Séance for a Vampire, Fred Saberhagen [win 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

to confer with me again, preferring not to try to discuss the subject on the telephone. Rebecca Altamont, concerned about this mood of desperation on the part of the man who was to have been her brother-in-law, had insisted on coming with him. Her first look at me was a silent plea for help, and I endeavored to convey a silent reassurance.

Armstrong, stumbling and stuttering in his weariness, and now distraught by his renewed fears for Louisa, still had not slept. Somehow, between conversing with his companion and attempting to compose an article on last night’s events for his American newspaper, he had kept himself from nodding off on the train.

“Even my friends in Fleet Street, Watson–for example, a London editor I know–even he cannot seem to understand. He now complains that I’phoned him an unsupported story. I can tell he doesn’t really believe me about Lou being still alive. All anyone will tell me now is that I ought to rest. but how can I rest, Watson? How–?”

“At least you can sit down,” I advised him gently. “You ought to save as much of your strength as possible for when it will be needed.”

“Yes, that’s true–true enough. Let me rest, then–for a few minutes only.” Moving with the uncertainty of an old man, he lowered himself to the sofa. “Any word as yet from Mr. Holmes?”

Patiently I repeated that there was none. Meanwhile Armstrong, having allowed himself to sit down, was almost at once reclining at full length on the sofa, as though he had been drawn into a horizontal position by some irresistible force of gravity, though scarcely conscious of its operation. Only moments later he was sound asleep.

Bending quietly over my visitor–who now, by default, seemed to have become my patient–I loosened his collar, took his pulse, and concluded a brief examination. None of this disturbed the young man in the least. Obviously he had succumbed to total exhaustion, both mental and physical.

“Let him sleep,” his fair companion pleaded in a whisper.

I straightened, nodding. “Of course. but there is no need to whisper. It would not be easy to rouse him now if we made a deliberate effort to do so.” Then, fixing the young lady with my professional gaze, I added that she looked very tired herself.

Miss Altamont, sunk wearily in an armchair, dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand. “Dr. Watson, what has really happened to my sister? Do you know?”

“I was hoping that you would be able to give me some information on the subject,” I hedged.

“I cannot,” Rebecca responded sadly. Then she cast on the recumbent form of young Armstrong a glance in which pity and some stronger emotion were perhaps mingled. She shook her head. “He is certain that it was Louisa who came to us in the library last night, but I am not sure even of that. While we were on the train coming here, he... he looked so pitiful that I pretended to fall in with his ideas.”

Clearing my throat, I made an effort–perhaps a rather clumsy one–to turn the conversation another way. “I wonder, Miss Altamont, whether your parents did not raise a strong objection to your coming to London in this way?”

Her gaze came back, as if from a great distance, to settle wonderingly on me. “Why should they do that, Dr. Watson?”

“I meant–that you should travel such a distance accompanied only by a young man who is really not a close relative.”

I believe it took her a moment to understand. Then she dismissed any such Victorian misgivings with another wave of her hand–I got the impression that Rebecca Altamont had had a great deal of practice in this gesture. As for any moral concerns that I, or her parents, might have regarding her traveling about unchaperoned, she gave me to understand that we were now living in the twentieth century and there was no need any longer to worry about such things.

I think it was in that moment that I for the first time truly began to see myself as old.

Meanwhile my young visitor had promptly returned to the subject from which I had sought to distract her. “I don’t know, Dr. Watson, if that was really my sister who came into our house last night or not. It was certainly no ghost or spirit, as our parents believe. but if it was Louisa–then I tell you that something dreadful has happened to her. She has been terribly changed.”

Some relevant response on my part appeared to be called for. “Changed? In what way?”

“I don’t know! That’s part of the terror of it.” In another moment the girl had broken down in tears. I thought that she herself could not be far from collapse.

Then she appeared to rally, and stated firmly: “Nothing has made any sense, really, since the day Louisa drowned.” Her eyes sought mine, as if anticipating and challenging my reaction to what she was about to say. Then, drawing a deep breath, she added: “Since the day I saw those pale hands reach up out of the water to overturn the rowboat.”

Nine

The walls of our sitting room at 221b baker Street have been privileged to hear many a strange tale; but perhaps none quite the equal in its implications of that which was related to me by Miss Rebecca Altamont upon that fateful summer evening. It was then that she revealed for the first time the full story of her experiences on the day when her sister had been so tragically torn from the bosom of her family.

“Until now, Dr. Watson, I have held back certain things–one thing, really–I thought I saw that day. because I doubted my own sanity, and I feared that others would doubt it even more. but now, when some people seriously believe that séances can bring us the truth–and others are convinced that our dear one whom we all thought dead is only hypnotized–oh, I cannot bear it any longer, I must tell