The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen (best black authors TXT) 📗

I was and what I was doing in this place unthinkable for a passenger to enter. I kept calmly insisting that I had merely entered by mistake, that the door after all had been unlocked, and that they had better take care to lock their doors if they wished to preserve these regions sacrosanct.

      I might have browbeaten my way free at once, had not the sharp eye of one of my interrogators happened to fall upon the bright metal of my own trunk’s mangled lock. A string of multilingual expletives, and we were off again. This fine trunk, the man insisted, had not been so vandalized on his retirement from the car on the preceding evening — I had done it, I was a thief and worse.

      This outcry I could only stem by claiming the trunk as my own; naturally I could produce a document or two identifying myself as the Corday whose property the trunk was labeled as. Before these arguments of mine could have any conclusive effect, however, the conductor had taken it upon himself to fling open the leathern lid, with a dramatic gesture that seemed to hope for a dismembered body, at least, to come to view within. All stared nonplussed at my mere load of earth.

      “And how is this explainable, monsieur?”

      “If you are referring to your rudeness, my good man, you must know the answer better than I.”

      “I refer, sir, to the conditions of this trunk and of its contents.” He peered in once more, eyes lighting up. Might there be, after all, a corpse or two beneath the mold?

      “It is my trunk, monsieur conductor, and its conditions my affair.”

      We adjourned shortly to the next car, where the conductor had his command post, as it were, commanding a view of the car’s corridor and the doors of the passenger’s compartments. Above his desk hung a small mirror that, had I not been immune to fear, might well have given me a moment or two of apprehension. A little stove at the conductor’s feet as he sat there enthroned gave off a grateful warmth against the autumnal dawn.

      If he had sought to keep me standing there as a supplicant he was mistaken. Monarch though he might be in his small, wheeled domain, my own rulership was vaster and more practiced, and I more skilled even than he in the tones and gestures that best serve to overawe. Without seeming to exert great physical force I still moved resistlessly through his entourage of lesser trainmen and walked deliberately to my cabin. One or two of them followed at a little distance — the affair of the trunk was not yet really over, and what was I to do for a resting place now? — but tor the time being no further effort was made to detain me or force questioning.

      I had barely got into my room and started to relax when a light tap came at the door.

      “Who is it?”

      “Dr. Floyd,” I thought the answer came, which sounded like an English name, and seemed to be spoken in that tongue; but it was undoubtedly the voice of my German-speaking acquaintance of the night before.

      Much to my surprise on opening the door, I beheld Mina standing there at the Viennese doctor’s side. When we two men had exchanged greetings, the doctor, speaking English in deference to Mina, introduced me to her.

      “In the course of a certain professional matter I met Mrs. Harker rather early this morning, and she has graciously consented to breakfast with us; when I mentioned, Dr. Corday, that you too were from London, she was most interested to meet you.”

      “I am flattered, Madam Harker.” And I managed to slip her the slightest wink as I bowed to kiss her hand.

      The “professional matter,” as Mina informed me later, had been a result of a disagreement in one of the gentlemen’s cabins during the night. Colt revolvers and bowie knives were brandished but fortunately not much used. There was evidence, in the form of certain articles of clothing, that at least one young woman had been on the premises. Dr. Floyd — as I then understood his name — had treated Quincey Morris for scalp lacerations and a certain young waiter for moderately serious but not disabling head wounds and facial contusions.

      All right, why should I now be coy and indirect? What with Arthur changing his mind at the eleventh hour about his need for female company — he had begun tearfully and drunkenly lamenting Lucy — and Quincey too actively disputing the bill for services rendered, an altercation had arisen, and bandages as well as banknotes were required to smooth things over.

      Harker had heard the commotion and burst out from his compartment adjoining, glaring madly and waving a huge knife; luckily he calmed quickly on discovering the true nature of the problem. Seward and Van Helsing had already gone in search of Mina to hypnotize her for the morning communiqué, and Jonathan told the conductor he had better cast about for some other physician to tend the wounded. As luck would have it, my friend of the smoking car was domiciled nearby, and came to volunteer his services. His accent, and perhaps something in his physiognomy, caused dear Jonathan to drop some half-audible remark about a “sheep-headed Jew” when Quincey groaned with the discomfort of getting a stitch or two in his thick scalp. Mina, finished early with her seance, had already come on the scene; authentically gracious as always, she left the men to argue and nurse their wounds, and came to breakfast with the good Samaritan as a token of reparations. She was delighted to have me as an unexpected bonus; her husband seemed glad to get her away from the scene of sordid combat for any reason.

      We three sat down in the dining car together. I ordered only cafe au lait, which I could swallow if there were compelling cause to do so.

      “And are you too, Mrs. Harker,” I asked, “traveling only to