The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(106)

“No, my love, please no,” Mina breathed, but she looked more frightened than I had thought possible. Suddenly, much about the Count and Mina became clear to me. I could hear, in that brief prayer, and see in her worried expression, that she indeed feared for her husband’s eternal soul, and perhaps her own. Vampires they were, yes, but only as victims of a rare blood disease, not as the monsters that Stoker portrayed. Yet Count Dracula had lived many years, many centuries if even half of what I had heard was true. Living so long as other humans died around you would make it supremely difficult to maintain the clear precept that human life had value, as clear a demarcation for morality as any I’d ever known. It was also clear that in Mina’s mind, she and her husband were on a moral precipice and in very real danger of falling over into a Dantean abyss, from which there would be no recovery. That moral fall, her very own Reichenbach, held more terror for her than death ever could.

Dracula said nothing, did nothing, and a cold, cold terror rose up inside of me.

Then he lifted his arm, very quickly, revealing, of all things, a pistol. At the same time, Holmes, revealing a strength I would not have given him credit for, broke Moriarty’s iron grip and pushed him out at arm’s length.

Dracula’s pistol fired, twice. The reports of the pistol cracked and were then whipped away by the wind.

Moriarty stumbled, hit. I fired my own pistol, putting another silver bullet into Moriarty’s chest.

Holmes pulled Moriarty into his own clutches. Then, my mind felt nearly rent asunder as Holmes, my lifelong companion of many years, buried his teeth in Moriarty’s throat, tearing for all the world like a lupine predator, spattering a fountain of blood into the night air that dispersed into a scarlet mist as the train rushed heedlessly on.

I have campaigned in foreign wars and seen, in Holmes’s company, some of the most appalling crimes ever perpetuated on man, most of them very recently in Gravesend, and yet it is the sight of Moriarty’s throat being torn out on top of a moving train that still haunts my daylight slumber.

Holmes, blood dripping from his lips, still had a grip on Moriarty’s coat so as to prevent the mortally injured man from falling overboard, but it was Dracula who rushed forward, still holding the pistol, and put yet one more silver bullet into Moriarty’s head, ending the man completely and finally.

Then Holmes – for it was Holmes, not Dracula who had appeared on top of the engine – dragged off his unruly black wig that had lent him Dracula’s appearance and lowered his pistol. Dracula, who had torn out Moriarty’s throat, now dropped the body without ceremony onto the roof of the train car. He shook out his hair, which had been slicked back to provide, along with Holmes’s overcoat and scarf, the appearance of London’s consulting detective.

“That worked far more admirably than I expected,” Dracula said. “The scent of your clothes I now wear would not have stood the test of close proximity.”

“The top of a train in the rushing wind did thoroughly suit our purposes in terms of disguising scent and providing poor visibility,” Holmes said. “We have Moriarty to thank for that. I had hoped for a second or two’s grace from our ruse in order to grant us a decisive advantage in our coming battle. I had hoped that this advantage, plus the addition of Mina and yourself, who I did not think Moriarty expected in the first place, would tip the scales in our favour.”

“It worked wonderfully,” I said.

Mina had gone over to her husband and into his arms, an open display of affection I found both touching and strangely out of place on top of a moving train.

“You look strange in another man’s clothes,” she said, gazing fondly up at him. “How did he ever convince you to perform such an act?”

He looked down fondly at her, his dark, hooded eyes soft. “He promised it would make things less dangerous for you and shift much of the greatest risk onto myself.”

“You take too many chances,” she said.

“Could we possibly take this conversation out of the wind?” Holmes said. “None of you feel the bite of the wind, but I assure you it is quite intolerable!”

“There is one more thing to accomplish,” Count Dracula said, brushing a stray lock out of Mina’s eye before he released her and turned to the body of Professor Moriarty. The train was visibly slowing now, but still moved at twenty miles an hour or so, I hazarded. We chugged out onto a bridge running over a heavily forested area, including a small tributary of the Thames, though I was too ignorant of our current geographical location to guess which one.

Dracula lifted his foot and shifted his weight in order to give the body a push with his booted foot, but Holmes lifted his hand and quickly knelt to search the body. His eyes glittered with pleasure as he pulled a small booklet from Moriarty’s coat pocket.

Dracula, seeing Holmes had searched to his satisfaction, kicked the body off and Moriarty’s corpse slid off the roof of the train and disappeared into the forested darkness.

“An exceptional waste,” Holmes said, looking down. “A mind of the first order. He might have done so much had he taken a different path.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“Come!” Holmes said. “I am quite losing the feeling in my hands and would very much prefer to be in my own clothes.”





Chapter 21