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

the chamber where the two men were meeting. A gramophone was playing over and over a scratched record–the distorted voice of Mary Garden.

Someone down on the ground floor put a new wax cylinder on the machine–now we had Enrico Caruso. There was an outburst of uproarious laughter; perhaps there were gypsies down there, entertaining in the lower regions of the house, and I wondered in a detached way whether the gypsies had even brought a dancing bear with them, at least into the kitchen or scullery. Certainly a distant crash of falling furniture and crockery indicated that the party was getting out of hand.

Rasputin, however, plainly preferred to keep his distance from such goings-on. Though a peasant and a mystic, he moved upon a different plane from gypsies with their innocuous spells and love potions. He said to Kulakov: “Where hast thou been, my friend? I have not seen thee for months.”

Kulakov: “I have been to England. I told thee months ago that I was going there.”

Rasputin said something that neither I (nor Cousin Sherlock, who as you will see was also eavesdropping) could clearly hear.

“–I told you, Little Father, that there were people in England who had robbed me. I went to get back what was mine. Also, to make them pay for what they did to me.”

Rasputin: “That was not what I advised thee to do. Dost thou love God, Alexander Ilyich?”

“I need help, Gregory Efimovich. Help me. The bad dreams have come back, and I have trouble sleeping, and my neck hurts all the time.”

The holy man told his patient sit in the soft chair where I had been. “Consider the sun and stars, and He who made them. The pain will go. And the dreams, also. I see that thou art worried. but nothing in life is worth worrying over–it all passes.”

Kulakov, the murderous vampire, as if drifting toward sleep, murmured something in a soft, childlike voice.

Then Rasputin spoke again: “Tell me about this treasure thou sayest is lost. What is there about it that is so important?”

And Kulakov, under deep hypnosis, told Rasputin word for word what had passed between himself and Doll, back in 1765.

There, I have told some of it. Almost the worst part, though that is yet to come. I must rest. Watson...

Sherlock Holmes and I, walking Rebecca Altamont between us down the hallway–toward the stairs–from the room in which she had been confined, heard voices ahead and stopped.

The voices spoke in Russian, and of course I could make nothing of them. but for Holmes, the matter was quite different.

Twenty

Of course at the moment our immediate problem was not to interpret a conversation held in Russian, but to convey Rebecca Altamont safely out of the house. We had garbed the young woman first in a robe over her nightdress, then a light summer coat, chosen from a wardrobe not occupied by a chloroformed maid. We had put slippers on Miss Altamont’s feet and had got her standing beside the bed. Then, despite her continued mumbled protests, we cajoled and led and half-carried her out of the room and halfway down the hall.

We had just rounded the last turn of the dim hallway before the stair when the sound of voices and the sight of figures just ahead forced us to pause, and seek concealment in a kind of niche containing the closed door of another room. As we were coming out of a bedroom like kidnappers, we chose not to try to brazen out the threatened encounter.

So far, the doors in this part of the hall had fortunately remained closed. Still, we could not remain indefinitely where we were, nor could we reach the stairway without passing directly in front of the large alcove where Rasputin and Kulakov were having their strange confrontation. I now observed that the alcove also contained some nameless lady of the Russian nobility, whose elegantly gowned form was lying senseless upon a bearskin rug. both of the men ignored her completely. I could see her stir at intervals, a movement suggesting that at any moment she might regain sufficient consciousness to complicate our situation even further.

In this awkward situation, Holmes and I exchanged whispered comments. Neither of us could understand what might have happened to Prince Dracula, who had supposedly been on guard in the very alcove where Kulakov and the strange-looking peasant were now conversing.

We were forced to the conclusion that in one way or another, the prince must have been put at least temporarily out of action.

Within a few moments–though the time seemed vastly longer– Holmes succeeded in somehow positively identifying a figure visible through a distant window, silhouetted against a brightening eastern sky. It appeared that our ally was now standing, strangely motionless and facing outward, upon a balcony on the next floor up. If Kulakov and his companion were aware that anyone was on the balcony, they paid that motionless figure no attention.

Shaking my head, I whispered: “What shall we do? Dracula stands like one mesmerized.”

“That must be it!”

And we realized further that the rising sun, due to appear in a few minutes, must destroy our comrade in arms. The balcony faced the east, where the orb of day would soon appear out of the endless bulk of enigmatic Asia.

Clearly we could not allow this, if there was any way to prevent it, and Holmes whispered as much to me. Hastily we worked out a plan between us. While I remained with our young charge, supporting her, still dazed and uncooperative, on her feet, Holmes walked boldly forward–there was no other way to reach the stair or climb to the level of the balcony where the prince stood so serenely poised to watch the sunrise.

To judge by the growing brightness of the eastern sky, dawn could not be more than a minute or two away–the sun never goes very far below St. Petersburg’s horizon at this season of the year. And today, for once, the morning promised to be