There followed some five minutes' dispute between the two, which I found rather embarrassing. Moore's angry pleas and arguments had no more effect upon the lady's determination than did the milder protests which I, at intervals, dared to interject. At last I judged it would be wiser to comply with her ideas as far as I reasonably could, and shortly all three of us were in a cab and headed for Scotland Yard. It seemed to me that her return visit there would be less difficult for all concerned if I were present to act as intermediary; I was well known in those precincts after so many years as Holmes' associate. His parting instructions were, of course, also fresh in my mind.
Our old acquaintance Tobias Gregson was, as I soon found out, the detective in charge of tracing all connections between the Scott case and the Grafenstein killing, while his old rival Lestrade continued to direct the overall search for the murderer.
Gregson, tall, stooped, and fair, quite courteously led the two young Americans to a comfortably furnished anteroom where, as he said, they were welcome to wait, and where any fresh news of John Scott would be brought to them at once. Then the detective beckoned me away, asking for a word in private. As soon as we were alone, I detected something like triumph in his pale face.
"Well, Dr. Watson, I suppose Mr. Holmes is close on the heels of some suspect in the killing?"
"I am sure he is very busy."
"But not on the brink of a solution?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Then, Doctor, I'd just like you to hear this."
So saying, Gregson led me along a narrow corridor. Stopping before a plain door, my guide motioned me to silence, and then opened a small spyhole in the door, indicating with a gesture that I should look in. The room revealed was large enough to hold on one of its walls a vast map of London, and a couple of policemen seated with their backs toward me. In another chair, facing the spyhole, sat an emaciated old man, wrapped from his shoulders down in a prison blanket which he kept clutched about him.
"And is that your mad killer, Gregson?" I asked, closing the judas window and turning away.
"Him?" The detective laughed softly. "Not by a long way. No, he's charged only with stealing a blanket—not the one he has wrapped about him now, but one he pinched through an open window in Whitechapel. Nor has he the least idea that a murder's under investigation. But I think you and Mr. Holmes are both going to be mighty interested in what he has to say."
Gregson opened the door and we both went in. The old man, who by his speech and manners gave the impression of belonging to the lower classes, looked up briefly startled, and then went on with what he had been saying:
"I tells you gentlemen, I took that bit o' cloth only in the name o' common decency, and meanin' to bring it back in the morning when the shops and stalls opened, and I could buy some proper clothes."
Bit by bit, under the prodding questions of the policemen, the man's story came out, interspersed with his objections at being made to repeat it to them once again. The essence of his account was that he had reached into someone's window for the blanket only because he had been compelled, during the night, to sell almost all the clothing he had been wearing to a stranger. The mysterious man who had forced him into the transaction under threat of bodily harm had then paid him for his rags with gold.
"Oh, come off it, now!" Gregson's voice was suddenly thick with convincing doubt. He picked up an envelope from a desk in the center of the room, and slid a gold coin out of it into his hand. "You stole this sovereign just as you stole the blanket. Now didn't you?"
"I never! Nossir! Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but I sold my clothes for that. Sold 'em fair, I did, and I was just a-borryin' the blanket to see me over until—"
"Yes, yes. Let's hear just once again how you came to sell your clothes. Who bought 'em?"
The man unburdened himself of a hopelessly weary sigh. "You've 'eard all that."
"The good doctor here hasn't," Gregson prodded, meanwhile casting a faintly triumphant glance in my direction. "Now, once more, if you please."
"Well, sir." The old man sighed again, this time resignedly. "It were this 'ere madman, like."
"Who?"
"Lor' bless you, sir, I didn't know 'im. And I wish I may never see the like of 'im again. Stark nekkid 'e was—talk of decency! Grip like a vise 'e 'ad, I swear. And 'is eyes—I don't like't' think on 'em, and that's a fact."
The old man was now warming somewhat to the repetition of the tale, which after all earned him the respectful attention from an assemblage of persons who may perhaps have seemed to him important. "The madman? I'll tell you. Myke a noise, says 'e, and the next noise 'eard in this 'ere street'll be the crunch o' yer bones a-breakin'. 'Ere, tyke this coin, 'e says, a-'oldin' up that wery sovereign, an' toss me over yer rags. An' I tossed 'em over, sir—you would, too, an' that's the Lord's truth. An' bless meif'e didn't pay me, just as 'e said 'e would."
I said in an earlier chapter that I would return to this point later, and now seems as good a time as any.
Those who think me unlikely to pay fairly, even generously, for goods got from the innocent do not know me. They know only the stories told by my enemies and their dupes, from my breathing days in the 15th century, through the 19th when Van Helsing concocted his lurid lies, down to the present. As if by some law of social entropy, when one's reputation changes, the change is almost always for the worse; and five centuries of life give time for a great deal of change.
That my name is ever going to improve again must be considered problematical at best, but at least its past deterioration can be charted. Let the serious students of 15th century affairs assure more casual readers that in my breathing days, as Prince of Wallachia, I was accused by some of being too scrupulously honest. Certain troublemakers, dissidents in my realm, groaned that I expected too much in the way of trustworthiness from my subjects!
Of course it was not the merchants who so charged me; they did not find the stench of robbers' bodies, staked up beside my roads as admonition, too much for their nostrils. Nor was it my country's peasants, or any of its honest poor, who launched the legend of my unexampled deviltry. When I ruled, their doors could stay unbarred by night, whilst their wives and daughters walked abroad in peace and safety. I am, and was, a strong-willed man; else were I dead, five hundred years ago, from sword-wounds at the hands of my less loyal subjects. The troublemakers claimed to find unbearable the mere rumors that issued from the dungeons underneath my castles, where I had those who preyed upon the innocent conveyed as speedily as possible; nor did nobility of blood preserve them from my justice. But all this is as a story that is told. —Dracula.
A door opened behind me, and Lestrade came quietly into the room, a gleam of suppressed excitement in his eye. He exchange a cryptic glance with Gregson, who quietly went out. After a nod to me, Lestrade, who had evidently heard the old man's story at least once before, took over the questioning.
"Now, dad, just where did this strange encounter of yours with the naked man take place?"
" 'Twas in Upper Swandam Lane, yer honor."
"And when?"
"Long 'bout the middle o' last night."
Lestrade placed two fingers, close together, upon the huge map of London that occupied one wall. "Upper Swandam Lane, Doctor, and right here's the pier where the, er, evidence was found." To the witness: "What did this strange man look like, apart from not being dressed?"
The fellow in the chair looked from one of us to the other. "Well, he were a sight taller than either of you gentlemen. Lean enough so that 'is ribs stuck out. But not wasted nor feeble; strong as an ox, 'e was."