Séance for a Vampire

by Fred Saberhagen

  Mycroft was as good as his word, and with the benefit of his powerful though hidden influence, discreetly exercised, our expeditionary force was able to obtain, quickly and quietly, the use of a fast steamer for the journey to St. Petersburg. The vessel provided was in fact the private steam-yacht of one of the Sea Lords—I think that even now I had better not be more specific regarding the vessel's ownership or the circumstances in which we obtained its use.

  There had been some discussion of our using a naval vessel, but Holmes had promptly decided that would be inappropriate. "Owing to the essentially private nature of our business, a privately owned craft is preferable to a ship of His Majesty's Navy, which would inevitably attract attention, and would require some diplomatic prearrangement."

  Another advantage of a private ship was that she could stand by unobtrusively in the Russian port, ready to carry us on the return voyage—but haste in returning should not be necessary.

  The craft we were privileged to obtain had engines similar to those of the new turbine-powered destroyers, capable of making more than thirty knots. Most naval vessels of the time could sustain no more than half that speed.

  During our voyage, Count Kulakov's motives and behavior were naturally the subject of intense discussion. So were those of Rebecca Altamont, the question being by what combination of force and guile she had been compelled to accompany him. Our party included Sherlock Holmes, Prince Dracula, Armstrong, and myself, as well as Sarah Kirkaldy, without whose genuine psychic capabilities we might never have been able to follow the escaping Kulakov with any accuracy.

  While the Russian's vampirish bloodlust had played a part in his behavior, obviously his prime motive in his attacks upon the Altamonts was—or had been—revenge.

  Even so, that left unexplained many details of his behavior. Nor was it very helpful simply to say that the man was mad, though that undoubtedly seemed to be the case. And there was still the matter of the mysterious treasure. Did it exist only in the fevered imagination of a deranged vampire?

  "It will of course be difficult, or impossible, to arrest the man we seek, in Russia even more so than in England—but it would be useless to arrest him anywhere. Courts, fines, and imprisonment are meaningless threats to him. The only practical way to punish a vampire is by the application of direct physical violence."

  We could not but agree with Holmes.

  At the same time, of course, Rebecca Altamont was making the voyage with Kulakov. We were sure that she must be in some sense his prisoner, though we could not say by what combination of threats, actual violence, and mesmeric power he might be forcing her to his will.

  At one point Armstrong asked me whether Becky, having made the voyage with her captor, would be unloaded in an earth-filled trunk, and whether she had been brought aboard his ship and spent most of the voyage thus confined. We all assured him that this was unlikely—unless Rebecca had already become a vampire. Such intimations as we could receive through the entranced mind of Sarah Kirkaldy indicated that this was not the case, but we could not be sure.

  Our sea route to St. Petersburg took us through the North Sea, among the islands and peninsulas of Denmark, and past Copenhagen, with a brief stop there to see if a cable might have arrived from Mycroft—the wireless was not yet available on ships—before entering the Baltic. Our journey in itself was almost completely uneventful, leaving us plenty of time for discussion of vampirism and related phenomena. I realized only belatedly that the favorable winds and generally calm seas we enjoyed were at least in part a result of Prince Dracula's efforts in an occult way.

  Whether Kulakov might be capable of exercising a similar influence upon the weather, we did not know; in any event, we gained a day or more on his ship during the voyage, so that we arrived at our destination only a day, perhaps only a few hours, after he did. We were elated to see that the ship on which Kulakov and his hostage had traveled—her name was plainly visible—was actually still at the quay, in the process of unloading cargo, when we arrived in St. Petersburg. This was indeed an encouraging sign, showing that our enemy and his helpless hostage could as yet be at no very great distance from the city.

  With our own vessel berthed, we disembarked amid dense fog and intermittent rain, conditions almost identical to those under which we had left Hull. Under Armstrong's guidance we had little difficulty in finding our way about the Russian capital. Our party took rooms at the Hotel de l'Europe. Here our windows overlooked Nevsky Prospekt, the great boulevard which runs for two and a half miles through the city's heart. When the fog cleared, which it soon did, the view was quite impressive. We saw the avenue thronged with people under black umbrellas, both of its sides lined by palaces and churches, by business establishments and government buildings of all sorts.

  There were an amazing number of uniforms to be seen among the native populace, and no immediate way for the stranger to know which type of costume belonged to high officials and which to mere minor functionaries.

  The hotel stood on the north side of the boulevard, less than half a mile east of the Kazan Cathedral, whose colonnade had been copied from that of St. Peter's in Rome, and whose interior boasted the regimental flags and imperial eagles captured from the ravaged army of Napoleon. A block past the cathedral, one reached the luxurious shops of the Morskaya, where I almost thought I might have been in Paris.

  Traffic here kept to the right, which added yet another minor strain to our difficulties.

  A mile to our north and out of sight from our hotel on the far bank of the broad Neva, there rose the sullen, dun-colored walls of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, at once a stronghold and a prison. Towering four hundred feet above those walls, and visible from most parts of the city, rose the slender golden spire marking the site of the cathedral contained within the fortress.

  For three miles along the southern bank of the Neva ran a solid quay of pink Finnish granite, lined on its inland side by the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, the foreign embassies, and the palaces of the great nobles, the wealthy merchants and landowners.

  Currently the Russian capital was a city of about a million and a half people. This made it not as large as London, but still to be classified as one of the great cities of Europe and the world. And from the bustle of commerce along the quays, and the evident respect shown toward the monarchy by most of the people, it was plain that their Majesties Nicholas and Alexandra were still secure on their thrones, despite the continual ferment of terrorists seeking to incite revolution.

  The Winter Palace, a huge and, as one might expect, an imposing edifice, built in the eighteenth century by the Empress Elizabeth, was seldom occupied by royalty at this season of the year. The Tsar and Tsarina, as Armstrong informed us, were in the habit of spending their summers at Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar's village, a construction of fantastic extravagance fifteen miles south of St. Petersburg. This miniature domain had been called "a world apart," and "an enchanted fairyland." Eight hundred acres of green lawn— well over a square mile—in the imperial park delighted the four daughters of the imperial family, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, whose ages were eight to two, respectively.

  The horse-drawn tram had not yet been replaced by the electric vehicle, and motorcars were much more a rarity than in the vicinity of London. Rubber-tired carriages were fairly common in the summer, and the main streets, at least, were all smoothly paved.

  Now we put into action, as best we could, the plans which we had made aboard ship. We were each of us to seek out our professional contemporaries in St. Petersburg, and endeavor to find out what we could about our quarry.

  Dracula mentioned casually that there might be in the St. Petersburg area some local vampires with whom he could establish useful contact. "Most likely it will be something indirect—I have a place to start, the name of a certain breathing friend of an old friend."

  Zubatov, then head of the Tsarist secret police, acquainted with Sherlock Holmes at least by reputation, was obviously a powerful man, important eith
er as friend or foe; and Holmes would pursue his own inquiries by that means.

  Armstrong felt almost at home in Petersburg, having spent much of the previous winter and spring in the city in the course of his duties as international correspondent for his American newspaper. He had found the place interesting, and had enjoyed many aspects of the local society. Others, such as the official censorship, were extremely distasteful. But mainly he had suffered by being separated from Louisa, until, to his joy, he had been reassigned to London.

  For my part I endeavored, though I met with little success, to establish some contacts among the local medical community, by means of shared interests or mutual acquaintances. One friend of a friend turned up unexpectedly—a Russian who had been doing research on plague, in Paris, but his knowledge of Count Kulakov, or of anyone who might know the count, proved to be nil. From my new acquaintance, I learned little more than that this city had been called "the Babylon of the Snows," or sometimes "the Venice of the North"—the latter because of the number of canals and natural waterways.

  I learned also that in summer, cholera was always a serious concern. It was important to make sure that drinking water was boiled.

  I was pleased to observe that telephones were as readily available as in most parts of Britain. All of the best hotels and other important buildings had at least one instrument installed, and I was told there were many thousands of subscribers in Russia.

  Our business in the city was facilitated by the fact that several of our party understood the language of the city's common people. Holmes spoke a little Russian and understood more—this knowledge, as he explained to me, being one of the fruits of two years of travel in Tibet. And Prince Dracula soon demonstrated fluency in the tongue of Ivan the Terrible, though Holmes told me there was much that was old-fashioned, even archaic, in Dracula's speech. The prince said that he had never visited St. Petersburg before; I admit being somewhat awed by the realization that he was considerably older than the city.

  Armstrong, during the past year having spent several months in St. Petersburg, had a smattering of modern Russian.

  Of particular help to me was the fact that every cultured person in the capital spoke French, some of them by preference over their native tongue; in addition, a fair number spoke English.

  On our first evening in St. Petersburg, some of our party visited a certain basement café called the Red Jingle, rather a bohemian establishment. Under a poster advertising last season's performances of Anna Pavlova, we discussed our next move.

  We intended to learn who might be Kulakov's special friends and associates in St. Petersburg, and Cousin Sherlock had been able to come up with some clues along that line. Everything we had learned so far tended to confirm that our quarry probably did not have many intimate associates, here in Petersburg or anywhere else.

  We still did not know whether Kulakov had yet forced his fangs upon his latest victim and hostage. Personally I thought it probable, though I admitted there might be reasons for him to do otherwise.

  Meanwhile I was congratulating myself for having managed to bring Sarah along, though the stern demands of duty kept me from seeing anything like as much of her as I would have liked.

  Getting a black look from Watson now and then, I condescended to assure the good doctor that he need not be worried about Sarah's becoming a vampire. With a little restraint on the part of both parties involved, such an outcome could be delayed for a long time, and most of my love affairs did not end in that result.

  Gradually our slowly growing network of contacts in the city began, like a tangle of grapevine, to bear fruit. Within two days we learned that in the higher social circles where he was known, Kulakov planned to present Rebecca as his new wife, acquired in England. In recent years he had been known in St. Petersburg as a widower, his last reported wife having died some years ago.

  Insofar as we could discover, it had never been the count's habit, before his latest trip to England, to mix much in St. Petersburg society, but he was on fairly intimate terms with a few of the nobility. Though appearing socially from time to time, he mainly kept to himself, spending most of his time on his extensive country estates.

  Martin Armstrong was still being tormented by his mixed feelings toward the dead Louisa. His beloved was, or had been, one of the undead. Having some difficulty in believing that Louisa was now truly departed, Armstrong was also anticipating a similar outcome for Becky. He brooded sleeplessly upon her fate, the unbearable fact that from now on, she might be compelled to spend her days, or many of her daylight hours, sleeping in her tomb. And he had learned from the party of vampire-hunters the uses of the wooden stake.

  Who would her lover be when she had become a vampire? Not Kulakov any longer—vampire and vampire do not bed together.

  No, Becky's new lover would have to be a breathing man. And there could be no future in society—any form of human society, as Martin thought—for such a couple.

  Sarah Kirkaldy, as Dracula's lover, had, by the time we left for Russia, been brought to a certain practical understanding of vampirism. By this time Sarah, though her grief for her brother and her desire for revenge were genuine enough, was beginning to wonder, perhaps to calculate, how such powers as had been revealed to her might be turned to a medium's professional advantage.

  Every witness—there were not many—who reported seeing Kulakov since his return to St. Petersburg, said that the man gave evidence of some kind of mental or physical infirmity. We wondered whether this infirmity had provided him with one strong reason, perhaps really the only reason, to come back to St. Petersburg. "Is it possible that he comes here in hopes of getting relief from these symptoms?" I asked. No one answered.

  The beautiful white nights, persisting well into July, made a favorable impression on the breathing visitors, but somewhat hampered the visiting and native vampires alike.

  Holmes asked Martin Armstrong for confirmation that Rebecca Altamont did not speak Russian. Then the detective mused that this lack would doubtless add to the girl's sense of helplessness and isolation, and make it harder for her to attempt an escape unaided, even if she were able to contemplate such a course.

  In engaging our hotel rooms, we had particularly asked for a suite equipped with a telephone. In the first two days of our stay, the instrument seldom rang; but toward the end of the third day, I answered a call and heard, to my great astonishment, the voice of a distraught woman whom I could only gradually, and with some uncertainty, recognize as Rebecca Altamont.

  I will not repeat in detail all that the mesmerized and terrorized woman said, or elaborate on my futile attempts to interrupt and offer her some hope. Suffice it to say here that she cursed us, one and all, for interfering with her happiness, and warned us to go home.

  There followed a little shriek as the instrument was evidently pulled roughly from her grasp, and then a gloating postscript in an unfamiliar male voice which I soon realized must be that of Kulakov himself.

  "Dr. Watson, I take it? Mr. Holmes is not available at the moment? Ah, too bad." Kulakov went on to give his own warning, to the effect that until now he had treated his prisoner kindly, but if Sherlock Holmes and the other meddlers did not promptly take themselves out of the country, he would soon begin to punish Rebecca Altamont for what he called our misdeeds.

  "The exact mode of this chastisement I leave, for now, to your imaginations. And ah, I must not forget. Let this call serve as formal announcement that a wedding ceremony is in prospect; I think, though, that it will be delayed until my bride and I have reached the country. It is easier there to find a priest with a dependable, sensible attitude in these matters."

  At that, I thought that the connection was about to be broken; but then the vampire remained at his 'phone long enough to deliver a parting shot. "Oh, and convey my goodwill to the family of thieves, the infamous Altamonts. Tell them I will yet have my treasure back. And give them my congratulations—they raise such tasty daughters. It is too bad they have no more."<
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  There was a laugh, then a sharp click at the other end of the line, followed by the impersonal humming of the wires.

  Rebecca was being held hostage for our good behavior.

  18

  Reeling under the shock of the horrible threat directed at Rebecca Altamont, our little group met in a council of war to determine what our next move should be.

  We were all horrified, of course, at Kulakov's new challenge; the most terrible aspect was his threat to carry his helpless hostage away to one of his remote country estates, where the lord of the manor customarily ruled as a law unto himself, unfettered by any of the constraints imposed by an urban society; and where we would find it much more difficult if not impossible to reach either the criminal or his victim.

  Prince Dracula of course was something of an exception when it came to considering impossibilities. On being informed of Kulakov's challenge he announced stiffly that, even if we were to fail in St. Petersburg, he would probably consider that his honor required him to mount an extended campaign, spending years if necessary, to recover the girl or at least to take vengeance on her abductor,

  We appreciated this attitude on the part of the prince, but at the same time we took rather less satisfaction from the idea of mere vengeance serving as a substitute for rescue.

  We considered the idea of trying to communicate our proud defiance, and the grimmest possible warning, to our foe, but soon decided that the only good response would be effective action.

  The more I saw of the city and its people, the more I found St. Petersburg a very foreign place to English eyes, despite its homelike fogs and dampness. But at the same time, the metropolis struck me as quite European—not Eastern or Asiatic—and exceedingly impressive.

  The city sprawls over nineteen islands, most of them at the time of our visit green with summer trees, and for miles along the ragged, swampy edge of the mainland. It is divided down the middle by the river Neva, which seems to carry with its flow the smells of pure wilderness water and bitter cold. I was startled to learn that the broad Neva is only forty-six miles in length. It drains Lake Ladoga, which, in turn, is fed by a number of streams flowing out of the infinite northern forests.