The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(66)

I overturned the table to make it a better shield, then shot a quick glance over the top to make sure I hadn’t lost track of Boucher. The towering man hadn’t moved, but was still standing in the middle of the room, holding the battered beaver cap. My blows had torn a sizable hole into it. He shook the hat angrily at me and yelled an incomprehensible torrent of unknown words. It was French, I thought, but so thick an accent that it might have been another language altogether. The man was shaking with anger. He took a step towards me just as a stronger blow hit the front door behind him. Crouching behind the overturned table, I fished my own revolver out of my coat pocket.

“No time, Boucher,” Thorne barked. “That’s the police. Doctor, we’ll have to take this up later.”

Boucher shot a glance filled with fury at Thorne and then shook his hat at me again.

Thorne stalked over to the back door, opened it, and peered out. “Do it your way, then,” he snarled over his shoulder. “You can play the savage until they hang you from the gallows, for all I care. But I’d take warning, they usually do such things in the sunlight.”

I cocked my revolver and stood up with the barrel pointed at him, but he paid no attention to my weapon or to the increased pounding on the front door. Boucher stood for a long moment looking woefully at the hat, then finally squashed it down on his head and followed Thorne out the back door. I could not bring myself to shoot an unarmed man in the back, no matter how much a villain he might be, but I was sorely tempted. I needed answers and they had just walked out. What grudge did Thorne hold against Mary, if any? Could I trust any of what he’d said? It seemed unlikely.

The police at the front door had increased their efforts to a frightful pounding by the time I lifted the bar off the door. The door smashed open and I had to step quickly back into the darkened interior as sunlight flooded in.

“Dr Watson!” Lestrade’s face, with its eternally inquisitive stoat-like expression, peered in at me. “I hardly expected to find you here!”

“You got my note, then?”

“Yes, and was on the way to Fairview House when I was rerouted by this commotion. Thank you for the information, Doctor.”

“I have always thought we two agencies must work together whenever possible,” I said, with no small amount of guilt for the accumulating mountain of facts that we could not share, with Lestrade or anyone in an official capacity.

“You and Mr Holmes are an agency now, are you?” he said with a wry face as he took in the empty room and abused furniture. “Well, I suppose there’s no denying that. What happened here, then?”

Two of the constables must have finally made their way around to the back door, because they now came thundering in on heavy boots with their billy clubs raised. I could imagine only too well the frightful impression the shots and crashing must have made to those in the street. The surprised looks from the constables on finding an empty room save for Lestrade and I was near comic.

“Did you see a wild man or American on the way in?” I said to them. “They were both tall men, and striking figures.”

Both men shook their heads. “We saw no one,” one of them added.

Lestrade pointed at the pistol in my hand, which I’d near forgotten about. “You don’t have any bullet holes in you that I can see. Was it these two men you were shooting at?”

I shook my head. “They fired at me, but I never had the chance to shoot back.”

“Get back out there, then,” Lestrade snapped at the two constables. “Tell the others. Two men like that can’t be hard to find.” He looked at me and I expanded on my hasty descriptions for the constables’ benefit.

“They can’t have gotten far.” Lestrade said, dismissing them. To me he said, “Mr Holmes isn’t with you?”

“He was following another lead,” I said, giving him a brief rundown of the encounter, omitting any connection to Mary. That brought a deep flash of guilt, but I knew that we couldn’t afford the exposure.

Lestrade eyed me with his dark gaze, and then sighed. “I think you are getting into Mr Holmes’s bad habit of secrecy, Dr Watson, but I won’t quibble. You’ve always done the Yard well in the past, and I wouldn’t even be on the case yet if not for your tip. I take it you have already been to the Apligian home?”

“Yes,” I said, and gave him a fuller rundown of the information I’d gotten there, such as it was.

He sniffed down at the notebook he’d filled with my information. “Not much yet to go on. I’ll just see if we can’t get a bit more out of the proprietor of this… establishment. If we can find him. I’ll let you know what I get out of the Apligian woman, too. It may be more than you did. I have a way with such women.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

He eyed me again, as if suspecting some joke at his expense, but my placid expression must have mollified him, because he nodded and put the notebook away. “When can I come by to Baker Street,” he said, “to compare notes with you and Mr Holmes?”

“I have not yet had a chance to get Holmes’s opinion,” I said. “But I promise to send a telegram as soon as we know anything definitive. Excuse me, I just had a thought.” I went back over to the broken table and fished up the table leg from the floor. The bullet was lodged neatly, as if it were a replica of some trick shooting demonstration. Also, Thorne had not been lying about the silver bullets. I let the table leg fall back into the wreckage.