Aside from lousy spelling, it was a place to start. Lugosi said he had, in fact, received an invitation in the same mail to attend a “sabbath” ceremony of the Dark Knights on the following night. The invitation had been on a small white card with a black bat embossed at the top.

“So?” he said.

“So, we go to the sabbath and I try to figure out which Dark Knight has been sending you mail.”

And that was how I came to be seated on a coffin, trying to listen to a conversation ten feet away while a pudgy vampire sipped, slurped, and crunched in my face.

“Why don’t you take your fangs out?” I suggested.

The vampire stopped sipping and put a finger from his right hand up to his mouth to keep the fangs from falling out as he spoke.

“I wouldn’t look like a vampire if I took the fangs out,” he answered reasonably.

“Right,” I said, without adding that at best he looked like Elmer Fudd doing a vampire act.

“The fangs do throw my bite off,” he confessed confidentially, leaning toward me.

“I know a dentist who might be able to help you,” I said. “Name’s Shelly Minck. We share an office downtown in the Farraday Building over on Hoover near Ninth.”

Elmer Fudd said he thought he might look Shelly up and proved his good intentions by groping under his cape for a pencil to get the address. Shelly would like this. How many dentists could say they treated a vampire for fang overbite?

“My name is Count Sforzni,” Elmer Fudd said, shifting his left hand to his mouth so he could extend his little balloon hand to shake mine. “We didn’t meet when you came in because I was upstairs preparing the refreshments.”

He nodded at the refreshments at the end of his coffin. They included a dish of straight Saltines, a pitcher of water, a few bottles of tepid soda pop, and a quart of cheap wine.

“We don’t usually prepare much,” he confided. “Most of the Knights won’t eat or drink at meetings. Vampire purists.”