He first got wind of the vampire cult on an overcast afternoon in the early spring of 1941. He was partaking of a nutburger in a health-conscious greasy spoon in Gower Gulch in Hollywood. The joint, shaped like a giant tomato, was across the street from Pentagram Studios, the outfit that was filming Hix’s latest script, The Invisible Vampire Returns. A big budget film, by Pentagram standards: they were devoting seven days to shooting.

“God created the world, according to reliable sources, in six days,” Hix was explaining to the very pretty blonde waitress who was lingering beside his booth. “So my film will be one day better, Inza.”

Inza Cramer nodded down at his plate. “What do you think of your nutburger?”

Narrowing one eye, he ran his fingers through his crinkly hair and grew thoughtful. “It has,” he informed her, “a nutlike flavor.”

“Seriously. The chef’s trying out a new recipe and he asked me to query the customers.”

“You have a chef here?”

“You know, Freddy.”

Hix inquired, “Well, what did the other patrons say?”

“So far, you’re the only one who’s ordered a nutburger this week.”

“It’s an honor to consume Freddy’s maiden effort.” He took another bite of the burger. “Tell him that I further said, ‘Yum yum.’ ”

The slim blonde Inza Cramer leaned closer. “Can you be serious for a minute, Hix?”

“I can do that, sure. Why, kid?”

She lowered her voice. “You heard about Nancy Decker?”

“Starlet over at MGM,” he answered. “They found her head in Griffith Park couple nights ago. Cause was a bad case of pernicious anemia.”

“You’re, aren’t you, sort of an expert on . . . well, spooky stuff?” She leaned against the edge of his booth, lowering her voice even further.

“As the man who single-handedly scripted not only The Invisible Vampire Returns, but The Bride of the Werewolf and Zombies on Parade, I certainly qualify as an expert on spooky stuff, yep,” he admitted, frazzled hair fluttering as he nodded his head very positively. “Fact is, UCLA is contemplating awarding me an honorary degree in occultism. Any day now.”

“Nancy was murdered, Hix.”

He sat up. “Oh, so?”

Her voice was a whisper now. “It was vampires did Nancy in.”

“What the hell makes you say that, Inza?”

“I was a friend of hers. We did extra work together before she got picked up by MGM,” said the blonde. “But she got involved with this funny cult and—”

“Coffee,” requested the suntanned stuntman two booths over. “If you’re through flirting with that undersized hack, honey.”

Hix rose up from his bench. “Five foot six is not undersized, Buck,” he announced and sat down again. “Besides, Mickey Rooney isn’t even that tall and he’s the idol of millions.”

“You also deny the hack part?” asked the stuntman.

“I’ll accept that appellation,” replied the script-writer. “If you add much-beloved to modify hack.”

“Done. So can I get a refill now, Inza honey?”

“Excuse me, Hix.” The slim waitress went hurrying off toward the kitchen.

“Vampire cult,” murmured Hix. “Vampire cult. Maybe I can do something with that.”

It was the following afternoon that Hix encountered, albeit briefly, his first real vampire.

He’d been sitting in his cubicle at Pentagram in the former stable that had been converted, with the aid of considerable plywood, into the Writers’ Building. Hix leaned back from his venerable Underwood typewriter, tapped the fingers of his right hand on the cover of one of the copies of Whiz Comics strewn atop his small, slightly lopsided desk. He had hit a snag in outlining his proposed sequel to The Invisible Vampire Returns. It was going to be a more socially conscious film that he was, tentatively, calling The Invisible Vampire Joins the Army.

“Inza,” he said aloud. “I ought to talk to her about that vampire cult she alluded to yesterday. Right, Inza Cramer could be a definite source of inspiration in these troubled times. Besides she’s got a very provocative backside.”

He trotted down the hall to the pay phone that the studio provided for its writers and called the tomato-shaped restaurant where the pretty blonde worked.

Turned out it was her day off, but by exercising his considerable powers of cajolery, complementing him on his nutburgers, and promising to slip him two bucks the next time he popped in, Hix obtained the aspiring actress’ address from Freddy the chef. She apparently didn’t have a telephone.

After scribbling “Out to research” on a cocktail napkin he happened to have in the pocket of his tweed sport coat and affixing it to the moderately warped plywood door, Hix headed for the small coastal town of Santa Rita Beach.

The closer his sporadically rattling old Plymouth coupe got to the late afternoon Pacific Ocean, the thicker the chill gray fog grew. Tired of talking to himself, the fuzzy-haired writer clicked on the radio.

Johnny Whistler, the piping-voiced Hollywood gossip columnist, was in mid-broadcast.

“. . . about time the great Greta Garbo lensed another flicker? I thought the dour Swede was a knockout in Ninotchka and proved she sure can do comedy. But insiders here in tinseltown are saying that was two years ago and maybe the Great Sphinx of the movies is afraid to try again. Or is Louis B. Mayer, the mighty mogul of MGM, afraid that his once favorite star ain’t got another comedy in her? I’ll be back in a minute with an open letter to Randolph Scott. Right now here’s a message of hope for those of you, who like me, are bothered by occasional irregularity, from Weber’s Delicious Painless Laxative. And—”

“Even though I occasionally suffer like Johnny Whistler, I think I’ll skip the commercial.” He changed stations.

The rest of the foggy journey he listened to a cooking show where a kindly maternal lady told him exactly how to make a jelly roll that would serve six.

Inza lived in a small shingle cottage on a wooded hillside a few hundred yards above a strip of beach that stretched away from the choppy gray Pacific.

Hix parked his coupe on the twisty lane that ran in front of the waitress’ cottage and the scatter of other small houses dotting this wooded section of hillside. His car went through the usual rattling shudders it evidenced whenever the motor was turned off.

The fog hung heavy around the cottage and the lighted front window was a hazy rectangle. “Mist enshrouded the humble dwelling in a blanket of chilling grayness,” Hix said to himself, trying to come up with an apt phrase to describe the setup.

Just about ten seconds after he noticed that the weathered redwood door of the young woman’s cottage was hanging half open, he heard a scream from inside.

“Hey!” he shouted and went running along the flagstone path to push into the house.

From the rear came the sound of something, probably a lamp, falling over and smacking the floor.

Hix, crinkly hair flickering, sprinted in that direction.

At the far side of the kitchen a slim figure in tan trousers, a dark ski sweater, and a knit cap was bending over, back turned, the sprawled body of Inza.

“Hey!” repeated Hix, hesitating on the threshold of the white and yellow room.

Without turning, the crouching figure dived for the rear door of the kitchen, yanked it open, and ran out into the deep fog.

Hix reached the door in time to see the slender figure being swallowed up by the thick gray fog.

He decided, no doubt influenced by numerous B-movies he’d scripted, to give chase.

He’d covered only a few feet of the surrounding woodlands when something whacked him on the side of the head.

Hix staggered, started to turn to see who was attacking him, and was sapped again across the temple. Harder.

He took two wobbly steps, gray fog engulfed him, and he tumbled down into it.

“You saved my life, Hix. If you hadn’t showed up just when you did, gosh, I don’t know what would’ve happened. Well, no actually, I do know. I’d have met the same fate as poor Nancy Decker.”

Hix found himself reclining on an intricate crazy quilt of many colors. He and the quilt were spread over an imitation antique spool bed. The odors of a pungent potpourri and recently-applied iodine mingled in the air.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, a white bandage on the left side of her throat, was Inza. There was an expression of gratitude on her pale face.

Although Hix blinked a few times, the blonde didn’t immediately come into focus. “Here’s a line I’ve found useful in many a brilliant script of mine,” he said, noticing that his voice was sounding moderately froggy. “Where am I?”

“My bedroom. And I bandaged your poor head.”

He lifted a hand and managed, after two tries, to touch the injured side of his head. “Ouch, ow, damn,” he observed. “How’d you manage to drag me in from the woods, kiddo?”

“Oh, I had help.” From the pocket of her pink striped blouse Inza extracted an embossed business card. “A very nice girl. Her name is Sara Hampton and her profession is—this is right up your alley, Hix—occult investigator.”

He abandoned his attempt to sit up as soon as he experienced the throbbing head, aching bones, and displays of Stuart Davis-style flashing of colored lights it caused. “An occult investigator just happened to be passing this joint when there was some heavy lifting to be done?”

“No, she was trailing somebody. When she found you sprawled out cold at the edge of my backyard and then noticed me gradually recovering from a vampire attack in my dinky kitchen, she took the time to lend a hand. How’s your noggin feeling?”

“Both my coco and the rest of me are still feeling relatively lousy, thank you. Where is this mystical Samaritan now?”

“She had something else to take care of, but she’ll be back shortly. She’d appreciate it if you wait around.”

“Good. I don’t intend to move from this supine position for quite some time,” decided Hix as the light display he’d been enjoying started to dim and fade. “I look forward to meeting her.”

“Here, keep her card.” Inza pressed it into his hand.

Hix told her, “As I recall, I dropped by to ask you about the vampire cult you were telling me about yesterday.”

She nodded, closing his fingers around the card and keeping hold of his hand. “What I suspect, Hix, is that somebody at the restaurant overheard something of what I was confiding in you and came here to shut me up.”

“Surely not Buck the stuntman? He’s too obtuse to be involved in a cult of any kind.”

“There were at least a dozen other people in the place while you were there.”

“I only had eyes for you. And my nutburger,” he said. “Now tell me exactly what happened here.”

“Okay, well, Nancy told me a lot about the workings of the vampire cult, though she wasn’t supposed to.” Inza’s grip on his hand tightened. “They must suspect that, so they sent somebody to . . . to get rid of me. They sent a vampire to attack me.”

“That’s sure a possibility, yeah. Any idea who he was?”

“It wasn’t a man.” She shook her head, frowning. “It was a woman. And don’t laugh, Hix, but from the quick glimpse I got of her . . . well, she looked a heck of a lot like Greta Garbo.”

Hix didn’t laugh.

“Much of the folklore about vampirism does contain a considerable amount of truth,” explained Sara Hampton while tacking a garlic chain to the front door frame of Inza’s cottage. “Garlic really is a sure-fire protection against vampires.”

“I never much liked the smell of the stuff.” Inza was standing on the threshold watching the occult investigator. “Freddy, though, loves garlic and uses tons of it at the restaurant.”

Sara was a small, slightly plump woman of about thirty, dressed in a tweed skirt, thick cardigan, and fairly sensible shoes. “This’ll keep them out.” Taking a step back, she studied the doorway and then glanced toward the windows. “All right, Miss Cramer, I’ve got garlands attached to all your windows and doors.” She made a let’s-go-back-inside gesture.

Some of the night fog followed the two women into the parlor.

Hix, a small green ice bag adorning his injured head and flattening his frazzled hair, was slumped in a sturdy armchair. The light from a floor lamp with a glazed shade depicting red sailboats in the sunset was shining down on him. “Okay, she’s protected while she’s at home,” he said. “What happens when she ventures into the outside world?”

“This will take care of that.” From her large black purse the occult specialist drew a small silver cross on a silver chain. “Wear this all the time, dear. All the time.”

Nodding, Inza accepted the silver cross and hung it around her neck. “You’re sure I’ll be safe now?”

“You’ll be okay, yes.”

“Shouldn’t she lay in a supply of silver bullets and a couple of wooden stakes?” Hix readjusted his ice bag. “Aren’t those essential tools for dispatching vampires? In my script for The Invisible Vampire Returns I—”

“Yes, a wooden stake in the heart never fails.” Sara seated herself on the sofa near the pale waitress. “Silver bullets, though, I’ve found, work best on werewolves. I’ve known a well-placed silver bullet to stop a vampire, but you can’t always count on that.”

Hix frowned. “In all of my near-award-winning scripts I’ve stated that vampires only come out after the sun goes down,” he said. “But Inza’s vampire jumped her in broad daylight.”

“That part of folk belief is strictly flapdoodle,” Sara told him. “Vampires can strike at any hour, all around the clock. And, by the way, except for the ones with an especialy morbid streak, they seldom sleep in coffins.”

“How about being immortal?” Hix removed his ice bag, set it on his knee, decided it was too cold for that and dropped it to the flowered rug. “In Count Drago Returns, one of the big Poverty Row hits of 1938, my vampire was way along in years. Some of my less successful and overly mean-minded colleagues accused me of swiping that notion from Count Dracula Returns, but I actually did nearly two hours of research at the West Hollywood branch of the public library.”

“The immorality business is true in some cases, isn’t it, Miss Hampton?” asked Inza. “That’s one of the things that appealed to Nancy Decker, the notion that if she was accepted into the vampire cult she’d eventually attain immortality.”

“Dumb idea for an actress,” observed Hix, reaching down to retrieve the icebag. “Most actresses only stay on top for ten or twenty years. If you’re immortal you’re going to be out of work for a hell of a long time. Though you could sure collect a lot of unemployment insurance and Social Security.”

“Let’s be serious again, Hix.” Sara, hands clasped on her lap, leaned forward. “Despite the fact that you’re just an average B-movie writer, you do seem to have a knack for occult detective work. You handled that werewolf case last year very well and the business with the demon was—”

“I’m an above average hack,” he corrected. “And how’d you hear about the werewolf? The studio involved hushed that up.”

She smiled faintly. “I’m an above average investigator,” she answered. “I’d like you to cooperate with me on this vampire case.”

When Hix scratched at his frizzy hair, it made crackling noises. “Sure, kiddo, I can do that,” he decided. “But, first, tell us how you happened to be in the vicinity this afternoon?”

“I was following someone.”

“The vampire who bears a striking resemblance to Greta Garbo?”

“No,” Sara said. “One of the operatives MGM hired to keep an eye on Garbo.”

It was raining in Beverly Hills. The sharp night wind drove the rain smack into the windshield of Hix’s Plymouth coupe as he drove through the open iron gates of the sprawling mansion that was his destination. His windshield wipers creaked on every backstroke.

The big house at the end of the long whitegraveled drive looked as though its architect had been inspired both by the California missions and some French Foreign Legion movies. The slanting roofs were of red tile, the many narrow windows guarded by considerable ornamental iron.

When his headlights swept the wide oak door, Hix saw that two chains of garlic were hanging from it.

He parked the coupe, as instructed, near the five-car garage. Clamping the wide-brimmed fedora he borrowed from the studio costume department—well, swiped actually—he hopped free of the car to run for the house.

Sara Hampton, a flashlight in her hand, opened the door. “You’re over half an hour late, Hix,” she said, shining the beam of the light on him and the redbrick porch.

“Decided to take a roundabout route,” he explained as he entered. “I had the impression, when I left my palatial homestead, that I was being tailed. Using several of the cunning evasive driving techniques that I first devised for my epic screen mystery Mr. Woo in Rio I eluded all pursuit. Far as I can tell.”

She invited him into the mansion. “They’ll probably pick you up when you leave here.”

“Until I met you last night, ma’am, my life was a serene idyll.” Hix followed her into the large, bean-ceiling living room. “Marred only by the fact that my salary isn’t what an obvious Oscar contender like me should be dragging down.”

Sara nodded at a leather-and-redwood chair near the deep, empty fireplace. “I’m afraid you truly walked into something when you decided to visit Inza Cramer yesterday.”

He settled into the chair, depositing his damp fedora on a Navajo rug. “I trust I’m here so you can fill me in on what exactly I’ve stepped in.”

The occult investigator sat in a chair matching his and facing it. “Yes, that’s why I asked you over.”

He gestured at the big, lofty room. “Impressive digs you’ve got.”

“I’m only borrowing the place from a friend while he’s back in New York doing a play on Broadway.”

“Who?”

“Larz Nordstrom.”

“Hey, it’s a good thing he’s got a job back East,” observed Hix. “His movie career has been on the skids since 1933 or thereabouts. It’s my theory that the public is only dumb enough to put up with an actor of Nordstrom’s limited ability for, oh, five, six years tops.”

“He’s a very nice man.”

“So’s my dentist, but I wouldn’t fork over two bits to see him in a movie,” said Hix. “And he’s not handicapped by a Swedish accent.”

Sara said, “I telephoned Inza this afternoon and she seems to be faring well.”

“Yeah, I dropped in at the restaurant for lunch and she looked only moderately terrified,” he said. “I had another nutburger, even though I’ve decided I loathe the damn things.” He exhaled slowly, making a sound that resembled a forlorn sigh. “I guess the vampires have transferred their affections to me.”

Standing, Sara crossed to the walnut mantel above the dead fireplace. “It isn’t only vampires you have to worry about.”

“Don’t tell me that collection agency in Santa Monica is after me again?”

She lifted a thick manila folder off the mantelpiece. “Actually, Hix dear, you are now in a position where two separate factions are down on you,” Sara told him. “There’s the vampire cult, of which Garbo is a member, and there’s a very aggressive bunch of Metro Goldwyn Mayer troubleshooters, who take their orders straight from Louis B. Mayer. Let me explain.”

“Yeah, kiddo, you’d better.”

It was raining in Santa Monica. The heavy drops were falling straight down on the slanted shingle roof of the small stucco house on the outskirts of town and fairly close to the ocean that Hix rented.

Wearing a faded USC sweatshirt, another item on extended loan from a studio wardrobe department, Levi’s, and some strange blood-colored slippers he was pretty certain he’d purchased while on a weekend south of the border in Tijuana, Hix was pacing the threadbare Persian rug in his low-ceilinged, small living room.

As was usual when he was alone late at night, Hix was talking to himself. “There’s got to be a socko movie in what Sara told me tonight,” he was saying as he paced from his venerable Atwater Kent radio to the leaning tower of back issues of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter against the peach-colored far wall.

“Have to change the names, make Garbo something other than Swedish, come up with something else to call L. B. Mayer.”

He remembered that the banana he’d started eating earlier was now residing on his coffee table. Retrieving it, taking a thoughtful bite, he continued pacing.

“Okay. According to the research Sara’s done while working for a large, very clandestine, outfit devoted to eliminating vampires, this vampire cult that started at MGM years ago now has about two dozen active members. Apparently Garbo’s the only big star involved. I can’t sell this story to MGM, but I bet Warner would go for it. Maybe Fox.”

He finished the banana, carried the peel out to the kitchen, tossed it in the sink.

“Garbo first got mixed up with this stuff back home in Sweden in the twenties when she was just plain Greta Gustafson. The guy who discovered her, Mauritz Stiller, was more than a director. Turns out, says Sara, he was a cross between Svengali and Dracula. Now, some directors sleep with the girls they discover, but Stiller initiated her into a small, dedicated group of Scandinavian vampires.”

Hix returned to the living room, slumped down on the sofa. “Stiller, in my script, I’ll make a Hollywood mogul. Garbo I’ll change into a virginal dame from Kansas or some place like that.”

Bouncing to his feet, he resumed pacing. He frizzy hair swayed as he bounced back and forth. “According to Sara, Garbo was still a practicing vampire when Mayer brought her over here in the mid-twenties. When he got wind of it, he suggested that she cease and desist. Sex and drug scandals were bad enough, he sure didn’t want a vampire scandal affecting the box office appeal of his big new star. Stiller he shipped back to Sweden. Could be L. B. had the guy rubbed out over there, but whatever happened, Stiller conked out. Garbo he sent to a very private sanitarium for a spell and they claimed they cured her of her bloodlust.”

The rain was hitting heavier and the wind that came up was rattling everything outside that could be rattled.

“Came the talkies and Garbo became bigger than ever, one of Mayer’s top actresses. Hotter at the box office than Mickey Rooney is now. Then, a couple of years ago, she apparently got that old feeling and some of the MGM folks who were still tied in with the cult welcomed her back into the fold. Eventually Mayer found out and had a fatherly chat with her. She promised to swear off, but didn’t really. To protect his investment, he put some of his best troubleshooting goons to following her. If they couldn’t stop her from attacking somebody, they would at least cover up her trail. That guy who bopped me on the sconce at Inza’s was making sure I didn’t follow her.”

He sat again, yawned. “Nancy Decker apparently was getting tired of the cult and immortality lost some of its appeal. She was planning to tell what she knew to folks like Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Johnny Whistler. The cult took care of her.”

He listened to the night rain for a moment, watching the peach-colored ceiling and hoping his roof didn’t develop any leaks. “Right now I’m not important enough to either side to get knocked off,” he told himself. “So I can concentrate on turning out a treatment that’ll sell the idea to a major studio. Been a long time since I’ve had an A movie. Actually I’ve never had one.” Sitting up straight, he rubbed his hands together. “I’ll call it Vampires Go Hollywood. Yeah, Vampires Go Hollywood with Tyrone Power as the Hix surrogate. I hear the guy’s a bit swish, but he does look quite a lot like me. Alice Faye, playing against type, as the virgin from Kansas who becomes a killer vampire. And Betty Grable as whatever I decide to call Nancy Decker. This whole project cries out for Technicolor and the 20th-Century Fox touch. Sure, maybe I can cook up a few catchy tunes and it can be a musical, too. That way I’ll earn—”

The phone on the coffee table rang.

“Hello?”

“Hix?”

“None other. And you are?”

“Forget about vampires, buddy,” advised a gruff male voice. “They don’t exist. And you won’t either if you don’t knock it off.”

“Hey, wait a minute, pal. Nobody threatens Hix and gets away with it.”

“I just did.” He hung up.

When the full moon rose on Friday, Hix was sitting, very quietly, in a darkened saloon on the MGM backlot. Out above the swinging doors he could see the dark night sky and the advent of the moon.

He was wearing dark slacks and a navy blue pull-over. Resting next to the thermos of coffee that sat on the round saloon table was the camera he’d borrowed from a Los Angeles Times photographer he knew. The camera was loaded with film that could take night shots without the aid of a flash.

He intended to wait here until about eleven thirty and then sneak over to the Andy Hardy house a quarter of a mile from here.

Absently, he touched at the silver crucifix hanging around his neck. Inza, who’d bought one for him, gave the cross to Hix when he dropped into the restaurant for lunch. For good measure, Hix had picked up several garlic bulbs at the farmers’ market and was carrying them in his trouser pockets.

Something the blonde waitress had remembered was his reason for being on the MGM lot after hours.

“Nancy Decker told me there was going to be a meeting of the vampire cult tonight, the first night of the full moon,” she’d told him.

Looking up from his nutburger, he asked, “Where and when, kid?”

“They meet once a month at different spots around Metro. Tonight at midnight they’ll be getting together at the house that’s used in those dippy Mickey Rooney movies,” Inza told him. “You know where Lewis Stone is his sourpuss father who’s always advising—”

“Why’d you just remember this now?”

“I remembered it right after Nancy died. But after being attacked by Garbo and then worrying about you, it slipped my mind until now.”

Hix sat up straighter. “This will fit in with my plan.”

“Which plan is that?”

“I was going to forget about investigating this bunch further and let Sara handle that end of things,” he replied. “Contenting myself with turning what I already know, cleverly disguised, of course, into a socko screenplay with the working title of Vampires Go Hollywood. However—”

“Maybe that’s what you ought to do.”

“However, now that these vampires have threatened me, warned me off . . .” His right hand clenched into a fist. “I’m going to track them down and get absolute proof of what they’re up to. Then I’ll expose the whole bloodthirsty bunch.”

“Gee, Hix, that could get you in a whole lot of trouble.”

“What it’ll get me, toots, is a whole lot of publicity. Followed by offers from the major studios.”

Sighing, Inza reached into a pocket of her blue-and-white waitress uniform. “That reminds me, I bought this for you. The guy at the shop says it’s been blessed by a bishop.” She handed him a cross on a chain. “If you’re planning to go anywhere near vampires, Hix, you really better take this along.”

He’d taken off from his far-from-spacious office at Pentagram a little before four to drive over to the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lot in Culver City. He called on a fellow writer, Frank Denby, who was working at MGM on the second draft of a William Powell comedy. After leaving Denby’s closer-to-spacious office, Hix cleverly alluded scrutiny and made his way to the backlot to await midnight.

Because the luminous dial on Hix’s wristwatch had lost most of its glow, he had to hold it up very close to his face to read the time. When, squinting, he determined that 11:30 P.M. was nigh, he tucked the thermos into the small canvas suitcase he’d brought along, gathered up the borrowed camera, and ventured out of the Wild West saloon.

Easing near to soundlessly through the swinging doors, Hix made his way along the dusty night street. Keeping to the shadows as best he could, the frizzy-haired writer cut along a narrow Cairo street, then skulked past a Paris sidewalk cafe’, annoying into motion a scruffy gray cat who’d been dozing atop one of the round outdoor tables.

Around the next corner stood the two-story house where Andy Hardy and his family resided through a long and successful series of movies.

Hix sneaked forward to station himself behind one of the elm trees that lined the typical small-town street. “Aha,” he said quietly to himself after observing the house for a couple of minutes. “Nary a sign of life.”

Very cautiously, Hix sprinted across the street, hurried over the lawn, and made his way to the rear of the Hardy home. Tiptoeing up the back stairs, he let himself into the kitchen. After standing in the dark, listening, Hix inhaled slowly and moved deeper into the house. He climbed upstairs and entered what looked to be the bedroom occupied by the teenage Andy.

Peering unobtrusively out the front window, Hix could see the front yard and anyone who approached the house. He crouched, stationing himself where he could use his borrowed camera to catch a photo of everyone who attended tonight’s midnight vampire get-together.

Greta Garbo was the fifth to arrive at the midnight meeting. Hix was confident he got two excellent photographs of the actress cautiously approaching the Hardy household. She wore a dark head scarf, a deep blue coat over dark slacks, and a pair of dark glasses.

Of the four vampire cultists who preceded her, Hix recognized three. An assistant art director, a veteran gaffer, and a cute platinum blonde bit player he was pretty sure he’d spent some time with after a beach party at Malibu last summer.

“Her name’s Trixie something,” he recalled. “Although Trixie isn’t a very appropriate name for a vampire. ‘Hi, I’m Dracula’s daughter. Just call me Trixie.’ ”

The other cult member, whom Hix didn’t recognize, was a plump, very well-groomed fellow in his fifties. Front office type.

After Garbo’s advent, no one else showed up. Hix abandoned the window, tucked the camera into his small canvas suitcase, and extracted a glass tumbler. He’d used this gimmick in two of the Mr. Woo flickers he’d scripted for Star Spangled Studios and one of the Dr. Crimebusters over at Columbia. He’d tested it on his cubicle wall at Star Spangled and clearly overheard the washed-up Broadway play-wright they’d hired to do the second rewrite on The Return of the Man in the Iron Mask talking to his bookie.

Of course, the walls of the writers’ cubicles over there were nearly as thin as they were at Pentagram.

Stretching out on the floor of Andy Hardy’s bedroom, Hix rolled up a portion of the rug and placed the upended glass on the bare floor. He put his ear to the base of the tumbler. “Eureka!” he exclaimed internally.

The glass worked for him as a listening device, same as it had for Mr. Woo and Dr. Crimebuster. He could hear what they were saying in the living room below.

“. . . getting too dangerous to continue meeting on the lot,” the assistant art director was saying.

“Hell of a lot safer than meeting at one of our homes,” said somebody with a deep, slightly boozy voice. Must be the front office type. “Though I don’t think the studio brass has any idea what’s going on, I—”

“You are wrong there, my friend,” said Garbo. “I am very much afraid that I have been under surveillance by Mr. Mayer’s minions for several weeks now. Therefore, I would like to suggest that—”

“Hey, honey, they’re naturally going to keep an eye on you,” put in Trixie in her slightly nasal voice. “Probably has nothing to do with our activities. It’s just, you know, that you’re one of the most valuable properties the old boy has and—”

“Wrong, sister,” said a new voice, one that sounded familiar to Hix. “We know exactly what all you screwballs are up. As of tonight, sweetheart, it’s all over.”

“Jesus!” exclaimed the assistant art director.

A chair fell over, Trixie screamed, several more people came heavily into the living room.

The front office guy protested. “What do you mean by intruding on a private—”

“Won’t work,” said the intruder. “I’m, as you damn well know, Healy, with the Metro security staff. We’ve had our eyes on you people for quite some time.”

“How’d you know where we were going to meet tonight ?”

“Because we’re a lot smarter than you.”

Hix sat up. “Damn, that’s the bozo who telephoned and warned me to lay off,” he realized, frowning. “That means it wasn’t the vampire gang who were threatening me. It was the MGM goons.”

But why? To avoid bad publicity? Because they’d heard of Hix’s capabilities as an amateur sleuth and didn’t want him nosing around?

Yeah, but it didn’t exactly make sense.

Returning his ear to the listening device, he heard, “. . . my boys will escort you to the Administration Building. Miss Garbo, I’m afraid Mr. Mayer is extremely upset by your conduct, by your betrayal of MGM’s code of behavior, and he’s returned to the studio tonight to have a very serious talk with you in his office and . . .”

Breathing very carefully, Hix again sat up. He concentrated on not making a sound.

“Maybe I ought to hide under Andy’s bed until they haul all the vampires away. I don’t want to get caught and tabbed a bloodsucker. It wouldn’t do my reputation in this town any good.”

Hix decided to eavesdrop once more. And this time he heard something even more perplexing.

Sara Hampton was wide awake and fully clothed. “I thought you might be dropping by, Hix,” she said as she took two paces back and invited him into the Beverly Hills mansion where she was staying. “Watch out for the luggage.”

“Has Larz returned from Broadway?”

The occult investigator shook her head, then gave a sideways nod toward the three matched dark-leather suitcases lined up on the mosaic tiles of the early morning hallway. “They’re mine,” she told him. “I’m leaving Los Angeles this morning, in a few hours.”

His hair fluttered as he held up his hand in a stop-right-there gesture. “Whoa, Sara,” he advised. “You’ll want to stick around when you hear what I found out whilst snooping around at MGM tonight and—”

“Come on into the living room,” she invited. “You were eavesdropping on the vampire gathering.”

“I was, yeah.” His sat on one of the redwood-and-leather chairs but didn’t exactly settle into it. “I brought a camera and got some great shots of all who attended.”

“Have you developed the pictures yet?” She stood in front of the dead fireplace.

“Nope, they’re still in the camera out in the car,” he answered. “But that’s not what I rushed over here in the middle of the night to tell you about, kiddo. First off, Mayer’s troubleshooters got a tip and raided the joint. They rounded up four out of the five vampires. I thought Garbo was there, too, but—”

“But it wasn’t actually Garbo.”

He bounced once in his chair, edged farther forward and his frizzy hair stood up straighter. “How the hell did you know that, Sara?” he inquired, frowning at her. “Yeah, after they took the others away to god knows where, Garbo and Mayer’s head goon stayed behind and had a little chat. But she ain’t Garbo. She looks like Garbo, she walks like Garbo, and, when there are people around, she sounds like Garbo. Talking with this guy, though, she has a definite New England accent. She asks him, ‘How did I do?’ and he shoots back with, ‘For only your second outing, Sally, you were swell. You did a terrific job.’ ” Quite a few new frown lines formed on Hix’s high forehead. “We’ve got to find out who this impersonator is and what’s become of the real Garbo.”

“Her name is Sally Brinkerhoff, she’s thirty-one, and Louis B. Mayer has been grooming her for a possible takeover for close to a year.”

Hix touched his fingertips to his cheek. “Plastic surgery, too?”

“Several operations, yes. And they broke one of her legs and reset it so they’d make a better match.”

“You knew about this?”

“For the past few days,” she said. “Mayer had tried something like this with Jean Harlow a few years back, but she died too soon for him to get a ringer in place.”

Standing up, facing her, Hix asked, “Where’s Greta Garbo?”

“Dead and buried,” Sara told him. “Someplace where no one will ever find her body.”

“But that was really Garbo who attacked Inza.”

“It was. They took care of her later that same night, when it became evident she wasn’t going to be able to stop.”

Hix inhaled and exhaled, slowly, twice. Turning his back on the woman, he said, “In my movies it doesn’t bother me when a couple of ham actors pretend to drive a stake into the heart of a blonde with a large bosom and a small talent. But, Jesus, to really kill Garbo.”

“Nobody—well, very few—will ever know, Hix. They’ll see Sally on the screen from now on and never be able to tell the difference.”

He spun around, poking his thumb against his chest. “I’ll know.”

Sighing, Sara said, “There are times, when you dispatch a vampire and it’s someone you know or admire, that can be very difficult. But, Hix, I’m dedicated—as is the organization that employs me—to destroying these dreadful creatures. And that’s what happening in this case.”

“You,” he realized, “had a hand in this.”

“They wanted another expert to sit in, someone to back up the vampire executioner Mayer hired some months ago.”

“Hey, you told me you were opposed to these MGM heavies. You said—”

“A few days ago a representative from Metro Goldwyn Mayer contacted me,” Sara explained. “We had a very useful meeting and I decided that we had similar goals. Therefore I agreed to cooperate. Five vampires have been destroyed and that is, to my way of thinking, Hix, a very successful—”

“Five? They killed those four poor saps they rounded up tonight?”

“Either they have or they will shortly. It may take a few days, since the deaths have to be made to look like accidents of one kind or another. These are vicious, unclean people, Hix, people who’ve killed in order to—”

“C’mon, you shouldn’t be that dedicated to your work. You helped them kill Greta Garbo, one of the best damn actresses in this whole phony town. That’s—”

“And what were you intending to do? What was the end result of your amateur detective work going to be?”

“For one thing, I wanted to make sure nobody tried to hurt Inza again,” he told her. “Once I had the goods on them, I’d give them a chance to take the cure or have the public find out what they were up to.”

“Except for Garbo, you don’t really care if they are destroyed or not. What you really want is some publicity so you can sell one more B-movie script.”

“A movie, Sara. Vampires Go Hollywood is destined to be a big-budget opus. In Technicolor.”

Sara said, after glancing at her watch, “Were I you, dear, I’d forget the whole thing,” she advised. “Nobody’s going to believe you if you try to make any of this public. And if you claim that Greta Garbo is dead, Mayer will just drag out his just about perfect simulacrum. Fact is, early next week MGM is going to announce that Garbo will be starring in a new comedy called Two-Faced Woman. So how can she be dead?”

“An apt title. But I’ve got pictures and, when I show them to some people I know at the LA Times and tell them what I know, they’ll write it all up. This is front page news, guaranteed to get me a whole stewpot of publicity.”

“Unwise.” Sara started for the doorway. “But do what you feel you have to.”

“Pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Times,” he suggested as he followed her into the hall.

Hix didn’t get to the Los Angeles Times. Where he ended up about an hour after leaving Sara was the West Hollywood Emergency Hospital.

As he drove his venerable Plymouth down through the dark after-midnight streets of Beverly Hills toward his almost oceanside place in Santa Monica, Hix was carrying on an intense conversation with himself.

“Even if she was a vampire, even though she took a bite out of Inza,” he was saying while descending the winding roads and lanes, “they shouldn’t have bumped off Garbo. She was a socko actress and, besides, I doubt this Sally whoever can do that good a job. Sometimes old Mayer does dumbbell stuff. Like this Garbo business, like never hiring me to knock out a script for MGM, like—yoicks!”

A car had snuck up behind his coupe, its high beams suddenly illuminating the interior.

Rolling down his window, Hix thrust out his left hand into the chill night air. Resisting an impulse to give this tailgater the finger, he repeated a pass-meschmuck gesture several times. “Get off my backside, moron!”

After riding his rear bumper for another full minute or more, the car started to come around on the right of his. But it didn’t pass, only stayed beside him on the narrow road. The car was big, long, and deep black.

Hix was unable to see the interior clearly, but the guy at the wheel was heavyset, wore a dark suit and a wide-brim fedora pulled low.

When the bit black car started to nudge him, Hix yelled, “C’mon, you jerks. Don’t you realize what a cliche’ this is? Husky guys in a black car, for Christ’s sake. I used this in two Mr. Woos and also in The Fargo Kid in Manhattan. Go away.”

He intended to say more, but the heavier car rammed into him with such force that he lost control. His coupe went jumping sideways, fishtailed, and then left the road entirely. Rattling vigorously, it went bucking down into the wooded hillside bordering the road, ignoring Hix’s fierce struggle with his steering wheel.

The car slammed, hard, smack into a broad and sturdy oak. It knocked Hix out cold.

Inza set the small basket of fruit on his bedside table. “I hope you like persimmons and quinces, Hix,” she said. “That’s all they had left at that dinky little market across from the—”

“Makes no diff, kiddo. I’m not in the mood for food.” He gestured at his suspended left leg and the heavy plaster cast encasing it. “How many cheesy comedies have you seen wherein some poor sap is trussed up like this. It’s often Babe Hardy and he ends up dangling out the window upside—”

“It really is my fault,” the blonde said apologetically, sitting somewhat timidly on the straight-backed white chair beside his hospital bed. “If you hadn’t tried to help me—”

“No, no, kiddo. This happened because I was about to reveal a sensational story to the whole blinking world,” he told her.

“About Greta Garbo being a vampire?”

“Among other things, yeah. And I had the pictures to prove it.”

“Well then, Hix, when you’re up and around again in a couple of weeks, you can take them to your buddies on the Times and—”

“The important word, sweetheart, is had. I ain’t in possession no more,” he said, sighing. “Whilst I was unconscious after my encounter with that tree, somebody swiped my camera and, for good measure, my notebook, from my mangled jalopy. Had I turned that stuff over to the LA Times, boy, what publicity I would’ve gotten. The name Hix would now be a household word in the mansion of every important Hollywood mogul.”

“Well, you did get a mention in the trades. Variety had a cute little story about your accident in the back pages someplace. The headline was PRINCE OF POVERTY ROW HACKS BREAKS A LEG. Quite a few of my customers at the restaurant commented on it and—”

“And no doubt guffawed at my pain and suffering.” As best he could, with the help of the pretty young woman, Hix sat up a bit higher in bed and folded his arms across his narrow chest.

“Speaking of the trades,” Inza said, “they all had stories about Greta Garbo today. She’s signed with MGM to do a new movie. Two-Faced Woman is the title and Melvyn Douglas is co-starring with her again. I don’t like him as well as Cary Grant, but he’s darn good. Don’t you think so?”

“Melvyn Douglas is my dreamboy, yeah,” he assured her.

Standing, Inza said, “Got to get back to work.” She leaned to kiss him on the cheek, lowering her voice. “If she’s making a movie, that may cut down on her other activities, huh?”

Hix said, “It’s possible, Toots, that she’ll never sink her choppers into another throat.”

Even though he changed agents after a couple of months, Hix was unable to get a major studio to so much as look at his proposal for Vampires Go Hollywood. His new agent, whose office was several blocks nearer to the offices of the high-powered agencies, told him that Universal had evidenced enthusiasm about having him write it as an Abbott and Costello movie. But that was an out and out lie.

So he revised his pitch and sold the idea to Pentagram. The resultant movie, The Invisible Vampire Goes Hollywood, opened in selected fleapits around the nation the same week as the Garbo flicker Two-Faced Woman. The MGM film got considerably more attention in the press than his latest. Hell, the latest Ken Maynard cowboy quickie got more attention.

Nobody much liked the Garbo film or her performance therein. The picture was destined to do badly at the box office. One afternoon, still limping slightly, Hix was pacing his cubicle at Pentagram and thinking out loud about his latest B movie, Mr. Woo Meets the Invisible Vampire, when a Johnny Whistler fifteen-minute Hollywood gossip broadcast came on the radio.

After reading an open letter to Rita Hayworth and extolling the many virtues of his sponsor’s laxative product, Whistler turned his attention to Two-Faced Woman. He concluded his critique with, “As you and you and especially you know, the Swedish Sphinx has no greater champion in Movieland than your humble servant. But as I sat in the darkened screening room watching this picture, I said sadly to myself, ‘This isn’t the Greta Garbo I know and love.’ ”

Hix clicked off the portable ratio atop his desk. “That’s because, Johnny, it isn’t Greta Garbo at all.”

He wandered over to a spot near the far wall where there might have been a window if Pentagram went in for that sort of thing. Gazing at the blank wall, he said, “Sally Brinkerhoff fooled all those nitwit friends of Garbo’s, people like Gaylord Hauser and Salka Viertel. Well, a guy like Gaylord Hauser, who eats yogurt and raw vegetables, it can’t be too tough to con him. She fooled the reporters and the crews at MGM . . . but you can’t fool the camera. This dame ain’t the actress that Garbo was.”

Limping back to his desk, he sat down. “If only they hadn’t swiped those damn pictures. If only Sara Hampton hadn’t sold out to MGM. If only I’d had the nerve to tell the story to the papers without any proof and . . .” Hix snapped his fingers. “Hey, I can use that Sara business in this new script. Sure, a double-crossing dame is always good.”

The woman calling herself Greta Garbo never made another movie and eventually ended her association with MGM. There was considerable speculation over the years as to the reason why.

But Hix knew.