The Holmes-Dracula File

by Fred Saberhagen

  Of course it was not the merchants who so charged me; they did not find the stench of robbers’ bodies, staked up beside my roads as admonition, too much for their nostrils. Nor was it my country’s peasants, or any of its honest poor, who launched the legend of my unexampled deviltry. When I ruled, their doors could stay unbarred by night, whilst their wives and daughters walked abroad in peace and safety. I am, and was, a strong-willed man; else were I dead, five hundred years ago, from sword-wounds at the hands of my less loyal subjects. The troublemakers claimed to find unbearable the mere rumors that issued from the dungeons underneath my castles, where I had those who preyed upon the innocent conveyed as speedily as possible; nor did nobility of blood preserve them from my justice. But all this is as a story that is told. —Dracula.

  * * * * * * *

  A door opened behind me, and Lestrade came quietly into the room, a gleam of suppressed excitement in his eye. He exchanged a cryptic glance with Gregson, who quietly went out. After a nod to me, Lestrade, who had evidently heard the old man’s story at least once before, took over the questioning.

  “Now, dad, just where did this strange encounter of yours with the naked man take place?”

  “ ’Twas in Upper Swandam Lane, yer honor.”

  “And when?”

  “Long ’bout the middle o’ last night.”

  Lestrade placed two fingers, close together, upon the huge map of London that occupied one wall. “Upper Swandam Lane, Doctor, and right here’s the pier where the, er, evidence was found.” To the witness: “What did this strange man look like, apart from not being dressed?”

  The fellow in the chair looked from one of us to the other. “Well, he were a sight taller than either of you gentlemen. Lean enough so that ’is ribs stuck out. But not wasted nor feeble; strong as an ox, ’e was.”

  “Dark or fair? Young or old?”

  “Well, ’e was gray, or partly so.”

  All this description, I noted to myself, tallied well with Holmes’ account of the man who had worn the shirt. Lestrade pressed on. “Any sign that this chap had been shot? Wounded?”

  “Huh! Not ’im!”

  After another question or two, Lestrade beckoned me to follow him out into the corridor. Gregson was there, and with him a one-eyed, rascally-looking fellow, accoutered in some of the garments of a sailor. This man the detectives introduced to me as “Jones,” one of the most valuable informers in the pay of the CID. I remember thinking that the pay of an informer must be modest indeed, for this man appeared not much this side of starvation.

  Jones’ story, which he repeated in a rough and hurried whisper at the request of the detectives, was that he had been last night at the Salvation Army shelter on Sidney Street, where he had witnessed an incident so incredible that he had decided it must be brought directly to Lestrade’s attention; though not until this evening, I gathered, had the inspector been receptive to his story.

  The informer was carrying with him a ragged, dirty cloth cap, which he said had been left behind at the shelter by an incredibly strong man. This individual had spoken to Jones there, had shared his soup and tea, and then had suddenly jumped up out of his bed and departed. At midnight the doors were kept locked, but the man had forced them open barehanded. This was such a display of strength that, as Jones put it, he would hesitate to describe it to us, were it not that the shattered wood and metal must be still available as evidence. The patrolman on the beat had been summoned to the shelter, and his report would doubtless be coming through channels.

  Lestrade nodded. “Yes, you did well to tell us. Let me see the cap.”

  With it in hand, Lestrade went into a small, dusty storeroom, from which he emerged a few minutes later with two more, almost as old and worn, but each of a different cut and color. Taking all three together in his hand, he led us back to the door of the room in which the elderly witness was being questioned.

  Opening the spy-hole, Lestrade gestured for the informer to look through. “Was it him?”

  “No sir, not much likeness at all,” came the quick answer. “Same general build, is all. This one looks quite feeble. The other—very weak he was, I don’t think! If you doubts my word on that, sir, you’d better go along and look at those hostel doors.”

  “I suppose I had. But there’s just a bit more to do here, first.” Bringing me with him—Jones stayed in the outer darkness of the corridor—Lestrade re-entered the interrogation room.

  The witness was now somewhat more at ease; an older constable, with hair as gray as his own, had come in to talk and joke with him. Lestrade in turn now jollied him along a bit, and, when he had put his man as much at ease as possible, presented him with the three caps, asking him to choose which was the one he had sold to the naked stranger.

  After only the smallest hesitation, the old man selected the cap that the informer had brought with him.

  When Lestrade and I were out in the hall again, he turned in my direction, looking positively gleeful. “And now I had really better visit the hostel, where the trail is going to be hottest. Dr. Watson, I think you can tell Mr. Sherlock Holmes that this is one case in which his theories are not going to be needed, and the plain evidence in the hands of the police is quite sufficient.”

  I murmured some reply, that was perhaps no more courteous than it had to be. A minute later I had rejoined my two companions, and shortly after that the three of us were on our way back to Baker Street, Miss Tarlton having at last been persuaded that the search for John Scott was giving no sign as yet of bearing fruit.

  She stubbornly insisted, however, on coming on to Baker Street to see if Sherlock Holmes were yet at home. “Then I promise. Dr. Watson, that we will cease to bother you—oh, but you have been a great help and comfort to me tonight.”

  I found my annoyance melting.

  As the cab drew up before our rooms, I could see that they were dark. Miss Tarlton had just admitted, with some reluctance, that it was time to call an end to the day’s adventures, and I had just got down from the cab and turned to bid the two young people goodnight, when from behind me sounded a soft shuffling of naked feet upon the pavement. I turned to confront the shabby figure of young Murray.

  The boy’s eyes were excitedly alight. “Dr. Watson, sir? Will Mr. Holmes be back soon?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Well, sir, when ’imself is not available, I’m to give to you, privately, any important news I should discover.”

  Murray’s dancing eyes made it superfluous to ask whether he had at present any news he considered of importance. After a moment’s thought I signed to the people in the cab to wait, and drew the lad aside. As soon as I had heard his information, I led him back to where the others waited. “Tell these people,” I ordered, “what you have just told me.”

  “Well sir—ma’m—two hours ago I was at Barley’s—that’s in Soho, a public house, and famous for their sporting entertainments. It seemed to me a likely place to find out who’s been buyin’ rats, for they has thousands in their show—and there was a man there just answered the description of this Dr. Scott that Mr. Holmes is lookin’ for. And I heard Barley ’imself say to this man, ‘Doctor.’ ”

  Miss Tarlton emitted a little gasp, compounded of equal parts of fear and joy. I wished with all my heart that Holmes were present, but he was not. Peter Moore and I looked at each other, in prompt and silent agreement that we had better go at once to Barley’s. And I suppose we both knew from the beginning that there would be no hope of persuading Miss Tarlton to stay away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When I sank gratefully into slumber in my snug earthen den, it was with the expectation of sleeping the earth’s rotation fully around. In this estimate I was not far wrong; nothing short of an attempt to stake me through the torso could have roused me much sooner. When the first crack of consciousness broke into my dreamless oblivion, I could feel that the bulk of the planet had turned between me and the sun, and a clock somewhere nearby was striking ten. I awoke hungr
y, but otherwise greatly refreshed in mind and body. Even the pain in the back of my head had dwindled to the point of being scarcely noticeable.

  Some six feet underground lay my comparatively new box. It was half-filled, of course, with hospitable homeland soil, and wedged between the remnants of two old wooden coffins, whose peaceful tenants were far past objecting to their restless new neighbor, although his installation had nudged them into postures far from dignified. Not that my clandestine digging had wrought havoc any worse than that of the breathing gravediggers in their sunlit routine. Fortune for once had smiled on me indeed, in that my den lay undisturbed. Below my six-years-planted box, round it on every side, and now above it too, the soil was thick with jumbled old bones, churned up by the sextons in their ceaseless search for space in which to plant the recent dead. In a long rush hour that goes on and on, the London cemeteries were—for all I know still are— more crowded than the streets above, a circumstance that the silent majority of the population are in no condition to protest.

  Like smoke I rose to the dank air from my small borrowed plot. In the shadow of a half-fallen shed nearby, a brace of large rats tarried unwisely to observe my assumption, above ground, of the form of man. When I had called them to me, they provided all the material nourishment* I really needed at the moment. Yet I found I had the appetite for more; and with this goal in mind, I began to walk from the churchyard, down one of the darker byways of Mile End.

  My normal hunting methods bear little resemblance to those of breathing men; the great control I am able to exercise over the lower orders of life obviates the need to stalk, or to kill from a distance. On this occasion I had not gone far before there harkened to my silent siren song a single large black rat, of glossy coat and graceful form. The race of Rattus rattus had even at that time been much diminished in most European cities, more by the effective warfare of his larger brown cousin the Norway rat (Rattus Norvegicus) than by the immemorial efforts of men, dogs, and cats.

  * * * * * * *

  * I had better pause here to make it clear to modem readers misled by the wild tales of my enemies, that human gore is not my customary food. The delight that I seek from women’s veins is frankly sexual. But for sustenance, the blood of any mammalian species will serve my modest needs; it is my belief that most of any vampire’s really essential nourishment comes from some mysteriously penetrating emanation of the Sun. Full sunlight is too much for us, of course, as breathing men will drown in a short time in a surplus of the same water that they must have to drink.

  * * * * * * *

  As bold as a bandit, though he could no more overcome my mental grip than he could have fought free of my hands, black rattus looked me in the eye and bared an ivory tooth, and I had not the heart to take his blood for a mere whim of appetite. So I stood there in the dark, holding and stroking him like a pet, and meanwhile let my thoughts begin to turn on deeper subjects.

  Of course my waylaying at dockside had not been the work of anyone who knew my true identity. The ways in which they had tried to murder me—their carelessness in letting me get free after such efforts—their puzzlement at my vampirish blood—all these were proof enough of that. No, only the bitch-goddess Fortune had picked me as their victim, to serve their evil experiments, experiments that I still did not understand... Well, when I had found the villains out, they would live just long enough to rue their choice of prey.

  As I stood there petting my black rat, and nursing blacker thoughts, I became aware of some folk approaching along an alley. Three pairs of feet were coming, those of young men or boys nearly grown. One of them was carrying—something—that both squirmed and squealed, in half a dozen subhuman voices. Presently the walkers rounded a corner and came into my sight—though I was still not in theirs—and I perceived that the squeals emanated from a canvas bag alive with captured rodents.

  My curiosity aroused, I remained standing where I was whilst they drew closer. Surely, I thought, they are not taking rats for food? Poverty was all about me in this part of London, but I had not seen starvation of the sort that comes with an extended siege, and argues breathing folk into trying the taste of rats.

  The three youths were almost near enough to bump me, before one of them spied or heard something, and quickly flicked open the shade of a tin lantern. After their first startlement at seeing me in its uncertain beams, my wretched clothing acted in my favor, reassuring my discoverers that I was lower, if anything, in the social scale than they.

  “ ’Ere, mate!” one cried out. “Fair give me a turn, you did, standin’ there in the dark like that. Wotcher got—well, pickle me if it ain’t a pet.”

  ‘“Just lookit ’im,” another chimed in, “a-strokin’ of it like a bloody kitten!”

  I held out the quiet rat toward them in one hand. “It is yours, if you like, to go with those you have already.”

  As I might have expected, my accent, upperclass and foreign-flavored, undid some of the reassurance of my clothes. The one who held the lantern asked me: “Not sick, is it?”

  “My pet here? Not a bit.” In the same moment I shifted the grip of my fingers, and released that of my mind. In my hand the little beast became a blur of motion, ready to bite the flesh that its jaws could no longer reach, now that I held it by the neck. After a moment, another youth unslung his sack and held it out, and in the black one went.

  “Tell me,” I asked, “what will you do with them?” They glanced at one another. “Look ’ere—you ain’t in the business?”

  “I am not, but I might be. Oh, I would prefer to be not your competitor, my friends, but your associate.” The smell of rats burned in the air, and forced my thoughts back to that grotesque, improbable laboratory. Ah, to be free of honor’s claims! Could such a wish be honorably made, I would have prayed it then. In Exeter, Mina was waiting, who for six years had been more dear to me than life itself, and whom I had not seen in almost all that time. Yet honor held me in London, to fight a war. “I can catch rats, as you have seen. Where are they needed?”

  They at first were loath to tell me where their market was. So from the holes and crevices I coaxed out a dozen more rats, some black, some brown, which performance filled their bag to squirming tautness with very little effort on their part. Then soon I learned the young men had more bags, and cages, aboard a cart nearby and waiting to be filled. No more rats appeared, however, until I had been made full partner in the enterprise.

  “Three pence a head we’re gettin’, mate, and it’s share and share alike when we divvy up.”

  “Those terms seem fair. And we are selling the rats to—?”

  They looked at one another, shrugged. One spoke: “No more than one steady market, these days, chum. It’s Barley’s.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  During our drive to Soho, some firm words from both Peter Moore and myself succeeded in persuading Sarah Tarlton that when we reached Barley’s she must remain in the cab while we two men went inside. The appearance of a young woman of her class in such a place at such a time must cause the kind of sensation that, if we were to have any opportunity of surprising our quarry, it was essential to avoid. Then too, by remaining outside and on watch, she would be able to observe all who left the place or entered.

  “If I see John,” she announced, “I am going straight to him, no matter what.”

  “Of course.” Peter Moore was looking at her earnestly, and again holding her hand. “But you had better be sure. If it is instead a man who only looks like John, then leave him to Dr. Watson and me.”

  “I’ll be sure, Peter. Have no doubts about that.” Her gaze, feverish with anxiety, was already busy darting this way and that among the passersby. “Oh, if only we can find him before those policemen do!”

  At my orders the cabman stopped across the street from Barley’s, where I directed him to wait. Murray jumped down nimbly from the seat beside the driver, to lead the way; and Moore and I followed, joining the intermittent stream of men now entering the public house. Befor
e leaving Baker Street I had gone up to my room, and now I could feel inside my coat the reassuring bulge of my old service revolver.

  The ground-floor parlor, which we entered first, was a large room filled with the fumes of drink and tobacco, where a wide-shouldered, hearty, mustached man of middle age presided behind the bar. This individual obviously had many friends among the patrons, and after a few moments spent listening to the exchange of rough, good-humored talk, I understood that this was Barley himself. His friends, and indeed the crowd in general, were an inclusive mixture of all the classes of the metropolis. A few were well-dressed, and undoubtedly gentlemen, while others were the basest ruffians. Of the female sex only a very small number were present, and these exclusively of the lowest class. I noticed particularly one girl who would have been pretty, even striking, had not one side of her face been almost covered by a great, disfiguring strawberry birthmark. This girl was subject to rude treatment as she endeavored to push her way through the crush, as if in search of someone; and I was well satisfied that we had persuaded Sarah Tarlton to remain outside.

  Moore and I ordered drinks, and in general tried to give the impression of a pair of sportsmen out for a night’s amusement. Meanwhile we of course were keeping both eyes open for the man we had come to find. I was distracted almost at once, however, by a chance encounter with an old acquaintance.

  “Why, it is John Watson. Shouldn’t have thought it likely to meet you in a place like this.”