhaps chafing a little under the yoke of enlightened Popery.'

'Are you sure that Father Callahan is a . . . that he drinks?' Susan asked, her eyes a trifle wide.

'Not positive,' Matt said. 'But an ex-student of mine, Brad Campion, works in the Yarmouth liquor store and he says Callahan's a regular customer. A Jim Beam man, Good taste.'

'Could he be talked to?' Ben asked.

'I don't know. I think you must try.'

'Then you don't know him at all?'

'No, not really. He's writing a history of the Catholic Church in New England, and he knows a great deal about the poets of our so-called golden age - Whittier, Long?fellow, Russell, Holmes, that lot. I had him in to speak to my American Lit students late last year. He has a quick, acerbic mind - the students enjoyed him.'

'I'll see him 'Ben said, 'and follow my nose.'

A nurse peeked in, nodded, and a moment later Jimmy Cody entered with a stethoscope around his neck.