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You see—my cousin died because of an attack by a vampire.”
    Peter nearly released the steering wheel in his amazement.
    â€œHe—did?’
    â€œIt wasn’t in this country,” Meadows continued soberly. “At that time I was practicing in a re­mote corner of Ireland, and if ever there was a place for manifestations it is Ireland. I was staying with my cousin at the time. He was attack­ed one night by something he could only describe as deathly white, which seemed to float through the air. On his neck were two scars. From the night of that attack he began to waste away, and finally died.
    â€œAt first we thought he had some kind of disease—we being myself and the villagers amongst whom I was living—then it occurred to somebody that he was perhaps being attacked nightly by a vampire which was drawing the blood from his body. It was only then that he had con­sciousness enough to describe the nightly visit of the white apparition. He had thought it a dream: we knew it was fact. We killed the vampire finally by driving a stake through its heart when it came one night. My cousin died shortly afterward. Pres­umably he too became a vampire— I didn’t wait to see. I left Ireland post haste and came to England here.”
    Peter drew up the car outside the doctor’s home.
    â€œI think,” Meadows said, climbing out into the rain and drawing him bag after him, “we’re up against it, son. Quite a lot of unpleasant things may happen in this village of ours before we’re much older.”
    â€œUnless the vampire is caught.”
    â€œHope for the best…. Good night, Peter, and thanks for the lift—both ways.”
    Meadows slammed the car door and went up the front door to his house. Peter sat thinking for a moment, the windscreen wiper clicking back and forth steadily; then he reversed the car and drove back through the streaming rain to his home.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE EMPTY COFFIN
    The mysterious attack that had been made on Madge Paignton was not repeated on any other member of the village, either men or woman. For some nights, Sergeant Blair and Constable Hawkins kept a watch on the cemetery, but nothing happened. So, grad­ually, things began to drift back to their former state of torpor and there was no more talk of vam­pires or things that go bump in the night.
    Peter said nothing to Elsie of his experience. The girl was under strain enough; but inevitably, during her visits to the village, she heard of the vampire and its supposed attack on Madge Paignton. Not that she paid much heed: she seemed to consider such fantasy as not worthy of notice.
    Peter for his part went ahead with the wedding arrangements, and a month after his experience with Madge Paignton he and Elsie were married. They honeymooned in London and returned to Little Pay­ling a month afterwards. By this time the worst inclemency of winter had passed and February was passing into March.
    Upon their return they both expected to hear gossip about themselves, but instead it centred upon a totally different subject—one they had both believed had expired. Vampires! Or at least, one vampire.
    The facts, as far as they could glean them in the village, were that during their absence two more attacks had succeeded. A farmer—and a week later, a well known local builder had both been foully murdered. Apparently their bodies had been discovered almost drained of blood. The farmer had been found in a ditch, and the builder in a pond. In both cases the men had deep wounds at either side of their necks, centring exactly on the jugular veins.
    Scotland Yard had been busy, uprooting every­thing right and left and questioning nearly every­body in the village; but they had arrived at no concrete conclusion.
    â€œAnd now,” Dr. Meadows said, shrugging, “the matter seems to have lapsed.”
    He had come over for one of his routine exam­inations of Mrs.