“Are you indeed?” He dabbed at his broad brow with a handkerchief. “It somewhat relieves my mind to hear it.”
Impulsively my visitor went on to discuss briefly the history of the Holmes family as it had been affected by vampires. The main problem (it pains me even now to set the matter down; therefore I pass over it quickly) had been the vampirism, developed after her sons were born, of Mycroft’s and Sherlock’s mother.
This conversation on Mycroft’s part was conducted, understandably, with intense emotion; and he then begged me to allow him to take himself away, before there was the least prospect of Prince Dracula actually appearing in our rooms. I got the impression that he would not have been surprised had his distant cousin arrived upon the scene in a dazzling flash and a cloud of smoke, like some stage representation of Mephistopheles.
When Mycroft had gone, I returned without hesitation to the task I found myself required to do. Finding the information and the necessary materials concealed among my friend’s private archives had been actually the work of only a few minutes, since I had fortunately remembered the essential code word by which the items were indexed. Putting the information and materials, once obtained, to their proper use proved considerably more difficult.
Until now Holmes had given me not the slightest hint of what his special procedure for communicating with Prince Dracula might be, and I in my reluctance to think about the matter at all had not endeavored to find out. I was somewhat relieved on discovering the details, which were distasteful, were not as bad as I had feared: The summoning involved the reading aloud of a few Latin verses from an old book, and the simultaneous burning of a lock of what appeared to be human hair– the latter provided with the book–before a mirror. This performance, strongly suggestive (to say the least) of magic, even of witchcraft, was most uncongenial to my nature. Yet I dared not even hesitate, as the matter had already been unavoidably delayed. Holmes’s old chemical workbench provided me with the space and the small flame that I required.
Bolting our sitting-room door on the inside, I began. So repugnant did I find this business to common sense, so mocked by the warm summer sunshine at the window and the mundane noises of the street outside, that three or four times during the course of the brief ritual I found myself on the verge of damning it all as foolishness, consigning to perdition the book, the hair, and the small mirror which also played a part, and seeking some other means to locate the man I wanted. Only the certainty that I was following Holmes’s instructions, which had been given in deadly earnest, and the knowledge that I had not the faintest notion of any alternate method of procedure, caused me to persevere.
My task was soon completed, but no immediate result was visible. I confess that while pondering the situation, wondering if I had erred somewhere, I fell asleep in my chair from sheer exhaustion. When I awakened, at seven upon a clouded summer evening, my neck and limbs were stiff, and for a moment or two I could not remember why I found myself once more in this familiar room rather than at home with my wife in our recently acquired lodgings in Queen Anne Street.
Memory soon returned. I glanced again at the clock, which ticked remorselessly upon the mantel. Approximately nineteen hours had now elapsed since Holmes had disappeared, and still there was no news of him. And no response to my summoning. I wondered again whether I had mishandled the ritual in some way.
Thunder rumbled over London, and I had just closed the window against a first spattering of rain when there came a brisk tapping at the bolted door. I am certainly not the most imaginative of men, but I found it necessary to steel my resolve before walking to the door and undoing the bolt.
Even so, a moment later I was trying to conceal my disappointment. The opened door revealed no figures more impressive than those of Martin Armstrong and Rebecca Altamont.
“Watson–good to see you again–I don’t suppose that Mr. Holmes is here?” Armstrong looked about anxiously as he came in. It was plain from the young man’s appearance–haggard, disheveled, and unshaven– that he had had little or no rest since I had left him in Amberley, and that he was now in the last stages of exhaustion.
“Certainly he is not,” I replied. “I have not heard from him. Have you just come from Norberton House? What can you report from there?”
Both the young American and Miss Altamont began to speak at once.
The most important item of information they brought with them was the sad but not surprising news that Abraham Kirkaldy had died of his injuries.
“It’s a case of murder now,” Armstrong said solemnly.
Maddened by the lack of any progress in organizing a search for the living Louisa, by what he considered an obstinate refusal to face the facts on the part of the authorities, Armstrong had boarded the train to London to confer with me again, preferring not to try to discuss the subject on the telephone. Rebecca Altamont, concerned about this mood of desperation on the part of the man who was to have been her brother-in-law, had insisted on coming with him. Her first look at me was a silent plea for help, and I endeavored to convey a silent reassurance.
Armstrong, stumbling and stuttering in his weariness, and now distraught by his renewed fears for Louisa, still had not slept. Somehow, between conversing with his companion and attempting to compose an article on last night’s events for his American newspaper, he had kept himself from nodding off on the train.
“Even my friends in Fleet Street, Watson–for example, a London editor I know–even he cannot seem to understand. He now complains that I’phoned him an unsupported story. I can tell he doesn’t really believe me about Lou being still alive. All anyone will tell me now is that I ought to rest. but how can I rest, Watson? How–?”
“At least you can sit down,” I advised him gently. “You ought to save as much of your strength as possible for when it will be needed.”
“Yes, that’s true–true enough. Let me rest, then–for a few minutes only.” Moving with the uncertainty of an old man, he lowered himself to the sofa. “Any word as yet from Mr. Holmes?”
Patiently I repeated that there was none. Meanwhile Armstrong, having allowed himself to sit down, was almost at once reclining at full length on the sofa, as though he had been drawn into a horizontal position by some irresistible force of gravity, though scarcely conscious of its operation. Only moments later he was sound asleep.
Bending quietly over my visitor–who now, by default, seemed to have become my patient–I loosened his collar, took his pulse, and concluded a brief examination. None of this disturbed the young man in the least. Obviously he had succumbed to total exhaustion, both mental and physical.
“Let him sleep,” his fair companion pleaded in a whisper.
I straightened, nodding. “Of course. but there is no need to whisper. It would not be easy to rouse him now if we made a deliberate effort to do so.” Then, fixing the young lady with my professional gaze, I added that she looked very tired herself.
Miss Altamont, sunk wearily in an armchair, dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand. “Dr. Watson, what has really happened to my sister? Do you know?”
“I was hoping that you would be able to give me some information on the subject,” I hedged.
“I cannot,” Rebecca responded sadly. Then she cast on the recumbent form of young Armstrong a glance in which pity and some stronger emotion were perhaps mingled. She shook her head. “He is certain that it was Louisa who came to us in the library last night, but I am not sure even of that. While we were on the train coming here, he... he looked so pitiful that I pretended to fall in with his ideas.”
Clearing my throat, I made an effort–perhaps a rather clumsy one–to turn the conversation another way. “I wonder, Miss Altamont, whether your parents did not raise a strong objection to your coming to London in this way?”