The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(23)
“It seems to me that this plague has come to all of London,” I said, “and not just Baker Street, and that no husband and wife are safe until we defeat it.”
“I knew I could count on you!” Holmes said. Then he turned to the open doorway. “Ah, Count Dracula, as punctual as I could have wished. That is well, for we shall have need of your help.”
I shot to my feet, startled and nonplussed by the Count’s sudden appearance. Seeing my reaction, the taller man gave me a thin, dark smile.
“Forgive me, Doctor,” he said. “You will find, should you live as long as I have, that in addition to sensing the sounds and smells of those around you, that you will start getting a sense of the thoughts and emotions in those around you, as well, be they vampire or human. These thoughts are like sounds on an open sea, echoing and uncertain, but there, nonetheless. As this ‘extra’ sense of yours grows, you will find that clouding the perception of others will become almost second nature.”
“The vaunted powers of the undead?” I said, unable to keep the scorn and despair out of my voice, for I was one of them now.
“Foolish!” Dracula hissed, his anger like a sudden storm. “Foolish to believe in fairy tales over your own senses. You are infected now. Tell me, do you feel like a death has come over you?”
“My life, as I know it, has certainly ended!” I shot back.
“Transformed!” the Count corrected. He took several steps into the room, stepped forward, and urgently seized my arm, caught in an eager frenzy to drive home his point to me. “Smell the air around you, listen to the noises of the city. More of the world washes over you than ever before, and you are more a part of it than you ever were before the infection, more a piece of the teeming life that covers this globe. Does ‘dead’ or ‘undead’ seem the proper term to you?”
I paused, shocked and startled by his intensity. But he was not wrong. I could hear voices and movement in the street, in the shops and residences and other dwellings such as ours, and all the people and things there. Animals, even rodents, or something as comforting and civilized and completely human as the scent of Mrs Hudson’s tea downstairs. As he said, this and many other things washed over me.
“No,” I admitted. “I do not feel like one of the ‘undead’, however tragic and loathsome this transformation is to me.”
“Nor should you,” Dracula said. “I will not attempt to explain all of my powers, for I have never made a scientific study, but I believe these things exist in the real world. They do not come from superstition and I am certain that a scientist such as Mr Holmes will be able to explain them, given time. After all, starfish and other marine invertebrates can regrow limbs. This is known. There is a certain tree in Africa that displays extraordinary powers that in a man, you would call powers of the mind. It can call the proper kind of ant to itself, urging the ants to make colonies in its own bark and wood, through means unknown, and so create large colonies. It is a symbiotic relationship that benefits them both, but one the ants cannot refuse. Man does not yet know how all these things can happen, but they do. Is not superstition just science that we do not yet understand?”
“I suppose so,” I admitted, perplexed and still a little frightened at his intensity.
The Count, seeing my fear, released me. “Forgive me. I did not mean to startle you, but it is a philosophical point that is very dear to me. I mean you no harm. We are allies in this endeavour, are we not?”
“I’m surprised,” I said carefully, “that you’d willingly reveal your secrets to us.”
“I have come for your help,” Dracula said. “My research on you and Mr Holmes suggests that you are both men of your word. My original supposition, that we should only become adversaries should I prove a danger to England’s laws or citizenry, and that you would both pit your full powers against any true threat to these things, still seems the strongest course. I have also seen for myself that your descriptions of your friend’s reasoning powers are not exaggerated, so he would likely see through any falsehoods on my part. Therefore, truth, in this case, shall be my shield and dissembling only a hindrance. Is it not logical?”
“Descriptions of my reasoning powers?” Holmes said, with a short laugh. “Watson, I believe you have only yourself to blame for landing this particular client at our doorstep.”
“You’ve read my stories?” I said. I could not, for the very life of me, imagine the Count engaged in such a mundane task as reading.
“Indeed,” Count Dracula said. “You should be commended on your veracity, Doctor.”
Holmes gave a short snort of derision. He’d made his own feelings on the ‘sensational’ nature of my stories clear enough many times in the past.
“It also had,” Dracula said, “the distinct advantage of providing me with your address. Much more efficient than questioning one of your cabbies, I should think.” Something that might, on another man, have been called the slightest trace of a grin, twisted the Count’s aristocratic mouth. If anything, it made him more frightening than ever.
“Come,” Holmes said, putting his revolver and several of the silver cartridges into his jacket pocket. “The rest of this discussion, including our destination, I shall have to explain en route, for we have lost too much time already.”