Séance for a Vampire Page 14

  "We must expand our search a bit, I think," he remarked, and started to walk slowly away. Then he turned back to me as if in afterthought. "You were certainly right about one thing, Doctor. There is a young girl who even now is sleeping—quite breathless, but not truly dead—inside these walls." And he stretched out a long arm to touch the old stone once more with a white hand.

  I could not entirely repress a shudder. "Louisa Altamont?"

  Dracula shrugged. "Very likely. I cannot tell her name. Later, perhaps we will awaken her and ask. But that will best be done after sunset; and first we must find Cousin Sherlock, while we have grounds for hope that he is breathing still."

  Several other charnel houses stood scattered about the half-acre, which, a century ago, must have been an active country churchyard, small but yet well tended. None of these other mausoleums were quite as large as the Altamonts'. Some were older and some newer, but in general, none showed any sign of having been disturbed for years, or even for decades. A variety of smaller stone monuments and headstones shared the area and the same condition of general neglect.

  Prince Dracula made the round of graves and tombs, evidently testing each, through some procedure that was invisible to me. His search was without result, though he paused several times, once for a full minute, to stare down at a tangle of vines, long undisturbed, beneath his feet.

  During this part of his search, he bent swiftly and, with a grunt of speculation, straightened up, holding an object that glinted a bright yellow in his hand. It was a golden pin, set with some greenish stones which I took to be not emeralds, but perhaps jade, aquamarine, or garnet.

  "That," I announced, "may well be one of the pieces of jewelry taken from the house on Wednesday night, while the sitting was in progress or shortly afterward. All were moderately valuable. But why is it here?"

  Dracula only shrugged, handed the golden thing to me, and once more concentrated upon his search.

  I inspected the pin briefly before dropping it into my pocket for eventual delivery to the police. It was a family heirloom sort of thing, and no ordinary burglar would have thrown it away; on the other hand it certainly did not represent the kind of treasure whose loss might be expected to provoke a thirst for vengeance lasting for more than a century.

  I considered this find a possibly helpful development. But of course it could not be allowed to distract us from our main goal.

  Dracula seemed already to have forgotten it. "None of the others who lie here are restless," the prince murmured at last. Then he raised his head, fixing his gaze in steady contemplation of the ruined chapel standing on its little hill nearby.

  Moments later, we had climbed the wooded hillock together and Dracula was leading the way into the now-roofless structure. Scarcely had he taken three steps across that old pavement, which still bore in places broken fragments of mosaic decoration, before he paused in an attitude of listening, one hand upraised in my direction, commanding silence.

  The pause was only momentary. Quickly my companion darted ahead, and as quickly stopped. "Here, Doctor Watson. Under the floor!" He stamped his foot lightly on a stone slab that must have weighed at least a quarter of a ton. "Sounds of breathing. And a heartbeat, slow but still strong."

  If there was indeed a cavity beneath that ancient floor, the mass of stone was too great to resound hollowly from the impact of a boot. I hesitated. "Then we must get tools—"

  "You need bring only the tools of your profession, from the trap. Be quick!" And already the prince was crouching, digging and probing with nervous, bony fingers at the edges of the slab. Stone flaked and crumbled under those long nails which seemed able to bite and penetrate with the force of steel tools.

  Hesitating no longer, I ran, stumbling through weeds and over gravestones, back to the trap, and as quickly returned with my bag to the chapel. In those few moments Dracula had made astonishing headway in loosening the stone, which did not appear to be mortared in place, but fitted almost exactly the space in which it lay. Barehanded he had chipped away an opening beside it, and was now lying at full length on the old pavement, reaching with one thin arm underneath the slab, which as yet he had not attempted to remove.

  He chuckled—a thoroughly delighted and unpleasant sound. When he spoke, his voice sounded much more pleased than outraged. "As I thought... very pretty... a snare for the unwary. Any incautious effort to lift the stone would cause it to slip and fall straight down upon the victim in the cavity beneath."

  I shuddered. "How did you know there was such a snare?"

  His head turned slightly and a dark eye glittered at me, while the visible portion of his body, excluding the arm beneath the stone, remained utterly immobile. Again I was struck by something distinctly reptilian in the man's aspect.

  At the same time his voice remained very human, and indeed gentlemanly. "Because, Doctor... it is just the sort of thing I should have arranged myself... in our opponent's place. Ah, there we are!"

  As soon as the mechanism of the snare, whatever its exact nature, had been disabled, the prince gave a little cry of triumph, then withdrew his arm from beneath the stone and crouched beside it in the position of one about to lift a heavy object. Before I could offer to help, there came a moment of apparently effortless exertion, and the immense stone slab rose on one side —a feat that, I am sure, would have tested the strength of three or four ordinary men.

  Revealed was a little crypt or cavity, not much bigger than an ordinary coffin, and nearly filled by the form of a man who lay upon his back, eyes closed, his limbs tightly bound with rope.

  "Holmes!"

  Scrambling down into the pit beside my friend, I seized a thin white wrist. A moment later, to my immense relief, I could detect a pulse. "Holmes! Holmes, speak to me!"

  To my indescribable joy, those pale eyelids fluttered open; the dry lips stirred. In a moment I had uncorked my flask of brandy and water and was lifting the victim's head. My friend drank avidly, and coughed, and then could speak.

  His voice was so weak as to be almost inaudible. "Watson. A timely arrival. I... was confident that... that you..."

  "Of course, of course. You must not exert yourself just yet. Breathe deeply."

  "The blessed light of day," Holmes murmured feebly. "There for a while, Watson, I feared that I might never see the light of day again."

  11

  Holmes, in his debilitated state, evinced no particular surprise at Dracula's presence. Turning his head slightly, he murmured a word or two of greeting to his cousin, to which the prince responded calmly.

  Even before we had lifted him from the earthen-floored pit, he gave orders that we must thoroughly search the narrow space in which he had been confined, looking for any evidence that Louisa Altamont had at least briefly—after her supposed drowning, but before her funeral and burial— been confined in the same place.

  "You have reason to suspect this?" I demanded.

  "Logic suggests it, Watson. I was unable to search properly myself. Do look carefully. Perhaps a ribbon or some other small item from her clothing—"

  We lay Holmes at full length on the crumbling medieval mosaics of what had been the chapel's floor. I then went back, as commanded, to search the pit, but could find nothing useful. Meanwhile, Dracula's sharp nails worked like metal picks, his pale, resistless fingers tearing to shreds the ropes that bound his cousin. As he did so the prince muttered something about psychic vibrations—these were quite imperceptible to my no doubt cruder senses, but to the prince they indicated that indeed a vampire had recently been here.

  "No," he amended this opinion. "I believe there have been two vampires, one of them only a young girl."

  But further investigation would have to wait. In a moment the bonds had been completely torn away, and Dracula, lifting his cousin as easily as a small child in his arms, carried him to our waiting carriage, where I wrapped him in a robe.

  Before leaving the site, Dracula insisted on taking a few moments to lower the great stone slab back
into place, and to replace most of the fragments he had broken free around its edge, leaving to a casual inspection no visible sign that a rescue had been effected. Holmes agreed that this was a good idea.

  We drove at a good speed back to our inn—at Holmes's request, keeping as much as possible to little-traveled roads. My patient, drawing deep, grateful breaths of the fresh air, already sounded a little stronger when he announced his wish that the fact of his rescue should be kept secret from the public for as long as possible.

  By the time we reached the inn, Holmes was actually able to stand unaided, and, with a little support, to walk into the building, through a rear entrance. Dracula suggested carrying his cousin up and in through a first-floor window, directly into our reserved rooms, but such heroic measures proved unnecessary. We managed to reach our quarters by normal passages, without encountering anyone.

  In only a few hours, when food and drink and fresh air had been allowed to begin their cure, Holmes had rallied wonderfully, though something of a chill still lingered, as he said, in his bones. At dusk, he was seated in his dressing gown, warming his hands and lighting his familiar briar pipe at a fire in our sitting room. When his pipe was drawing satisfactorily, he agreed to reveal to us exactly what had happened to him on the terrace of Norberton House.

  I recalled that Holmes had still been present on the terrace when Abraham Kirkaldy was struck down, slaughtered by a blow from the hand of a strong vampire, as irresistible as that from the paw of a lion—and Holmes confirmed that he had seen that happen.

  "But after that, old fellow, I was not able to see much. Will you tell me what occurred after my forced departure?"

  "Of course." I now briefly outlined for him the later events I had witnessed on the terrace and in the garden. Dracula, though he had heard substantially the same story from me earlier, sat listening with great attention.

  When I had finished, Holmes said: "Gentlemen, we are dealing with two vampires here—I believe with no more than two. One of these, I am now certain, is the unfortunate Louisa Altamont."

  Here my friend glanced at his impassive cousin. "I say 'unfortunate' because she has been brought to her present state not by her own choice, or even by an accident precipitated by excessive passion. Rather the young woman is the victim of a deliberate attack."

  Dracula stirred at last from his pose of rapt attention. "And the other nosferatu?" he inquired in a soft voice. "The one who carried you away?"

  "That one, I am morally certain, is also her attacker. But let me tell you from the beginning the story of my own abduction."

  Holmes went on to outline, in a few words, what he had been endeavoring to accomplish by dashing out onto the terrace at the conclusion of the séance: "I was determined to save Mrs. Altamont if I could, and also the breathing men who could not understand what sort of enemy we faced. I considered that they were all in danger of the same fate which had befallen Abraham Kirkaldy—if not of something worse."

  "Thereby exposing yourself," I commented, "to a greater danger still."

  Holmes made a dismissive gesture. "It is true that the intruder at the séance might have slain me on the spot—he might have slain us all. But it is obvious now that he had in mind something more than the mere slaughter of those he considered his enemies."

  Then Holmes related for us in some detail what he had actually seen, felt, and heard while being seized and carried off by a single adversary of immense strength. "I must tell you, gentlemen, that it is not an experience I should care to repeat.

  "Naturally my first reaction, when I felt his grip upon me, was a spontaneous attempt to resist; but that effort was both short-lived and unsuccessful, as my opponent quickly proved himself fully capable of pinioning both of my arms with one of his own. In that fashion he carried me, held at his side like an infant, while he beat a swift retreat from the vicinity of Norberton House.

  "As there was no longer the slightest doubt about the nature of my antagonist, my immediate and overriding fear was that he might choose to drink my blood..."

  Holmes paused for a moment. "I am, as you know, no weakling in ordinary circumstances, yet I could do nothing physically against a vampire. I regret that his identity remains a mystery—though to judge by the few words I heard him speak, and by a few other clues I noticed, it is certain that he is not English."

  "I am glad to hear it," I murmured, and felt rather than saw the gaze of Prince Dracula turn toward me.

  Holmes resumed his tale. "Not knowing why I was being taken prisoner, I fully expected death at any moment. Realizing that any continued physical struggle would be useless, I next endeavored to influence my captor by making him aware that I understood the basic truths regarding the existence and nature of vampires. By this means, I hoped to suggest to him the possibility that he might find me more useful alive than dead... but my attempt at cleverness was ignored about as thoroughly as my physical struggles had been."

  "It is a miracle that you survived."

  Holmes nodded at me. "I tell you, gentlemen, it would have been less frightening had he gagged me, or threatened me to keep me silent. But I received a strong impression that he was indifferent as to whether I might cry out. I sensed that nothing I might say or do was going to influence my captor in the least."

  Holmes went on to describe how he had been taken to a secluded glade along the riverbank. There his limbs were bound, quickly and efficiently, and he was thrown down upon the grass and questioned at some length.

  "I saw no point in trying to deceive him regarding my identity. Still, I am not even sure that he recognized my name."

  This, I surmised, had probably stung my friend's pride as sharply as had being carried away like an infant.

  "What else did he ask you?" Dracula inquired.

  "There were several commonplace questions about the Altamonts, and how long I had known them. These I answered truthfully, not seeing that there was anything to be lost thereby. But—and this is interesting—when he moved on to Ambrose Altamont's reasons for hiring me, he doubted my still-truthful answers. He would have it that my real purpose in their house and at the séance had been to protect 'the treasure,' or 'the jewels'—he used both phrases several times.

  "Steadfastly I denied any knowledge of a family treasure. I admitted having heard the apparition in white speak of it during the séance, but said I had assumed that her claim had been made at her new master's prodding.

  "Then—after perhaps an hour, though really it might have been considerably less—my captor abruptly seemed to lose interest in me."

  "Lose interest!"

  Holmes nodded. "That is the impression I received. Though unfortunately I was not entirely forgotten. Again my kidnapper picked me up, throwing me over one shoulder this time, and carried me some little distance through the dark wood.

  "Already the faint traces of dawn were visible in the east. No doubt the approach of daylight contributed to his decision to postpone any further questioning, and it gave me hope that at least my uncertainty regarding my fate was not to be much more prolonged.

  "Not until we were climbing the slope surrounding the abandoned church did I recognize my surroundings. With scarcely another word to me, my enemy brought me to the place where you found me. Effortlessly he lifted the stone slab and packed me away beneath it.

  "I can only describe his manner in doing so as if it seemed to him that I might be too valuable to be thrown away, but at the same time, he could not for the life of him think of anything useful to do with me at the moment."

  Fervently I repeated a sentiment I had already expressed: "It is amazing that you are still alive!"

  "For that I have you gentlemen to thank." And Holmes solemnly nodded to each of us in turn.

  Dracula rubbed pale hands together, as I have seen his cousin do on occasion, in the manner of one who looks forward to some task he is about to undertake. "Tell me," said the prince, "more about this man we are looking for. I confess that I am intrigued. About this insane Russian,
if that is really what he is."

  Holmes shrugged. "There is not much more that I can tell. I am not even completely certain that I shall recognize him when I meet him again. The darkness was very nearly absolute in among the trees where I was questioned, and I was cast to the ground in such a position that my face was turned away from him. And as we know, the face, even the voice, of the vampire may change from one day to the next, much more than that of any breathing man."

  I interrupted at this point to say that perhaps I could provide some physical description of the enemy, and now I repeated to Holmes another episode I had earlier recounted to Dracula: Rebecca Altamont's revelation of what she had seen, but had not previously disclosed, on the day her sister had been lost.

  Holmes, who did not appear to be much surprised, listened with great attention. "So, he deliberately capsized the boat to get at his prey! The faint marks on the prow had suggested as much to me; but I could not be sure. The maneuver required him to expose his naked body to the daylight, if only briefly—even for an angry vampire, such a tactic seems bizarre, does it not?—but there can be no doubt that it is the same man. Did Rebecca Altamont hear him speak?"

  "Apparently not."

  My friend arose from his chair and paced the floor, and I was glad to see this evidence of his returning strength. He said: "Overturning the boat suggests a certain cleverness— it allowed him to make off with the older sister, and use her for his own foul purposes, while leaving everyone else with the impression that she had been accidentally drowned. But then why take the risk of allowing himself to be seen? Surely he might have tipped the boat while remaining hidden. Why? Why? Mere bravado? But that would be inconsistent. Real lunacy is a more convincing explanation." Holmes paused, and sighed. "Watson—"

  "Yes?"

  "A criminally insane man is terrible enough when he is breathing. When we add the immense physical strength of the nosferatu, and the other powers they possess—this is a fearful business indeed."

  Holmes was excited and expressed his urgent wish to question Rebecca, and his concern for her safety.