Séance for a Vampire Page 20

  Martin Armstrong had backed up a pace or two, and now sat on a crude wooden bench, staring in shock.

  "That cannot be Louisa," he said at last. "But... it is."

  "It is." Holmes laid a sympathetic hand on the young man's shoulder.

  "Doctor?" The young man turned to me, moistening his pale lips. "This girl is dead?"

  "No," I said, and shook my head. "I do not believe so, despite appearances."

  Armstrong made a curious, awkward gesture with both hands. "But... she came to me last night."

  "We understand," said Sherlock Holmes.

  "But I do not begin to understand. If this is not she... then who is it?"

  "I tell you," said Sherlock Holmes, "that this is Louisa Altamont."

  My friend and I earnestly renewed our efforts to explain to this lover of a vampire what sort of changes he must expect.

  "Look!" I exclaimed, pointing at the white face of the figure in the box.

  The sun was now very near setting. Tree shadows had covered all the windows, and Louisa, already partially awakened, had turned her head toward her lover.

  Armstrong jumped to his feet. He uttered a strange sound, compounded of fear, fascination, and something very like disgust.

  Then he mumbled a few incoherent words, because suddenly Louisa was sitting up.

  "Martin?" Her voice was soft and calm.

  His only answer was a kind of moan.

  Again, she who had been his betrothed called to him lovingly, and he hesitated, alternately shrinking away from her and then starting forward.

  When the young woman's red lips parted and I saw clearly her white fangs suddenly grown sharp, I moved between her and the man she had once planned to marry, to keep them from embracing.

  Louisa, reacting to my interference and Martin's acceptance of it, gave a little snarling cry and suddenly leaped out of the crude nest in which she had sheltered from the daylight, so that both Holmes and I recoiled, and I reached for my revolver. But the vampire, who was still Louisa Altamont, had no aggressive intention. In another moment she had fled from our presence into the gathering dusk, thereby relieving us of any need to make an immediate decision on what we had ought to do with her, or do about her.

  The figure of the girl did not change form, but ran barefoot at amazing speed into the nearby trees and disappeared.

  We had followed her out of the building. Armstrong, speechless, with one hand to his mouth, could only stare after her, on his face the wildest expression of terror and shock that I have ever seen.

  Now that the sun was gone, it was imperative that we conduct a strategic retreat, lest our enemy vampire appear and destroy us all at his leisure. Once night had fallen, granting our enemy the power of changing forms at will, my chances of getting in a good shot with the wooden bullets would be reduced almost to nothing.

  Armstrong, in a daze, made no objection as we urged him to come away. Nor did any of us have much to say as we walked briskly back to the place beyond the fence where we had left our carriage.

  Driving back to Amberley as twilight deepened and faded into night, we stopped to light our carriage lamps, and Armstrong suddenly began to talk.

  The burden of his conversation was that of course such things, outside the settled and scientific order of nature, were simply not possible. Certainly not now, with the world firmly established in modern times, the twentieth century well begun. And "demonic" hardly seemed the proper word for the female who had come to his bed last night. Pagan and passionate, he thought, were apt descriptions.

  Holmes was musing that the testimony of the victim herself now definitely indicated that she was the victim of a rapist.

  And I, Watson, remarked indignantly that what was known of the girl's history and of her family made any other explanation unlikely.

  Holmes said it was almost certain that the vampire who had kidnapped him must be the same one who had so brutally and lustfully attacked Louisa.

  It was, of course, fully dark by the time we returned to the Saracen's Head. There we found our colleague Dracula fully awake, well rested, and waiting for us in our sitting room.

  The mere fact that Dracula was sitting with a companion, engaged in quiet conversation, would have been surprising enough—but when that companion looked around and revealed himself to be Mycroft Holmes, our amazement knew no bounds.

  "Calm yourself, Sherlock," said Mycroft, starting from his chair. "The prince and I have introduced ourselves and reached an accommodation—it was necessary, you know, that we should."

  Never have I seen Holmes so at a loss for words as he was then. But in a few moments, he had recovered from the shock, at least so far as to be able to bid his brother welcome.

  When we were all seated, Mycroft Holmes explained that he had found himself unable to remain away from the scene of action any longer.

  Taking a deep breath of air, he looked toward the window open to the summer night. "It is years since I have been in the country." But having done as much, he thereafter seemed indifferent to his location.

  Mycroft had brought word from London concerning the connection of the Altamont family with pirates in the eighteenth century. Also, he had obtained historical confirmation of the fact that the family fortune had always derived chiefly from land holdings and that none of the strange events of 1765—at least some of which he had uncovered— had had any noticeable effect on it one way or another.

  In fact, a transcript of the Admiralty trial of the pirate Kulakov had turned out to be available, and Mycroft had brought a copy of the relevant portions with him.

  We marveled that Kulakov, in his sleepwalking indifference to what his enemies might do, was still using his own name in the society of 1903.

  Mycroft remarked: "Well, this much seems to be true—if there was any actual treasure involved, and the Admiralty records seem to suggest there was, the loot was never recovered."

  Mycroft had also brought with him more details of Count Kulakov's rented establishment, Smithbury Hall, which we had already inspected from a distance, and he confirmed that the police were starting to take an interest there. Two plainclothes policemen, calling at the door on some pretext, had been told by the man's servants that he was not at home and that they did not know when he was to be expected.

  Holmes was more and more intently focusing on the Russian aspect of this affair. "Prince, if you thought that some member of this English family, or any other, had robbed you, at some relatively remote epoch in the past, what steps would you be likely to take to regain your property?"

  The prince, sitting with one pale hand extended before him, appeared to be admiring his own sharp fingernails. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it occurred to me to wonder whether they might be retractable, like a cat's claws, and I shuddered slightly.

  He flexed his fingers briskly and then forgot about them. "That would depend to a great extent upon what kind of property it was."

  "Of course. Land would be very difficult to regain by anyone striving for justice—as I presume you would be—outside the formal channels of legality. Gold, for example, or anything that can be locked up in a small space, would be comparatively easy."

  Dracula, when he had heard the tale of our discovery of Louisa Altamont, was confident of his ability to overtake this little child-vampire in hot pursuit, catch her and bring her back. But he was not sanguine about his chances of discovering where she might be now.

  "Why did Louisa flee from us?" Armstrong asked the question.

  Dracula replied that she gave every evidence of being under some very strong hypnotic influence, strong enough to overcome her natural inclinations.

  I then asked: "Even in this... altered state, she is subject to the hypnotic influence?"

  The prince replied: "Indeed, even more thoroughly, strongly subject to such influence, given a mesmerist—or a hypnotist, if you prefer that word—of overwhelming willpower and superb technique."

  How were we to find Louisa again? And when she was found, wh
at to do with her, her pallid form, her bloodstained lips?

  16

  Martin Armstrong returned to Norberton House late that evening, and lied convincingly enough to Becky and to the elder Altamonts about his day's activities.

  A little later that night, when Armstrong had retired and was trying to close his eyes in sleep, Louisa drifted in uninvited through the window of his room and, as on the previous night, materialized sitting on the edge of his bed.

  The idea of trying to resist her attraction crossed the young man's mind, but only briefly. The attempt failed before it had really started, and the couple passionately made love.

  This did nothing to resolve Armstrong's feelings. He found himself sliding inexorably into a crisis of doubt, fear, and hesitation regarding his relationship with his beloved.

  While the sensual attraction between the pair was, if anything, stronger than on the previous night, the young man's feelings of revulsion had also increased to the point where they could no longer be denied. He realized, with the night's first surge of passion spent, that these contrary emotions must be either wholeheartedly accepted, or overcome.

  Armstrong was thinking, as most of us do most of the time, of his own future. Holmes and Watson had been trying to instruct him about vampires. For him to remain Louisa's lover in a permanent way, forsaking all others, would sooner or later mean setting his own feet irrevocably upon the path to vampirism, thus bringing upon himself the implacable enmity of the great mass of humanity—however many could be induced to believe in him.

  Side by side with the great tree of passion, the faint seed of disgust, sown during Louisa's first visit to his bedroom, was growing rapidly.

  He spoke the word to her during this visit: "Lou, you have become a... vampire."

  "Yes. I know." She pleaded with her lover not to tell anyone, her parents least of all. They must not learn that she was coming to him in this way, the discovery that their daughter had become a monster—so they must view the matter—would destroy them.

  Nor did Louisa's new master know that she was here, and she was afraid that he would find out.

  She also feared Sherlock Holmes and his associates, though not as much as she feared Kulakov. She felt instinctively that Holmes and Watson, as preservers of law and convention, would pass the terrible knowledge of her state on to her family, and would separate her from Martin.

  Dracula she feared as well, but in yet another way; he was somehow kin to the man who had enslaved her, even though he was Kulakov's enemy as well.

  Armstrong was both angry at Kulakov and afraid of him, and wanted to see the man destroyed.

  Louisa had had other reasons for returning that night to the home of her breathing childhood, and actually she had accomplished these before coming to see her lover: She had wanted to see Becky (without allowing Becky to see her), and also to gaze from a distance at her parents, whom Louisa loved but who, she thought, were now farther than they had ever been from understanding what had happened to their elder daughter, and what was going to happen.

  On Saturday morning, at least some of the people who arrived at the cemetery for the burial service of Abraham Kirkaldy were astonished and outraged to discover the vandalism that had been committed by an angry vampire the night before.

  But the service went on as scheduled.

  Martin Armstrong was there, nervously wondering if the small amount of blood he had lost during the night had weakened him, and if one of the new fang marks on his throat might show above his collar. A police constable was at the service too, taking the place of Inspector Merivale, who was busy elsewhere that morning. The constable stood quietly in the rear with Mycroft Holmes, observing the mourners.

  Also present were the two elder Altamonts—Rebecca, pleading weariness, had stayed home. There were only a few other people, most of them spiritualist enthusiasts who had known the Kirkaldys as mediums. These last and the officiating clergyman eyed one another uneasily.

  Just as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, a soft rain began to fall. Sister Sarah, weeping for her brother for the last time, was supported by both of the elder Altamonts, who, in the freshness of their conversion to the spiritualist outlook, could not refrain from sometimes gazing at the young woman's tears in gentle wonder that she, so knowledgeable about commerce with the other world, should grieve so at a temporary separation.

  Prince Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Watson were elsewhere that morning, having delegated Mycroft, who was considered no great shakes as a man of action, to represent them at the cemetery and act as their observer. The hunters considered it barely possible that Count Kulakov, if he were truly as mad as his behavior seemed to suggest, might put in an appearance at his victim's burial. But they thought that in the daylight, and surrounded by other people, Mycroft would probably be safe enough.

  I, Dracula, at the time of Abraham's interment, was wistfully imagining myself enjoying yet another daylight rest at the Saracen's Head, my darkened room's one door not only snugly locked, but barricaded, so that no maid might enter and run screaming to announce the discovery of a corpse. But alas for my comfortable imaginings; the game was afoot in earnest, as Cousin Sherlock used to say, and such lassitude on my part was not to be. At the moment when the first shovelful of earth fell upon the coffin of Abraham Kirkaldy, I, in company with Sherlock and the faithful Watson, not to mention Inspector Merivale and a small army of police in horsedrawn vehicles, was just arriving in sight of Smithbury Hall.

  But let Watson tell the next part of our adventure—

  Sherlock Holmes had also been thinking about secretly promoting another attempt at a séance, hoping thereby to make contact with both Louisa and her attacker. He discussed this possibility with his cousin and me while we were on our way to Smithbury Hall.

  Today's raid had been organized and was being launched at the instigation of Sherlock Holmes, acting with the advice of Mycroft. There now existed some hard evidence to tie the Russian count not only to a particularly vicious group of terrorists, but also to the Okhrana, the Russian Imperial Secret Police. Such ambiguity, even among the nobility, would hardly be unheard of in the intrigues of Muscovy. Although our British law and custom can and does tolerate political refugees of every stripe, engaging in violent conflict upon our soil is quite another matter.

  This next spiritualist sitting had been arranged for Saturday. It would be conducted in Norberton House by Sarah, with Dracula overseeing matters, lurking alternately outside the house and inside, trying to set a trap for Kulakov.

  To hold this new séance so soon was definitely against Mr. Prince's advice. Sarah had been forced or argued into it somehow by the overanxious Altamonts. I hoped it would not produce disastrous results.

  I raised another subject with Holmes as we rode in the carriage. I found myself deeply shocked to learn that Martin Armstrong, even after understanding what fearful alteration the girl's nature had undergone, had apparently made no effort to break off his affair with her. Indeed, he was seriously, deliberately, considering what sort of future life they might be able to achieve together.

  "We must do something, Holmes."

  "I share your feelings, Watson. But by what right would we interfere?"

  "By what right? It is our duty to act, as we would act to prevent a suicide, to save a madman from self-destruction."

  "Is Martin Armstrong mad?"

  "If he behaves in such a way. On the other hand..."

  "Yes?"

  "I was about to say, it would be unthinkable, Holmes, to return the girl to her parents in this... this..."

  "Quite so." Holmes, with a sigh, turned to his relative. "To the best of my knowledge, there can be no possibility of reversion to the breathing state once matters have progressed this far."

  "To cling to any such hope would be an utter waste of time." Dracula's face seemed carved in ice, as if he might have been insulted by the suggestion that such a change might be desirable. As for repealing Louisa's vampire-conversion, the p
rince assured us that everyone had better accept that as impossible. Dracula himself had never seen it happen.

  Today, as yesterday, our first glimpse of our enemy's rented house came from a little distance away among the trees. Today again we had eschewed attention-drawing motorcars and were traveling in a small convoy of carriages.

  Smithbury Hall was a relatively new building, constructed in Victoria's early reign, of yellow stone with white stone columns, and in a mixture of architectural styles, most of them flat-roofed. It stood on a gentle, grassy hill amid fairly extensive grounds, some thirteen or fourteen miles from Norberton House and perhaps half a mile from the abandoned greenhouse.

  Our discovery yesterday of Louisa's "body" so close to the house would certainly have interested the police; but of course we had not told them of our find.

  Naturally, we had preferred to launch our raid on Kulakov's rented manor in daylight, when it was at least probable that the count might be caught sleeping within.

  But he was not to be found. Perhaps, we thought, he had somehow got wind of our coming. With Holmes and Merivale leading the way, armed with search warrants, we stormed through the house. Of course Holmes and I, if not the police, were well aware that the vampire could not be caught in such a way—but the police were ready and eager to lay hands on a man whom they conceived to be an ordinary criminal.

  Though within a matter of minutes, a dozen policemen were tearing the house apart from roof to cellar, we were not really surprised at our failure to discover Kulakov; and Mr. Prince, once invited in, searched the attic, and particularly the cellar, with a thoroughness of which no breathing man would have been capable, seeking traces of a hidden earth, whether occupied or not. Actually, Dracula, while the police remained oblivious to his real activities, located two or three such dens, but all were empty.

  Holmes, the prince, and I had already agreed that Kulakov had probably formed a careful, suspicious habit of shifting daily from one earth to another, and that one or more of his essential troves of Russian soil might be in close proximity to the place where we had finally found Louisa, and where we hoped to be able to find her again.