The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(34)
“I have found documentation,” he said, “for the Count and Mina’s departure from the country in the time-frame he claimed and evidence that the men in question – Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward, Harker, and Morris – did not leave London at all that year. Morris’s return to America a year later is particularly damning to Stoker’s version of events, since he is supposed to have died in Transylvania. Harker died the year after that, unmarried, in a traffic accident, and I have viewed the burial site myself and found it intact and unmolested. With Van Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood, we have a greater mystery than before as there is clear documentation that the three travelled together to Australia, immediately took an expedition to the wilderness there, and did not return. The authorities there are concerned, but do not find it surprising for three men to disappear in such an uncivilized place. It has caused a great deal of stir with the Holmwood family and estate.”
“I should imagine,” I said.
“There were some irregularities with that documentation such that I suspect a forgery. This is augmented by the fact that we know that Dr Seward did return to England, or perhaps never left. Our autopsy of Seward, as you know, gave us little information. Of Van Helsing and Holmwood, I can find no trace, either here or in Australia. None of this does much to either confirm or deny Van Helsing as the Mariner Priest. Even worse, the Mariner Priest has taken a measure that I can find no counter for.”
“How so?”
“It is fiendishly simple,” Holmes said bitterly. “It also accounts for his recruitment of so many sailors. Deucedly simple! Yet I can devise no stratagem to defeat it!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“His various agents have all landed and taken to sea once again. Now, I have reason to believe they are with the Mariner Priest on one ship.” He collapsed into his armchair and despondently tapped on the armrest. I was deeply alarmed. Never had I seen him looking so defeated.
“We must give chase,” I said. “Wherever he is heading, we must book passage at once. Have you discovered it?”
“His plans are quite known to me, yes,” Holmes said, but the fact did not seem to cheer him.
“Then when do we depart? What is his destination?”
“That is just it, Watson. My theory is that he has no destination.”
“No destination? But how?”
“He has taken a boat and gone to sea, but with no destination at all.”
“What of the legend of running water?” I said. “We have seen ample evidence that water has a strange effect on the vampire.”
“While they might be in some danger encountering a storm at sea, it would still be less than a human crew would face and British sailors have been braving those waters since the beginning of time. Also, the Mariner Priest has shown a certain ruthlessness with his personnel, as it were. Consider, Watson, he has ample resources to purchase a ship outright and now he also has a loyal and partly eternal crew. At sea, he has very little fear of discovery. Any ship that comes across them will play the victim and provide fresh blood and other supplies and is hardly any threat to a crew of vampires. They need only have enough of a human crew, in proper submission, to get them through the days and they can live indefinitely at sea. They can replenish crews and supplies as needed through piracy. This man’s plans reveal a mind of the first order. They will be impossible to trace and will leave no clues except the occasional missing ship. And the Mariner Priest knows that I cannot take to life at sea and still guard England. So, the Mariner Priest, with this plan, need only wait.”
“He has some plan coming to fruition here in London for his return?” I asked.
“You misunderstand me, Watson,” Holmes said. “You forget, everything we know, every ploy or stratagem, must be cast in a new light based on the vampire’s outlook. You yourself are too stolid of moral character to fully see the brilliance of his plan.”
“But what are they waiting for?” I asked.
“For my death,” Holmes said. “No, do not be alarmed, Watson. While there may be another assassination attempt, I do not believe that the Mariner Priest will gamble much on this. Not after the first one failed. But, don’t you see, the Mariner Priest has only to wait. If there had been any doubt that the head of this vampire-ridden criminal empire was a vampire himself, this eradicates it. What is a few decades or more to one who is immortal? Time will remove the Mariner Priest’s greatest obstacle, and there is no denying it.”
I sat silent in thought while Holmes took his clay pipe out of the pipe rack and puffed furiously at it until the entire room was shrouded in smoke.
“Holmes,” I said.
“Watson, Watson,” he said with a rueful smile. “I thought you might come around to this suggestion again, but it will hardly serve. I cannot allow myself to contract vampirism, even to confront this nemesis. Come now, don’t be so surprised. Your thoughts are apparent to any trained observer. You glance at the darkness outside, then at the specially filled teapot at your left elbow and back to the new painting you have acquired of the sunset and it is quite easy to follow the track of your thoughts. At any rate, I have expected this suggestion for some time. But I’m afraid you do me rather too much credit with this one, Watson. I have all the makings of a terrible vampire; I would become a greater threat to London, over time, than the Mariner Priest would ever be. Oh, I know you have adapted rather admirably, but I’m afraid that I possess the antithesis of the qualities that preserve your outlook.”