The Dracula Tape

by Fred Saberhagen

  Getting into the unpeopled baggage car presented no problem at all. Alas, what with my unusual fatigue, and what would now be called jet-lag, or weariness compounded by changing time zones, getting out again did become a problem. The fact is that I overslept, and woke past dawn, to find with some concern that I could not change my shape to get out of the box.

  I managed to force open the trunk’s lock from inside, and then, exerting all the considerable strength of my fingers, tried to close it again once I had got out, so that it should appear to be normally locked. Some of the train crew came blundering into the car whilst I was thus employed. I tried to take shelter behind some piles of luggage; but the cunning of centuries, if I could in fact lay claim to such, was set at naught by the mere limited geography of the confined space; and in fact I was soon accidentally discovered.

  There began at once an excited argument. Conductor, porters, trainmen of all description seemed to appear from nowhere to press inquiries upon me, in a dozen languages, as to who I was and what I was doing in this place unthinkable for a passenger to enter. I kept calmly insisting that I had merely entered by mistake, that the door after all had been unlocked, and that they had better take care to lock their doors if they wished to preserve these regions sacrosanct.

  I might have browbeaten my way free at once, had not the sharp eye of one of my interrogators happened to fall upon the bright metal of my own trunk’s mangled lock. A string of multilingual expletives, and we were off again. This fine trunk, the man insisted, had not been so vandalized on his retirement from the car on the preceding evening — I had done it, I was a thief and worse.

  This outcry I could only stem by claiming the trunk as my own; naturally I could produce a document or two identifying myself as the Corday whose property the trunk was labeled as. Before these arguments of mine could have any conclusive effect, however, the conductor had taken it upon himself to fling open the leathern lid, with a dramatic gesture that seemed to hope for a dismembered body, at least, to come to view within. All stared nonplussed at my mere load of earth.

  “And how is this explainable, monsieur?”

  “If you are referring to your rudeness, my good man, you must know the answer better than I.”

  “I refer, sir, to the conditions of this trunk and of its contents.” He peered in once more, eyes lighting up. Might there be, after all, a corpse or two beneath the mold?

  “It is my trunk, monsieur conductor, and its conditions my affair.”

  We adjourned shortly to the next car, where the conductor had his command post, as it were, commanding a view of the car’s corridor and the doors of the passenger’s compartments. Above his desk hung a small mirror that, had I not been immune to fear, might well have given me a moment or two of apprehension. A little stove at the conductor’s feet as he sat there enthroned gave off a grateful warmth against the autumnal dawn.

  If he had sought to keep me standing there as a supplicant he was mistaken. Monarch though he might be in his small, wheeled domain, my own rulership was vaster and more practiced, and I more skilled even than he in the tones and gestures that best serve to overawe. Without seeming to exert great physical force I still moved resistlessly through his entourage of lesser trainmen and walked deliberately to my cabin. One or two of them followed at a little distance — the affair of the trunk was not yet really over, and what was I to do for a resting place now? — but tor the time being no further effort was made to detain me or force questioning.

  I had barely got into my room and started to relax when a light tap came at the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Dr. Floyd,” I thought the answer came, which sounded like an English name, and seemed to be spoken in that tongue; but it was undoubtedly the voice of my German-speaking acquaintance of the night before.

  Much to my surprise on opening the door, I beheld Mina standing there at the Viennese doctor’s side. When we two men had exchanged greetings, the doctor, speaking English in deference to Mina, introduced me to her.

  “In the course of a certain professional matter I met Mrs. Harker rather early this morning, and she has graciously consented to breakfast with us; when I mentioned, Dr. Corday, that you too were from London, she was most interested to meet you.”

  “I am flattered, Madam Harker.” And I managed to slip her the slightest wink as I bowed to kiss her hand.

  The “professional matter,” as Mina informed me later, had been a result of a disagreement in one of the gentlemen’s cabins during the night. Colt revolvers and bowie knives were brandished but fortunately not much used. There was evidence, in the form of certain articles of clothing, that at least one young woman had been on the premises. Dr. Floyd — as I then understood his name — had treated Quincey Morris for scalp lacerations and a certain young waiter for moderately serious but not disabling head wounds and facial contusions.

  All right, why should I now be coy and indirect? What with Arthur changing his mind at the eleventh hour about his need for female company — he had begun tearfully and drunkenly lamenting Lucy — and Quincey too actively disputing the bill for services rendered, an altercation had arisen, and bandages as well as banknotes were required to smooth things over.

  Harker had heard the commotion and burst out from his compartment adjoining, glaring madly and waving a huge knife; luckily he calmed quickly on discovering the true nature of the problem. Seward and Van Helsing had already gone in search of Mina to hypnotize her for the morning communiqué, and Jonathan told the conductor he had better cast about for some other physician to tend the wounded. As luck would have it, my friend of the smoking car was domiciled nearby, and came to volunteer his services. His accent, and perhaps something in his physiognomy, caused dear Jonathan to drop some half-audible remark about a “sheep-headed Jew” when Quincey groaned with the discomfort of getting a stitch or two in his thick scalp. Mina, finished early with her seance, had already come on the scene; authentically gracious as always, she left the men to argue and nurse their wounds, and came to breakfast with the good Samaritan as a token of reparations. She was delighted to have me as an unexpected bonus; her husband seemed glad to get her away from the scene of sordid combat for any reason.

  We three sat down in the dining car together. I ordered only cafe au lait, which I could swallow if there were compelling cause to do so.

  “And are you too, Mrs. Harker,” I asked, “traveling only to Vienna?”

  “Ah, no. My husband’s plans are grander. He has arranged a holiday for our party, at some spa on the Black Sea or nearby. His plans are still somewhat mysterious.”

  “I love a mystery, madam. Would that it were possible for me to join you.”

  “That would indeed be pleasant — doctors. Both of you.”

  The man I thought of as Floyd had been pulling at his beard and glancing intently from Mina’s face to mine and back again. I realized belatedly that my hair had fallen aside from the center of my forehead.

  “Dr. Corday,” he began hesitantly, “I hope you will not think me impertinent — I really have some professional interest — would you think me rude if I were to inquire how you happened to come by the small scar on your forehead?”

  “Not at all, Doctor. I incurred that peculiar mark some five months past, at the hands of an acquaintance of mine.” As I spoke I realized how much my conversational English had improved since I first encountered Harker in Castle Dracula. “Guest in my house at the time; given to nightmares, unfortunately. Chap became quite violent on one occasion, and we were both of us in good luck that no more serious injuries occurred.”

  “Thank you. I — I was emboldened to ask because …” His eyes drifted again to the mirror image of my scar, that stood in bold red upon the fairest brow in all the world.

  “The scar upon my forehead is a sensitive subject with me,” said Mina boldly. “If you are curious, know that it is the result of a physician’s faulty treatment. I wish to speak no more about it.”

  “Yo
ur pardon, madam.”

  “Not at all, Doctor.” Mina’s voice was reasonably gay again.

  “Dr. Corday.” The Viennese turned to me, obviously with a change of subject in mind. “You were telling me of your consulting service in London.” Blocked in one investigation, he would pursue another. And his voice now held a hint of command: how could I refuse to answer his queries directly now, when such a change in the conversation would serve to cover a lady’s embarrassment?

  Coming toward our table were two waiters bearing food and drink through the car, one had a black eye. And behind these, as a ship of the line was wont to enter battle behind a screen of skirmishing destroyers, came my old foe the conductor. Doubtless he was just passing through the car — not even a wanted murderer would have been interrupted in mid-meal on that train — and meant to bide his time before confronting me again. But the presence of Mina inspired me, and I launched into a sudden speech that was as much for the conductor’s benefit as it was for my possibly dangerous breakfast companion.

  “You see, my friends,” I announced rather loudly, “in London I function chiefly as a consultant for Moule’s Patent Earth-Closet Company.”

  “Moule’s —?” Floyd dabbed uncertainly with a napkin at his fine brown whiskers.

  “Earth-Closet Company, of Covent Garden. Moule’s Company now make earth closets for the garden, closets for shooting boxes, closets …”

  A look of refined social horror, I saw with concealed jubilation, was now welling up in the doctor’s face. The same expression was mirrored in Mina’s countenance, and in the conductor’s lordly visage as well, where, as I saw to my relief, there was also the dawn of a certain understanding.

  “Closets for cottages, closets for anywhere. Earth closets complete are now made, fitted with pull-out apparatus; fitted with pull-up apparatus …”

  I did not see then, and do not now, why subject matter fit for the front page of a respected newspaper should be abhorrent at table; doubtless this attitude is a result of my irrepressible medieval barbarism. Giddy with success and relief, however, I pressed on, driving the foe metaphorically before me:

  “Closets made of galvanized or corrugated iron, to take to pieces for easy transport. Can be put together in only two hours. To work satisfactorily only require to be supplied with fine and dry mold. Closets built on this principle never fail, if properly supplied with dry earth; of which, for demonstration purposes, I am carrying a supply of superb quality in my trunk in the baggage car at present …”

  * * *

  At Ulm the train crossed the Danube and I thought briefly of getting off and trying to make the rest of the journey by water. Breakfast had concluded in morose near-silence and I was not sure that Mina would be willing to speak to me again for some time. But my calculated boorish-ness had had the desired effect, where any amount of suave verbal fencing might well have failed; the Viennese had broken off his questions, and whenever the conductor passed me he now made sure to avert his gaze. I was a social time-bomb liable to explode again at any moment aboard his train.

  But my ticket read through to Bucharest, and to get off sooner would draw even more attention to myself. Enough was enough. No one would bother my trunk now, by day or night.

  At Vienna, my young doctor-friend with the so-thoughtful eyes got off the train. He was courteous to stop to offer me a handshake before we parted, at which time he also raked me with one more friendly but penetrating glance that showed I would not soon be forgotten.

  “Auf Wiedersehen, Dr. Corday. It has been a fruitful journey for me — a most fruitful journey in some respects …”

  I returned his handclasp warmly and with mixed emotions. I would under other circumstances have enjoyed his company and delighted in his penetrating thoughts, but at the moment I was quite glad to see his back.

  Budapest was only a short stage farther on our journey, and by the evening of October fourteenth we had passed the stops at Szegedin and Timisoara, the latter once the Hunyadis’ headquarters. Yes, I was now nearing home. Again and again I breathed the air, simply to catch now and then, through numbing coal smoke, the living odors of the dear land of my youth.

  I visited Mina at night and brought her up to date on all my plans before it came time for me to leave the train. To my relief, she accepted with her usual intelligence my apologies for my performance at the breakfast table.

  “For the present,” I then counseled her, “continue to give them their reports, darkness and water, and so forth, as before.”

  “And when the ship lands at Varna, Vlad? Will they not haste to board her, and by bribery or force find means to open the box? And when it is found empty, will not your plans be ruined, and I fall under the most serious suspicion?”

  “I mean to see to it that they do not board Czarina at that port. I must get them to chase the box; with your help I must keep it moving ahead of them, by land or by riverboat, but not so far ahead that they fail to keep following. The deeper they penetrate my territory, the greater my advantage; for there the knowledge of geography, language, and custom is all mine; they will be strangers in a strange land indeed. Also I will be able to enlist auxiliaries as required.”

  “Vlad.” She was very serious. “As I have pleaded with Jonathan for your life, as much as I dared to do so, so now I would plead with you for his. I ask you, for my sake, to spare him, should the time ever come when he is fully delivered into your hands.”

  “Far greater gifts than his life would I gladly grant you, if you did ask for them.” And once again I kissed her hand.

  Track Eight

  By about five o’clock on the afternoon of the fifteenth my enemies and Mina were ensconced at the Odessus Hotel in Varna. Had I taken the train that far with them I should then have been about five hundred kilometers, or three hundred miles, from home, as the bat flies. But I had been resting snugly in my trunk — the lock forced together firmly from inside — when it was unloaded on schedule, in broad daylight, at Bucharest. By getting off the train there I had reduced the distance to my home by about one third from the Varna figure, which enabled me to feel somewhat more secure. Besides, there would have been little for me to do in Varna, beyond dalliance. I had decided that the ship was not going there after all.

  At any rate, Czarina was not even due to reach the Dardanelles till the twenty-fourth. There was plenty of time, and I decided to go home at once, there to arrange some reception for my guests.

  In Bucharest I knew where I could obtain a cart and horse that I, in native clothing, could drive myself without attracting any particular attention. Dressed once more in costume of my homeland, and with the leather trunk as almost my sole luggage, I took the road back to the high Carpathians. Dozing by day at the side of some small, seldom-traveled way — already home was near enough that the common roadside earth would let me get a kind of rest — and traveling steadily by night, in three days I won my way so far up the slowly climbing roads that with the third sunset I felt sure that I would need my trunk of earth, and therefore my wagon, no longer. The horses I soothed and sent to stand in the yard of a poor farmer, who when it came time for plowing in the spring would bless the hand that had sent them to him. The cart, a poor thing, I left by the roadside, still holding the trunk, from which I had spilled and scattered the earth, lest such cargo here give rise to too much speculation. I do not often bestow largesse upon the lazy world, but considered that my homecoming deserved some unusual celebration.

  Before going to the castle I stopped at a spot some miles distant, where the Szgany sometimes camped. A few were there, with their wagons and barking dogs and ragged children. The counterfeit ruddiness of my days on the train had faded; my hair when it blew before my eyes looked lank and gray, and the Szgany knew me at once. I frowned to note that the first to see me gave me hangdog, sullen almost reproachful looks. When they called Tatra out of a wagon, matters were different. His leathery face worked with joy as he beheld me, and he came forward at once to fall on his knees and ki
ss my hand.

  “Master! Long have we waited for your safe return. My wife and seventh daughter have worked the spells three times, at dark and full of moon …”

  “Yes, yes. Well, here I am. How are things at the castle?” His face took on some of the others’ sullenness. “We were not welcome there.”

  “Not welcome? In my home? Who has told you so?”

  A hint of coming satisfaction touched his lips with a smile. “The ladies three who dwell there, master. They said they spoke with your full knowledge and authority. I doubted them … but I am only mortal man.”

  “You will be welcome now, my friend. But first there is another matter I must discuss with you.” I informed Tatra of the approach of my enemies, and of the effort I was soon going to require of him and his men. I did not tell him that I was not going to be inside the box at the time when he received it downriver; I could not expect him or his men, if they knew that, to defend the box as wholeheartedly as might be necessary. Tatra in turn told me of certain things that he had witnessed in the castle, before being excluded therefrom, and I was frowning when I took my departure from the gypsy camp.

  Anna, Wanda, and Melisse knew of course by this time that I was coming home, as they would have known across the vast miles had some sharp stake of English yew been forced into my rib cage to drive my spirit out. They were waiting on the battlements when the chief bat came down out of a rainy midnight sky. Anna, fairest and boldest of the three, actually put out her wrist for me, with a mocking smile, as if she thought I might perch there like some pet bird.