The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(75)

“Give it up, Thorne,” Holmes said. “The Merry Widow is a small sailboat and not a particularly swift one. Your escape relied on secrecy and that’s gone now.”

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” Thorne said, and his pistol never wavered from its place next to Miss Winter’s side. “We’re going to get onto that ship, and that ship is going to be allowed to cast off. You’re a man famous for tricks, Mr Holmes, and I’m not having any of them. I see any sign of you, or a police boat following us, I shoot your little leech here. When I get sight of the open sea, then I’ll put the girl into a boat.”

“No boats!” Kitty moaned. “It’ll tip and I can’t hardly swim!”

“No?” Thorne said, surprised. “Isn’t this here whole country an island? Well, no matter. Maybe you can’t swim, but you can’t drown, neither, the way I figure it. One way or another, you’ll get back on dry land safe. Unless you press me! Don’t press me, Holmes! None of us wants that!”

“Actually, Thorne, dear,” Mary said, “that’s not quite true. Our kind can drown. Somewhat more easily than the rest of you, as it happens. Don’t ask me how, but it’s true.”

I glanced at Holmes’s face, but he did not give anything away. Mina Dracula’s incarceration had proved that vampires did not drown permanently, but the coma that immersion induced could be as good as death in this situation. I remembered Dracula fishing Mina out of her watery prison where she had lain, deathless but undying, and thought of what it might be like to fall into the Thames and be trapped there. I took one look at the dark water and shuddered. Pulling Mina out of a water-filled casket had been one thing; finding Kitty Winter’s comatose body in the Thames would be quite another. It also seemed that whatever connection Mary had to the Mariner Priest, it had not included him sharing this information with her.

“No boats,” Kitty moaned again. “I took a swim once, just after I got bit. The darkness! The darkness closing over me. I have dreams about the ocean swallowing me. Swallowing me and I don’t never come out.”

“We’ll put her in a big boat, then,” Thorne said in exasperation, for Kitty had begun to writhe in his grasp at the mention of drowning. “With a life preserver. As long as we’re not interfered with!”

The gunslinger’s reckless violence and brazen disregard for any law outraged and horrified me in equal measure. I cast my gaze up and down the docks, fearful that the local constabulary might catch sign of this spectacle and intervene. The workers were still looking on with consternation and alarm, but none interfered. At least one man had run away, presumably to fetch an official, but there was no sign of any assistance yet.

“Come on down, Holmes,” Thorne called out to us. “Down here into the street where I can see you!”

I looked at Holmes to see if he had any final stratagem, but Holmes’s face was troubled. We climbed down the short drainpipe onto the lower roof of the nearby shed that we had used to make our ascent some hours ago. Moments later, we were in the street, facing Thorne, Mary, Boucher, and the captive Miss Winter across a dozen feet of dock.

“Fine,” Thorne said, gesturing with the pistol toward a part of the dock well-lit by a hanging street lantern. “Over there, where I can see you plain.”

After we complied, Thorne, Mary and the others moved around us to the part of the dock that was adjacent to the ship. There was still a good twenty feet between the gently bobbing deck of the ship and the dock, however. The Thames was riding high, so that the deck was some few feet over our heads, hiding the fog-enshrouded area even further from our view. The gangplank was down, but the deck was empty and the masts and spars lonely, dark skeletons in the storm-dimmed sky. There was, in fact, no sign of anyone aboard. Clearly the crew had gone into hiding.

“Ahoy there, you up on ship!” he bellowed. “We’re coming up. Don’t you worry about payment none, there’s five more pearls like the one you saw. Five and you’ll get them all. You have the word of Randall Thorne!”

There was no answer. The ship creaked as it lay slowly bobbing in the grip of the Thames, but nothing aboard her moved. Even if a crew had suddenly burst from hiding, it would take some time to prepare even a small ship like that for travel, but Thorne seemed ignorant or uncaring of such necessary trifles.

“I don’t believe,” Holmes said, “that the word of Randall Thorne is entirely relevant here.”

“What’s that?” Thorne said, his gaze suddenly sharp.

“Your name,” Holmes said. “It isn’t Randall Thorne. No doubt you’re going to claim that every bit of your law career in Kansas City is true, but it simply won’t do.”

“I was a lawman in Kansas City!” Thorne screeched.

“Interesting,” Holmes said, “since the records are quite clear that Randall Thorne built his career in Dodge City, though I imagine that distinction easy to miss for someone from Texas.”

“Texas?” Thorne was nearly apoplectic by now.

“The drawl really is quite unmistakable,” Holmes said. “Not thick enough for Kansas at all. I had some concern that Watson had simply underestimated your height, but I see that the Doctor was quite correct, which removes my last doubts, Mr Morris.”

“Damn you!” Thorne said.