Read Return of the Wolf Man for Free Online Page B

every full moon, I’ll kill. Don’t you see, Miss Raymond? There’s no choice. I must be destroyed.”
    “Destroyed?” she said. “You’re not a rabid dog—”
    “I know that,” Talbot said sadly. “A rabid dog doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder where he is or who he’s killed. A rabid dog can’t ask to die. A rabid dog can’t cry. I can, Miss Raymond. And I do.”
    Joan could see the pain in his eyes. She forced herself to look at Professor Stevens. Just a few minutes before, the scientist had been alive—a man with a conscience, emotions, memories, and passion. Now he was raw meat already drawing flies. Whether Talbot was cursed or insane, he was a killer. Perhaps he deserved death. But that wasn’t for her to decide. And for some reason she felt sorry for him.
    “In order to die,” Talbot went on, “I need your help. A werewolf can only be destroyed by someone who feels passionately about him. Someone who wants him to die out of love or pity or even hate.”
    “No,” Joan said. “I’m not a killer.”
    “Destroying me isn’t murder,” he insisted. “It’s mercy to me and to those I might attack.”
    “But if love can kill you then maybe it can cure you,” she said.
    “I tell you it’s been tried!”
    “You’re in America now, Mr. Talbot. I’ve visited clinics, modern facilities where there are many different ways of treating people. Things are different from how they are in Europe.”
    “Are they?” Talbot asked. “I lived with my mother in California for eighteen years. Do you know what will happen if I go to the police? The courts will say I’m insane. Psychiatrists and physicians will study me. They’ll try to discover what causes the transformation.”
    “It’s possible they will,” said Joan. “And maybe they’ll succeed. Maybe they’ll find a cure.”
    Talbot shook his head. “I’ll escape before that happens. I always do. After being deprived of a kill for just one night the will to attack becomes overpowering. I can bend metal bars, Miss Raymond. I can snap chains. Nothing can hold me. Besides, even if medical science were able to cure me, I dare not put the secret of my curse into anyone’s hands.”
    “Why?”
    Talbot walked toward her slowly. “Does the name Frank Griffin mean anything to you?”
    Joan shook her head.
    “His grandfather was Dr. Jack Griffin. Surely you’ve heard of him—the Invisible Man.”
    Joan began to wonder if she had slipped down the rabbit hole into Wonderland without realizing it. She raised her hands and waved them in front of her. “Don’t,” she warned and began backing away again. “I’m leaving.”
    “But you must listen—”
    “No! Don’t try to tell me that he was real too!”
    “But he was,” Talbot insisted, his voice calm. “Hear me out. When the military learned that Frank possessed his grandfather’s invisibility formula, they insisted that he use it to fight the Axis. He became the Invisible Agent. After four or five successful missions he was wounded by German spies in London. But before he was sent home, Allied doctors took samples of his blood. They used it to re-create the formula and turned other men invisible—”
    “Stop it, Mr. Talbot!” Joan cried. “I don’t believe that there are squads of invisible spies and G.I.’s!”
    “There are records,” he assured her. “Does your firm have contacts in London?”
    “Yes—”
    “Call them.” He pointed toward an old wooden desk to the right of the front door. “There’s a telephone, Miss Raymond. Get the long distance operator and call. Ask them about an American Army medic, Dr. Peter Drury, who was stationed in Cardiff. He worked with Griffin’s blood. He also came across my case in the files of the old Queen’s Hospital. That was the first place I’d gone to for help. Dr. Drury contacted me at my flat in London and I met with him. He said he wanted to try to cure me.” Talbot’s eyes grew moist and he looked down. He rubbed his