The Holmes-Dracula File

by Fred Saberhagen

  The day wore on. He was not hungry or thirsty. At least—turning his head to glance at the garbage he had knocked to the floor—not for anything like that.

  Night crept at last upon the city, and its approach brought to the aged captive at least a partial return of health and strength. The sounds of casual activity that had gone on through the day had faded, and some time had passed in silence, when the old man heard two pairs of feet approaching from a long way off. Shortly Rough-voice walked into the room, a supple, poorly-clad young woman after him. Both of them were masked in gauze.

  “ ’Ow is it ’e’s all bound up like that?” The voice of the girl bore traces of gentleness, if not concern.

  “Told yer, didn’t I? ’E’s a violent one when ’e gets the chance.” The man was about to turn and hurry out of the room when he paused in afterthought. “ ’Asn’t said a bloody word since we got ’im, but that don’t mean ’e can’t. Might be a real sweet-talker when ’e wants t’ be.”

  “Won’t matter a bit t’ me,” the girl said lightly. And like the visiting nurse she parked a cloth bag that she was carrying atop the tall chest of drawers, and looked about her for a place to settle. There was only the one hard chair.

  “See that it don’t. Well, then, I’m off.”

  “Ah.” It was almost the man’s ar.

  Rough-voice shut the door behind him. His tread receded, went jauntily bouncing down some distant stairs.

  Left alone with the old man, the young girl turned to size him up more thoroughly. Her eyes were brown and hard, fragments of London cobblestone above the border of her white mask, whose strings where they went back to her ears were hidden by brown curls. The sun was setting now, and the room had grown much darker in the last few minutes, but in keeping with all the other seeming perversities of his situation, the old man only saw her all the better for the failing of daylight. Her dress was coarse and plain and patched, and he thought that the scarf she draped on the chair’s back would have been better suited to a man.

  “Well,” she said, and came over to stand beside his bed, looking at the floor. “A pretty mess you’ve made. And none o’ them’d ever think of cleaning up, of course.”

  Sally. But the name could be a weapon, the only weapon he had, and he must wait for the proper time to strike with it.

  “Release me,” the old man told her suddenly, his voice so deep and firm that it surprised himself. “And I will clean up what I have spilled.” To have begun with something that sounded like cleverness would surely have put a clever girl on guard.

  “Well, well, ’e talks! And like a bloody toff. Dressed like ’un, too.” But still Sally hardly looked at the old man, as she bent to pick up the spilled refuse. The stain from the tea was large, yet scarcely conspicuous on worn floorboards long since abandoned to their fate. Bread, mug, glass and tray the girl carried to some outer room, whence sounded a dull clatter of utensils. She came back in a minute, chewing on something, and stood before him with folded arms as if to ask him silently: How am I to stand your company for hours and hours?

  On his part hoping for long hours of isolate companionship, the old man spoke again, letting his voice take on a certain sound of stagy tragedy. “No, girl, I was quite wrong to ask you to release me. If there be more chains you can add, I bid you bring them here and lock them on.” He was not one for thinking through his plans with any complete logic; perhaps he tried this zig-zag tactic on the chance that the girl would feel she ought to do the opposite of anything he urged her. Well, he was still half-addled.

  Whatever Sally might have felt, she did not sound surprised. “Don’t ’ave no more chains. Do ’ave some scrag I might bring in, if you’ll promise not t’ fling it all about this time.”

  He let his voice sag down to being weakly friendly. “I promise that.”

  “I’ll myke some tea.” Coolly practical, she left the door ajar and went off to what must have been the kitchen. In the middle distance he could hear her, now pouring water, now cutting bread. Now came the subtle sound of a knifeblade spreading out a heap of jam. His imagination’s picture of the rich red stuff brought on a wave of hunger, mixed with a little nausea.

  The irrelevant smell of tea soon took form on the night air. The old man strained his limbs again and then lay back, unable to budge his iron bonds, hissing his exhaustion. Good God but they were strong. Had this bed-cart been constructed to confine a mad gorilla?

  Here Sally came back to him, replenished tea-tray in her hands. It was now so dark that she must grope her way, and she had removed her mask, which must have been an annoyance to keep on for hours and hours. The old man could now plainly see her face, which would have been pretty were it not for a great birthmark, covering her whole right cheek and jaw, more strawberry than the stuff which she had spread upon the bread—and were it not, of course, for the corollary of this disfigurement, a set of resignation in all her facial muscles, the look of bitter, sullen surrender to all the world’s foul ugliness.

  She felt secure, of course, that in this lightless room he’d never see her face. Meanwhile he watched the innate and unconscious grace with which, even unable to see the way, she moved across the room.

  “ ’Ere. Can you see it?” She put the tray down where it had been before, upon the stand that branched out from the bed.

  “My hand could find it in the dark. Alas, I cannot move a finger.”

  Sally went away and groped for the stiff chair and brought it back, sat down in it an arm’s length distant. Perhaps I have exaggerated the room’s darkness; there must have existed a little ghost of light, oozing from the shaded window at her back, to fall across his bed. No doubt she could see him at least faintly, while believing that her own face was fully hidden from his eyes.

  She tore off a morsel of the bread and held it toward his lips. “ ’Ere. It’s crusty, but you ’as a good mouthful o’ teeth for an old ’un. I could see that when you first spoke t’ me.”

  His neck muscles reflexively turned his head away. It was not red jam that he hungered for. “I thank you deeply, but I find I cannot eat.”

  “Ah.” There was again some gentleness in her voice. Sally popped the morsel into her own mouth. “Want some tea?” She spoke as one who does not wish to dine alone.

  “Where am I, girl?”

  “You’ve ’ad a knock on the ’ead, you ’ave. So you’re—in ’ospital.”

  “But in what city?” Although of that, at least, he had no doubt.

  “How ’bout some tea: ’Spect I’ll have it meself if you won’t.”

  “Thank you, but no. Some water, if you please,” he added, so he should not seem too strange. With water his old guts could cope, he felt.

  “Right-o.” She held the glass for him, while being careful, he noted, to touch neither his gray lank hair that straggled before his face, nor his clothing, nor his skin. He managed to raise his head enough to drink whilst his arms stayed bound down. Water slid toward his stomach, where it lay unabsorbed, like liquid glass.

  “Girl…” He lay back, blowing through wet lips. “What shall I call you?”

  “Never you mind.” Then there occurred a thought that pleased her privately. “You can call me ‘Miss.’ ”

  “Miss. Will you then be kind enough to tell an old man why he is being held a prisoner?” Night deepened; he was waking up. The words had begun to dance along naturally, without thought on the old man’s part. The finger-movements of a violinist, tuning a new instrument, whose hands over the long, long years have cradled a thousand others like it.

  “I told you, yer in ’ospital.” Making herself cold and abrupt was not something that came naturally to Sally. She had practiced for enough years, though, to do it well. She could be ruthless. Now she was eating, quite neatly, the rest of the bread and jam he had refused.

  “Miss. Please.” The old man played for pity. She could be ruthless but it did not suit her, and he supposed he must look shriveled and senile as he lay bound before her. Her own dear father was
somewhere tonight…but one had to be careful along that route. Across the room the cracked fragment of a mirror leaned upon a high shelf close to the chest of drawers, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to see himself in it. Besides…

  Besides what? Something important had come and gone before he could grasp it. So much was gone, so much remaining was now jumbled, broken, useless, inside this savage persisting pain that felt as if it must deform his head. Anyhow she had called him old, and there was his gray hair twisting before his eyes. And he could see his own hands, and thought that they looked old. Wrinkled and gray-furred on the backs, yes, old-looking despite the strong long nails and the incongruous firm plumpness of the palms that so contrasted with the leanness of his wrists where they emerged from newly dirty cuffs.

  “Why am I shackled, Miss? I have done no one any harm.”

  “You gets violent at times. Out o’ yer ’ead, so t’ speak. That’s why you ’as t’ be restrained a bit.” She had a relish for the jam that she was finishing, but not for lies.

  He would now strike with the name, and see what magic wound he might inflict. “I hope devoutly, Sally, that…”

  Right in the heart. She jumped up, chair almost toppling back, breadcrumbs scattering to the floor. “ ’Ow’d you know my nyme?”

  “Ah, my dear girl! I did not realize that your name was a secret, too. Do you know mine? It has been taken from me.” Which was the all-too-painful truth.

  Her face hung over him. Her fists were clenched. “ ’Ow’d you know?”

  He had seen and heard far too many real menaces to take this one very seriously. Her anger was not aimed at him, of course. “My dear…I had no wish to upset you. You have been kind to me. The others mentioned your name, with some laughter…as if there were some joke. But then, perhaps I am mistaken.”

  “Joke? Tell me wot joke!” She leaned over him, still trying to sound threatening. But one hand was now raised to conceal her disfigurement, in case the dark should fail her at close range.

  “Perhaps I am mistaken, as I said. Perhaps, for all I know, it is mere accident that yours is the only name my caretakers have spoken freely. There is no reason, is there, why the names of my attendants should be secret?”

  “Ow, damn them!” Sally fell back into her chair, muttering to herself, and perhaps not hearing the old man at the moment. “Damn all their ber-luddy eyes!”

  “And the names of the doctor in charge, and his good wife?”

  That caught Sally’s attention back, and for a moment it seemed she might be going to utter a harsh laugh. “Huh! Wife? Not ’er!” Then the girl retreated abruptly into a silence so quick and accomplished that it must have been an habitual defense.

  Now wait, the old man told himself. Wait for a little while before you push again. His brain still throbbed, distracting him with pain, refusing to yield his rightful memories. How could he plan or act? Yet he must do the best he could.

  Presently, in this deep night that was to his eyes clear as brightest day, the girl got up and moved about the room. Standing for a moment by the window, she pulled the curtain back for a furtive, nervous peek, looking out blankly, not as if she really expected to see anything of importance. Then she went to the tall chest of drawers, fondled the candle in its holder for a moment, and put it down again. Next with decisive steps she left the room, to come back shortly, once more masked, and carrying a lighted oil lamp which she set on the tall chest. She moved the chair back closer to the light and, somewhat to the old man’s surprise, extracted from her bag a small book. This she settled down to read.

  “What are you reading, Sally?” Though he could see the faded printing on the cover: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Fair.

  She raised her eyes to his some seconds before answering. “A long poem, like. A lady wrote it.” She told him what the title was.

  “And are the goblins in it terrible?”

  “Oh, no sir.” The “sir” seemed quite unconscious. “Least I don’t think they are.” Sally was on the verge of confiding more, but changed her mind, blanked her face, and dropped her eyes back to the safety of the printed page. She read with an occasional lip-movement, but well enough for all that, to judge from the deft shuttling of her eyes. Outside, the night was growing darker, and there came a hint of ozone in the air, even before the old man could hear the distant thunder. Still faintly audible were the two sets of his fellow prisoners’ lungs, in nearby rooms—they sounded like two old men slowly dying.

  “The word ‘goblin,’ ” he remarked, “derives I believe from the Greek kobalos, and means ‘rogue.’ ”

  “Ah.” Above Sal’s mask her eyes came back to fasten on his face, as if unwillingly.

  “How old are you, Sally?”

  “Turned seventeen last Easter. Look ’ere sir, you sure you don’t want no tea?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “And they spoke out my name, hey?” The book went down in her lap. “Wot’d they say?”

  “Very little.”

  “Come on, wot?”

  “That you were to stay with me, tonight.” His voice was low and tired and patient. “And there was some indelicacy, which I should prefer not to repeat. And something, somehow, amused them—having a connection with your appearance, perhaps; I could not hear them clearly. I say, is there anything wrong? I’m sorry.”

  She had frozen in her chair, and under her mask there might now be a ghastly kind of smile. I have not said he was a kindly, good, benevolent old man.

  At last the thunder of the approaching storm rolled near enough for her to hear it, and broke in upon her poisoned reverie. She glanced at the closed window, then back at the old man. And then back to her book.

  He let her turn two pages. Then: “Sally, what lies behind that door?” When the girl looked up he indicated with a movement of his head the doubly padlocked portal.

  “Ah, just some drugs an’ medicines an’ things.” She was making up an answer to avoid being bothered by the question. Her deeper thoughts were elsewhere—without doubt, still brooding upon those vicious employers of hers who laughed at her blotched face. Now, how could she get back at them? Oh, he was not a considerate, truthful old man at all. But long-lived, yes indeed.

  He asked: “No living thing is kept in there?”

  She put her book down in her lap again, forefinger holding place. “Why, barrin’ a mouse or a bug or two, I don’t s’pose there’s any. Kept, you say? Wot kind o’ livin’ thing?”

  “Go listen at the door.” The thunder grumbled closer. The giant Rat liked not the coming storm, and in between its atmospheric slams and rumbles the prisoner now and again perceived a huffing squeal that issued from no human throat.

  Sally automatically started to get up, as if to do what the old man had bidden her. Then she caught herself. “Ahh, it’s the storm you’re hearin’,” she decided, and sat down. Still, in doing so, she unconsciously hitched her chair a little closer to the old man, though this caused the light to fall more dimly on her book.

  Next time the thunder came he could hear, beneath her patched dress, the life pump more quickly through young veins and arteries. He thought: Look up, and her eyes lifted and were caught on his.

  Ah, that old man could hypnotize, sometimes. But his broken memory made him uncertain of himself, and his powers of concentration were flawed by injury. More important, this particular young girl was quite reluctant to deliver her own will completely to another. She might have fought free of the softest, most enticing web he could have woven on his best day.

  Still, in some corner of her heart, she must have welcomed this approach so much like wooing—even as, with a shake of her head, she spurned it. “Look ’ere, lemme get you another drink at least.”

  “That would be kind.” And while she was out, this time, he turned his head and regurgitated, in a clear stream that vanished into the visual mosaic of that experienced floor, the small amount of water he had swallowed earlier.

  This movement of his head, with neck s
tretched out as much as he could manage, dislocated the poor oilcloth pad from under his bruised skull. Sally’s first instinct when she returned to him was to reach out and set this right; and when she leaned over the old man, his mind was dazzled by the soft throbbing in her slender throat of the great vessels there that tinged the fair skin blue above them.

  She put the pad straight, and then remembered orders and stood back a step. “I wasn’t to touch you, not your bed even. Very firm on that point, ’e was, and I shouldn’t be surprised if ’e should ’ave some means o’ tellin’.”

  “I would never betray one who sought to help me.”

  She stood there without answering, and held the glass of water for him as before.

  He drank, as if it were a great boon, and lay back exhausted by the effort. “Thank you.”

  “Ah well. Now I s’pose I could hand yer the bedpan or bottle if y’ wish. I’ve done a bit o’ nursin’ in me time.”

  “No thank you. Sally.” He paused to look at her with yearning concentration. “You do have the kind hands of a nurse, I see. The body of a good graceful dancer. And that mask cannot hide your beauty from me.”

  “Ar,” she said, and started looking round to see where she had left her book. She was quite good at not letting any feelings show. More than a decade she must have practiced that, since first she looked into a mirror with understanding.

  “Of course I do not know your face. But what I mean is, even if you had no face at all, or if your face were far from what the world calls pretty, yet when I saw it your beauty would be just the same, unmarred for me.”

  Sally hardly hesitated as she turned away and went to where her book lay on the chair. The rain roared suddenly upon the nearby roofs. He let his tensed neck-sinews soften; his head lolled back upon the pad that she had straightened for him. Why oilcloth? Easy to clean? But nobody cared about that, as a rule.

  And somewhere in his upper jaw a faintly delicious aching had begun. To be precise, the ache lay at two points, the toothroots of his canines. But the continuing skull pain soon squashed this interesting sensation jealously out of perception’s range, continuing to hold for itself the center of the stage.