The Holmes-Dracula File, Fred Saberhagen [pride and prejudice read .TXT] 📗

side away from me. There must have been low growling in my throat, as I stepped from that false coffin. My long-nailed fingers must have worked, as if the man named Matthews and the still-nameless doctor were before me.

   Where was my trunkful of good Transylvanian earth? It must long since have been unloaded from the ship, whose gangplank I had descended to the London dock... great heaven, how many unresting days ago? I had voyaged to England again, of course, because of...

    “Mina!” I groaned aloud, casting the name of my beloved violently into that foul air. It was with relief sharp enough to be a shock that I realized in the next moment that my dear Mina must be quite safe, long miles away in Exeter. Her absence left me unencumbered for the war to come.

   Oh, it was going to be a war, indeed! I knew not how many were against me, opponents clever, mysterious, and powerful. But the odds would not be all upon my enemies’ side, although I fought alone. They were but breathing men, and I was vampire, immune to metal, knife or bullet; with the strength of twenty always in my sinews; capable during the hours of night of changing my form to that of an animal, or of a mist impalpable, and changing back again to man.

   And no one in the world of 1897 had more experience of war than I—Count Dracula.

CHAPTER SIX

   As we rode from the docks back to our lodgings, Holmes maintained an irritable near-silence. Twice he began remarks upon extraneous subjects, but in each instance let his sentence die incomplete, and in such indifferent fashion that no reply seemed called for. This was so at variance with his customary manner of speech, and with his usual ability to divert his thoughts at will from professional matters, that it confirmed my impression of his having been profoundly disturbed by the riverfront murder.

   “Holmes,” I offered, with the idea of diverting him, “have you given any consideration to watching Her Majesty’s Jubilee procession? There are people asking outrageous prices for the mere privilege of sitting an hour or two in a window of a room along the route. With half a dozen strangers as company, I suppose.”

   “Bah, I have no time,” Holmes muttered. His tone was scarcely civil, and he continued to stare from the window of the cab as if hidden among the passers-by there were some arch-enemy who had just managed to escape him.

   As we alighted from the cab in Baker Street, a ragged urchin darted toward Holmes from a nearby doorway, where he had evidently been in wait.

   “Got yer message, sir,” this small and rather unsavory person reported, giving his hatless forelock a touch that bore some resemblance to a military salute. “I been to the Northumberland, and neither the boots nor the maids remembers any particular gentleman wot would answer the description, sir.”

   “Well done, Murray.” Holmes dropped coins into the grimy hand that shot out to accept them. “And what news of the dogs and rats?”

“Market in stray dogs is quite steady, sir. In rats-to tell the truth, I ain’t been able to find out. None of me chums with connections along that line has been where I could discover ’em. I’ll be going right off to ’ave another look.”

   Holmes dismissed the lad with a nod. When we had ascended to our rooms, I ventured to inquire whether the state of the market in dogs or rats might have any bearing upon any of his cases with which I was acquainted.

   Stuffing his pipe with dark shag, Holmes only grunted in reply, and passed over to me without comment a visitor’s card that had been left while we were out. The name it bore was that of Peter Moore, the American manufacturer of medical and scientific goods. The back bore a short written message:

Will call again in an hour or so. Am very anxious that everything possible be done to find John Scott.

   After passing me the card, Holmes stood for a little while brooding out upon the warm spring afternoon beneath our window. Down in the street, children shouted in merriment over some game; a bird gave voice, and the sun shone warmly. The horror of the docks seemed to belong to another world, and shortly my friend managed to shake off the black mood that had threatened to engulf him, and turned to me with a small smile.

   “My apologies, Watson. Your question is of course a fair one, and I only wish that I were certain of the answer. My thought is that the equipment belonging to Dr. John Scott can be of real use only to a medical experimenter. And, as we have seen, it is not logical that the items were stolen, with considerable risk, effort, and expense, in order to be sold. Then does it not follow that they were taken simply to be used?”

   The murder had rather driven thoughts of Miss Sarah Tarlton’s problem from my mind. “But by whom, Holmes? Surely none of the regular laboratories would stoop...”

   “Of course they would not. But someone has. And if we can find out where these unknown experimenters are obtaining their subjects, we might be close to learning their identity and the nature of their work. So this morning I carried out a quick survey of all the legal, respectable suppliers of experimental animals in London, and convinced myself that none of them has lately enjoyed a marked increase in business.

   “What, then, of the illegal or informal sources? To test them I dispatched young Murray, and several of his associates in this year’s active corps of the Irregulars; with the results that have just given you cause to wonder.”

   Holmes knocked out his pipe into the fireplace, and reached for his violin. But before beginning to play, he faced me with a distant, abstracted look. “Has it