Casually I snapped my collapsible hat back into shape and replaced it on my head. Then I nodded affably to my companion and prepared to engage him in conversation; it was necessary to learn whether my own survival was going to require throwing this unfortunate person from the train, or whether he could be brought around to the belief that he had not really seen what he had seen at all.
"Bon soir, monsieur," I offered, and switched to German when his rather hesitant reply came in an accent that betrayed his greater familiarity with that tongue.
"Good evening," he answered, and had to stare a moment longer before blinking and offering an apology. "Pray forgive my staring. But-but I was lost in thought here, and it seemed to me that-that you arrived here on the platform… as if from nowhere." Hesitant though his words were at first, they soon acquired a tone of firm dominance that was evidently more natural for him.
"Quite understandable," I murmured. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Emile Corday, of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, in Vienna."
He was nonplussed again; once more I had blundered. From behind my glasses I scanned the passing scenery, looking out for a haystack into which I could toss him, thus getting an inconvenient observer out of the way for an essential day or two, if not forever. It was beginning to look as it his departure from the train would be required, but I was loath to take his life.
"The Akademie…?" he muttered. "But I myself… that is, I thought I was fairly well acquainted with all…"
"Ach, of course I have not been active there for some years. I am at present in the employ of a London firm… no, thank you, no cigar, Herr-?"
He reached to grasp my hand by way of self-introduction, and opened his mouth to announce his name, but at that moment we plunged into a short tunnel and his words were lost on me.
After such intensive dousing in engine smoke as the tunnel had afforded us we moved by common consent to re-enter the interior of the train. It was of course the smoking car we entered; I froze momentarily, anticipating immediate and desperate action, when I recognized two of the-exclusively male, of course-inhabitants as Arthur and Quincey, who seemed to have just seated themselves and lit cigars.
I contrived to sit with my back to them as my new companion and I took seats not far away; he had his own cigar new-lighted and was likely to wish to remain in this car for some minutes. Nor did I wish to leave him until I was sure how much he had seen, or thought he had seen, of my inhuman acrobatics.
The voices of Quincey and Arthur were pitched too low for ordinary ears in my position to have picked them up, but I had little difficulty.
"In Texas we call a who-er a who-er," Quincey was whispering with some vehemence. "You sure that li'l red-haired piece is one, whyn't we up and put the question to her? Ask her if she's got a girl friend aboard, too. Things'd be more comfortable that way."
"It isn't always done that directly and bluntly, old fellow, as you never seem to learn. This is not Africa, after all, nor the South Seas."
"That's what you said in London, too. And matters there worked out pretty well, the way I handled it. Right?"
"The woman there was absolutely terrified, dear chap, after you claimed to see a bat, and fired your Colt out the window for target practice…"
"My practice is at present rather limited," my new friend was saying, closer to my ears. He seemed in a way attracted to me, as one unusual person is sometimes drawn to another even when neither knows the exact quality of the other's strangeness. "I have devoted so much energy lately to these researches on the effects of cocaine, and on the energies of the mental process as they may affect the physical health."
This last caught my attention with a jolt. "Most interesting, Doctor," I said with feeling. I had surmised his title by now if I was still ignorant of his name.
My companion had fallen silent, pondering something, letting his cigar go gray.
"Shouldn'ta had that las' brandy if this's to be my night to howl, but t' hell with it. Now I'm gonna mount that red-haired catamount or know th' reason why… Art, you are sure she's a who-er?"
"Quite, quite. One can learn from listening to the servants, you know, even as they learn from us. One must conduct negotiations through them, I'll wager, for the favors of this auburn-haired charmer and any companion she may have aboard…"
"And did you say you had a practice now in London, Dr. Corday?"
"Ah, not precisely, Doctor, no. Rather I am a consultant there on various physiological and medical matters… for several firms…"
My processes of invention, never very strong, were flagging rapidly. I did, however, by speaking slowly and with thoughtful pauses, manage to stall my interlocutor until Quincey and Arthur had got up again and left the car, evidently to begin negotiations. I thought Arthur trailed rather reluctantly behind his friend; Lucy had been in her grave for only three weeks, and dead for only two. Perhaps I was naive, but it came as something of a surprise to me to learn that ladies of the evening regularly rode the wagons-lits in luxury across the Continent. But why not? Money and boredom both abounded on the Orient Express, and I believe there is something intrinsically exciting in the quick motion of a train.
When my new friend and I did leave the smoking car I arranged matters so that he preceded me through the train, opening doors as we came to them; thus I was given an invitation into each sleeping car that I had not yet visited. At this early hour of the night the ladies' car was of course still passable by gentlemen. Inside it, only glass panels and a frame of wood separated the compartments from the more or less public aisle; but damask curtains covered most of the glass, and I still did not know in which compartment Mina was going to lodge.
"Ah, it is an extravagance, this train," my unwitting benefactor murmured after we had passed on into a gentleman's car and were pausing before the door of a cabin that was evidently his own. "For myself, that is. But I wanted to be alone, and in peace for a time, to think… there is so little time for thought."
"I have noticed that in my own affairs," I rejoined sympathetically. "Well, I trust I have not unduly distracted you from your thoughts, Doctor. Your research sounds immensely interesting and I look forward to hearing more of it in the near future."
"You are going to Vienna?" he asked.
"A much greater distance. Business will eventually take me as far as the Black Sea."
"Well, we shall certainly have time to talk tomorrow… at breakfast, perhaps?"
"Why not?" I would always be able to plead some minor indisposition while at table; and if it became necessary I could even swallow some bland food, to be regurgitated later.
"As for interrupting my research, distracting me, Dr. Corday, do not give it another thought. No, you have given me…" He broke off with a little laugh. "Food for thought," seemed to be the unstated conclusion of his sentence. "Do you know, when first I saw you on the platform there tonight, I fancied you had…" But at that point he had to break off again, with a little smile followed at once by a very serious look of introspection. What he thought he had seen out there was too ridiculous for casual, social discussion.
I answered his smile. "I look forward to hearing of it in the morning." And I bade him goodnight and went on to my own room.
Once in, I locked my door and of course went out again through the closed windows. Hat folded into my pocket against the blast, I worked my way aft again toward the women's quarters. Intelligent, practical Mina had contrived to open her window curtains enough for a cinder-scorched wayfarer hanging from the train roof to see inside, where she and Jonathan now sat primly tete-a-tete.
Primly is perhaps not the right word, for as he sat there he was whetting his huge, murderous new knife, the weapon with which he hoped to send me to eternal punishment. It was a type of knife called Kukri, as I recall, favored in those days and earlier by the Gurkhas of Nepal, and acquired by Quincey or Arthur in their travels. As I stared at this evidence of how stubbornly my enemies still relied on metal to accomplish my demise, my plan for their deception began
to take its final form.
Shortly Jonathan rose and, with a few words to his wife, which I could not hear, thrust the keen blade into a scabbard underneath his coat, bade her a chaste goodnight, and left. As soon as he was gone and the door of the compartment locked Mina came over to the window. Her face was wan but the sight of my own visage, inverted just outside the glass, brought some animation to her countenance, and she remembered to beckon an invitation to insure my ability to enter. A moment later and we were in each other's arms.
Mina reported that, as far as she could tell, the men were still all firmly convinced that I lay as inert cargo aboard Czarina Catherine. She had been doing what she could to reinforce this opinion, with her changeless reports of watery noises and darkness, at her regular morning hypnotic sessions with Van Helsing when she pretended to be entranced after he had made a few mesmeric gestures.
"It will take us at least three full days to reach Varna, where they plan to intercept the box," she told me. "Vlad, are you sure that your presence aboard the train can be kept secret from them until then? When and where will you rest?"
"I am getting off at Bucharest," I explained. "And I have made provision, too, for resting whilst on board." And with scarcely a qualm I told her of the great leather trunk that rode in the baggage car, half filled with good Transylvania earth. I felt scarcely a qualm, as I say, in telling her. Not for centuries had I trusted any breathing soul with knowledge so vital to my survival. To lose my trunk or be deprived of using it would place me in a desperate strait-though admittedly not quite so desperate as if I had been wrecked in the North Sea on my way to England. The Express was hurtling eastward, hour after hour; and from near the Franco-German border it might have been possible for bat, wolf, and man, traveling sequentially, to regain the homeland before being destroyed by exhaustion and the sun.
When Mina and I had pleased each other as best we could that first night in the swaying train we lay companionably together side by side upon the narrow bed; I with my acute hearing found some amusement in parts of a conversation that penetrated train noises and thin partitions to reach my ears from a neighboring compartment. The persons talking were a young lady, who I suspect had auburn hair, and a young man who by daylight probably wore blue silk and white stockings in the dining car, and by night evidently served in a more enterprising and lucrative capacity as the lady's business agent.
"What is it makes you smile so, Vlad dear? I confess that my own heart is heavy, whilst your life and Jonathan's remain both in grave danger."
"I am pleased that Arthur and Quincey have plans for less destructive work tonight."
"Really? What do you mean?"
Mina was quite interested as I explained. Perhaps because of the nature of our special relationship, she discussed openly with me matters she would have been reluctant to mention to her husband.
"At least it must distract them from their cruel thoughts of harming you," she murmured. Then shortly I said it was past time for me to go, if I was to manage to dine on beef blood and to get some rest before the dawn.
"Now do be careful," she warned, "especially going atop the moving train."
I kissed her hand. "I shall take care. But really, I am no more likely to fall from the train top than you would be to topple over when crossing a level and unmoving floor. And for your sake too it is time I left; for you must rest. The good professor will no doubt come round for his usual report before dawn, or have you brought to him to deliver it."
"And what am I to tell him in the morning?"
"Let it be the same report as before-wind and waves, and the darkness of the hold."
The kitchen or galley portion of the voiture-restaurant was not deserted even at that hour. Bakers and scrubbers worked industriously so that the passengers should dine and sup in serenity and plenty on the morrow. But after biding my time at a window I entered in mist-form and abstracted some beef and lambs' blood-congealed, but better than nothing-from carcasses kept in a massive icebox toward the rear. Then, hunger appeased and ruddy cheeks preserved for a few hours more, I sought the privacy of my great cowhide trunk.
Getting into the unpeopled baggage car presented no problem at all. Alas, what with my unusual fatigue, and what would now be called jet-lag, or weariness compounded by changing time zones, getting out again did become a problem. The fact is that I overslept, and woke past dawn, to find with some concern that I could not change my shape to get out of the box.
I managed to force open the trunk's lock from inside, and then, exerting all the considerable strength of my fingers, tried to close it again once I had got out, so that it should appear to be normally locked. Some of the train crew came blundering into the car whilst I was thus employed. I tried to take shelter behind some piles of luggage; but the cunning of centuries, if I could in fact lay claim to such, was set at naught by the mere limited geography of the confined space; and in fact I was soon accidentally discovered.
There began at once an excited argument. Conductor, porters, trainmen of all description seemed to appear from nowhere to press inquiries upon me, in a dozen languages, as to who I was and what I was doing in this place unthinkable for a passenger to enter. I kept calmly insisting that I had merely entered by mistake, that the door after all had been unlocked, and that they had better take care to lock their doors if they wished to preserve these regions sacrosanct.
I might have browbeaten my way free at once, had not the sharp eye of one of my interrogators happened to fall upon the bright metal of my own trunk's mangled lock. A string of multilingual expletives, and we were off again. This fine trunk, the man insisted, had not been so vandalized on his retirement from the car on the preceding evening-I had done it, I was a thief and worse.
This outcry I could only stem by claiming the trunk as my own; naturally I could produce a document or two identifying myself as the Corday whose property the trunk was labeled as. Before these arguments of mine could have any conclusive effect, however, the conductor had taken it upon himself to fling open the leathern lid, with a dramatic gesture that seemed to hope for a dismembered body, at least, to come to view within. All stared nonplussed at my mere load of earth.
"And how is this explainable, monsieur?"
"If you are referring to your rudeness, my good man, you must know the answer better than I."
"I refer, sir, to the conditions of this trunk and of its contents." He peered in once more, eyes lighting up. Might there be, after all, a corpse or two beneath the mold?
"It is my trunk, monsieur conductor, and its conditions my affair."
We adjourned shortly to the next car, where the conductor had his command post, as it were, commanding a view of the car's corridor and the doors of the passenger's compartments. Above his desk hung a small mirror that, had I not been immune to fear, might well have given me a moment or two of apprehension. A little stove at the conductor's feet as he sat there enthroned gave off a grateful warmth against the autumnal dawn.
If he had sought to keep me standing there as a supplicant he was mistaken. Monarch though he might be in his small, wheeled domain, my own rulership was vaster and more practiced, and I more skilled even than he in the tones and gestures that best serve to overawe. Without seeming to exert great physical force I still moved resistlessly through his entourage of lesser train-men and walked deliberately to my cabin. One or two of them followed at a little distance-the affair of the trunk was not yet really over, and what was I to do for a resting place now?-but for the time being no further effort was made to detain me or force questioning.
I had barely got into my room and started to relax when a light tap came at the door.
"Who is it?"
"Dr. Floyd," I thought the answer came, which sounded like an English name, and seemed to be spoken in that tongue; but it was undoubtedly the voice of my German-speaking acquaintance of the night before.
Much to my surprise on opening the door, I beheld Mina standing there at the Viennese doctor's side. When we
two men had exchanged greetings, the doctor, speaking English in deference to Mina, introduced me to her.
"In the course of a certain professional matter I met Mrs. Harker rather early this morning, and she has graciously consented to breakfast with us; when I mentioned, Dr. Corday, that you too were from London, she was most interested to meet you."
"I am flattered, Madam Harker." And I managed to slip her the slightest wink as I bowed to kiss her hand.
The "professional matter," as Mina informed me later, had been a result of a disagreement in one of the gentlemen's cabins during the night. Colt revolvers and bowie knives were brandished but fortunately not much used. There was evidence, in the form of certain articles of clothing, that at least one young woman had been on the premises. Dr. Floyd-as I then understood his name-had treated Quincey Morris for scalp lacerations and a certain young waiter for moderately serious but not disabling head wounds and facial contusions.
All right, why should I now be coy and indirect? What with Arthur changing his mind at the eleventh hour about his need for female company-he had begun tearfully and drunkenly lamenting Lucy-and Quincey too actively disputing the bill for services rendered, an altercation had arisen, and bandages as well as banknotes were required to smooth things over.
Harker had heard the commotion and burst out from his compartment adjoining, glaring madly and waving a huge knife; luckily he calmed quickly on discovering the true nature of the problem. Seward and Van Helsing had already gone in search of Mina to hypnotize her for the morning communique, and Jonathan told the conductor he had better cast about for some other physician to tend the wounded. As luck would have it, my friend of the smoking car was domiciled nearby, and came to volunteer his services. His accent, and perhaps something in his physiognomy, caused dear Jonathan to drop some half-audible remark about a "sheep-headed Jew" when Quincey groaned with the discomfort of getting a stitch or two in his thick scalp. Mina, finished early with her seance, had already come on the scene; authentically gracious as always, she left the men to argue and nurse their wounds, and came to breakfast with the good Samaritan as a token of reparations. She was delighted to have me as an unexpected bonus; her husband seemed glad to get her away from the scene of sordid combat for any reason.
The Dracula Tape Page 19
