Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen (top ebook reader TXT) 📗

head turned slightly and a dark eye glittered at me, while the visible portion of his body, excluding the arm beneath the stone, remained utterly immobile. Again I was struck by something distinctly reptilian in the man’s aspect.

At the same time his voice remained very human, and indeed gentlemanly. “because, Doctor... it is just the sort of thing I should have arranged myself... in our opponent’s place. Ah, there we are!”

As soon as the mechanism of the snare, whatever its exact nature, had been disabled, the prince gave a little cry of triumph, then withdrew his arm from beneath the stone and crouched beside it in the position of one about to lift a heavy object. before I could offer to help, there came a moment of apparently effortless exertion, and the immense stone slab rose on one side–a feat that, I was sure, would have tested the strength of three or four ordinary men.

Revealed was a little crypt or cavity, not much bigger than an ordinary coffin, and nearly filled by the form of a man who lay upon his back, eyes closed, his limbs tightly bound with rope.

“Holmes!”

Scrambling down into the pit beside my friend, I seized a thin white wrist. A moment later, to my immense relief, I could detect a pulse. “Holmes! Holmes, speak to me!”

To my indescribable joy, those pale eyelids fluttered open; the dry lips stirred. In a moment I had uncorked my flask of brandy and water and was lifting the victim’s head. My friend drank avidly, and coughed, and then could speak.

His voice was so weak as to be almost inaudible. “Watson. A timely arrival. I... was confident that... that you...”

“Of course, of course. You must not exert yourself just yet. breathe deeply.”

“The blessed light of day,” Holmes murmured feebly. “There for a while, Watson, I feared that I might never see the light of day again.”

Eleven

Holmes in his debilitated state evinced no particular surprise at Dracula’s presence. Turning his head slightly, he murmured a word or two of greeting to his cousin, to which the prince responded calmly.

Even before we had lifted him from the earthen-floored pit, he gave orders that we must thoroughly search the narrow space in which he had been confined, looking for any evidence that Louisa Altamont had at least briefly–after her supposed drowning, but before her funeral and burial–been confined in the same place.

“You have reason to suspect this?” I demanded.

“Logic suggests it, Watson. I was unable to search properly myself. Do look carefully. Perhaps a ribbon or some other small item from her clothing–”

We lay Holmes at full length on the crumbling medieval mosaics of what had been the chapel’s floor. I then went back, as commanded, to search the pit, but could find nothing useful. Meanwhile, Dracula’s sharp nails worked like metal picks, his pale, resistless fingers tearing to shreds the ropes that bound his cousin. As he did so the prince muttered something about psychic vibrations–these were quite imperceptible to my no doubt cruder senses, but to the prince they indicated that indeed a vampire had recently been here.

“No,” he amended this opinion. “I believe there have been two vampires, one of them only a young girl.”

But further investigation would have to wait. In a moment the bonds had been completely torn away, and Dracula, lifting his cousin as easily as a small child in his arms, carried him to our waiting carriage, where I wrapped him in a robe.

Before leaving the site, Dracula insisted on taking a few moments to lower the great stone slab back into place, and to replace most of the fragments he had broken free around its edge, leaving to a casual inspection no visible sign that a rescue had been effected. Holmes agreed that this was a good idea.

We drove at a good speed back to our inn–at Holmes’s request, keeping as much as possible to little-traveled roads. My patient, drawing deep, grateful breaths of the fresh air, already sounded a little stronger when he announced his wish that the fact of his rescue should be kept secret from the public for as long as possible.

By the time we had reached the inn, Holmes was actually able to stand unaided, and, with a little support, to walk into the building, through a rear entrance. Dracula suggested carrying his cousin up and in through a first-floor window, directly into our reserved rooms, but such heroic measures proved unnecessary. We managed to reach the rooms by normal passages, without encountering anyone.

In only a few hours, when food and drink and fresh air had been allowed to begin their cure, Holmes had rallied wonderfully, though something of a chill still lingered, as he said, in his bones. At dusk, he was seated in his dressing gown, warming his hands and lighting his familiar briar pipe at a fire in our sitting room. When his pipe was drawing satisfactorily, he agreed to reveal to us exactly what had happened to him on the terrace of Norberton House.

I recalled that Holmes had still been present on the terrace when Abraham Kirkaldy was struck down, slaughtered by a blow from the hand of a strong vampire, as irresistible as that from the paw of a lion– and Holmes confirmed that he had seen that happen.

“But after that, old fellow, I was not able to see much. Will you tell me what occurred after my forced departure?”

“Of course.” I now briefly outlined for him the later events I had witnessed on the terrace and in the garden. Dracula, though he had heard substantially the same story from me earlier, sat listening with great attention.

When I had finished, Holmes said: “Gentlemen, we are dealing with two vampires here–I believe with no more than two. One of these, I am now certain, is the unfortunate Louisa Altamont.”

Here my friend glanced at his impassive cousin. “I say’unfortunate’ because she has been brought to her present state not by her own choice, or even