Read Online Kolchak The Night Strangler by Richard Matheson, Jeff Rice - Free Book Online Page B

middle of page three with a notation on same under “Local Briefs” at the bottom of the front page. More of Vincenzo’s handiwork, no doubt.
    I dressed, called a cab, and headed for the University of Washington, my trusty tape recorder in hand.
    The University of Washington is situated on nearly 700 acres of greenery on the shores of Lake Washington with NE 45 th Street bordering it on its northern most side, and 23 rd Avenue cutting right through the center of it.
    As the cab moved up Memorial Way, I could see the Washington State Museum to my right. It’s an old campus with a good-sized student body of more than 33,000. Louise told me Dr. Helms’s quarters were in Denny Hall, a great gray stone structure build in 1895 and named for the pioneer who had given a generous endowment to help get the university it’s “territorial” status. Arthur Denny’s great-grandson is the present Dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs.
    Denny Hall itself is crowned by a greenish-tinged copper cupola which houses an amplifier system from which the university chimes peal forth their call to study. For the most part, it is taken up by language classes, psychology offices, and a few labs on its upper-most floors. It used to have a wooden sash decorating its exterior but this was replaced by steel about ten years ago. Inside, as expected, it’s a bit musty with a bit of the old lab smell about.
    Dr. Helms’s “temporary quarters” were the remains of an old board room with eighteen-foot-high ceilings, and paneled in dark-stained oak throughout. The walls were lined with books and the two tables—one large round one and a smaller oblong affair, leather-topped—were littered with tomes, notes, and the assembled skeletons of small animals. Seated behind a huge, incredibly ugly desk, likewise littered, was Dr. Helms. She was visibly older, a bit heavier, and her spiky hair was almost snow white. But she was still the same Dr. Helms.
    “Late as usual, I see, and still drinking too much. Typical of your breed, Kolchak. Sloppy student. Sloppy in personal habits as well. You’re still undernourished, under-exercised, and no doubt your mind is slowly dissolving in alcohol. I’d love to have it, “she said with great relish, “to study when you finally wind up in some alleyway. It won’t even need to be put in formaldehyde.”
    “Welcome home, said the chastised reporter glumly.”
    “Forget the wisecracks, Kolchak. I’m a busy woman. Your friend, Miss Harper, who by the way has an excellent mind—although I’m not sure now, seeing who she’s been associating with of late—told me what you’ve been up to. It does an old woman’s heart good to know that someone, even someone like you, Kolchak, still has enough independence of mind to not turn up his nose at things most people call ‘the stuff of fairy tales.’ Well, don’t just sit there on your bad record. Tell me what you’ve got, and I’ll tell you where to go.”
    I just bet she would, too. “I’m still recovering from your welcome.” I turned on my tape recorder. She scowled.
    “Well …?”
    “Well, this time I don’t think it’s a vampire. It would seem that every 21 years since 1889…”
    I gave her every piece of information I had been able to find, plus my own speculation, and related my encounter with the man in the alley, of whom I still had my doubts as a suspect.
    “Vampires, I think we can rule out. As you said, the amounts of blood drawn from the victims were consistent but minor in terms of supplying a vampire with his needs.”
    “Okay. Vampires are out. Tell me about walking dead men.”
    “Dead men don’t walk. Un dead men, perhaps. But not dead dead men.” And this from a Ph.D. no less!
    “Well, then, what about zombies?”
    She smiled a mirthless grin. “Not indigenous to Seattle.”
    “Can a man more than a hundred years old, who’s not a vampire, still retain his vitality?” I reached for my tape recorder to turn up the