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

Though within a matter of minutes, a dozen policemen were tearing the house apart from roof to cellar, we were not really surprised at our failure to discover Kulakov; and Mr. Prince, once invited in, searched the attic, and particularly the cellar, with a thoroughness of which no breathing man would have been capable, seeking traces of a hidden earth, whether occupied or not. Actually Dracula, while the police remained oblivious to his real activities, located two or three such dens, but all were empty.

Holmes, the prince, and I had already agreed that Kulakov had probably formed a careful, suspicious habit of shifting daily from one earth to another, and that one or more of his essential troves of Russian soil might be in close proximity to the place where we had finally found Louisa, and where we hoped to be able to find her again.

Today our raiders, like yesterday’s disguised inquirers at the door, were told by two servants of Kulakov, the only people inhabiting the house at present, that the master had gone elsewhere; he was in London, they thought. No, they could not say where, and they had no means of reaching him.

When the opportunity presented itself, Holmes and I, by prearrangement, slipped away from the main house without telling Merivale or any of his men, and made our way back to the abandoned greenhouse. Holmes had great hopes that there we should find Louisa Altamont in daylight trance.

Should we be successful in this endeavor, Holmes had worked out a plan of getting her away to a hiding place of his own choosing and then, later, with Dracula’s help, working out some kind of viable future for the girl.

But such was not to be. Our departure from the area of the main house was not unnoticed by our enemies. Holmes and I were trudging across a grassy meadow, not yet within a hundred yards of the old greenhouse, when I happened to glance back and saw that we were being pursued.

I cried out immediately, and my companion turned. At the same moment a shot was fired from behind us, and a bullet sang past our ears. A small group of men in dark clothing, sprung seemingly out of the earth itself, were running after us from the general direction of the house. Even as we stared, our lead pursuer raised a pistol and fired again. I had drawn my own revolver now, and returned fire, with no effect. Remembering that the wooden bullets would tend to be inaccurate at long range, I turned and ran, with Holmes, toward the abandoned greenhouse.

As investigation later proved, the men who came after us were some of Kulakov’s adherents, four or five revolutionary terrorists wanted by the police in London and other cities, who had been using another old shed on the grounds as a hiding place. They had failed to observe our intrusion yesterday, but today, when they had seen where Holmes and I were going, they had burst out of concealment in obedience to their master’s orders and pursued us. Evidently their dark master had enjoined them to protect the old greenhouse from intruders at any cost.

“Run, Watson, run! We must reach Louisa Altamont before they do!”

I redoubled my efforts, and managed to stay close behind Holmes as we went pounding over the meadow, stirring up songbirds, and along the faint track of a farm road, toward the grove of trees in which our objective lay concealed.

Shouts of anger, and of momentary triumph, sounded from behind us, closing in, and I knew it was likely that our pursuers ran on younger legs than ours. Once more I turned, at bay, thinking at least to delay the foe long enough for Holmes to reach the greenhouse and what it contained. This time the enemy was closer, and I took more careful aim. My next shot dropped our first pursuer in his tracks, and caused the others to hesitate.

Beyond the men who were chasing us, a greater number of policemen, some in uniforms, were now running to our aid. Among the latter I saw Mr. Prince, his long legs outpacing all the others.

It was necessary for me to shoot a second of the gasping villains in our wake before the rest turned away, scattering with police in pursuit. I then ran again, gasping and tottering, after Holmes, who had gone on into the grove.

I found my friend inside the greenhouse, where he stood looking down into the great toolbox. Inside it lay Louisa Altamont again; but this time the girl was truly dead. She lay on her back with arms outflung, still clad in her once-white burial gown, the fabric now further torn and disarranged. Her blue eyes were open and unseeing, unbothered now by daylight; her white breast was transfixed by splintered wood in the form of the long, broken handle of a rake.

We were standing there, speechless with exertion and surprise, when light rapid footsteps announced the arrival of Prince Dracula, who came bounding into the sunlit space to stop suddenly beside us, and join us in silent contemplation.

I turned to him in puzzlement. “but, her body–I thought that it would vanish?”

The shouts and heavy footsteps of police now sounded from just outside the building. Dracula put his lips close to my ear and whispered, almost pedantically and more calmly than I would have expected: “A new vampire when killed is hard to distinguish from a breather newly dead; only the bodies of old nosferatu like myself are wont to disintegrate spectacularly into dust and gas when their spirits achieve a true departure from this plane of existence.”

Within a few moments, Merivale and others had joined us, and were loud in their expressions of outrage at what they saw. Louisa’s death was of course blamed on the villainous terrorist gang, whose surviving members were now being rounded up among the estate’s woods and fields. Holmes soon whispered to me privately that