The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(87)
“A silver bullet,” I said, “and certainly the cause of death.”
“Clearly,” Holmes said. “What of the face? Does he not look familiar?”
There was something familiar about the face, now that Holmes had brought my attention to it. A young man’s face, handsome, blonde, but I could not place it.
“Imagine, perhaps,” Holmes said, “a superior sneer across those lips?”
“John Clay!” I said. It all came rushing back now, including the long, underground vigil in a vault not unlike a tomb, and one of the more daring bank robberies ever conceived. The Adventure of the Red-Headed League! Clay had dug a long tunnel from a nearby pawnbroker’s shop to the vault in question. I remembered, too, the condescension that he’d shown the arresting officers when taken into custody. One of the more dangerous men that Holmes and I had dealt with in the past.
“It seems as if Moriarty,” Holmes said, “has decided that he no longer needs his star pupil.”
“You think there is a connection, then?” I asked.
“Well,” Holmes said, “I had long surmised a connection between the two based on Moriarty’s role in criminal society as a criminal consultant and the outrageous nature of Clay’s robbery attempt, but I’d never had the opportunity to confirm it. The mere fact that Clay is here, instead of in prison, suggests he had outside help. This, however, is a rather intriguing development.”
“What can it mean?”
“Clearly,” Holmes said, “this man had been transformed. The most likely source is our Mariner Priest. That is to say Moriarty himself. Had we any doubt about Moriarty returning to England, I would say this would tip the balance of probability in that direction, making it more than likely that Clay and Moriarty came back here on the same ship. We can take that as a working hypothesis, at any rate.”
“Is there someone else hunting vampires?” I ventured. “Someone that knows their vulnerability to silver? Someone hunting Moriarty’s ship, perhaps?”
“I should think,” Holmes said, “that if there had been an organization aware of vampires to the extent that they’ve armed men with silver cartridges and outfitted a ship with the purpose of hunting Moriarty at sea, that they’d have also involved themselves in watching over the vampire problem in London and we should have encountered some sign of them ourselves. Since we have not, I conclude it highly unlikely.”
“Who then?”
“The most likely choice is Moriarty himself.”
“Shoot his own agent?”
“We know John Clay to have been a highly ambitious man,” Holmes said, “and Moriarty to be even more so, as well as being extremely ruthless. I can only surmise a falling-out between the two men. It must have been a truly serious one for Moriarty to abandon his investment in Clay’s education, but it is the theory that best fits the facts.” He straightened up and turned about from John Clay’s cadaver. “In the meantime, we shall let Lestrade know the identity of the body, but breathe no word regarding the unusual nature of the disease, nor any explanation of the wound, as we understand it.”
“Of course not,” I said, a little hurt that Holmes should have to tell me, of all people, that.
“Very good,” Holmes said. “In the meantime, we shall need to try and locate any bolt holes where Moriarty could safely bring in a ship with a vampire crew and hide them.”
“Could Lestrade not help with that?” I asked.
“I have a better idea,” Holmes said.
Chapter 17
THE NEW BAKER STREET IRREGULARS
Holmes’s concept of a ‘better idea’ became clear when we returned to Baker Street and he dispatched a telegram to Kitty Winter to mobilize the Baker Street Irregulars and send their spokesman to us for instructions.
While we waited, Mrs Hudson brought up a letter. Holmes, standing pensively by the window, violin dangling listlessly from his hand, bounded over to snatch the paper from her. He gave her the violin in trade and tore it open. Mrs Hudson made a tsk-tsk noise, shook her head with fond dismissal of Holmes’s typically cavalier manners and crossed the room to put the violin down on the desk near the window Holmes had just left. She then beat a hasty retreat.
“Some excellent news, Watson,” Holmes murmured. “Count Dracula and Mina are indeed coming to England after all. It seems they already departed Varna some two weeks ago and are expecting to land in London inside of a week. If Varna had not had broken telegraph wires, we should have gotten this news much sooner.”
“That is good news,” I said dutifully, although I had mixed feelings about their arrival. Still, with Moriarty in England, we should need all the allies we could get.
“Now,” Holmes said, looking with irritation at his watch, “if our emissary from the Baker Street Irregulars would only arrive!”
The Irregulars were a key group of informants for our operations, keeping their eyes peeled for unusual disappearances, especially among the lower classes, where such things are more easily overlooked by the official police force. Normally, the Irregulars and the Midnight Watch needed to work closely together, and Holmes often relayed direction through Kitty Winter, but in this instance, Holmes was keen to relate his instructions directly to Holly Hoskins himself. As such, he paced in irritation, looking at the window often and several times picking up his violin to play only to set it down again. The last time he did this, the position of the violin was so precarious, wedged against the side of the window, that I was forced to jump up and rescue it. He smoked several cigarettes and two pipes as we whiled away the hours, always loitering by the window. I tried to engage myself in the paper, but it was a dreary time and all I could think about was the danger coming to us in the form of Moriarty. I’d never seen him except for a brief glimpse from afar, but the vulturous image of the man had begun to haunt my dreams as well as my waking hours. All in all, it was a tedious vigil for both of us.