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

   His eyes, expressing shock that demonstrated, as I thought, some recognition, were locked on mine. He cried out, excitedly but in a voice too low for me to understand, a syllable that I took to be a name. Then he sprang forward and astonished me by collaring and dragging back a second policeman, who was about to fasten on me before I had got quite free of the first. My next kick sent that tenacious officer (from whom the bull-terriers of the pit might have learned something, had they paused to watch) flying above the crowd. This, thanks to my unknown benefactor, ended my direct encounter with the police; however, brief as it was, it had still delayed me long enough for my quarry to get out of the building and out of my sight, slamming the trapdoor shut behind him.

   Climbing, I hurled myself at the closed exit, considering direct violence faster than the change of form that would have let me slide out like smoke through the thinnest crevice. But again, a second or two was lost before the bar that my enemy had set in place outside gave way.

    Bursting out into the open night at last, I saw that the police, however thoroughly they might have covered the building’s first two floors, had been remiss in their planning for the rooftops—or else their men simply had not had time to get into position here before Sal sang out her alarm below. The figure of a lone constable, arms outspread as if to pose for a statue of the guardian law, stood upon a flat neighboring roof some four or five feet distant from Barley’s sloping slates. Some thirty feet from the trapdoor, he blocked the single avenue of escape practicable for breathing men. Some ten feet closer to me, his back to me and facing the officer, the blond young doctor crouched, in the act of drawing a revolver from an inner pocket.

   At this crucial moment I was once more distracted by an outcry in Sally’s voice. This time it was a loud scream, and in such a tone of lost despair that it compelled my immediate allegiance. Behind me as I turned the pistol spoke, the wounded officer cried out, my enemy escaped; but Sal had been tortured for me, and had received my solemn pledge of help, and to my mind my duty was as clear as ever it could be.

   Melting at once to bat-shape, I fluttered from the roof down to the police van inside which the last vibrations of that lost scream were dying out. As I recall, there were three vans drawn up in the street, and one, in all propriety, had been reserved for lady prisoners. Alighting on the driver’s elevated seat, I resumed human form and at once snatched the reins out of his startled hands. Before he could react he had been pushed off to the ground.

   My mental shout was already ringing inside the horses’ brains, and they started as if a lion sprang behind them. For several blocks I drove a zigzag course at breakneck pace, scattering traffic from the streets of Soho. Within the lurching van, fresh screams broke out in a wide range of voices; the ladies’ coach must have been commandeered from some more prosaic police business and pressed directly into service without a stop to discharge cargo. Over the women’s panic I had no control, but I soothed that of the horses, as soon as I was sure we were not being closely pursued, and by degrees reduced their speed, till I could draw them to a halt in a dark mews.

   Dropping down behind the van, I tore the padlocks from its door and stood back just in time to escape trampling by a rush of women. From amid this screeching stream, which dissolved into the night in all directions as soon as it emerged, I plucked out Sal. Then, holding one hand clamped over her mouth, I pulled her away with me at a fast trot.

   We ran one block and turned a corner, walked quickly for another block and turned again, then walked some more. Sally was quiet now, save for her rapid breathing, and willing to go on with me arm-in-arm. When we had reached an utterly lifeless spot against the outer wall of what I suppose was a factory—by all appearances it might have been a prison—I stopped, and listened. Half a mile or so away, what sounded almost like a small riot was in progress. But still there came no sounds of the chase, and where we were, the night was quiet.

   Sal appeared uninjured. “What were they doing to you, girl? Why such a scream?”

   “It—it were bein’ shut up in that little place. It does me that way sometimes, an’ I come all over queer, like I can’t breathe.”

   I sighed, thinking of my lost quarry, lost for no better reason than to relieve this wench from an attack of claustrophobia. But sighs and regrets will gain one neither blood nor honor. I asked: “For what were you arrested, though?”

    Sal’s breathing, a lonely, frightened sound, had now slowed enough to let her talk easily. “I—I sang out when I saw the peelers at the door. Don’t know no other reason.” There was no recognition in her voice as she scowled toward me through the dark. “’Ow’d you manage t’ get me clean away like that?”

   “Do you not know me, Sally?” I asked, turning my head so that the ghost of light from a far-distant lamp fell on my face.

   “I... ” She began, and halted. Remember that she had never seen me on my feet before, or in these ragged garments. Remember especially that a full feeding, such as I had enjoyed upon the previous night, will for a time restore to me something of the