Séance for a Vampire Page 18

  THE AMERICA CUP TRIALS...

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES: SIR—I fear the 60 hours rain which we enjoyed on June 13, 14, 15 has utterly destroyed the prospects of partridge shooting for this year, at least in the southern Midlands...

  BUER'S PILES CURE—gives instant relief...

  CRYSTAL PALACE—MASSED BANDS—GREAT CONCERT.. .

  WEATHER—Generally fair to fine and warm, for the next three days...

  TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS REWARD FOR EVIDENCE which will lead to the Conviction of Driver or Owner of MOTORCAR which, between 4 and 5 o'clock on

  Wednesday afternoon, ran into and knocked down two polo ponies...

  A BEAUTIFUL HOME, 45 minutes from London amidst delightful scenery on the Kent and Surrey borders, to be SOLD, comprising a choice family mansion and heavily timbered park and woodlands of 300 to 700 acres as desired...

  I had always found the prospect tempting, of being able to enjoy such an estate in rural England. Alas, my previous attempt along that line, some twelve years earlier (again, see The Dracula Tape), had taught me that such dreams were only folly for Prince Dracula—or Mr. Prince.

  COAL—LOWEST SUMMER PRICES...

  EXEMPTION of DOGS from VIVISECTION Petitions to Parliament for the above are now being issued post-free...

  EMPLOYMENT-OF-CHILDREN BILL...

  NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS, Neuritis, Neuralgia, Sciatica, Lumbago, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Rheumatism, Gout and Malaria speedily cured by the highly recommended Ultra Violet Electric Light Lamp and combined Double Light Baths and Currents of High Frequency and Ozone... LIGHT CURE INSTITUTE. HOME TREATMENT if required, Distance no Object...

  AT WORSHIP STREET, the two men charged with attempting to defraud Frederick Wensley of £2,225 by means of a trick—the sale of brass filings as gold dust— were brought up on remand...

  SERIOUS ILLNESS OF THE POPE—A sudden change in the condition of Leo XIII caused great anxiety...

  THE UNITED STATES (from our own correspondent)—The President celebrated the Fourth of July by announcing at Huntington, "There is not a cloud of a handbreadth in the sky. We are on good terms with all the peoples of the world."

  THE ASSASSINATION OF A RUSSIAN GOVERNOR...

  Why Don't You Try BISHOP'S VARALETTES for 25 days for 5s? They work wonders in all uric acid troubles...

  A MEDICINE OF IMPERIAL REPUTE

  WOODWARD'S

  "GRIPE WATER"...

  SEQUEL TO THE TSAR'S RECENT MANIFESTO— The optimistic hopes of many of the Russian Liberals that the Tsar's recent manifesto heralded a large extension of local autonomy will hardly be upheld by the publication of the reprint of the conference held at Tsarskoe Selo on May 16...

  "One seems to encounter the Muscovites everywhere these days," I remarked.

  Watson, lapsing into the comfortable manner of one London clubman communicating with another, grunted from the opposite chair some comradely agreement. Since I had played so important a role in the rescue of Cousin Sherlock, he evidently was content at least to tolerate me. For the time being. Currently his boots were off and his stocking feet elevated on an ottoman, his upper half invisible behind his newspaper. I suspected that he was half asleep.

  Need I say that my feelings toward that most unimaginative man were—and still are—mixed? But I had responded to his summons as quickly as I could, and with a sense of urgency, confident that the invocation had not been made frivolously.

  I read on.

  CRICKET

  GENTLEMEN vs PLAYERS

  The second day's play in the Gentlemen vs Players match at Lord's yesterday presented in every way, except the weather, a great contrast to the first...

  CHURCH OF ENGLAND HOMES FOR WAIFS AND STRAYS...

  with the object of organizing regular telegraphic communication with Russian warships...

  I cast my newspaper aside. Watson's had now collapsed into a kind of tent, behind which he was snoring. Holmes came into the room shortly, and I, Dracula, began to argue with him, because I still felt real doubts as to whether Holmes's kidnapper should be regarded as the only villain in the piece. For all we knew, young Louisa Altamont might have yielded willingly to her fanged seducer, even before the boating "accident"—and that traumatic event, if carefully investigated, might bear some different interpretation.

  My cousin the detective did not care much for my tentative hypothesis, though he conceded to me that it was entirely possible that a treasure had been stolen from our mysterious Russian-speaking vampire at some time in the past.

  Presently abandoning the argument, which had never been very intense, I announced my immediate intentions, or some of them anyway, and nipped out of doors. Shifting quickly to bat-form under cover of the blessed night, I made my second visit in a few hours to Sarah Kirkaldy, who, I must confess, was beginning to seem more and more attractive. Tut-tut, you say. With Brother Abraham still laid out in his coffin in the parlor downstairs?

  Actually, I refrained from any romantic endeavors on that night. I found Sarah keeping vigil by the coffin. For a while, I peered in through a window at this touching scene, then flew round the house, making an estimate of its security, before deciding that my seduction of Sarah had better wait. Maybe at least until tomorrow night.

  While looking in the parlor window I also observed, briefly and more chastely, Rebecca Altamont, who like a good girl was reading another book—I could not make out the title—and keeping the bereaved Sarah company in her deathwatch. That dutiful young woman was spending most of her time with her parents now, trying to shield them from further hurt.

  I thought that the younger Miss Altamont, too, stood at some risk from her family's mad enemy. I decided that tomorrow Mr. Prince must find an opportunity to warn Becky, as he had already warned Sarah, of the dangers of taking the night air unaccompanied. Of course rebellious Becky, if she knew Mr. Prince to be secretly associated with Mr. Holmes, would probably spurn the warning.

  Even postponed for one more night, such early wooing would have to be classified as very impetuous. But certainly there was good reason not to leave Sarah unattended. I would go to her, when I went again, with the genuinely altruistic motive of offering protective advice, and real protection.

  Readily enough I imagined for myself the scene that might take place upon my finding her in her room, restless and unable to sleep...

  At my blackguardly intrusion, her gasp, of outrage mixed with other things. "Where did ye coom from?"

  "You called me, Sarah."

  "I didna!" Pulling the bedclothes up ever more tightly under her chin. But her outrage was hollow.

  "Perhaps it was your beauty alone that called... with such a voice that I was quite unable to resist."

  Well, soon enough I would probably play out that scene, or one much like it, in reality. I wondered whether my new potential conquest had been in communication with our chief foe since the former disastrous séance. Or whether this Count Kulakov—if that was really his name—his mind wandering as Cousin Sherlock said it did, or else focused sharply on revenge, had forgotten about Sarah and her dead brother for a time. A blessing for them if it were so—but one cannot always rely on blessings.

  When I, Dracula, felt that I had done all that could reasonably be done to enhance Sarah's security, and that of the household in general, I flew back to rejoin Cousin Sherlock and the worthy Watson at the inn. En route, I actually passed (without, of course, being noticed) Armstrong in his roaring Mercedes, bound for the same goal. On reaching the Saracen's Head, I looked in at the window of Inspector Merivale's room, where a steady snore informed me that the poor, tired man had retired early.

  Gathered at our improvised headquarters, we felt reasonably certain that the last of the regular parties sent out to search for Holmes had retired or been recalled from the field, and as soon as Armstrong had rejoined us we equipped ourselves as best we could for the effort that lay ahead. The necessary materials included some tools suitable for breaking and entering. Even I might have trouble ent
ering this tomb without them.

  Let Watson tell the tale again.

  Holmes had earlier remarked, and Dracula reminded us, that now the Altamont mausoleum qualified as a dwelling place, being inhabited by a living (though unbreathing) human; even should the doors stand wide open, those portals would be closed to any vampire lacking a direct invitation to enter.

  Armstrong was familiar with the village and its environs, and was able to provide us with some tools. As we left the inn, the night was mostly cloudy, with little moon, which suited our purposes admirably.

  In response to a question from Holmes, I assured him that I had indeed come equipped with my old service revolver.

  "And wooden bullets?"

  With some dignity I was able to reply that such necessities had not been forgotten.

  Armstrong looked from one of us to the other as if quite convinced that we were both mad.

  (Holmes told me he had considered waiting, tactfully, until Dracula was absent on some errand, to equip himself and me with implements intended for an even grimmer purpose: a wooden stake and large hammer. But Dracula would accept the need for such implements if tonight's investigation indeed led us to the resting place of the vampire rapist and murderer, and if the latter should, by some good fortune, be in his coffin. At any rate, it would be hard indeed to conceal from the prince any sizable objects that we were carrying.)

  Our party was fully assembled near midnight. The four of us set out for the cemetery secretly; we now had a rented carriage big enough to hold us all, and Dracula himself harnessed our horses without disturbing the stable boy.

  Young Martin Armstrong's impatience with the general failure to find any clue to the whereabouts of the living Louisa was reaching a dangerous level, nearing the point of frenzy. Despairing of ever obtaining official permission, he was ready to consider a rough-and-ready exhumation of the occupant of Louisa's tomb as one way of making progress.

  He mentioned that he had been planning his own independent expedition along that line, but he joined forces with us gratefully. He understood, he said, the desirability of having other witnesses present besides himself when the tomb was opened.

  Though the night was very dark, so that I supposed even the horses could scarcely see the road, Dracula drove the carriage without lights, and without apparent difficulty. In about twenty minutes we were dismounting, leaving the horses and the lightness vehicle at a little distance from the burial ground. Before we left the animals, which seemed skittish, Dracula soothed them somehow, and they started to crop the grass.

  An owl flew hooting overhead as we once more approached the Altamont family mausoleum, its walls pale in the garish light of our electric torches. The sweet honeysuckle vine was now marked, somewhat to my surprise, by clustered, night-blooming, purple-white flowers. I stared intently and suspiciously at a small shape flying near these, thinking about bats, until Dracula assured me it was only a night-feeding hawk moth, by which these flowers were mostly pollinated.

  I held a small electric torch, and by its light Holmes needed only a moment or two to pick the old lock of the iron grating. The fastening of the inner door to the mausoleum yielded almost as quickly to his skilled fingers. The process of opening these barriers was silent; all the locks and hinges had been oiled and repaired less than a month ago, at the time of Louisa's funeral.

  Meanwhile Mr. Prince stood back a little, watching silently and with every appearance of tranquility, first with his hands in his pockets, then with his arms folded under his short cabman's cape. He might have been listening to the ordinary sounds of the night—insects, an owl, the murmur of the nearby stream—but I felt mortally certain that he was on guard, in a way that we could never be, against any attack by our chief adversary.

  Not far away was the place where Abraham Kirkaldy was to be buried—by the kind charity of the Altamonts, put under the soil in a simple grave. Tonight the open pit, edged by its pile of fresh earth, yawned at us, awaiting its tenant, and when we shone our lights in that direction provided us with an ominous reminder of mortality.

  Having all, or most of us, crowded into the little building, we now turned our attention to the small crypt in the wall where almost a month ago Louisa's body had been laid to rest. A small brass plate on the door confirmed the exact niche. Another door to be opened, and the casket was exposed. There was, as was more commonly the case a few years ago, a double coffin, the inner vessel of lead and hermetically sealed.

  Dracula, resting one hand on the outer casing, turned his head and assured us silently, with a slight shake of his head, that the inner coffin was currently empty.

  Holmes and I exchanged glances, while Armstrong, more and more puzzled, not aware that any discovery had yet been made, or that any decision was being taken, continued to look on impatiently.

  Sherlock Holmes sighed, and I realized that he had decided it would be best to open the coffin to demonstrate its vacancy to Armstrong. Though the young man was bound to misinterpret this discovery at first, yet it was a step on the way of preparing him for the truth which he might sooner or later have to face. I wondered whether Holmes also expected, or hoped, to find some clue or evidence in the coffin, even though it should be untenanted.

  Dracula returned to his position as sentry outside the mausoleum, while I continued to hold the lantern, and Holmes got to work with hammer and chisel and wrench. The inner container was of soft sheet-lead and easily cut apart.

  Armstrong, despite his stoutly expressed confidence in Louisa's survival, continued to exhibit thinly controlled anxiety while first the outer and then the inner container were being opened.

  There were the white-satin pillows, showing a round indentation where a head had rested. But the head was gone, along with the rest of the corporeal tenant of the coffin.

  "It is, as you see, empty."

  The young American let out a great sigh of relief. "Gentlemen, we have proof at last!"

  I, at least, started in surprise on hearing this comment. But I realized that to Armstrong, the empty coffin was resounding confirmation of his own favorite theory. According to him, Louisa had never actually been interred here at all—no one had.

  "Look at the sealing on the coffin, gentlemen—there has been no grave-robbery here. The body we all mourned last month as Louisa's was taken away somehow at the last moment, and the coffin buried empty. With all that lead, no one noticed the difference in weight. The kidnappers have done a thorough job!"

  Sherlock Holmes and Prince Dracula—the latter had now stepped back inside the door—exchanged a look, whose meaning I thought I could read perfectly: that it would be useless at the present time to attempt to give the young man anything like a full explanation of the true state of affairs.

  In fact, none of we older men could be sure at this point whether Louisa was out roaming, foraging for animal or human blood, or whether our chief opponent had intelligently anticipated our investigation here and had therefore moved Louisa elsewhere. The latter was perhaps the safest, as well as the most likely, assumption.

  We resealed the coffins, inner and outer, so that a close inspection of the outer would be necessary to tell that anything had been disturbed. We relocked the doors of the charnel house, and in general put things back as they had been. Then we took our departure.

  Choosing a moment when Armstrong could not hear him, Holmes put into words the thought we others shared: "Her native earth lies around her for miles in every direction, and there are an almost infinite number of places where she may be hidden."

  Even Dracula could not undertake to find her in any reasonably limited period of time.

  15

  May I, Dracula, remind the gentle reader that when undertaking to tell this story I gave notice that from time to time I would indulge in some imaginative, reconstructive narration? Here comes a sample now: I am about to recreate a scene at which I was not actually present. (Exactly how much testimony I might have had later from one or both participants, I shall leave you
to judge for yourselves.)

  Know, then, that Martin Armstrong, despite his brave statements to the contrary, had actually been troubled by the empty coffin—it was as if until now he had not really believed that his own bizarre theory was true, but had only been using it as a kind of psychic crutch to cope with the reality of death. But now he had to believe in it—or allow that something else must have happened which was even stranger. Uncomfortable with either possibility, the young American returned to his room in Norberton House a little after midnight and fell uneasily asleep.

  Some hours later, in the midst of that deep satisfying darkness (at least I find it so) that comes not too long before the dawn, Martin had fallen into an unpleasant dream—he told me about it later. It seemed to him that he was struggling to row a huge, ungainly boat upstream, all the while feeling tormented and cast into despair by the knowledge that he was late—terribly, irretrievably, late for the most vital appointment of his lifetime.

  He was roused from this dream, none too soon for the sake of his mental health, by a familiar voice, softly and persistently whispering his name; and he opened his eyes in predawn darkness to find his beloved Louisa sitting close beside him, right on the edge of his bed.

  She was very close to him—in fact in actual contact. She even held a hand stretched out, as if she were about to touch his cheek, his throat, caressingly.

  The next few moments were full of confusion for the young man. Before he became fully aware that he was not still dreaming, some part of his distracted mind could not help noticing the reassuring solidity of Louisa's corporeal presence. Her body, though slender as always, weighed down one side of the mattress with a more substantial effect than he would have expected. The window behind Louisa's head created an aureole of predawn sky light—the ghostly glow of stars and moon and cosmic rays—around the tangled paleness of her hair. At the moment, with this backlighting, Martin could see nothing of her face even though she sat turned directly toward him.