by Will Hill
Silence settled uncomfortably over the drawing room.
Tell me it was an isolated incident, thought Van Helsing. One of you tell me that. The alternative is too horrible.
“I fear this is only the beginning.”
It was Arthur Holmwood who spoke, his voice even and firm. “I believe that the situation is only likely to worsen. I wish I could honestly say otherwise, but I cannot. Can any of you?”
His face did not betray the fear that the old professor knew he must be feeling, nor the great sorrow with which the death of his father had filled him. Van Helsing felt an immense warmth for his friend, who had been dragged unwillingly into the terrible events of the previous year for no greater a crime than proposing marriage to the girl he loved, but had conducted himself with enormous courage and dignity as the matter had taken its course.
“I cannot,” said Dr Seward.
“Neither can I,” said Jonathan Harker.
The Professor nodded, curtly, trying not to show the dread that had settled in the pit of his stomach. “So we are in agreement,” he said, gripping the arms of his chair and pushing himself to his feet. “It is my sincere hope that we are wrong, but I feel it in my heart that we are not. I will convey our conclusion to the Prime Minister. Let us hope that he surprises us with wisdom enough to heed our warning.”
The valet brought the carriage to a halt outside the grand Horse Guards building, dismounted and helped Van Helsing down on to the pavement. Two soldiers of the Household Cavalry, resplendent in their blue tunics and gold ropes, immediately approached and asked them their business. The valet produced the letter from inside his top coat and passed it to the soldiers, who examined it carefully before standing aside.
Inside the arched entrance to the building an elderly butler, clad in immaculate morning dress, informed them that the Prime Minister would receive them in the study of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army on the first floor. He hovered respectfully as Van Helsing removed his coat and handed it to his valet.
“Wait here, boy,” the old man said. “I doubt I shall be long.”
The valet nodded and took a seat in a high-backed wooden chair by the entrance, folding his master’s coat across his knees.
Van Helsing followed the butler up a wide staircase, his footsteps muffled by a deep red carpet, the oil-painted eyes of the greatest heroes of the British Empire staring silently down at him from the walls.
He was led along a wide corridor on the first floor, turning left and right and left again, until they reached a large oak door, which the butler pushed open. He stepped inside and the Professor followed.
“Professor Abraham Van Helsing,” the butler announced, then backed silently out of the study. The old man watched the servant close the door, then turned and looked at the six men gathered at the far end of the room.
Seated at an enormous mahogany desk was William Gladstone, the Prime Minister, looking expectantly at Van Helsing. Flanking him to the left and right were five of the most powerful men in the Empire; Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty; Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Secretary of State for War; George Robinson, Secretary of State for the Colonies and 1st Marquess of Ripon; Herbert Asquith, Home Secretary; and Archibald Primrose, Foreign Secretary and 5th Earl of Rosebery.
What a rogues’ gallery this is, thought Van Helsing.
He walked across the study. The wall to his left was dominated by a tall row of windows, through which could be seen the green expanse of St James’s Park. To his right an open fire roared in an ornamental marble fireplace. Lying on the floor between him and the desk was an immaculate tiger skin, the head, paws and tail still attached and forming a six-pointed star on the dark floorboards. Beyond the rug was a wooden chair, positioned directly in front of the one in which the Prime Minister was sitting.
Van Helsing stepped around the tiger skin with a look of distaste on his face, and stood next to the chair.
“Won’t you sit, Professor?” asked Gladstone, his voice higher and more feminine than Van Helsing had expected.
“No thank you, Prime Minister,” he replied curtly. “I prefer to stand.”
Even though the pain in my hip feels like there is a branding iron being pressed against it. Let it hold up for as long as this takes, grant me that much.
Gladstone continued. “I saw you admiring the tiger. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“She,” said Van Helsing pointedly, “would be more beautiful were she still alive in the forests of Siberia, in my opinion. Sir.”
Secretary Robinson uttered a short laugh. “Professor, you are mistaken,” he said, his voice booming from a mouth partially concealed behind a vast beard that reached below his bow tie. “Not about the sex of the beast, as female she surely is, but about her provenance. She’s a Bengal, sir. I shot her myself outside of Yangon, two summers ago.”
Van Helsing turned and looked down at the animal skin, taking in the size of the head and the length of the tail, both still intact.
“I think not, sir,” he replied. “Panthera tigris altaica. The Siberian, or Amur, tiger.”
Robinson’s face darkened red. “Are you calling me a liar, sir?” he asked, his voice low.
He bought it, realised Van Helsing, with cruel enjoyment. Probably in Singapore or Rangoon. Bought it and brought it home as a hunting trophy. How wonderful.
“I am not suggesting that,” he replied, relish creeping into his voice. “I am, however, suggesting that it is you who is mistaken. The thickness of the coat, the pale orange of the fur, the lighter concentration of the stripes, all are unmistakable characteristics of the Amur, as is the fact that she must have stood more than eight feet in length. Perhaps you have been hunting on the Siberian plains in recent years, as well as in Bengal, and merely forgotten from which trip you brought her home? Because, if that it not the case, there is only one conclusion I am able to draw.”
He left the accusation unspoken, hanging pregnantly in the air of the drawing room, and after favouring him with a look of pure murder Secretary Robinson admitted that his son had taken camp in Siberia two summers previously, and had brought home a number of fine wild specimens, and it was likely that he had mixed up his Bengal trophy with one of these.
Still you lie, to the faces of your peers. Gilded fools. Preening bookkeepers. Let us be about this business.
The Prime Minister cleared his throat and took a sip of water from the half-full glass on the desk.
“Professor Van Helsing,” he said, his tone warm and rich now, the oily voice of a born politician. “I wish to thank you personally for your endeavours last night, and to pass on to you the gratitude of Jenny Pembry’s mother and father. The girl is now recuperating with them in Whitechapel, and appears to be doing well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“However, the incident, although blessed with a satisfactory ending, raises some unusual questions, does it not?”
Van Helsing allowed that it did, and Gladstone nodded.
“Could you therefore, Professor, explain to us the nature of the creature you encountered last night, and your experience in such matters? We are not beyond the reach of gossip in Whitehall, and I’m sure we have all heard rumours of the business with Carfax Abbey and its Transylvanian occupant, but I would like to hear the truth, from you.”
The old man looked steadily at the Prime Minister, then up at the ministers who were gathered around him.
Like a gaggle of vultures. Looking for a way to turn blood and death to their advantage.
“Very well, sir,” he said, and began to talk.
He spoke for no more than ten minutes, but as he finished it was obvious that his tale had divided the men in the room into two camps. Primrose, Robinson and Campbell-Bannerman were looking at him as though he were utterly mad, their faces contorted with obvious outrage that they had been forced to listen to such foolishness. Asquith, Spencer and Gladstone were ashen-faced, their eyes wide with horror, and Van Helsing knew that these three men belie
ved what he had told them.
“Are there any questions?” he asked, looking squarely at the Prime Minister.
Gladstone opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Secretary Robinson. The Prime Minister gave him a look that suggested he was going to regret having done so at some point in the near future, but allowed the Marquess to speak.
“This is preposterous,” Robinson said, his voice trembling with indignation. “You’re asking me to believe in men who can fly, have superhuman strength, drink blood and live forever, and moreover you’re suggesting that there is going to be some form of epidemic of these behaviours? Behaviours that can only be destroyed by exsanguination or the obliteration of the heart?”
“Exactly, sir,” Van Helsing replied.
Robinson turned to Gladstone. “Prime Minister, this has surely gone beyond a joke. I fail to see what—”
“Shut up, George,” Gladstone said, evenly.
The Colonial Secretary looked as though he might burst. Primrose opened his mouth to protest but the Prime Minister waved a derisory hand at him.
“Not another word, from any of you,” he said. “I appreciate that what Professor Van Helsing has just told us is unsettling, horrifying, even. And I can also appreciate why some of you, perhaps all of you, might have trouble believing his tale. But I have it on good authority that events beneath the Lyceum took place exactly as he describes, and we’ve all heard the stories about the journey he and his companions made to Transylvania last year. So I confess my inclination to believe him.”
It is possible I had this man wrong, Van Helsing thought. There is an intelligence at work here that I had not given credit for.
“And as Prime Minister,” Gladstone continued. “It is my responsibility to do what I believe to be in the best interests of the Empire, especially where potential threats to its security are concerned. And that is what I will do. Unless anyone wishes to object?”
He got up from behind the desk and looked closely at each of the men stood behind him, daring them to speak against him. Van Helsing watched, fascinated, as Robinson, literally shaking with righteous indignation, made as if to do so, until Campbell-Bannerman placed a restraining hand on his arm and the Colonial Secretary looked away.
“Very well,” said the Prime Minister, stepping out from behind the desk and approaching Van Helsing. “Professor,” he said. “Popular opinion would suggest that you are our finest authority on the matters you have just outlined. Would you agree?”
The old man allowed that there was some truth in that particular rumour, and Gladstone nodded.
“In which case,” he continued. “I am prepared to make your expertise an official position in Her Majesty’s Government. Clandestinely, of course. Are you interested?”
“What would the position entail?”
“The investigation and elimination of the condition that you have just explained to us so compellingly. With authority recognised by every appropriate governmental department, annually budgeted expenses, and co-operation guaranteed by all agencies of the Empire. That’s what it would entail.”
The Prime Minister looked at Professor Van Helsing and smiled. “So,” he said. “Does that interest you?”
*
Dr Seward extinguished a Turkish cigarette that smelt to Van Helsing as if it had been lightly laced with opium.
“And?” he asked. “What did you tell him?”
The men were sitting in the red leather armchairs that dominated the comfortable, wood-panelled study of Arthur Holmwood’s father. Van Helsing’s valet had driven his master back to the townhouse on Eaton Square as soon as the meeting at Horse Guards had ended, and Arthur had led them upstairs to the room in which his father, Lord Godalming, had spent much of the later years of his life. The men had lit cigarettes and pipes and the old man had just finished telling them about his meeting with the Prime Minister when John Seward asked his question.
“I told him I needed time to think it over,” Van Helsing replied. “I asked for twenty-four hours, which he granted me. I am to deliver my reply by noon tomorrow, in writing.”
“What do you intend your answer to be?” asked Harker. He had a deep bell pipe in his hand that had gone out. He was holding it absently, as though he had forgotten about it.
“In truth, I do not know,” Van Helsing confessed. “I think in all likelihood I will accept his proposal, but my happiness at doing so will rather depend on the question I am about to ask you all.”
The Professor set a wide tumbler of cognac on to a shelf beside his seat. He had returned from Whitehall with his mind racing at the possibilities Gladstone’s offer might afford him, but also shaken deeply by the responsibilities it would bring, and he had gratefully accepted Arthur’s offer to open his father’s drinks cabinet a little earlier than was usual.
“Gentlemen,” he began. “We have all witnessed with our own eyes more of the darkness that inhabits this world than most, and more than any sane man would care to have seen. I flatter myself we did a fine thing in the Transylvanian mountains, something we can all be proud to have played a part in, and if any of you wishes to let your involvement in these matters end there, let me promise you that neither I, nor anyone else, will think even the slightest bit less of you for it. Each of us has more than paid our dues, and a peaceful life, untainted by blood and screams, is not something to give up lightly.”
He paused and looked around the study.
“Part of me believes that to ask more of you is a cruelty on my part, one that none of you deserves. But that is what I am going to do. Because I believe a plague is coming to this nation, to all nations, and that Harold Norris was only the prototype. This morning you all claimed to believe this as well, but I ask you to consider how firmly you believe it, for a very simple reason. If we are right, then we are the only men in the Empire with any experience of what is to come. And I cannot stand by and see innocent blood spilled, innocent souls polluted for eternity, knowing that I could have saved even one of them. We swore that we would be vigilant, that were the Count ever to return we would deal with him once more. He has not, and I don’t believe he ever will. But the evil that inhabited him has survived, and is abroad.”
Van Helsing reached for his tumbler with a shaking hand, and drained the glass.
“I will accept the Prime Minister’s offer tomorrow. But when I asked for a period of time to consider it, I also informed him that were certain people to agree to be involved, they would be allowed to do so. I informed him that this was not negotiable. So I am asking for your help, as you once asked for mine. I wish I could offer you longer to think it through, but I can only—”
“I accept,” interrupted Jonathan Harker. His face was pale, but a determined smile played across his lips. “I don’t need time to consider.”
“Nor do I,” said Dr Seward. He had lit another cigarette, and his handsome face was wreathed in smoke.
“And neither do I,” said Arthur Holmwood, firmly. He had set his cigar and his glass aside, and was looking directly at Van Helsing. “Not a single minute.”
Thank you. Oh, thank you.
“Please take one anyway, Arthur,” he replied. “All of you. Because there can be no going back if we embark on this journey. You will never be able to tell anyone beyond this room of the existence of our organisation. Not even Mina, Jonathan. Are you prepared for that?”
Harker flinched, but nodded his head. “Are you all?” Van Helsing asked.
Seward and Holmwood both agreed that they were.
“In which case,” Van Helsing said. “I see no reason to make the Prime Minister wait. I will despatch our answer immediately.”
Chapter 11
THE MORNING AFTER
Jamie woke shortly before dawn.
He raised his groggy head from the pillow and saw an IV drip running down to a needle that had been placed in his forearm. He didn’t remember its insertion; didn’t remember much of how the previous day had ended, after the girl had attacke
d him in the hangar.
He pushed back the sheets and blankets and swung his legs off the bed. He was wearing a white medical robe, and was scanning the room for his clothes when a wave of nausea rolled through him and he thought for a horrible second that he was going to vomit. His throat hurt and it was painful to breathe. He raised a hand to his neck, felt a swollen ridge of flesh tender to the touch, and winced. He closed his eyes and lowered his head between his knees, and after a minute or two the sick feeling passed. He was about to get down from the bed when the door at the end of the room opened and a doctor walked briskly into the infirmary.
“Mr Carpenter,” the doctor said. “Please lie back down.”
The man’s voice was familiar and full of authority, and Jamie did as he was told. The doctor examined his bruised throat, pricked his finger and drew blood, shone a small flashlight in his eyes, then slid the needle out of his arm and pronounced him much improved.
“How do you feel?” he asked Jamie.
“I feel OK,” he replied, rubbing the neat circular bruise left by the needle. “I don’t really remember how I got here. Did Frankenstein bring me?”
The doctor nodded.
“Brought you in, then stayed with you most of the night. He only left a couple of hours ago. He asked me to remind you when you woke up that you are to go and see him before you talk to anybody else. He asked me to make sure you understood that. Do you?”
“I suppose so.”
The doctor drew a PDA from his pocket and tapped a number of keys with the plastic pen.
“I want you to come back and see me this afternoon,” he said. “The bruising is down, and you’re no longer dehydrated. You may still be suffering from a degree of post-traumatic stress, but under the circumstances I’m going to discharge you. Is that what you wish?”
Jamie nodded.
“OK then. Rest here as long as you like, and when you’re ready you can get dressed and go and find your friend. He asked me to give you this.”