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

inn. En route I actually passed (without, of course, being noticed) Armstrong in his roaring Mercedes, bound for the same goal. On reaching the Saracen’s Head I looked in at the window of Inspector Merivale’s room, where a steady snore informed me that the poor, tired man had retired early.

Gathered at our improvised headquarters, we felt reasonably certain that the last of the regular parties sent out to search for Holmes had retired or been recalled from the field, and as soon as Armstrong had rejoined us we equipped ourselves as best we could for the effort that lay ahead. The necessary materials included some tools suitable for breaking and entering. Even I might have trouble entering this tomb without them.

Let Watson tell the tale again.

Holmes had earlier remarked, and Dracula reminded us, that now the Altamont mausoleum qualified as a dwelling place, being inhabited by a living (though unbreathing) human; even should the doors stand wide open, those portals would be closed to any vampire lacking a direct invitation to enter.

Armstrong was familiar with the village and its environs, and was able to provide us with some tools. As we left the inn, the night was mostly cloudy, with little moon, which suited our purposes admirably.

In response to a question from Holmes, I assured him that I had indeed come equipped with my old service revolver.

“And wooden bullets?”

With some dignity I was able to reply that such necessities had not been forgotten.

Armstrong looked from one of us to the other as if quite convinced that we were both mad.

(Holmes told me he had considered waiting, tactfully, until Dracula was absent on some errand, to equip himself and me with implements intended for an even grimmer purpose: a wooden stake and large hammer. but Dracula would accept the need for such implements if tonight’s investigation indeed led us to the resting place of the vampire rapist and murderer, and if the latter should, by some good fortune, be in his coffin. At any rate, it would be hard indeed to conceal from the prince any sizable objects that we were carrying.)

Our party was fully assembled near midnight. The four of us set out for the cemetery secretly; we now had a rented carriage big enough to hold us all, and Dracula himself harnessed our horses without disturbing the stable boy.

Young Martin Armstrong’s impatience with the general failure to find any clue to the whereabouts of the living Louisa was reaching a dangerous level, nearing the point of frenzy. Despairing of ever obtaining official permission, he was ready to consider a rough-and-ready exhumation of the occupant of Louisa’s tomb as one way of making progress.

He mentioned that he had been planning his own independent expedition along that line, but he joined forces with us gratefully. He understood, he said, the desirability of having other witnesses present besides himself when the tomb was opened.

Though the night was very dark, so that I supposed even the horses could scarcely see the road, Dracula drove the carriage without lights, and without apparent difficulty. In about twenty minutes we were dismounting, leaving the horses and the lightless vehicle at a little distance from the burial ground. before we left the animals, which seemed skittish, Dracula soothed them somehow, and they started to crop the grass.

An owl flew hooting overhead as we once more approached the Altamont family mausoleum, its walls pale in the garish light of our electric torches. The sweet honeysuckle vine was now marked, somewhat to my surprise, by clustered, night-blooming, purple-white flowers. I stared intently and suspiciously at a small shape flying near these, thinking about bats, until Dracula assured me it was only a nightfeeding hawk moth, by which these flowers were mostly pollinated.

I held a small electric torch, and by its light Holmes needed only a moment or two to pick the old lock of the iron grating. The fastening of the inner door to the mausoleum yielded almost as quickly to his skilled fingers. The process of opening these barriers was silent; all the locks and hinges had been oiled and repaired less than a month ago, at the time of Louisa’s funeral.

Meanwhile Mr. Prince stood back a little, watching silently and with every appearance of tranquility, first with his hands in his pockets, then with his arms folded under his short cabman’s cape. He might have been listening to the ordinary sounds of the night–insects, an owl, the murmur of the nearby stream–but I felt mortally certain that he was on guard, in a way that we could never be, against any attack by our chief adversary.

Not far away was the place where Abraham Kirkaldy was to be buried–by the kind charity of the Altamonts, put under the soil in a simple grave. Tonight the open pit, edged by its pile of fresh earth, yawned at us, awaiting its tenant, and when we shone our lights in that direction provided us with an ominous reminder of mortality.

Having all, or most of us, crowded into the little building, we now turned our attention to the small crypt in the wall where almost a month ago Louisa’s body had been laid to rest. A small brass plate on the door confirmed the exact niche. Another door to be opened, and the casket was exposed. There was, as was more commonly the case a few years ago, a double coffin, the inner vessel of lead and hermetically sealed.

Dracula, resting one hand on the outer casing, turned his head and assured us silently, with a slight shake of his head, that the inner coffin was currently empty.

Holmes and I exchanged glances, while Armstrong, more and more puzzled, not aware that any discovery had yet been made, or that any decision was being taken, continued to look on impatiently.

Sherlock Holmes sighed, and I realized that he had decided it would be best to open the coffin, to demonstrate its vacancy to Armstrong. Though the young man was bound to misinterpret this discovery at