Spartan Boulevard turned out to be an upscale suburban street on the west side of town, in a street that was down in a little ravine and had plenty of trees. Not bad, even though it was wet and gloomy on this occasion. # 17 was a grey bungalow in good shape. The mailbox had several days worth of mail still in it. Chongo rang the doorbell several times and got no answer. He thought about it some and walked around to the back and knocked there. No answer. Time to take a look inside. A chimp can always climb up on the roof and enter by way of the chimney if it's large enough, but why do that when you can jimmy open a window somewhere and keep your clothes clean (if not dry)? It was only the work of a minute to find a kitchen window that opened and clamber in. The kitchen was fairly much in order except that someone had spilled a drink on the table, and it had run over on the floor and not been cleaned up. The same someone had not finished his meal, ham and eggs. That had happened at least a couple of days ago, by the look of it. The eggs were starting to smell. Something else was not smelling too good either, and Chongo had a good idea what it was.

He found it in the living room. There was a stiff hanging from the chandelier by his tie. It was a man, his face contorted and horribly pale. He was as dead as Herbert Hoover's chances of being re-elected to the Presidency. Upon closer examination Chongo saw that the guy had two deep bite marks on the right side of his neck. And his wrists were heavily bruised. He appeared to have put up a desperate struggle against a much stronger opponent.

"No wonder ya look so pale," growled Chongo. "I bet there ain't a teacupfull of blood left in yer veins."

Chongo fished the guy's wallet out of his pocket and checked the I.D. Vito Alfonso Fresnelli. Age: 39. Color of eyes: brown.

"I guess I ain't gettin' no useful information from you now, eh, Vito?" said Chongo. "Well, let's see what else we got here."

The wallet yielded a couple of gambling stubs, a condom, a membership card from the Loyal Order of Lampreys, and a hundred and fifty dollars.

"That's odd," commented Chongo. "Well, I guess vampires don't really need cash all that bad. Must be nice not havin' to worry about that...look, Vito," he went on, "I know you don't need this $150 no more, and I am short of dough at the moment. I hope you won't take no offense if I make use of this. Look, if you got any objection, just speak up."

Vito said nothing, so Chongo pocketed the cash. He comforted himself with the thought that this $150 would help him track down the undead creep who had done in Mr Fresnelli.

The next thing Chongo noticed was a gun lying on the floor. It turned out to have been discharged recently, all six chambers. Chongo could smell the fresh powder. He also found out where the spent rounds had gone. Two of them were in the wall out in the hallway and one more was buried in the doorframe. The other three had made a pattern of holes close together in the living room wall. Chongo could tell right about where the target of those rounds must have been standing, and it looked to him like all three shots had been aimed right about heart level for a tall man.

Vito had emptied his gun at his killer, and Chongo figured the killer in question had just stood there and laughed. Vampires aren't bothered by bullets. Then the creep grabbed Fresnelli with inhuman strength and sucked the life out of him. Simple. But why? Why would Vlad go after this guy?

Chongo methodically checked out the entire residence. He found plenty of evidence that Vito was into gambling and betting on the horse races, plus importing some kind of expensive stuff from Australia. There were codes written down, but it wasn't clear just what the shipments involved.

There was one more thing. A plane ticket to Australia. It was for a week from Monday.

"Australia. I never been to Australia." Chongo thought about it. As far as he knew there wasn't much of a primate population in Australia at this point, but what difference did it make? Magenta was in Australia, and the mysterious statue had come from there. Chongo went back to the living room.

"Vito," he said, addressing the dangling corpse, "I feel it is my duty to make use of this plane ticket, and go see what all this rumpus is about on your behalf. It might be you had unfinished business in Australia, so I am gonna see what I can do about it. I will drop a line to the cops so you get a decent burial. I am sorry about what happened here, so I hope they give you a nice clean coffin. Thanks for the $150."

Chongo put everything carefully back as it had been and exited by the same window he had entered by. The gloves he had worn would have left no fingerprints nor any sign of his presence. The cops were welcome to make what they could of Fresnelli's sudden end. They would certainly be puzzled by the bite marks, that's for sure, not to mention by all those bullet holes and no sign of anyone getting shot.

As soon as he got back to the office, Chongo phoned up the police. "Yeah, 17 Spartan Boulevard. I heard shots there a couple of days back. Maybe 5 or 6 shots. I been thinkin' about it, and I thought you oughta know. Who am I? I'm just a little bird that flew by. Yeah, that's right, a bird. Look, I gotta migrate, so bye for now. I hope it ain't nothin' too serious." Chongo hung up. That oughta do it. Chongo doubted that the cops would find much useful, but they were certainly welcome to try.

In the meantime, he had a vampire to catch. Time to read up on Australia. He had a week to do that and pack.