“Yes,” I said after a moment. “It is the year of the fall of Constantinople.”
“I thought you would see it,” he said with his bitter smile. “It is the worst date in history.”
“It seems to me there are many contenders for that honor,” I said, but he was shaking his great head above his great shoulders.
“No,” he said. He lifted his candle high and in its light I saw his eyes blaze up, red in their depths like a wolf’s, and full of hatred. It was like seeing a dead gaze suddenly rustle to life; I had thought his eyes bright before, but now they were savage with light. I could not speak; I could not look away. After a second he turned and contemplated the dragon again. “He has been a good messenger,” he said thoughtfully.
“Did you leave mine for me? My book?”
“Let us say that I arranged it.” He reached his battle-scarred fingers out to touch the carved block. “I am very careful about how they are distributed. They go only to the most promising scholars, and to those I think may be persistent enough to follow the dragon to his lair. And you are the first who has actually done it. I congratulate you. My other assistants I leave out in the world, to do my research.”
“I did not follow you,” I ventured to say. “You brought me here.”
“Ah -” Again that curve of the ruby lips, the twitch of the long mustache. “You would not be here if you had not wanted to come. No one else has ever disregarded my warning twice in a lifetime. You have brought yourself.”
I looked at the old, old press and the woodcut of the dragon. “Why do you want me here?” I did not wish to rouse his anger with my questions; tomorrow night he could kill me, if he liked, if I’d found no escape during the daytime hours. But I could not help asking him this.
“I have been waiting a long time for someone to catalogue my library,” he said simply. “Tomorrow you shall look at all of it in freedom. Tonight we shall talk.” He led the way back to our chairs with his powerful, slow step. His words gave me a great deal of hope-apparently he really did not mean to kill me tonight, and besides, my curiosity was rising high in me. I was not dreaming, it seemed; I was speaking with one who had lived through more history than any historian can presume to study in even a rudimentary way in a single career. I followed him, at a careful distance, and we sat down before the fire again. As I settled myself, I noticed that the table with my empty supper dishes was gone, and in its place was a comfortable ottoman, on which I cautiously propped my feet. Dracula sat magnificently upright in his great chair. Although his chair was tall, wooden, and mediaeval, mine was comfortably upholstered, like my ottoman, as if he had thought to provide his guest with something suited to modern weakness.
We sat in silence for long minutes, and I’d just begun to wonder if he meant us to sit this way all night when he began to speak again. “In life, I loved books,” he said. He turned to me a little, so that I could see the glint of his eyes and the lustre of his shaggy hair. “Perhaps you do not know that I was something of a scholar. This seems not widely known.” He spoke dispassionately. “You do know that the books of my day were very limited in scope. In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned-the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end. And by the time I first took my rightful throne, the great libraries of Constantinople had been destroyed. What remained of them, in the monasteries, I could never enter to see with my own eyes.” He was looking deeply into the fire. “But I had other resources. Merchants brought me strange and wonderful books from many places-Egypt and the Holy Land, and the great monasteries of the West. From these I learned about the ancient occult. As I knew I could not attain a heavenly paradise”-again that dispassionate tone-“I became an historian in order to preserve my own history forever.”
He fell silent for some time, and I was afraid to ask more. At last, he seemed to rouse himself, tapping his great hand on the arm of his chair. “That was the beginning of my library.”
I was too curious to keep silent, although I found the question bitterly hard to frame. “But after your-death, you continued to collect these books?”
“Oh, yes.” He turned to look at me now, perhaps because I had asked this of my own volition, and smiled grimly. His eyes, hooded in the firelight, were terrible to meet. “I have told you, I am a scholar at heart, as well as a warrior, and these books have kept me company through my long years. There is much of a practical nature to be learned from books, also-statesmanship, for example, and the battle tactics of great generals. But I have many kinds of books. You shall see tomorrow.”
“And what is it you wish me to do for your library?”
“As I said, to catalogue it. I have never made a full record of my holdings, of their origins and condition. This will be your first task, and you will accomplish it more swiftly and brilliantly than anyone else would be able to, with your many languages and the breadth of your knowledge. In the course of this task, you will handle some of the most beautiful books-and the most powerful-ever produced. Many of them do not exist anywhere else anymore. Perhaps you know, Professor, that only about one one-thousandth of the literature ever published is still in existence? I have set myself the task of raising that fraction, over the centuries.” As he spoke, I noticed again the peculiar clarity and coldness of his voice, and that rattling in the depths of it-like the rattle of the snake, or cold water running over stones.
“Your second task will be much larger. In fact, it will last forever. When you know my library and its purposes as intimately as I do, you will go out into the world, under my command, and search for new acquisitions-and old ones, too, for I shall never stop collecting from the works of the past. I will put many archivists at your disposal-the finest of them-and you shall bring more under our power.”
The dimensions of this vision, and his full meaning, if I was comprehending it correctly, broke over me like a cold sweat. I found my voice, but unsteadily. “Why will you not continue to do this yourself?”
He smiled into the fire, and again I saw that flash of a different face-the dog, the wolf. “I shall have other things to attend to now. The world is changing and I intend to change with it. Perhaps soon I will not need this form”-he indicated with a slow hand his mediaeval finery, the great dead power of his limbs-“in order to accomplish my ambitions. But the library is precious to me and I would like to see it grow. Besides, I have felt for some time that it is less and less secure here. Several historians have come close to finding it, and you would have found it yourself if I had left you long enough to your own devices. But I needed you here at once. I smell a danger approaching, and the library must be catalogued before it is moved.”
It helped me, for a moment, to pretend again that I was dreaming. “Where will you move it?” And me with it? I might have added.
“To an ancient spot, older even than this one, that has many fine memories for me. A remote place, but one closer to the great modern cities, where I can easily come and go. We shall set the library down there and you shall increase it vastly.” He looked at me with a sort of confidence that might have been fondness, on a human face. Then he stood up with his vigorous, strange movement. “We have conversed enough for one night-I see that you are tired. Let us use these hours to read a while, as I usually do, and then I shall go out. When morning comes, you must take the paper and pens you will find near the press and begin your catalogue. My books are already sorted by category, rather than by century or decade. You will see. There is a typewriter also, which I have provided for you. You may wish to compile the catalogue in Latin, but I leave this to your discretion. And, of course, you are free now and at any time to read whatever you would like to.”