“His feats are certainly incredible.”
“No ordinary human being could match them;” Holmes sounded now like a professor encouraging a student, and he was still watching me intently.
Not knowing what I was expected to say, I went on: “He is a madman, certainly, and in his paroxysms must be immensely ferocious and strong. But we have known that from the first.”
Holmes said evenly: “I think he is not a madman. It is my belief that this man is a vampire.”
For a time there was no sound in our cab but that of its creaking motion, and the steady beat of the horse’s hooves. A kind of mist had come before my eyes, and I could find no words with which to reply.
My friend’s voice now seemed to reach my ears from a great distance. “Watson, I know it is a hard thing when the mental habits of a lifetime must be discarded. Had I not—had I not some private sources of information, I might well be as reluctant as you are to face the truth. But I shall need your help when I stand face to face with this vampire, and nothing less than the truth will serve to prepare you for the confrontation.”
What was I to do? In my despair I realized that to suggest to Holmes that he was not himself, that overwork had at last taken its toll upon his mind, would be worse than useless. The least harmful result I could imagine was that he would no longer communicate his true thoughts to me at all—and that, I felt, would prevent my helping him in any way toward recovery.
Meanwhile Holmes’ voice pursued me, and in it I now heard the dreadful certainty of madness. “Think, Watson: the man survived not only infection with the plague, but drowning, and after that a gunshot through the body. Think of the horrible strength and ferocity that tore out the woman’s throat and took her blood, then pulled apart those iron locks and heavy timbers at the hostel. No doubt we shall see fresh evidence of the same powers at the end of this little ride.”
“I must think about it, Holmes. You must give me time to grasp it.”
“Of course.” I could hear a certain weary relief in my friend’s voice. He thought that I was almost ready, or at least on the way to being ready, to grant that he was right. I had deceived my friend. My heart sank further, if that were possible.
“And now,” he added, “here we are.”
It was a vile neighborhood in which our cab had stopped. Here, as at the docks, I glimpsed the little mob of curious onlookers kept at a distance by police; here again, there stood a uniformed officer on guard, this time at a dark doorway, into which he passed us with a nod.
Having groped our way down into the damp and dimness of a wretched cellar apartment, we found Tobias Gregson, his electric torch in hand, evidently making an inch-by-inch search of the floor for clues. At our arrival he scrambled to his feet and offered greetings, his face a study in mixed emotions.
Holmes now seemed almost buoyant. “Have you any word yet, Gregson, on the identity of your supposed maniac?”
“No sir, we have not. It’s my own thinking now that he’s not escaped from anyone’s custody, but has just freshly gone off his nut.”
“Well, this latest modification of the official theory has the attractive quality of some freshness, at any rate. Now let us inspect the evidence.”
A second electric torch was resting on a small, shaky table; Holmes picked it up and tried it. “Switched on, you see, Watson, but the batteries are dead. Gregson, if I might borrow yours for a moment? Thank you. And so, here is the killer’s latest victim.”
Against the far wall of the cellar lay the body of a man dressed in cheap clothing. Though he was young and powerfully built, in death his brutal features had acquired a curiously aged, exhausted look. In the middle of the forehead a great depressed fracture was plainly visible, beneath a discoloration of the skin.
Holmes ignored this for the moment and examined the throat particularly. “No sign of a wound here. Do you think, Watson, this man has been exsanguinated?”
“I think not.”
“Gregson, what did the medical examiner say?”
“Sir?”
“The question is, has this body been drained of blood?”
Gregson blinked. “No sir, nothing was said along that line.”
Beside the man’s body lay an evil-looking clasp-knife, open. This Holmes now picked up, and on the tip of its blade he declared a tiny bloodstain to be visible.
Gregson commented: “That’ll support the girl’s story, Mr. Holmes. I mean that this beauty here was threatening her.”
“I am very anxious to speak with her; but still I felt it necessary to look in here first. Right wrist broken, wouldn’t you say, Watson?” Holmes was offering me the dead man’s arm to feel, as impersonally as if it had been a chicken wing.
Taking the lifeless, heavily-muscled limb into my grasp, I found I could make the bone-ends grate against each other beneath the skin. “Yes. Also, there seems to be no doubt about the cause of death.” I pointed to the ruined forehead.
“And very little doubt, that it was done with this.” Holmes picked up a fist-sized stone also lying nearby. “A good match with those in the walls. And observe the bits of mortar still adhering to it.” He shone the torch about into the room’s dim corners. “The electric light may prove to be one of the most practical aids to the criminal investigator since the invention of the microscope... But where did this piece come from?”
Holmes had to go out into the stairwell with the light before his search was successful. “Here, at about shoulder level. And the stone was dug out very roughly; with the fingers, it would appear.”
The face of Gregson, looking over Holmes’ shoulder, took on an injured expression. “No need to pull our legs, sir. Walls here may not be solid as a cathedral, but to remove that piece still took a bit o’ work with steel tools, I fancy.”
Holmes fitted the stone into the hole, where it matched fairly neatly. Some mortar was missing, which could be seen in the form of dust and scattered small pieces at our feet. With a sigh my friend snapped off the torch and returned it to its owner. “No doubt it is as you say, Gregson. Come along then, Watson; I look forward very eagerly to a talk with Miss Sally Craddock.”
In a few minutes we were at the Commercial Street police station, where Holmes was of course well known by the authorities. We were shown at once to the small room in which the girl was being temporarily held. As the door opened, I saw her seated, in conversation with a matron; and although her face was turned partially away, I recognized her at once as the young woman whose great strawberry birthmark I had remarked at Barley’s.
Her appearance as we entered, and the vivacity with which she turned her head to see who we were, showed that she was much recovered from the dazed condition in which Lestrade had reported her to be. Holmes at once stepped forward, saying: “I am delighted to see you looking so well, Miss—”
He was never to complete his sentence. As the gaze of the young woman rested on Holmes’ face, her whole demeanor altered in an instant. Her face paled with a suddenness that made me think she was going to faint. Instead, a scream burst from her lips, a cry that rang with hopelessness as much as terror, and echoes in my memory to this day.
Sally Craddock burst away from us and out of the little room, so swiftly and unexpectedly that neither Holmes nor I could stop her. Through the main room of the police station and the outer foyer we raced after her, as startled faces turned our way, a hue and cry went up, and other men joined in the pursuit.
Holmes was not more than two strides behind the fleet girl as she darted into the busy street, and I was running right on his heels. We both cried out a warning at the sight of the heavy dray-wagon that came rumbling toward us at high speed, but our shouts were in vain. The slender figure sped right into the path of the four powerful horses, and was run down.
The wagon hurtled on, only to overturn with a great crash as its driver tried to round the next corner without slackening speed; but neither Holmes nor I as much as turned our heads in that direction at the moment.
Bending over the crumpled body of the girl, I saw in an instant that her injuries were likely to prove fatal, and turned to call for the police to bring a stretcher. When I turned back, Holmes had knelt beside me and was silently pointing to the girl’s throat. Two tiny puncture-marks stood out there, stark against the white of the girl’s skin.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After escorting Sally to within sight of the police station, I remained watchfully nearby until she had vanished within its protective doors. At that point I considered I had done all that honor could reasonably require of me for her present welfare, and considered myself free to turn all my thoughts and energies toward avenging us both and assuring as best I could her future safety.
According to Sally’s information the building in which I had been held a prisoner was not far away, and I rose on batwings to seek it out before the dawn. I found the structure just as she had described it, an old, faceless, nameless edifice of brick a few yards from the river. I flew around it once, discovering a disappointing aura of desertion, All the doors were tight shut in those voiceless walls, the windows closely shuttered or boarded over.
Landing upon a windowsill, I melted into mist, in which form I could have passed through a crack much thinner than those offered by the warped boards before me. If the place had ever been a proper dwelling it was so no longer, and the lack of an invitation did not prevent my passage through one dark, empty room after another. I could hear the scurrying of a few ordinary rats; nothing else now breathed within those walls. The enemy, for whatever reason, had moved on. I had not the slightest doubt that I had come to the right place, for they had left behind them a considerable litter of scientific and medical equipment, including at least one of the strange carts unpleasantly familiar to me from my days of captivity.
Others in my place might have found among this debris a wealth of clues, but Matthews had been grossly wrong when he called me a detective. To me, as I stood amid that exotic litter, only one fact was plain: Dr. David Fitzroy was no longer here, and there was no reason to think he might return.
Where next to search for him and for his as yet unidentified co-conspirators? Leaning against the building’s outer wall and pondering this question, I let myself be overtaken by the dawn. Unable to change shape during the hours of daylight, I thus gave up for a day the privilege of seeking out my snug earth in Mile End. But I considered that I had urgent work to do, and a tough old nosferatu such as I could readily endure a day or two of tempered, slanting British sunshine.
Leaving the waterfront, I sought out a used-clothing stall in Whitechapel and bought a presentable hat to replace the cap that I had somewhere lost, thus acquiring both a sunshade and some little foothold on respectability. I then spent the remainder of the morning gradually upgrading my entire wardrobe, here purchasing untattered trousers, there a better second-hand coat, in a third place some shoes without holes. By noon I was still far from the epitome of fashion, but at least felt confident of being able to enter a newspaper office or a library without being summarily thrown out.
The first library I tried offered a medical reference book, listing a Dr. David Fitzroy... indeed, listing more than one. But, even if I knew which one I wanted, what good would his address be to me? This melancholy realization dawned on me as I stood tapping a taloned forefinger on the page. After what had happened at Barley’s, the police must certainly be looking for my foe, and he would not be sitting at home to wait for them, nor for me either. He must be in hiding. But how was I to find out where?
Alas, sane and methodical procedures for doing anything are not really my forte. By mid-afternoon, the only really constructive idea that had come to me was to buy and read the newspapers, in hopes of catching some word, direct or indirect, of my enemies and their machinations. That day’s papers did not reward me, nor did those of the next day, but I persisted.
Thus it came to pass that, about a week after the affair at Barley’s, a lanky, slightly seedy but still respectable Continental gentleman might have been observed, hat shading his eyes against the warm late afternoon sun, seated on a park bench and somewhat pensively perusing the latest edition of the Times. The items successively attracting his interest ran approximately as follows:
PRECAUTION—Avoid impure water from wells and cisterns, the fertile sources of zymotic diseases. The safest and best drinking water for table, bedroom, and tea-making is the “ALPHA BRAND”...
ALGERNON GISSING’S NEW NOVEL
THE SCHOLAR OF BYGATE
(Algernon who? you ask. Well, such is literary fame.)
CAN any LADY RECOMMEND for the end of September, London and country, a really first-class PLAIN COOK? Abstainer, active, and early riser. Age 29 to 35 (not over). Four in family, eight servants. Quiet, very neat appearance. Also at same time a good, strong, clean kitchenmaid, good at vegetables. Age 18-20.
(I could sympathize, having long yearned for a staff of really first-class servants in Castle Dracula. But one cannot have everything.)
SPORTING INTELLIGENCE... (I looked under this heading, but found nothing on rat-killing.)
... a minister from Stuttgart, Herr Traub, spoke in the name of the Evangelical workmen’s syndicates of Wurtemburg and supported the legal eight hours’ day. He denied the assertion that workmen would spend the extra spare time in beer drinking.
... the foreman of a contractor for the Post Office was fined 5 pounds for working horses in an unfit state...
(From an address by Dr. William Osier)... when one considers the remarkable opportunities for study which India has presented... such a field for observation in cholera, leprosy, dysentery, the plague, typhoid fever, malaria... the work of Dr. Hankin and of Professor Haffkine, and the not unmixed evil of the brisk epidemic of plague in Bombay, may rouse the officials to a consciousness of their shortcomings...
(I had not seen a “brisk” epidemic of plague for more than two centuries, and had no wish to see another, though I myself am almost certainly immune.)
TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES—A large quantity of instruments, weighing in all about two tons, have arrived at Dover in connexion with some experiments in telegraphing without wires which are to be made there.
EGYPTIAN-HALL
England’s home of mystery
Startling mysteries by Mr. David Devant
(I thought to myself that if I had time for amusement, I should prefer something more soothing.)
ANGLING—This week the general angling season will open...
TURKEY AND GREECE—The Armistice
The question of the establishment of a pneumatic post in London has been more than once under consideration …
THE FAMINE IN INDIA
Starving subjects of Her Majesty’s Indian Empire …
THE DIAMOND JUBILEE. The state carriage in which the Queen will drive out June 22 will be the same as was used at the Jubilee in 1887...
THE PLATTNER STORY, by H.G. Wells. A book just published ...
(And my attention jumped back to the preceding item. June 22? That was the date mentioned by Fitzroy in my hearing as some kind of deadline. A coincidence? I pondered, but got nowhere.)
PLAN showing the berths of the MEN-OF-WAR and the track for yachts at the Jubilee naval review on June 26...
MAP showing the route of the royal procession on June 22...
(The twenty-second of June draws near, said Fitzroy’s cultured voice, played back in memory. But what could the connection be?)
A GENTLEMAN is willing to LET his TWO WINDOWS for DIAMOND JUBILEE. Accommodation for about 14; use of third room for lunch. Every convenience. Double view of procession, as it passes windows and circles over London bridge. Apply C. Meredith, 78 King William street, City.
(A column was filled with similar advertisements.)
THE KLONDIKE GOLD REEFS EXPLORATION COMPANY, LIMITED APPLICATION FOR SHARES ...
COCKLE’S PILLS ...
THE ADVANCE ON THE NILE...
NESTLE’S MILK ...
Nat
ional Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children ...
CHEAP RETURN TICKETS TO THE EAST
—India, Ceylon, China, Australia, Tasmania—
AT WORSHIP-STREET, POLICE-CONSTABLE FRANKLIN, 4436, appeared to answer a summons charging him with violently assaulting Mary Smith and causing her actual bodily harm. The complainant, a tall, powerfully-built Irishwoman, said that... she was in Mansfield-street, Kingsland-road, going home, and met the policeman, who “shoved” against her, asked her what luck she had had that night, and made overtures to her. When she rejected them...he kicked her...hit her in the left eye and, burst the ball...
HUMPHREYS’ PORTABLE IRON CHURCHES, Chapels, Mission, Club, Reading and School Rooms, Cottages...
BABY HAGAR, 29, a respectably-dressed young woman, said to be an actress, was charged with attempted suicide. Evidence was given by Inspector Chandler of the Thames Police, that on Saturday evening he saw accused struggling in the Thames near Waterloo-bridge. On getting her out of the water she told him, “I have had but one glass of port wine, and I jumped from the bridge because I was tired of life.” Mr. Hall, the Court missionary, informed the magistrate that prisoner told him she had been unfortunate in her employment and had got very low down and despondent. On his advice she promised to apply to the Ladies’ Theatrical Guild ...
The Holmes-Dracula File Page 15
