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before I changed. But my hopes don’t matter.” His voice began to rise. “You’d think I was the greatest sinner since Cain. But do you know the irony of it? When my older brother John died in a hunting accident, I wasn’t even there. I had nothing to do with it!”
    Talbot’s growing passion frightened Joan and she finally began backing away. She stepped into the towering entrance hall with its great spiral staircase and baroque furnishings. Though she had watched the man transform she didn’t believe what she’d seen. He had to be insane. He wasn’t bitten by a werewolf and Count Dracula wasn’t a vampire. This man Talbot had to have willed the change in a way she didn’t understand. Or maybe she was insane. Or delirious. Maybe she’d eaten spoiled pâté at the ball and was imagining all of this. Or perhaps this castle was the real McDougal’s House of Horrors and no one had bothered to tell her. Her boss or McDougal or someone else was testing her. This was all a sinister joke.
    Whatever it was, she had to get out of the house and back to civilization. The world was mad; it had just proved that in a second World War. But at least that was a madness she understood.
    “Mr. Talbot,” she said, “have you ever tried to get help? There are doctors, psychiatrists—”
    “I’ve tried doctors!” Talbot lamented. He started walking toward her. “Dr. Mannering, Dr. Niemann, Dr. Edelmann. Some of the most revered and notorious scientists in Europe have attempted to cure me. Dr. Edelmann—he came close.” Talbot smiled faintly. “I was so confident, so sure that he’d succeeded, I even married his assistant, Miliza. Poor, sweet Miliza. We had two beautiful months together before my brain rejected the surgery. Before I . . . I—” Talbot thrust his tortured face into his open palms. “The werewolf seeks to kill the one it loves. She’s dead and Edelmann is dead and whatever he did to me died with him. They all tried to help with science or love and they all failed.”
    “There are sanitariums,” Joan said softly.
    “I’ve been caged and shackled and straitjacketed over and over!” Talbot said. He shook his fists violently. “I tell you, nothing can hold me. Nothing except—” Talbot looked at her.
    “Except?” she prodded.
    “Except death.” A gentleness and an almost boyish anticipation suddenly came over him. “Miss Raymond, please don’t back away. Don’t be afraid.”
    “I’m not afraid,” she lied. But she stopped moving. She was standing in the center of the vast hall, just outside a sharp shaft of moonlight that shone through the open door. A cold breeze swept past her, stirring a tapestry that hung along the winding staircase to her right. The wind whistled up the stairs for a moment and then died. When it did, the front door squeaked on its hinges. It shut solidly, snapping off the moonlight. The hall was dark and quiet.
    Talbot was standing in the laboratory doorway. His hulking form filled the door, dark and ominous against the lighted room.
    “I want . . . I need your help,” Talbot said. His voice echoed through the hall.
    “If you want to turn yourself in to the authorities,” Joan replied, “I’ll be happy to help.”
    “No,” Talbot said emphatically. “That won’t do any good. I only want to die. I don’t want to live through another one of my spells. When I was back in London, I thought I could use my animal cunning for good by hunting down Count Dracula. I wanted to try to atone for all the suffering I’ve caused. That’s why I followed him here. But at best I’ve only delayed him. At worst I’ve strengthened his resolve.”
    “You don’t know that Count Dracula has survived.”
    “And you don’t know Count Dracula,” Talbot replied. “His coffin was probably hidden nearby. By now he’s had enough time to return to it. When the sun goes down he’ll move it. It will take me days or weeks or maybe even months to find him. And all the while, during