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

her. The very gentleness and sensibility which could not bear to see a sick old man disposed of in the Thames, now began to appear as possible liabilities to that old man’s cause.

   Ah, Sal! If only, before Jem Matthews, there had come into your life some solid London workman, with love that could be blind to your marked face—but of course at seventeen she had had very little time for such a miracle.

   I stood before her and patiently held out my hand, until hers came to take it. She shuddered at the contact now. Her face began to turn away, but stopped because her gaze had locked itself almost unwillingly on mine. There were the two little raw punctures on her throat. They would be extremely slow to heal; but heal they would, if we embraced no more, and with their disappearance all signs and shadows of my vampire presence would vanish from her mind and body.

   Now softly I entreated her. “My dear? Dear Sal?” And when at length I saw enough awareness in her eyes I went on: “We must now consider how best to keep you safe. If any of Matthews’ associates observe you in this state, they are sure to consider you dangerously unreliable. And should they connect you even indirectly with his death—well, you would not be safe at all. I can of course remove his body from your dwelling, but—”

   Terror had been slowly replacing the blankness in her face. “It was you on that bloody cart.” She made it an accusation. “In irons, lookin’ like an old ’un—I seen you there.” Her voice fell to an awed whisper. “I know they drowned you—didn’t they? Or was it smothered? Yer a dead ’un now.”

   I shook her—oh, just a little, very gently—and persisted. “Never mind about all that—about the old man. The question now is, what is to be done with you?” Sal’s gaze had turned toward the still form huddled by the wall. “He was my man—my Jem. You killed ’im... broke ’is neck like a chicken... like a bloody rat...”

   Now this was neither accurate nor apposite, to say nothing of the lack of gratitude it showed. I resumed my shaking of the wench, this time with a little briskness of irritation. Still there was no restorative effect, and I soon let her go.

   I paced around the wretched room, came back. “My own thought, my dear,” I said, “is that you had best be taken straight to the police. They can protect you both day and night, as long as those who work with Matthews are still alive. Are you presently wanted by the police? For anything, I mean, besides giving the alarm at Barley’s?”

   Sal continued to stare at the body of the one she thought of—now, at least—as “her man.” She did not answer me at all.

   Oh, I might have brought her out of it, even restored her to a temporary gaiety. There are ways. But those ways would not have been good for her in the long run. And the danger to her from her criminal associates would have remained. “Come! Answer!”

   She turned to face me, and swallowed. “No—no, the peelers don’t want t’ buckle me, ’cept fer wot I did at Barley’s.”

   “Then to the peelers, as you call them, you shall go. And you must tell them all you can—be willing to give evidence and they’ll protect you day and night. Tell them where that building is, where I was held a prisoner. And say you’ll testify against that young doctor—what’s his name?”

   “Dr. David Fitzroy. I ’eard it once.”

   “Fitzroy.” I breathed the name a few times, savoring its syllables. “And also any of the others whom they can manage to arrest. Name them all. Fitzroy is the leader?”

   “Not ’im. The way ’e talked sometimes, I know ’e got ’is orders that ’e ’ad t’ follow.”

   “From?”

   “I dunno who.” A ghost of Sal’s normal spirit showed in her eyes, and glad I was to see it. “Me turn evidence? Stand up t’ peach on ’em in court? Ah, if I on’y dared! Jem’d be alive now if it weren’t fer them.”

   “You must dare. Never fear, you will not be called upon to testify, as they shall never come to trial. I swear it, as I swore the same to Matthews.”

   “Ah... ”

   “Fitzroy.” Once more I enjoyed the name. “Yes, you must tell the peelers all you can, even about me, I shall not mind. And they will keep you safe—for long enough.”

   “Ah...”

   “But all you mean to tell them, you must tell me first...”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

   Late though the hour was, and tired as we all were, the urgency of the matter would not allow of any delay. Holmes and I dressed, went down with our visitors to the waiting carriage, and rode with them at a brisk pace through almost deserted streets. Then, at the same hospital where I had first encountered Sherlock Holmes, in a small, guarded dissecting-room not far from that very laboratory, Sir Jasper Meek showed us the body which had been so horribly deposited before his door.

   The corpse was that of a grizzled and unshaven man, past middle age, and thin as any of the homeless poor. It bore the classical tokens of the plague, in the form of hard, black swellings in groin and armpits. Additional marks on wrists and ankles indicated that the victim must have been heavily manacled at, or shortly before, the time of his death.

   Holmes, bending close through the reek of carbolic to examine the body, soon disposed of our impression that the man had been a derelict in life.

   “The illiterate poor,” said he, “do not spend a great deal of time holding a pen between thumb and forefinger, as this man undoubtedly did. We might bring in the next of kin of any elderly clerks reported missing during the last month