The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(25)
“I still don’t understand.”
Holmes rapped the ceiling of the carriage and called out again. “Here, Count!” He pointed a long, lean arm through the window indicating a dark building ahead and to the right.
The Count must have tried to pull up the reins, or command the horse to stop in some other, more subtle means, but instead, our horse stumbled, ran a dozen more strides, and ran full tilt into a heavy stone wall next door to the shop. The hansom jolted off its wheels, slamming into horse and wall with a terrible jolt. Holmes and I were nearly thrown, but Dracula leapt easily and neatly off. Holmes and I were shaken, but otherwise unhurt.
I sprang out of the hansom and rushed to examine our faithful mare, but the Count was already there ahead of me.
His face was still as he knelt in the muddy street next to her inert form. “She is quite dead,” he said. His voice was strangely sad, something I had not expected. He lay his hand on her neck for a moment, and then stood up. “Brave girl. She gave her life nobly. Let us hope that her sacrifice was not an empty one.”
I stared, horrified beyond measure that this animal had died so suddenly and tragically.
“What did you do to her?” I whispered. “Did you cause her death?”
“I did not,” Dracula said, and the man who had as much as openly admitted to hunting men and women in London sounded offended at my accusation. “Though I do bear some blame for it. I freed her of pain. She was old and lived a dreary existence pulling the cab around in this city. I underestimated the burdens on her. When I lifted all her aches and pains away, the sheer joy of running overtook her and this…” He gestured at the tragic form in front of us. “This was the result. I had not expected that. She felt no pain in the end. Her death was quite instantaneous.”
I wondered how he could know that, but somehow believed him, and felt no small amount of gratitude that this was the case.
“Gentlemen!” Holmes called, striding to the front door of the shop.
Dracula remained a long moment, staring fiercely at the small crowd of a dozen or so men and women gathered near the dead horse and broken carriage. When they looked for driver or passengers, their gaze seemed to slide right past us. No one appeared to notice us or pay us any attention whatsoever.
Count Dracula, who had stood a moment to supervise the crowd, now turned, with the sternest of expressions, and followed Holmes. I marvelled at the impossibility of what had just happened and, not for the first or last time, found myself more than a little frightened by the Count.
The shop stood dark and empty. It was a two-storey building, with living quarters above the shop. A shiny, new-looking padlock hung from the front door.
Holmes had pulled out his leather case that held a selection of lock picks. It was remarkable to me that he might try such a blatantly illegal endeavour in full view of so many passers-by, but when I looked behind me, I saw that still, no one paid us any mind.
“You believe someone is buried in the cellar, yes?” Dracula said, and I realized that he must have clearly heard and followed our conversation in the hansom, despite the racket we’d made coming here.
“I do,” Holmes said.
“Mina?”
“It’s possible,” Holmes said. “Another possibility is that this Mariner Priest is indeed making more vampires and needed a place for them to safely rest and then rise. This draws us towards the Count’s elder vampire theory, but possibly away from Van Helsing as a subject if we cannot account for this activity in the light of his hatred of the vampire.”
“It still seems the most likely explanation to me,” I admitted.
“Who else?” Dracula asked. “It must be him.”
“It is far too soon to tell, but there are several distinct possibilities and that one is almost as likely as the others. Come. Time is of the essence. Every vampire we allow the Mariner Priest to create is both another victim and another formidable enemy.”
Dracula was no dullard, following Holmes’s line of reasoning better than I had, despite my familiarity with my friend’s deductions and methods. But now I saw the chain of reasoning from Holmes’s observations in the opium den to their natural conclusion.
“I hear no one inside,” I said, indicating the shop as Holmes selected one of his lock picks.
But he never used it, because Count Dracula stepped boldly forward and pulled lock and hasp both free of the wood with a sharp, splintery crack. He discarded the twisted metal with disdain and stepped inside.
Never had I felt such a pang of loneliness and desolation that threatened to unman me as I did at that place. It was not a matter of darkness, for my newly vampiric eyes could pick out details in the dark far better than they ever had before. No, this was an emptiness that touched the senses with a frightening chill that had little to do with physical temperature. There was a sharp smell from the left side of the house, where the shop with its many brands of tobacco lay, but no sense of any person in the entire place.
Dracula had gone a short way inside, where a set of narrow stairs led upstairs to the living quarters, while a door to our left led to the shop. He stood there, pale and isolated, quivering with repressed energy. Then he sagged, very slightly. It seemed a motion of the heart rather than the body, undetectable by the eye but powerfully felt nonetheless.
“She is not here,” he said quietly. “If she were, I would feel it.”