"Now, my dear," I went on, when we had walked half a mile or so, and the tension in the hand upon my arm had started to relax. "Now, you cannot really have forgotten that old man. He'd lost his name, remember? You spoke to him so kindly. And you did more. You very bravely, once, tried to help him—really help. That was shortly before they—took him off."
Her fingers would have pulled free, but could not move. Then slowly, slowly, they were once more persuaded to relax. Her voice, as she murmured "I never 'eard of… no old man," faded almost to stunned silence.
I smiled fondly, stroking her captive fingers on my arm, almost as I had soothed the rat. "I'm sure the old fellow never forgot your great kindness. And he did most solemnly promise, no police."
"Sir, don't go a-scarin' a poor girl with talk like that." Had Sal now recognized me, at least on some hidden level of her mind? Her numb voice was sunk so low I had to concentrate to hear it. "If-if yer really wants't' help me, just-just get out o' this and let me go—"
"My dear, I might get out o' this, as you put it, at any time. But I fear that you cannot, without help, disentangle yourself from the nets of wickedness. Will you not accept my help?"
"Ah, God…" We were passing now under a streetlamp, but Sal forgot to try to hide her birthmark as she looked at me with eyes of terror. (How could she fail to know me, now?) "It'd be as much as me life is worth… sir, there's some folk it's death to trifle with."
"So I have heard." I let show in my face the anguish that I sometimes feel, when I am forced to contemplate the evil ways of men. "I sympathize with your fear." Now for a time I only held her hand in silence as we walked, and let her choose the way. "I'll see you safely home," I said.
At the next streetlamp, Sal looked at me very closely once again, this time remembering to use her hair to hide her cheek. She made a small, choked sound, but in this sound there was only a small component of fear, and bolder and bolder grew her eyes probing mine.
Once more the fang-roots in my upper jaw were aching. When we had walked farther still, and I could read unforced consent in Sal's brown eyes, I turned our path into a darker, narrower way, and stopped and pulled her close…
It is now common knowledge that the briefest, pleasantest love-making with a vampire will change a breathing human to a fang-sharp monster in a trice. Common knowledge that is of course absurdly wrong. Would you accept the follies of the films and so-called comic books as gospel truth on any other subject? No. To render any man or woman nosferatu requires a prolonged exchange of blood; and so when I released Sal a few blissful minutes later, her throat was marked but her species—as yet—was quite unaltered.
"Now I shall truly see you home," I said. And like a girl who walks and dreams at the same time, Sal put her hand upon my arm and led me promenading down the shabby street.
A drizzle had begun, dissolving the day's dust into slime on the paving stones, before we reached, at the low end of an even meaner street, the hovel she called home. Hers was a cellar room, in a building old even for London, that must have stood sunny in a bird-song field before the city rose like a dirty tide around it.
Sal was reaching with her latchkey for the door at the dark bottom of some stairs, when I put out an arresting hand. In the room beyond the door, a set of lungs—a man's, I thought—was breathing. He might be husband, lover, father—all quite all right with me—but then again he might be something else. When Sal turned up a questioning face to mine, wondering why I held her back, I whispered very softly in her ear: "As soon as you have crossed the threshold, bid me come in."
She looked a question at me still, but unlocked and pushed back the door.
It was deep dark within; though not to my eyes, of course. But Sal started at the scrape of clothing on rough blankets, as the man who had been sprawled upon the room's one cot rose up. One of his great hands swept up from a nearby table a portable electric torch and flashed it in our faces.
"Gorblimey, Sal!" growled out a rough, familiar voice, thick with astonishment. "These ain't no days for bringin' home a trick…"
Matthews' voice died as his eyes, widening, fastened upon my face.
Sal ran in to him at once, beginning to babble some apology or explanation, and completely forgetting or ignoring my last words to her. They had not been idle chatter. I, vampire, am unable to enter even the meanest dwelling unless once invited directly to do so.
Her pleading to Matthews did her no more good this time than last. His left hand set down the torch and with easy power seized her hair. He bent her neck, holding her immobile, whilst in his right hand a wicked clasp knife came to be, so smoothly that eyes less experienced than mine might have seen only the flower of the motion, not the growth.
Still wide-eyed, incredulous, he grinned at me but spoke to her. "Now, Sal—yer mean yer don't know who this be?"
"Jem, no! It ain't who you think—the man you think it be is dead."
"Dead! Ar!" It was almost a laugh. "Not 'im! My eyes are workin' fine!"
By now I felt almost as bewildered as the girl. Matthews had never seen me on my feet before, nor with a comparatively youthful face. Beyond doubt he thought he recognized me, but—it dawned upon me rapidly—not as the wretched oldster on the cart. He must know, he must be convinced in his bones as well as in his mind, that that victim was still at the bottom of the Thames. Then who did he think I was?
He held the knife now at Sal's throat, and the wonder in his eyes was blending into triumph. His harsh voice rasped at me: "Now let's see just where yer revolver's hid. Tyke off yer coat real slow, and drop it on the floor. Else this gal's done for where she stands—Mr. Great Detective."
Chapter Twelve
"Why, Watson, do you maintain that it was your fault that the man eluded capture?" Sherlock Holmes, in dressing-gown and slippers, put the question to me as he stood before the fire in our sitting room. It was nearly midnight, an hour after the climax of the affair at Barley's. A chill rain had begun to tap upon our windows, and Holmes' hands were spread toward the blaze while he turned his penetrating eyes in my direction. The wrinkles and black hair-dye of his disguise were gone, and he seemed in general none the worse for his desperate struggle to escape Gregson, Moore, and myself. Yet I did not much care for his pale, finely drawn appearance.
"Why should it have been your fault?" Holmes repeated. "I understand that the suspected killer had already made good his escape before you chose me as your quarry. And even if you had not stopped me, I would not have caught him—I must admit that I was in pursuit of other game myself."
I took a chair beside the fire, and tasted the brandy he had just poured for me. "Holmes, I saw no point in confessing to the police that it was I who collared one of their men, and thus deliberately gave the murderer his chance to get free. But I must confess it now."
Holmes sat down across from me. "You collared a policeman?" His voice sounded too tired to express the full surprise that he must naturally have felt. "My dear old fellow—why?"
"It is very simple. Because I did not know the man escaping was the maniac whom the police had launched the raid to capture. I was convinced that the man escaping was yourself."
Holmes leaned back in his chair, and there was a long pause before he spoke. "He looked like me, then. Very much like me." The words were quiet, with a fatalistic lack of emotion in them.
Peering anxiously at my friend's haggard features, I went on: "With the first good look I got at the fellow's face, I recognized—there is no other way to put it—I recognized it as yours. The same aquiline nose, the same strong chin and piercing eyes. Yes, even the same figure, tall and lean and very active."