The Holmes-Dracula File

  THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE

  by Fred Saberhagen

  Credits

  Copyright © 1978 by Fred Saberhagen

  ePublication : JSS Literary Productions

  eISBN: 978-1-937422-49-3

  Background Cover art for the e-edition:

  ©Fredric Prochasson, View of Big Ben Clock Tower at Sunset, i-stock #74187773

  Cover design: Brianna Schorr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE

  Chapter One

  There can be little doubt that if the cudgel descending on that old man’s skull had been of lead or iron, rather than some stout timber of the English forest, not much would have come of the attempt—at least nothing worthy of your attention and mine at this late date. The street beside the East India docks was very nearly empty in the dawn, and to any assault with mere metal he would have responded vigorously, and then would have gone on his way to meet his love in Exeter, lighthearted with the sense of having done the metropolis of London a good turn en passant, ridding it of one or two of its more rascally inhabitants.

  It is however an important fact of history—I do not exaggerate—that the force of that stealthy blow, delivered from behind by an assailant of breathtaking cunning, was borne in wood. The old man fell down senseless on the spot; he felt neither the slime of the street’s stones nor the rough hands that lifted him and bore him off, their owners doubtless grumbling at his unexpected weight.

  There was a great pain in the old man’s head when he awoke, and he awoke to nothing better than a crippled awareness, bereft of useful memories. He was in a poor little bedchamber, quite strange to him. And when the old man tried to move, he found that his arms and legs were fettered with iron, held tight to the peculiar high, narrow bed or cot on which he lay. On making this discovery he began, as you may well imagine, very earnestly to consider his situation. But no, he could neither remember nor guess how he might have come to such a pass.

  He had no more than shards of memory, all recent but quite incomplete: a sailing ship, a gangplank, the happy feel of solid land beneath his feet once more, the fog-wreathed dawn…the great pain in his head.

  Now here he was locked to his bed, in a small room he did not know. The lone window was heavily blocked with blinds and curtains, but still admitted more light than he required to take stock of his surroundings. Above it on the stained ceiling a smear of reflected daylight quivered, signaling that water lay outside in the sun. On the far side of the room stood a high old chest of drawers in need of paint, holding on its top an unlit candle in a brass stick, a chipped wash-basin, and a pitcher. A stark chair of dark wood waited inhospitably beside the chest, and that completed the room’s furnishings save for the bed itself, which seemed to be fashioned almost entirely of heavy metal.

  It might be morning still, or afternoon. The Cockney cries of a coster, hawking vegetables, came from somewhere outside and below. The room, though small, was furnished with two doors, set in adjacent walls. One door was fettered by two closed padlocks, which were large and strong, and mounted upon separate heavy hasps. Little splinters of bright, raw wood about these showed that their installation had been recent. The other door was also closed, but had no lock at all, at least not on the old man’s side.

  Wafting, oozing from somewhere, was a certain smell…

  The pain and damage in his head had left his mind confused and wandering. Yes, a whole symphony of smells was in the city’s air. Below and beyond the others was the sea, perceptible to a keen nose though miles away. That and his fragmented memory of being recently aboard ship reminded him that this was London. What was he doing here, so far from home? So far from…

  Not till his thoughts had reached this point did the old man realize that he no longer knew who he was. If he had been at all susceptible to fear, he would have known it then.

  At wrists and ankles, elbows and knees, his arms and legs were clasped to the high, narrow bed by rings of steel, fitted too tightly to leave the smallest chance of wriggling free. When he raised his head as far as possible he could see that his lanky body, still clothed even to elegant frock coat and boots, lay on a sheet of patterned oilcloth. Beneath this, some thin padding covered the hard top and metal frame of this odd cot. It was a sturdy bit of furniture. The old man strained his wiry arms until they quivered, without eliciting so much as a creak from their constraints.

  What was that smell? Something to do, he thought, with wild animals. With…

  Footsteps were approaching, outside his room, and he lay back as if no more than semiconscious, and quite too weak to move. Presently the unlocked door was swung in, by a heavyset figure in workman’s garb: shabby dirt-colored coat over a gray sweater, baggy trousers, drab cloth cap. Below blue eyes and heavy, blackish brows, most of the man’s beefy face was hidden behind a mask of white gauze, held on by strings that looped behind his hairy ears. That mask would look familiar to you now, from films and television if not from direct experience in surgery, but it was strange and puzzling to our old man. In 1897, few people had ever seen the like of it.

  “ ’E’s awyke, Guv’nor.” The grating voice that came out through the gauze was addressed to another man not yet in sight, whose steps were drawing near across uncarpeted wood floors. “Plyin’ peek with us, ’eis.”

  The rough-voiced workman moved aside to let in a much leaner and somewhat taller man, dressed as a gentleman in frock-coat and dark trousers, but masked in the same mysterious style. “So he is,” this newcomer commented, in an upperclass voice that fit his clothes, and came right over to the waist-high bed. His fair hair was well groomed, and his penetrating blue eyes assessed the old man’s condition with a professional economy of movement. With skilled fingers he pressed impersonally about the back of the old man’s skull, a region which radiated pain as glowing iron sends out heat. “Hit in the usual spot? Quite. Excellently done. No sign of fracture, not even a hematoma. Well, no reason he should not go to the rat at once.”

  The old man, who had let his eyelids sag completely shut again, liked to think that in the last few years he had gained a certain facility in English. New bits of slang and jargon, however, continually surprised him. Was “rat,” in this context, yet another vulgar synonym for latrine? He felt no need for any such facility. Indeed, despite the hurt confusion in his mind, it was for some reason almost amusing to imagine that he might.

  The costermonger outside had trundled his leeks into another street; his voice came faintly now. Within, the two masked insiders, experts enjoying the mystification of their patient, conferred in low and cryptic words. They had turned from his bed and, keys in hand, were rattling open the padlocks upon the little bedroom’s second door. It was from behind that door that the smell came, the old man now discovered, the smell of... no, it was still impossible for him to think. A hard-wheeled cart assaulted paving stones beneath the window. The cart was being pulled by a big gelded horse whose left front foot felt sore.

  Inside the house a third set of human footsteps now drew near. These seemed to be—yes, assuredly they were—the footsteps of a woman, although her shoes clopped the bare floors with authority bold enough for any man. She entered the room, drew near the bed and stopped, and the old man once more cracked an eyelid to observe. She was not large, but held herself erect with the energy of one who lives to dominate. The woman was well dressed in the English style, and it came as no surprise that she should be g
auze-masked like the two men.

  They must have expected her entrance, for they did not react to it. When the rough-voiced workman had finished taking the locks off the second door, he came over to tie a cloth bag, evidently meant as a blindfold, around the prisoner’s head.

  The bed, by starting to roll when it was pushed, now proved itself to be a cart. The tall man walked ahead of it, holding open the door that had just been unlocked, while the woman came in the rear, now and then muttering imperious and doubtless unnecessary orders to Rough-voice, on how he should maneuver this strange conveyance into the room adjoining.

  Upon the old man’s being wheeled into this new chamber, all background smells of the city, the house, the people—in 1897 the modern passion for changing clothes and keeping sterile armpits still had a long way to develop—all common smells, I say, were suddenly wiped out for him, by the sharp tang of carbolic acid. A good deal of this disinfectant was being sprayed and swabbed about. Also the old man’s keen ears informed him that his three caretakers were all donning extra clothing. Each was putting a voluminous garment over what he or she already wore.

  After these preliminaries had been got through, there proved to be yet another door which must in its turn be unlocked and opened, another threshold to be bumped over on his cart. In this third room, a soft click brought out the unnatural radiance of electric light, perhaps from some kind of handheld torch. Its rays probed at the old man’s blindfold and even faintly warmed his exposed hands. All this time he had kept on feigning to be unconscious, largely because in his damaged state he was unable to think of any stratagem more promising. And now, despite the steady olfactory roar of the carbolic, there came back, stronger than ever, the animal smell at which he had first wondered.

  He could place it now: it was the stink of rodent. Rats, or a rat, but magnified, transformed, intensified. Despite a certain original flavor it was essential Rat, and therefore familiar and unmistakable to that old man, and even almost reassuring. He ought to be able to—to—

  To do what? The terrible pain in his head went on, and it was still impossible to think. Impossible to try...he did not even know what effort he should try to make.

  Almost touching his cart, there were more locks and bolts now being operated. These opened no ordinary door, but something that sounded all metal when part of it skreeked back, all metal and full of space as a skeleton.

  “Be careful of the screen!” the woman warned. And next moment, the heartbeat and the breathing of a single large inhuman creature were almost within the old man’s reach. Here was the radiant center of the rodent smell.

  The prisoner’s hands began to strain again at their steel restraints, uselessly though with more strength than any victimized old man should have been able to command. But no hunger or rage beat in the animal’s heart, so he made his hands relax. Experience counseled waiting, though what experience in his blind past had been remotely like this one he could not guess. Still he felt sure that this was not the first time in his long life that he had been chained and blindfolded. And when the torture started, presently, they would find him no trembling virgin in that field of endeavor either.

  Torture? All that came, in apparent anticlimax, was the opening of his clothing at the chest, followed by the pressure there, against his bare skin, of a smooth empty circle like the rim of a glass jar. Inside the circle, a sudden flea crawled on the old man’s hide, a tiny timid creature almost frightened by this alien, white and nearly hairless world. Yes, the old man knew it was a flea. He had been for many years a soldier, long ago, and like many another warrior he had become an unwilling connoisseur of vermin. After a moment a second flea came onto his skin, and then by ones and twos additional reinforcements, until he could no longer count the nervous, jumping creatures confined within the circle of the jar. He disliked these creatures, and so he awed them with a great, voiceless, soundless shout, at which command they ceased to jump and huddled in abject obedience.

  The glass-rim contact was maintained for several minutes, while the four people in the room were silent. Eventually the woman barked out an order, as if at the conclusion of some timed interval. At this, a thin plate of metal or glass was slid in beneath the glass rim, against the old man’s chest and belly. Then cover, jar and fleas were adroitly withdrawn together.

  Again locks clashed, and metal bars. In reverse order, doors were opened, the cart was wheeled, carbolic splashed, doors closed, et cetera, and in a few minutes the four human participants were all back in the same room in which the strange charade had started. The old man’s blindfold was pulled off by Rough-voice, and this time the old man let his eyes stay open, thinking what the hell or something to that effect. But no one cared if he was wide awake or not. His three tormentors had already turned their backs on him and tramped out. Rough-voice went last, closing the door without padlocks behind him. Before the three began to talk among themselves again they were too many rooms away for the old man to understand a word.

  He lay there thinking. To say that he was trying to think would be more accurate. He was still unable to cope with the pain and confusion in his head, the lasting damage of that most savage oaken blow.

  Torture, he thought, by fleas. Tickled into trauma by the tripping of their tiny toes. Mangled by their fierce jaws—if he had let them bite. Absurd. Maniacal. But if the intention had not been torture, what? It had all been most deadly serious, in any case.

  The blotch of daylight, faint though it was upon the ceiling just above the blinded window, was somehow oppressive to his injured brain. And now his weariness hung like a diver’s weights upon his every fettered limb. He could not sleep upon that cart, nor truly rest, but did fall into a kind of trance.

  When he came wide awake again it was still full daylight. Again feet were approaching his room’s door, the one that had its locks upon the side away from him. With a great clatter it was pushed open, and Rough-voice tramped in, masked as before. His huge hands held a small metal tray bearing a slab of bread, tea steaming in a mug, a glass of water.

  With the old man now watching openly, the tray was set down upon a peculiar kind of rest that his brawny keeper snapped up from the bed’s right side. Then when the attendant turned a crank somewhere, his aged prisoner’s forequarters were elevated, putting him nearly into a sitting position. Rough-voice then brought out a key, and presently one of the manacles restraining the old man’s right arm clicked and let go. Now the prisoner could just reach the tray, and might have lifted food and drink from it up to his mouth. He snarled instead and lashed out with a backhanded blow of long-nailed fingers. The tray and its repulsive cargo went splash-and-scatter on the bare floor.

  “Ar! Yer a rum cove, ain’ cher?” Rough-voice, massive fists on his broad hips, displayed that almost good-humored appreciation not infrequently offered by strong and ruthless people to opposition that is at once spirited and hopelessly weak. “Go dry an’ empty then, bein’ as you likes it better so!” And with smiling eyes Rough-voice went out by the door where he had entered, not forgetting to re-imprison the old man’s wrist. Outside the room he could be heard squeaking a small, wheeled cart along, and entering one after another a pair of nearby rooms, in each of which his entry was followed by a dull clatter of utensils.

  The old man, listening, decided that he shared his captivity with at least two other prisoners. Now that he made the effort, he thought that he could hear their faint and sickly breathing from their separate apartments. Not that he felt any the less alone for the discovery. Rough-voice moved on with his cart, and now, in yet another room, he paused to make report. “Number One, sir, ’e didn’t tyke no water, even.”

  “Oh?” The responding voice was that of the skillful prober of skulls. “Does he show fever?”

  “Not as he could notice. Didn’t touch ’im.”

  “Quite right. How are the other two?”

  “Both given up on shoutin’. Two’s eatin’, three’s asleep.”

  “Very good. Try Number One aga
in in an hour or so. He should eat and drink. And if he’s acting strangely, we should have someone with him through the night. His case is not established yet.”

  “Beg pardon, Guv’nor, but me own orders is t’ go out, on that other little job at Barley’s. I’ll very likely be hangin’ around there all night.”

  “Yes, to be sure.” Well-bred vexation in the voice. “Of course there must be no question of deviating from your orders. But it will leave us short-handed.”

  “There’s the girl, Guv’nor.”

  A little hum of disapproval. Then: “Have you any suggestions?” The question was in a new tone, obviously addressed to someone other than the churlish workman.

  It was answered by the woman with the military walk. “I t’ink we must use the girl.” Number One could now discern a stratum of German underneath her cultivated English.

  The doctor pondered for a few seconds. “Can we be sure of her?”

  “More than uff anyone else we could recruit on such short notice.”

  “True enough.” Another hesitation; then decision. “Yes, we must use her, I suppose. Her reputation is for reliability.” Again a switch in his words’ aim. “Bring Sally up to keep an eye on Number One tonight. Be sure she stays away from Two and Three; they’re too far along to need watching. Impress upon her that she’s to stay in the one room, and see that she understands what’ll happen to her if she does not hold her tongue about this place.”

  “Ar.”

  A door closed, and the voices, already remote and so low that their owners must feel securely private, became too faint for even that old man’s ears. He tried to follow them and failed, and then was swamped again by the murderous weariness that only got worse the longer he lay here motionless upon his back. Not cramped or stiff, not even sleepy, but deathly tired. He closed his eyes, and opened them again. This was, he knew, an impossibly wrong place for him to get the rest he craved. But just where would the right place be?