--my own poor, motherless children--who were sucked
bloodless in their cradles...."

Arthur Duryea passed a hand across his aching eyes. Those words, so
often repeated by that witch of an aunt, stirred up the same visions
which had made his childhood nights sleepless with terror. He could
hardly bear to hear them again--and from the very man to whom they were
accredited.

"Listen, Arthur," the elder Duryea went on quickly, his voice low with
the pain it gave him. "You must know that true basis to your aunt's
hatred. You must know of that curse--that curse of vampirism which is
supposed to have followed the Duryeas through five centuries of French
history, but which we can dispel as pure superstition, so often
connected with ancient families. But I must tell you that this part of
the legend is true:

"Your two young brothers actually died in their cradles, bloodless. And
I stood trial in France for their murder, and my name was smirched
throughout all of Europe with such an inhuman damnation that it drove
your aunt and you to America, and has left me childless, hated, and
ostracized from society the world over.

"I must tell you that on that terrible night in Duryea Castle I had been
working late on historic volumes of Crespet and Prinn, and on that
loathsome tome, _Vampyrs_. I must tell you of the soreness that was in
my throat and of the heaviness of the blood which coursed through my
veins.... And of that _presence_, which was neither man nor animal, but
which I knew was some place near me, yet neither within the castle nor
outside of it, and which was closer to me than my heart and more
terrible to me than the touch of the grave....

"I was at the desk in my library, my head swimming in a delirium which
left me senseless until dawn. There were nightmares that frightened
me--frightened _me_, Arthur, a grown man who had dissected countless
cadavers in morgues and medical schools. I know that my tongue was
swollen in my mouth and that brine moistened my lips, and that a
rottenness pervaded my body like a fever.

"I can make no recollection of sanity or of consciousness. That night
remains vivid, unforgettable, yet somehow completely in shadows. When I
had fallen asleep--if in God's name it _was_ sleep--I was slumped across
my desk. But when I awoke in the morning I was lying face down on my
couch. So you see, Arthur, I _had_ moved during that night, _and I had
never known it_!

"What I'd done and where I'd gone