The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(92)
“It’s a haberdashery, ain’t it?” Miss Winter said, adjusting her hat on top of her head.
“Not open to the public,” the man said, putting a hand out to stop her, but it never landed. With blinding speed, even to my eye, Miss Winter slipped past the man’s arm and seized a fistful of his coat. One sharp push and the man, who had to weigh at least fourteen stone, flew a dozen feet and crashed into the other guard so that they both went down in a confused tumble.
Then Kitty Winter leapt with a low, feral, and unfettered growl that chilled me as the night air no longer could. She landed on the nearest man in a crouch and I heard a strangled cry and the tearing of clothes and flesh.
My revolver in my hand, I rushed to Miss Winter’s side, horrified at her actions. “Miss Winter!” I shouted as I grabbed at her shoulder to pull her off her helpless victim.
She turned at my touch, still crouching, fangs bared and prominent, pale eyes wild and dangerous, and raised her hands like a predator’s claws.
“Kitty! No!” Somersby shouted.
I raised my own hands, sure that she might leap at me and tear my throat out. I had my pistol, but couldn’t bring myself to fire.
Then the moment passed and she took a deep breath and straightened up. “Aye, I knows what you thinks of me now, don’t I? Plain as day.” She stepped away from the two crumpled bodies and I could see with relief and growing shame that both men lay unconscious, but clearly unharmed. I could even, now that I listened for it, hear their breathing. Still uncomprehending, I looked at where the one man’s shirt was torn wide open.
“I heard…” I stammered, “a tearing.”
“He had the key under his shirt,” Miss Winter said, holding up a cord with a single key on it.
Holmes stepped forward and took the key from her. “If a herd of antelope stumbled through here,” he said bitterly, glaring at the lot of us, “they could not have made more noise.” Holmes, still glaring, stepped over to fit it to the lock. “If Moriarty did not know we were coming before, he certainly does now.”
Miss Winter delivered her own withering stare and Somersby and I exchanged guilty glances.
“Come on,” Holmes said. “There’s no help for it now.” He stepped in, followed by Miss Winter and then, belatedly, Somersby and me.
My nerves had worked themselves up to a fever pitch so that I half-expected the warehouse we stepped into to be teeming with hordes of fanged and hostile sailors, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Instead the dimly lit interior showed only aisles and aisles of tall shelves filled with round boxes. It was plenty for me and Miss Winter to see by, but Holmes had brought his pocket lantern and lit it now. I kept waiting for some outcry to come from further in the building, but the place seemed to be deserted. I listened as hard as I could, but though I picked up distant sounds from outside – the sounds of people and the occasional hoofbeats – I could hear nothing in the dark, cool interior of the building but us.
The shelving units were wood, some of it makeshift and in very poor repair, but I scented nothing more sinister than wood rot in the air. The men outside, the guards, had been very human. Perhaps we’d made a terrible mistake. We only had Kitty Winter’s hunch that this place housed anything unusual, and after all, was it so remarkable to find sailors outside a warehouse in the dock districts?
“Holmes,” I said, whispering. “Could we have the wrong place?”
Miss Winter looked sideways at me, chewing her lip.
“It’s possible,” Holmes said to me, “but here, look at this.” He held his pocket lantern over a small clump of dirt on the cobblestone floor. “This is not from outside and is still moist, so has been left here rather recently, for the air is dry. The men outside did not have any earth like this on their shoes. The balance of probability is that this has come from a basement and been left here recently.”
“How in the name of all that is holy,” Somersby said, “did you see that particular bit of earth on this dirty floor?” He would have been echoing my exact thoughts if I had not seen Holmes display this particular talent before, so I was also prepared for Holmes’s answer.
“Because I looked for it,” he said, simply. “Now, let us see if we can get a look at that basement.”
We started to spread out slightly, moving carefully and quietly, taking care to keep each in sight as we looked for a way down.
“Balance of probability?” Somersby whispered. “You mean you’re guessing? I thought that you never guess. A shocking habit, you called it.”
“Another victim of the Doctor’s literary crimes, I see,” Holmes said, but he spoke so quietly that Somersby could not have possibly heard him, though I certainly did.
“You did say those very words,” I said.
“Here!” Miss Winter said from further in. “A door!”
We all gathered around the door she’d found, a heavy, ominous wooden door of indeterminate age, bound with iron bands and set in a doorway of arched fieldstone. It had a latch and a heavy padlock, which hung incongruously open.
“A disturbing sign,” Holmes said. “The feeling that we are expected grows and grows.” Nonetheless, he unhooked the lock and swung the door open. A slight and stale breeze, cold and fetid, caused me to shiver and carried with it the smell of fresh-turned earth and the slight but unmistakable mustiness of vampire. Since vampires were usually hard to detect for other vampires, the wave of scent gave me gooseflesh. It wasn’t just one vampire down there, but many. Possibly dozens. I hastily fumbled my pistol out of my jacket pocket. We’d found our horde, just as Moriarty clearly intended. Now it only remained to put our foot into the trap the rest of the way.