A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9), Fred Saberhagen [some good books to read TXT] 📗

      With an effort he put out a hand and seized the thing by its—no, by his own hair—and tilted it. The raw neck-surface now exposed was mottled red, and from it protruded narrow tubes of rubber, their ends stained brightly in the color of fresh blood.

* * *

      Radcliffe was still pondering his discovery, when some subtle sound, a change in atmosphere, informed him that he was not alone.

      He turned to confront a figure, which was much more than a mere image, though it was standing as motionless as the surrounding shapes of wax and wood and cloth.

      Monsieur Legrand, smiling faintly, bowed to his young friend in silent greeting.

      Radcliffe felt a sudden surge of anger, born of the memory of terror and despair that could never be forgotten. “So, the sentence has been carried out, has it?” he blurted. “Perhaps you didn’t notice. I’ve been beheaded!” The young man spoke through his teeth in a strained voice.

      Legrand, blinking, seemed utterly taken aback. At last, his own anger stirred, he got out: “What is this idiocy?”

      The young man took half a step toward him. “Have you forgotten that I was taken to the guillotine? … My head has been…” Radcliffe’s hands flew through a sequence of shaky and elaborate gestures. Meanwhile he continued to glare at Legrand, as if daring him to confirm or disprove his claim. “The gypsy told me. She told me what you were going to do! To change me into a—a—” He struggled and failed to name the object of his scorn, but it was plain from his tone that the idea now aroused his disgust.

* * * * * *

      Upset at what seemed to me a profound lack of gratitude, I glared back at him without sympathy, but rather with a full measure of contempt. “I shall tell you what has happened to your head: It has been filled with brandy and with nonsense!” After venting my annoyance in a string of oaths in antique languages, I seized him by the shirt-front and shook him—still rather gently.

      “You have not been decapitated. Nor have you yet been honored with induction into the illustrious ranks of the nosferatu—though I fear,” I added as I peered into his eyes, “that Constantia may have brought you rather closer to that goal than I intended. Yes, I see. Never mind, now I begin to understand. Where is she, by the way?” And I glared around angrily in search of my sometimes deranged assistant.

      “How in hell should I know?” Radcliffe stared at me. Then his voice began to break, with the relief of strain. “But I remember—the scaffold—”

* * *

      When I thought about it, the way my client must have perceived the process of his rescue, I had to admit to myself that he really had been under a tremendous strain, that all the details of my plan had not been executed to perfection, and that he was perhaps entitled to some consideration on that account. I launched into a hasty explanation of the key points of the seeming miracle:

      “You remember that you stumbled and fell, even as you stepped up onto the platform?”

      “I… yes.” His hands were trembling now, and he was looking for a place to sit down.

      “You fell because you were tripped. You tumbled into one of the long baskets, which was practically concealed from the onlookers behind another basket whose lid stood open.”

      Radcliffe, who had found a stool, was listening, open-mouthed.

      The body that was lifted out of the basket, slammed on the plank, and bound in place, then shoved into the machine, was not yours. It was one of these!” And my open hand thumped one of the anonymous dummies standing nearby. To which this”—a long forefinger stabbed at the ghastly head on its low shelf—”had been attached.”

      At the museum, Marie and Melanie had done all the work on Radcliffe’s head with their own hands, pouring the molten wax into the plaster mold Marie had brought back from the prison. Then, knowing that the young man’s life depended on their skill, they had painstakingly attached some of Radcliffe’s own hair, inserted the glass eyes, and administered the final touches with shaping tools and paint. None of the other workers in the shop had questioned Marie’s orders or concerned themselves with her behavior. They were perfectly willing to take orders from the woman who was about to inherit—dare I say it?—the whole ball of wax.

      In the museum storeroom the young American was beginning to weep—tears were somewhat more common then— with the relief of strain. “But I felt someone pulling on my hair—lifting my head—”

      “You are confused,” I explained in a soothing voice. That was a little earlier, when I tripped you and threw you into the basket.”

      “You!”

      The intricate performance on the scaffold of course had required the secret cooperation of the whole crew of executioners who happened to be present on the platform.

      “But there were only two of us, as you undoubtedly remember.” I smiled modestly, proud of what I still considered a well-nigh perfect stratagem.

      “You—!” He repeated, staring at me.

      “Yes, of course I was one of them! You had not seen me in daylight before, and you certainly were not expecting to see me there, in that costume. Also I had allowed myself to age a couple of decades in as many days—we have that privilege, you know.”

      “And the other executioner?”

      “Oh, that was Citizen Sanson, right enough. One of them—a member of the younger generation, who have now completely taken over the family profession. One of them and one of us. Once Constantia and I hit on the proper sort of bribery, he proved quite susceptible—much easier to deal with than the elder head of the family would have been.”

      And in fact poor Gabriel Sanson had been quite madly in love with Constantia by that time, ready to risk everything for her, as poor foolish breathers so often are. Radu’s people, his spies,