The Holmes-Dracula File by Fred Saberhagen (best books to read for beginners txt) 📕

   Those who think me unlikely to pay fairly, even generously, for goods got from the innocent do not know me. They know only the stories told by my enemies and their dupes, from my breathing days in the 15th century, through the 19th when Van Helsing concocted his lurid lies, down to the present. As if by some law of social entropy, when one’s reputation changes, the change is almost always for the worse; and five centuries of life give time for a great deal of change.

   That my name is ever going to improve again must be considered problematical at best, but at least its past deterioration can be charted. Let the serious students of 15th century affairs assure more casual readers that in my breathing days, as Prince of Wallachia. I was accused by some of being too scrupulously honest. Certain troublemakers, dissidents in my realm, groaned that I expected too much in the way of trustworthiness from my subjects!

   Of course it was not the merchants who so charged me; they did not find the stench of robbers’ bodies, staked up beside my roads as admonition, too much for their nostrils. Nor was it my country’s peasants, or any of its honest poor, who launched the legend of my unexampled deviltry. When I ruled, their doors could stay unbarred by night, whilst their wives and daughters walked abroad in peace and safety. I am, and was, a strong-willed man; else were I dead, five hundred years ago, from sword-wounds at the hands of my less loyal subjects. The troublemakers claimed to find unbearable the mere rumors that issued from the dungeons underneath my castles, where I had those who preyed upon the innocent conveyed as speedily as possible; nor did nobility of blood preserve them from my justice. But all this is as a story that is told. —Dracula.

* * * * * * *

   A door opened behind me, and Lestrade came quietly into the room, a gleam of suppressed excitement in his eye. He exchanged a cryptic glance with Gregson, who quietly went out. After a nod to me, Lestrade, who had evidently heard the old man’s story at least once before, took over the questioning.

   “Now, dad, just where did this strange encounter of yours with the naked man take place?”

   “ ’Twas in Upper Swandam Lane, yer honor.”

   “And when?”

   “Long ’bout the middle o’ last night.”

   Lestrade placed two fingers, close together, upon the huge map of London that occupied one wall. “Upper Swandam Lane, Doctor, and right here’s the pier where the, er, evidence was found.” To the witness: “What did this strange man look like, apart from not being dressed?”

   The fellow in the chair looked from one of us to the other. “Well, he were a sight taller than either of you gentlemen. Lean enough so that ’is ribs stuck out. But not wasted nor feeble; strong as an ox, ’e was.”

   “Dark or fair? Young or old?”

   “Well, ’e was gray, or partly so.”

   All this description, I noted to myself, tallied well with Holmes’ account of the man who had worn the shirt. Lestrade pressed on. “Any sign that this chap had been shot? Wounded?”

   “Huh! Not ’im!”

   After another question or two, Lestrade beckoned me to follow him out into the corridor. Gregson was there, and with him a one-eyed, rascally-looking fellow, accoutered in some of the garments of a sailor. This man the detectives introduced to me as “Jones,” one of the most valuable informers in the pay of the CID. I remember thinking that the pay of an informer must be modest indeed, for this man appeared not much this side of starvation.

   Jones’ story, which he repeated in a rough and hurried whisper at the request of the detectives, was that he had been last night at the Salvation Army shelter on Sidney Street, where he had witnessed an incident so incredible that he had decided it must be brought directly to Lestrade’s attention; though not until this evening, I gathered, had the inspector been receptive to his story.

   The informer was carrying with him a ragged, dirty cloth cap, which he said had been left behind at the shelter by an incredibly strong man. This individual had spoken to Jones there, had shared his soup and tea, and then had suddenly jumped up out of his bed and departed. At midnight the doors were kept locked, but the man had forced them open barehanded. This was such a display of strength that, as Jones put it, he would hesitate to describe it to us, were it not that the shattered wood and metal must be still available as evidence. The patrolman on the beat had been summoned to the shelter, and his report would doubtless be coming through channels.

   Lestrade nodded. “Yes, you did well to tell us. Let me see the cap.”

   With it in hand, Lestrade went into a small, dusty storeroom, from which he emerged a few minutes later with two more, almost as old and worn, but each of a different cut and color. Taking all three together in his hand, he led us back to the door of the room in which the elderly witness was being questioned.

   Opening the spy-hole, Lestrade gestured for the informer to look through. “Was it him?”

   “No sir, not much likeness at all,” came the quick answer. “Same general build, is all. This one looks quite feeble. The other—very weak he was, I don’t think! If you doubts my word on that, sir, you’d better go along and look at those hostel doors.”

   “I suppose I had. But there’s just a bit more to do here, first.” Bringing me with him—Jones stayed in the outer darkness of the corridor—Lestrade re-entered the interrogation room.

   The witness was now somewhat more at ease; an older