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

explained how Louisa could have been compelled by Kulakov to plague her parents about some treasure–a treasure that seemed to exist only in the vampire’s deranged mind.

Holmes and I were invited back to Norberton House by Ambrose Altamont, who wished to apologize for having treated us, as he now viewed the matter, unfairly.

The true death of their elder daughter, and the abduction of their younger, would perhaps have given a clear-thinking Ambrose and Madeline strong reason for welcoming Sherlock Holmes at last into their house, for apologizing for past mistakes, and for humbly requesting my friend’s help at last. As matters stood, however, Ambrose was now a broken man, reduced by the blows of fate to a mild and pleasant manner, living in a kind of contentment from one moment to the next, vaguely agitated by everything that happened, but freed of all terror and grief. He only wanted to explain, he said, that there was really no need to be concerned: What lay in the coffin in the parlor now was not really Louisa at all, but merely a psycho-plastic construction. His dear girl would be coming back to them again, once the proper procedure for a séance could be worked out. They would be holding another sitting, he assured us, as soon as his dear wife felt well enough to take part.

Madeline Altamont, we were told by her physician, had taken to her bed. She was, at the moment, beyond listening to any explanations at all, or expressing any hopes, and her recovery was doubtful.

Before we left the house, Holmes tried once more, speaking slowly and kindly and carefully, to explain the matter to Louisa’s father. “The apparition at the séance of the girl in white was indeed your daughter, though at that time, she was not dead. What we are dealing with here is something more strange and terrible than death.”

Involuntarily I looked at Dracula to gauge his reaction to this remark. His glance at me held a flavor of amusement. “but I quite agree, Doctor. Life is indeed more strange and terrible than death.”

As we left the house, Holmes grumbled privately to me that this was not the first time a client of his had been driven mad, but that made the matter no easier to accept.

“By Heaven, Watson, I mean yet to get my hands on the fiend who has done this. And when I do...”

Meanwhile, my affair with Sarah was now well launched, with the seductive vampire (myself) continuing to visit the young woman repeatedly in her room at night, or in the grounds of Norberton House at dusk.

Watson, on discovering (I never did learn how) the fact of this affair, was outraged (naturally so, as he thought) and proved brave enough to tell me so to my face.

Considerations of honor and duty restrained my natural reaction to this meddling, and Watson survived the occasion unharmed. His good luck may be partially attributable to Sarah, who, with the wise idea of separating the two men, prevailed on Mr. Prince to escort her there and then to the little cemetery where her dear brother now lay beneath the freshly mounded earth. She said she wanted to bring more flowers to the grave.

“And will you help us hunt his killer, Sarah?” I inquired softly, when she had risen from her graveside prayers. (In recent days the value of traditional religion had risen sharply in her eyes.)

“Aye. But how am I t’ dae that?” Her brown eyes burned at me.

“He laid a spell upon you, did he not? Meaning to force you to do his will?”

“Aye, he did that.”

“Then traces of that connection probably remain. Will you trust me to put you to sleep, and let me look for them?”

Suffice it to say that the experiment was made, the thin red threads of mental influence traced to their source. Evidence obtained through Sarah, speaking in true trance, detailing her psychic visions, indicated that Kulakov had carried becky off to the docks, not in London but in Hull, and from there had promptly taken ship.

Sarah’s visions were also of pain and intermittent weakness. When Sherlock Holmes heard this, he said with characteristic insight that Kulakov probably still was, and had been for most of his long life, suffering from the discomforts of having been hanged in 1765.

Holmes delegated to some of his lesser associates a sustained effort to find and destroy all of Kulakov’s earths in England. Several such hideaways were found on the grounds of Smithbury Hall, quite near the place where Kulakov had been keeping Louisa. but Holmes thought this search of only secondary importance.

Dracula, too, freely expressed his doubts about the effectiveness of the procedure. “It seems most unlikely that we should ever really be able to render them all uninhabitable. I speak from a certain experience. A dozen years ago, as perhaps you are aware, some Englishmen led by that idiot Van Helsing were attempting to do the same thing to me. They failed miserably, though they were not aware of their failure. Someday perhaps I will tell you the whole story.

“But the point to be noted just now is this: A vampire given time for preparation, and the chance to ship in a supply of his native earth, can so entrench himself in a foreign land that he becomes almost impossible to root out–without killing him.”

Kulakov’s prospects for regaining his lost treasure must have seemed to him as remote as ever. The evil vampire had killed Louisa with his own hands, or arranged for her killing. The count had seen his convert now as only a liability.

Further evidence obtained through Sarah’s psychic contact indicated that the Russian vampire had departed from the docks at Hull aboard a fast steamer which, the port records showed, was bound directly for St. Petersburg. The vessel was Russian, and we thought that probably it was under Kulakov’s direct control.

Holmes promptly cabled some friendly contact in the Petersburg police, to alert them to be on watch for Kulakov,