The Holmes-Dracula File d-2 Page 20

  Just at this point, I was startled by a low moaning or keening sound, proceeding from the still figure lying at my side. When I looked toward Holmes, his dazed expression had not altered, though his eyes were now fixed on Seward. The strange wail issued from my companion in a way that made my hair start to rise on end—then it cut off abruptly, and he muttered a few words that I could not make out.

  Seward and Fitzroy both hurried to his cart, where they bent over him on either side, straining to hear better. But hardly had they done so, when Seward abruptly straightened again. Following the direction of his suddenly staring eyes, I saw with blank incomprehension that Holmes' right arm had somehow come free of its shackle—the steel ring was still closed, and fixed to the cart, but it no longer held his wrist.

  Frowning, Seward reached to take hold of the escaped limb. But that thin, white hand rose steadily on its lean arm. It brushed aside Seward's grasping fists as though they were those of an infant, and took him neatly by the throat.

  Simultaneously Fitzroy straightened up, as if he realized that something had gone wrong but was not yet clear on what. Before he could do anything purposeful, the left hand of the figure on the cot slid easily of its restraint, and struck at him with a cobra's speed. I saw its fingers clench round the unfortunate Fitzroy's neck. His eyes started from their sockets, as bone and muscle together were crumpled like twists of paper in that grip. An instant later, and his lifeless body had been flung aside, like some huge, weightless doll.

  So quickly was the incredible deed accomplished that it was over before the attendants had been sufficiently aroused from their inattention to throw themselves into the struggle. Meanwhile I, on my own cart, strove with might and main—but uselessly—to free myself.

  The cart beside mine slid and rolled, then went over with a crash upon its side. All four of his limbs now freed as if by magic, the man who had been on it stood erect. He was red-eyed and terrible of visage as he fought, and to my dying day I shall hear the droning shriek of rage that issued from his lips.

  Though his two new opponents bulked huge on either side, they could not stand against him—this, despite the fact that his right hand constantly maintained its grip on Seward's neck and collar. First one and then the other of the burly henchmen was shaken like a rat in the grip of a terrier, then hurled aside. The body of the first struck the door of the room with an impact that made the solid oak tremble, then slid down into a lifeless heap. The second man, an instant later, was thrown against the cage with such force that the iron structure tilted on its base. From my own helpless position, I saw with horror how the animal inside rushed in mad excitement against its bars. It reached out its muzzle far enough to sink fangs into the shoulder of the last man to fall. He was still living, for now his scream went up and up.

  The Count—for by now I realized that despite dark hair, shaven eyebrows, and certain other facial alterations, it must be he—now stood alone, silent but expressing in his demonic grimace the triumph that he evidently felt. His chief and final victim was still in his grasp—still in his grasp and living, for his grip on Seward's throat had not yet exerted deadly power.

  Jack Seward hung in that lean and terrible hand as helpless as a kitten. He kicked and writhed in desperation, and his arms beat uselessly against the arm of steel that held him. The pressure of the Count's thumb on Seward's jaw had twisted his head round until his neck must have been on the point of snapping, and his face grew purple with congested blood. In this state Seward fastened his wretched gaze on me. As if he no longer realized that I was bound and helpless, he choked out an appeal:

  "Watson… help… he's not human…" Perhaps Seward had a moment to read my bitter answer in my face, before Dracula's resistless one-handed grip spun him away and dragged him toward the cage. A last desperate kick of the victim's foot happened to strike my cart, and turned it so I could no longer see what was going on. I heard a rattle, as of one of the cage's small doors being opened—as it would have opened for me had Seward's own plan been carried out. Then I would have stopped my ears had I been able to, so terrible were the screams that began.

  These awful outcries soon subsided, though not entirely. The room seemed to be spinning around me, and there was a roaring in my ears. And now it seemed to me that I once more heard the woman's voice, this time entreating: "Vlad—Vlad, stop it, please. I do not care what he has done—"

  "For you, my dear," came a low reply, and with that the last horrible cry cut off abruptly. "There are still two more upstairs?"

  "Yes. Only menials. And what of him?" asked the woman, her voice sounding shaken. "Will you not loose him from that cart?"

  "Hush, my darling! He will hear you. He must not know that you and I are lovers."

  "Dr. Watson is a gentleman who minds his own affairs, I am sure. You must free him."

  "Very well, but later. First I must see about the two upstairs." The two voices faded completely as the door squeaked once more.

  I was left alone in that room of death, where all was silence, save for one hideous sound somewhere behind me—the frantic snuffling of the caged Rat. But no, there was another still alive. I heard a faint human groan. It was repeated.

  By dint of great straining I extended the shoeless toes of one foot far enough to reach the wall, and managed to push hard enough to turn my cart. At once I saw that Seward himself must be dead; his horribly mangled body lay half in and half out of the cage, blocking the small door which had been opened for feeding purposes. The angle that his head made with his trunk showed that his neck must have been completely broken at the last.

  A shape stirred on the floor just outside the cage, and I saw that one of the brutal attendants was not yet dead. With many groans, struggling against what must have been massive internal injuries, the man called Campbell dragged himself to his feet. It was an effort that could not be sustained. Even as an uproar—a muffled cry, a shot, the sound of running feet—broke out somewhere overhead, Campbell staggered again, lurched against the table where the oil lamp stood, and carried both over in his last collapse. Flames sprang up to lick at the fallen table, at the wall, and at the cage itself.

  Under the stimulus of fire, the caged beast, whether by instinct or crude intelligence, pulled entirely into the cage the body it had already begun to devour. Through the small doorway thus left unobstructed, it strove desperately to force itself to freedom.

  I shouted until I thought my voice must fail, yet heard no answer. The uproar continued upstairs, with more shots, and trampling feet, and confused cries. When at last I thought I heard an answering yell in response to one of mine, I took heart and continued my efforts to be heard.

  Meanwhile, to my horror, the Rat was succeeding in forcing its body through the aperture, which had at first seemed much too small. Squeezing its body inch by inch past the constricting metal, it bared its teeth at me—my cart lay now between it and the door. With a last effort, it burst free, and crouched to spring upon me.

  A revolver shot rang out, near at hand, and the brute fell dead into the spreading flames. "Watson!" cried a familiar voice. "Thank God!" A face loomed over me, coughing in the smoke, and altered by false bushy eyebrows, but still beyond all doubt the face of Sherlock Holmes.

  Though volunteers from the nearest houses soon came to fight the fire, it had gained too great a start to be controlled before it had destroyed the entire building. The gray light of dawn found me wrapped in a blanket donated by some kindly neighbor, and seated on a stump in the half-wooded grounds of the old asylum while I contemplated the smoldering wreckage.

  With the exception of some trifling burns, I was uninjured. So were Holmes and Lestrade, who had searched the building for me at considerable danger to themselves, after besting Seward's two remaining henchmen in a deadly struggle on the floor above. My friends had then carried me out of the building, cart and all, to a spot far enough removed from the blaze for Holmes to take the time to pick the locks that shackled me.

  Nor had any of
the Harker family, Seward's guests, been hurt. All of them were dressed as if they had been hastily aroused, and were the picture of innocence and shock—Mrs. Harker, the young woman I had already seen and heard; her husband Jonathan, a rather pudgy man of about forty, prematurely white-haired; and their two small children with a young governess. Mrs. Harker, so she said, had chanced to be awake, and had smelled smoke, thus giving her entire family a chance to get safely to the open air. In the presence of the folk from neighboring villas and houses, she said not a word—nor did Holmes or Lestrade—of shots or fighting or indeed anything out of the ordinary beyond the fire itself.

  The blaze was blamed for the extermination of most of the staff of the institution, of which only an innocent cook and stableboy appeared to have survived—and for the death of Dr. Fitzroy, who, it seemed, had been visiting in connection with some animal experiments. In these, it appeared, I also had been taking part, and I was the sole survivor of those who had done so. Lestrade, who of course had at least some idea of the true state of affairs, hastened to assure other police arriving on the scene that I would give a statement in due time, but was in no condition to be questioned just at present. Right after the police came Lord Godalming, in his own carriage, to exchange shocked words with his old friends the Harkers, and then with Holmes and Lestrade.

  Then he came, shaking his head, to where I sat upon my stump. "Dr. Watson," he muttered, "very fortunate that you could get out alive. They tell me there were five dead in all, including poor Jack."

  "Six," corrected Lestrade. "We found one chap just over there at the edge of the trees. He was running for help, I should guess, and in his panic evidently fell and broke his neck… a bad business, very bad."

  I shivered slightly, thinking the broken neck not at all likely to have been an accident. But for the time being I said nothing.

  "Very bad," His Lordship agreed, distractedly. "Watson, I suppose you have met the Harkers?"

  I was thereupon introduced properly to the husband; the wife smiled gallantly and said: "Dr. Watson and I did meet last night, though we scarcely had a chance to speak to each other—the men were so busy with their work. I did mean to come back, Doctor." These words she spoke very earnestly. "But I was delayed."

  "I do appreciate the thought," I murmured. My eye at this moment chanced to fall upon the Harker children; they were a boy and a girl, and as I now saw, undoubtedly twins. When the girl looked at me I thought I saw in her face something wild and savage—a passing shade that I never should have recognized before I had met the Count. It may have been my imagination, for the strange look was gone in a moment, leaving only a child who regarded me thoughtfully.

  At this point we were distracted by another arrival, that of Peter Moore and Sarah Tarlton, who held hands as they dismounted from a hansom and approached us. Word of the fire had reached them through the police, as I discovered later. I saw Miss Tarlton pale at the sickening smell of death-by-fire that hovered over the still-smoldering ruins. Holmes broke off a whispered conversation with Lestrade to greet them.

  "I must report that my investigations have had an unhappy conclusion as regards the object of your search," my friend informed her. "There is no longer any doubt that John Scott perished in the South Seas."

  His words were painful to the girl, but it was obvious that she no longer found them in the least surprising. She raised her chin. "And was his death a natural one?"

  "I fear that it was not. But you have my solemn word, for whatever comfort it may provide, that those responsible have already paid the full penalty for their crime."

  A few minutes later Holmes and I were on our way back to Baker Street. It was, as I well remember, June 22, the day of Her Majesty's Jubilee procession. Somewhere musicians had risen early to begin their final practice, and from the distance, strains of martial music drifted to our ears. Though traffic was already snarled in places, the whole metropolis was in a festive mood, for which its people had even better reason than they knew.

  We had continued our progress for some distance into the increasingly busy streets before I broke a silence by remarking:

  "He is not dead, you know."

  "He?"

  "Holmes… do not play games." My friend gave the ghost of a chuckle. "I do not doubt for a moment that the Count still lives. When he and I came to our agreement, it was not part of the plan that he should die."

  "Only that you should switch identities for a time. Well, the plan succeeded, though I never should have trusted him." Then I bit my lip, recalling whom I had chosen to trust.

  "Whatever else he may be, Watson, Count Dracula is a man of honor—a rarity in this day and age, and perhaps in any. We had a strong common ground in our enemies; once I had made sure of that, I knew the gamble was worthwhile. Dracula, his eyebrows and hair trimmed and darkened, and with a few other touches from my make-up box, remained in our apartment wearing my clothing, to let himself be kidnapped and taken to the enemy headquarters, where the men he yearned to destroy were most likely to come within his grasp." I shuddered. "I shall lose no sleep over their fate, Watson, whatever it may have been. But I confess that I never expected you to be taken with him, and I had a bad moment or two when I learned of your abduction. The Count was willing to gamble that the means of kidnapping would do him no serious harm; it was a much longer chance that you took so unknowingly. I was much relieved when Mrs. Harker's guarded telephone message came to me, through the police, telling me that you were at least still alive."

  "Ah. But how did you know that our chief enemy was Seward? And that when he came to our rooms it would be to kidnap you rather than to kill you outright?"

  "My dear Watson, the next time you attempt to drug one of your patients with curried chicken, it would be well to choose a subject not yet out of his first childhood, or else far gone into his second."

  "Holmes, I—"

  He waved me to silence. "I was not certain whether this move was your own idea, or—you have never done anything of the kind before—whether it might have been suggested by some seeming friend with an ulterior motive. I pretended to sleep late, but was nevertheless up in good time to eavesdrop on your entire conversation in our rooms with Dr. Seward and Lord Godalming. This gave me no reason to suspect the latter, but it strongly aroused my suspicions against Seward. When I came out into the sitting-room later, I took the liberty of stumbling against you in my bemused state, and emptied your pocket—I know in which one you always carry pills—of Seward's gift. A little chemical analysis, and I was certain of my foe, though I still had not a shred of evidence against him save for the pill itself. The drug was an East Indian one, unlikely to be fatal but producing a violent temporary madness. Sir Jasper Meek confirmed my findings. You were meant to give it to me, then call in Seward for more help. He would thus be enabled to interrogate me at his leisure in his stronghold at Purfleet. Now I knew he did not intend to kill me outright. I replaced the pill with a harmless substitute, put the box back into your pocket…"

  "Holmes, I must apologize."

  "It is not at all necessary. If your plan unintentionally endangered my life, so did mine accidentally place yours in peril."

  "How did you work out your plan with Dracula?"

  "Well, he and I pushed his great box up onto the roof, out of sight, so he might appear to have taken it away. We disarranged the sitting-room to suggest struggle or flight. Then, while I was busy with our disguises, the Count had time to tell me where the enemy had formerly kept their headquarters. Leaving him dressed in some of my clothing, I went out through our old second exit, that served us so well, as you must recall, in the recovery of the Mazarin Stone. I was thus free to take effective action in the field, against an enemy who thought me safely out of his way.

  "Once I had found the abandoned building described to me by the Count, and entered it, inspection soon convinced me that the abandonment could be no more than temporary. In particular, I had been intrigued by Dracula's mention of rats that he heard there on
his second visit. Now, men experimenting with transmission of plague by means of rats would hardly have allowed their laboratories to be so casually infested.

  "I searched, and on a lower level, which the Count had not bothered to look at, I found hundreds of brown and black rats caged. Food and water had been provided for them, yet there was evidence of sickness, and I did not go too close. I hastened instead to enlist the help of Sir Jasper, and the faithful Lestrade. I am happy to report that the cages and their contents were drenched in carbolic and incinerated, shortly after being inspected for the last time by one of their owners, the late Dr. Fitzroy. Lestrade and I followed him back to Purfleet, while he thought himself secure."

  For a while we both were silent, as our cab labored forward in the morning traffic. Then stubbornly I came back to my subject.

  "I admit, Holmes, that I may owe the Count my life. But I think he would as cheerfully have killed me, had I stood in his way. Holmes, the man is still at large, and he—he is a vampire."

  "Ha! You saw enough, did you, to convince yourself of that? Perhaps someday I shall ask to hear all the details." Holmes folded his arms and sat back, softly whistling something from a French opera. His manner was, it seemed to me, very strangely altered from that of recent days; he could now speak lightly, almost frivolously, of this being whose mere existence had seemed likely to drive him mad.

  I began another protest, which he interrupted. "So, Watson, you are now convinced. Would you like to try to convince Lestrade? Besides, with what real wrongdoing can we charge the Count? In conscience, Watson. I do not speak strictly of the law."

  I could not immediately find an answer that adequately expressed my deep forebodings, and in a moment Holmes went on. "It has long been my practice, as you know, to bend the law for special cases. If I could do so for Von Herder, how much more for the man who has, more than anyone else, saved London? In fact, I should like to reassure the Count that, insofar as the matter rests with me, he and his kind will be subjected to no probing and no publicity."