Dracula Sequence - Seance For A Vampire Part 20

The two men in the alcove at the end of the hall looked up sharply as Holmes approached. But his walk had altered, become the light, obsequious tread of a servant, and it must have seemed to them that a dark-clad footman or waiter had gone by with averted face.

Evidently Kulakov had not recognized his own former prisoner. Still, something about the briskly moving figure apparently jarred the former pirate into suspicions regarding his present hostage. Mumbling inaudibly, moving slowly at first, he started out of the alcove-glanced up the stair after Holmes, shook his head as if in doubt- then turned again, proceeding straight down the central hallway in the direction of the room where Miss Altamont had been confined. By good fortune, he had chosen the other branch of corridor from the one where she and I were waiting.

My opportunity, as I saw it, had come, and I did my best to take advantage of it.

Quickly I resumed my efforts to persuade Rebecca to walk along the corridor toward the stairs. My urging had little effect on the girl, who remained no more than half- conscious. After a moment, I picked her up bodily in my arms and strode along.

Evidently Kulakov, once distracted from his conversation with Rasputin, needed perhaps half a minute to clear his mind fully of the light trance into which, under the ministrations of the healer, he had begun to descend. By that time Miss Altamont and I had reached the stairs and were making steady progress down them. They were broad, marble stairs, gracefully curved, and discouragingly well-lighted compared with the dim bedroom corridors above. Although at the moment the young lady and I had the way all to ourselves, the sounds of ribald merriment proceeding from the several doorways visible below us suggested strongly that that state of affairs could not last long.

Meanwhile the count, going to check on his victim, needed only a few moments to discover that she was not in her room. Alarmed, he dashed straight back to the stairs, where one look down showed him that his prisoner was being carried out of his control.

Kulakov came charging, leaping downstairs after us, roaring like the madman he was. The vampire did not change form, and it crossed my mind, even in the moment of crisis, that perhaps daylight was already too far advanced to permit him to do that.

The first rays of the rising sun, striking in through the skylight far above us in the roof, produced a crystalline, slightly dazzling effect, but I knew well that here in the house we were too sheltered and shaded to allow me to depend substantially upon the sun for our defense.

My revolver was already in my hand, and as that dark, snarling figure came bounding downstairs toward us, reaching out with taloned fingers, I fired repeatedly.

Fortunately my aim was true, and at least two or three of Von Herder's heavy wooden bullets pierced our attacker's body.

The effect was devastating. Kulakov went tumbling past us down the broad curving marble stairway, his flesh, even as he fell and rolled, hissing and dissolving as though submerged in some vat of acid. In another moment the vampire's body had been claimed by the true death.

With all the noisy celebration still in progress, no one in the house paid much attention even to the sound of gunfire; a few heads looked round corners toward the stairs, and laughter ceased briefly, only to resume as loud as before.

The body, being that of an old vampire, dispersed in mist-form, clothing and all, before anyone could see it, and before I or my companions could be embarra.s.sed by the necessity of explaining a corpse.

Rasputin had come out of the alcove and looked down once from the landing. I am not sure that he actually saw Kulakov die, but I believe that through occult knowledge or instinctive wisdom, the peasant understood what had just happened, and that he then simply and prudently took himself away. I can only say that the man's later notoriety, seemingly at its peak in this year of 1917 in which I write, does not surprise me at all.

Meanwhile, once Holmes had reached the balcony where the prince was standing, it became possible for my friend to invoke a certain name effectively, that of a lady to whom the prince had long shown sincere devotion. Also, I suspect that Holmes's studies in Tibet might have served him well when the need arose to break a hypnotic trance. He led an awakened Dracula indoors before the direct sunlight could do his cousin fatal injury.

By that time it was possible for them to see that Miss Altamont and I had safely reached the street; and moments later, Dracula and his cousin had joined their co- conspirators in the street and were running to board the waiting carriage with them.

Fortunately, with Kulakov's death, Rebecca Altamont quickly recovered from her hypnotized state and was soon able to cooperate actively in her own rescue. Soon we had succeeded in removing her to a place of relative safety.

We determined to cable this happy result to England as soon as possible, but then decided we had better not delay our departure to do so.

Meanwhile, in the course of our forced delay inside the house, Holmes and Dracula between them had by accident overheard a fairly detailed account, by Kulakov himself, of those peculiar events involving vampires, an execution, and stolen treasure in London in 1765. After a few minutes of intense thought upon these matters, Dracula's cousin did hastily dispatch a cable, this one coded, back to Mycroft in London.Having done this, the detective, in a smug, elated mood, promised all of us, to our astonishment, that he had identified the pirate treasure and hoped soon to be able to explain where it had been hidden for the past one hundred and thirty-eight years.

Some hours after Holmes had dispatched his cable to Mycroft-in fact, as we were about to board our ship to leave St. Petersburg-he received an answer, this time in the form of a clear transmission. It ran as follows: MATERIAL FOUND IN PLACE DESCRIBED ALL SATISFACTORY HERE MYCROFT.

Epilogue.

We were worried lest some powerful subordinate or ally of Kulakov's deduce that he was dead, and discover-perhaps from the splinters of a wooden bullet-the manner of his death, and then take measures to delay or prevent our departure.

Moving quickly, yet deliberately to avoid giving any appearance of undue haste, we completed our preparations for taking ship from St. Petersburg.

Fortune smiled on us, and within a matter of hours, we were well on our way back to England, embarked on the same speedy private vessel which had carried us to Russia.

We were well out at sea, and had satisfied ourselves that no pursuit was to be antic.i.p.ated, before we openly discussed every aspect of the case among ourselves.

In these circ.u.mstances, Holmes concluded his summing-up, including an outline of the chief events that must have taken place in 1765 to provoke Kulakov's thirst for vengeance and cause the mysterious disappearance of the jewels.

"Before giving my final explanation about the treasure, I believe it will be pertinent to explain the circ.u.mstances in which Louisa Altamont had apparently been drowned.

"Young Martin Armstrong has told us how he plunged again and again into the pool where the boat had overturned, looking for the victim of an accident, never dreaming that a kidnapping had taken place instead.

"But actually, Louisa, her attempts to cry out strangled in her throat, was already in the grip of the vampire Kulakov, and was being pulled downstream, under water, at a speed that would have seemed incredible to anyone who did not understand the powers of the being who had seized her.

"Pulled downstream, around the next bend, then brought to the surface long enough for a few gasps of air-the last air she would ever breathe upon this earth."

While Becky had run for help, first to the nearest cottages and then to Norberton House, Martin, soon aided by other swimmers, plunged into the water again and again, screaming Louisa's name in an ever more hoa.r.s.e and breathless voice. He worked his way some yards downstream and then came back, afraid that she was still under water near the place where she had fallen in... afraid that she was dead. "But in fact Louisa was not dead. Kulakov had repeatedly forced himself upon her-in vampire fashion. This s.e.xual a.s.sault took place first underwater and later upon the land. He also, in his half-crazed state, demanded that his victim tell him where the treasure, the family jewels, were hidden.

"Louisa of course knew nothing, or at least very little, about her ancestor's conflict with a piratical vampire more than a century ago. Pressed to reveal the secret of a supposed family treasure of whose existence she was unaware, she could only tell this man, this fiend, about a safe in her father's office, which held only some irrelevant legal papers and a few pieces of modern and comparatively inconsequential jewelry."

Holmes went on to recount how the missing girl, still fully clothed and in the powerful grip of her naked captor, was carried swiftly and silently away downstream, to where a rusted, moss-grown iron fence marked the border of the cemetery.

There Louisa had been brought out of the water, and there her wet garments were torn back from her throat, and the vampire's fangs pierced her white skin.

"But even that was not the worst. She was compelled to drink her attacker's blood." There was a shuddering reaction among the listeners. "With a long nail, Kulakov opened the skin on his own chest, and forced her mouth to that place."

After that, Louisa, bound as Holmes was later bound, had been hidden for some hours in the same secret crypt from which Holmes was later rescued. There Kulakov again attacked her repeatedly, so that in a matter of hours, she was well along in the transformation from breathing human to vampire.

That transformation was irreversible by the next morning, when Kulakov left the girl's body on the riverbank, to be discovered by the first searchers who came that way after dawn.

"Had he a conscious motive in so doing? I am inclined to the belief that he did not.

It seems probable that one of Kulakov's periodic lapses of purpose, even of coherent thought, overcame him there on the riverbank at dawn. He had achieved a great revenge upon the Altamonts, but there was no ultimate satisfaction in this deed, and he was as far as ever from recovering the treasure.

"We come now to the treasure-a much happier subject."

Our little circle of listeners heartily agreed with that.

Holmes went on: "The key, of course, lies in what Kulakov-during the last minutes of his life-confessed to the man who was endeavoring to heal him-about what happened in 1765, on the morning after Kulakov was hanged."

Holmes went on to describe the scene as it must have taken place in the Angel Inn: "... Kulakov, in his confused state, still looking for his treasure and having no success, had heard the woman's despairing cries and had come back from the adjoining room.

"Doll had put on her clothes again. Gibbering and pleading in her terror, she tried to bargain with him. She spoke now in her native language, which Kulakov had learned to understand. She told the Russian that she knew where the stolen ornaments were hidden, and that she would give them all to him in exchange for only a few pounds of her native earth.

"Somewhere among the hundreds of ships in the great port, which had brought in by accident soil, plants, vermin from the farthest reaches of the globe-somewhere among all those far-traveled hulls, surely, surely there must be one whose cargo or bilge or windblown planking contained a few pounds, a few handfuls even, of that stuff more precious now to her than any gems or l.u.s.trous metal.

"The Russian, with his understanding clouded by the multiple stresses of strangulation and rebirth, heard her out. Then he had a question of his own. He whispered it in English: 'Where are the jewels? They are not here.'

" 'Are you not listen to me? I tell you where the treasure is, I swear, when you have help me find the soil I need. The jewels are not here. But they are all safe, in place you know, where you can get them!'

" 'I know.' The pirate looked down at the red mess on the floor. 'He gave them to his brother, who has them at his country estate, somewhere out of town. His brother, who helped him to betray me.'

"In near despair the woman clutched his arm, her long nails digging in, a grip that might well have crushed the bones of any breathing man. Once more she spoke in her own language. 'Will you not listen to me, Kulakov? I need my earth! By all the G.o.ds of my homeland-by whatever G.o.ds you pray to in your Muscovy-I swear that if you help me find the earth that I must have, the treasure shall all be yours!'

"Indeed," continued Holmes, "Doll told the truth in saying that she knew where the jewels were hidden-because she had put them there herself!"

There was a sensation among the listeners.

Holmes went on. "Let us try to put ourselves in this woman's place. She had been in England for only a few days, and was still almost totally unfamiliar with the metropolis in which she found herself. When Kulakov, seeking vengeance, entered the room at the Angel Inn, she did not wish to oppose him directly in his murderous rage.

"Seeing that her patron and lover, Altamont, was doomed, Doll prudently gathered up the treasure that he had secreted in the next room and carried it to a certain place she had seen and remembered. It was a place from which she could easily retrieve the jewels, at any time between sunset and dawn, while they remained secure from accidental discovery by any of London's swarming, breathing folk.

"It was even possible to theorize that Kulakov in a daze might have put the treasure in that place himself, and then have forgotten the act. But if we accept the scene in the Angel Inn as factual, then the correct explanation must be something else.

"Let us consider carefully what the doomed woman actually said to Kulakov when she was pleading for his a.s.sistance. According to the recent testimony of Kulakov himself, while hypnotized, her words were these: " 'The jewels are not here. But they are all safe in a place you know, where you can get them.'

"On hearing this, Kulakov, who was already convinced that Peter Altamont had the treasure, a.s.sumed that Doll meant the family estate in the country-Norberton House. But there are several reasons why that could not have been her meaning, a.s.suming she spoke the truth.

"To begin with, Norberton House was hardly a place known to Kulakov-he had heard it mentioned, but that was all. Nor had Doll ever been there. Again, if Doll spoke the truth, all the pieces of treasure, her own bracelet included, must be together-but we know now that her bracelet had been on her arm, in London, only minutes before she began to plead with Kulakov for help.

"Norberton House is hours distant from London by modern train. Not even the speed of vampire flight would have allowed Doll to carry the jewels there and return to the Angel Inn in the time allowed.

"If any further proof is needed, consider: Had Peter Altamont ever come into possession of the jewels, he would certainly have kept them. A sudden increase in his family's wealth, dating from that time, would now be discoverable by a thorough search of the historical records-which it is not."

There was a murmur of agreement round our little circle.

Holmes went on. "We are faced with the inescapable conclusion that Peter Altamont never had the treasure; that Ambrose, who betrayed Kulakov, had given Doll one trinket and kept the others with him in London, until he was killed. And that immediately after his death, Doll, who must have discovered where the things were hidden, spirited them away to what she must have considered a safe hiding place, within a mile or so at most of the Angel Inn."

There was a murmur of comment around our circle.

Holmes resumed. "Remember, she told Kulakov: 'It is a place you know.' But at that time the Russian pirate had even less familiarity with England than she did.

What places did she know in London, of which she could be certain that they were known to the Russian as well?"

"Execution Dock," I suggested.

"Bravo! That thought had crossed my mind. But the dock, and the ground in its vicinity, was daily washed by tides, and trampled by hundreds or thousands of people engaged in the common commerce of the waterfront. What other-"

To my surprise, it was Sarah Kirkaldy, fists clenched and eyes flashing, who interrupted sharply. "Newgate! By G.o.d, Newgate Prison!"

Holmes's eye twinkled. "Exactly! But then it seemed to me that we could probably be a little more precise. Doll's last rendezvous with Kulakov before his transformation took place, we are informed, was in one of the condemned cells. We have learned from other contemporary sources that some of the old prison's walls were actually crumbling at the time. None of the jeweled ornaments were large-they could be dropped into a hole or a crack too small to accommodate a man's arm.

"It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture a crevice of convenient dimensions in the ma.s.sive masonry-perhaps just outside the barred window through which Doll drifted on her visit-a recess large enough to hold the jewels, and practically inaccessible to breathing folk, but easy enough for any vampire to reach, particularly by night."

We all applauded Holmes's masterstroke of deduction, and he, pleased as a child, acknowledged our praise.

The treasure already having been retrieved by Mycroft from the ruins of the recently demolished prison, the question of who really owned it in 1903 remained to be discussed. The establishment of any genuinely just claim appeared to be impossible, and we agreed that if the matter were submitted to the courts, it might well enrich a generation of lawyers, but no other benefit was likely. In the circ.u.mstances, we chose unanimously to arrange for a quiet distribution of the value of the jewels among ourselves.

Martin Armstrong and Rebecca Altamont were married within the year. I have wondered, on the basis of no real evidence, whether the young American's fascination with the vampire Louisa ever caused him to experience a certain disappointment that his bride was not in that category.

Ambrose and Madeline Altamont, with their surviving daughter restored to them, enjoyed a gradual recovery from the fever and near-madness with which they had been afflicted-but neither was ever quite the same.

Since the war began, I have heard that Madeline at least, joining with a group of parents who have lost sons at the front, is still making plans for sittings with one or more of the new mediums, still convincing herself that they enjoy at least occasional success in their ongoing efforts to achieve contact with the departed daughter they so deeply love.

Thank you, Dr. Watson. Now I, Dracula, will have one more word...

Sarah Kirkaldy and I remained very good friends. I spent some time with her in Scotland. I really could not find it in my heart to condemn the lady too strongly for her career as a medium. By and large, her clients received in full measure what they paid for: feelings of excitement and contentment.

In fact, I even consented to help out my newly prosperous friend Sarah with a difficult client or two. There was in Edinburgh a certain psychic investigator, as he styled himself, a very determined skeptic who seemed really bent on giving the poor young woman a hard time... but that is another story altogether.

Probably I should also add that I planned and executed no revenge upon the peasant who had hypnotized me in St Petersburg. In that case, life itself, as so often happens, exacted sufficient retribution.

In fact, there were witnesses who heard Mr. Prince, just before departing for Scotland, confide to his cousin Sherlock Holmes that he wanted nothing more to do in any way with Gregory Efimovitch Rasputin.

Tor books by Fred Saberhagen

The Berserker Series The Berserker Wars Berserker Base (with Poul Anderson, Ed Bryant, Stephen Donaldson, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, and Roger Zelazny) Berserker: Blue Death The Berserker Throne Berserker's Planet Berserker Kill

The Dracula Series The Dracula Tapes The Holmes-Dracula Files An Old Friend of the Family Thorn Dominion A Matter of Taste A Question of Time Siance for a Vampire

The Swords Series The First Book of Swords The Second Book of Swords The Third Book of Swords The First Book of Lost Swords: Woundhealer's Story The Second Book of Lost Swords: Sightblinder's Story The Third Book of Lost Swords: Stonecutter's Story The Fourth Book of Lost Swords: Farslayer's Story The Fifth Book of Lost Swords: Coinspinner's Story The Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword's Story The Seventh Book of Lost Swords: Wayfinder's Story The Last Book of Swords: Shieldbreaker's Story

Other Books A Century of Progress Coils (with Roger Zelazny) Earth Descended The Mask of the Sun The Veils of Azlaroc The Water of Thought