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

in the cab while we two men went inside. The appearance of a young woman of her class in such a place at such a time must cause the kind of sensation that, if we were to have any opportunity of surprising our quarry, it was essential to avoid. Then too, by remaining outside and on watch, she would be able to observe all who left the place or entered.

   “If I see John,” she announced, “I am going straight to him, no matter what.”

   “Of course.” Peter Moore was looking at her earnestly, and again holding her hand. “But you had better be sure. If it is instead a man who only looks like John, then leave him to Dr. Watson and me.”

   “I’ll be sure, Peter. Have no doubts about that.” Her gaze, feverish with anxiety, was already busy darting this way and that among the passersby. “Oh, if only we can find him before those policemen do!”

   At my orders the cabman stopped across the street from Barley’s, where I directed him to wait. Murray jumped down nimbly from the seat beside the driver, to lead the way; and Moore and I followed, joining the intermittent stream of men now entering the public house. Before leaving Baker Street I had gone up to my room, and now I could feel inside my coat the reassuring bulge of my old service revolver.

   The ground-floor parlor, which we entered first, was a large room filled with the fumes of drink and tobacco, where a wide-shouldered, hearty, mustached man of middle age presided behind the bar. This individual obviously had many friends among the patrons, and after a few moments spent listening to the exchange of rough, good-humored talk, I understood that this was Barley himself. His friends, and indeed the crowd in general, were an inclusive mixture of all the classes of the metropolis. A few were well-dressed, and undoubtedly gentlemen, while others were the basest ruffians. Of the female sex only a very small number were present, and these exclusively of the lowest class. I noticed particularly one girl who would have been pretty, even striking, had not one side of her face been almost covered by a great, disfiguring strawberry birthmark. This girl was subject to rude treatment as she endeavored to push her way through the crush, as if in search of someone; and I was well satisfied that we had persuaded Sarah Tarlton to remain outside.

   Moore and I ordered drinks, and in general tried to give the impression of a pair of sportsmen out for a night’s amusement. Meanwhile we of course were keeping both eyes open for the man we had come to find. I was distracted almost at once, however, by a chance encounter with an old acquaintance.

   “Why, it is John Watson. Shouldn’t have thought it likely to meet you in a place like this.”

   I turned to behold a dark-haired, handsome man, but little changed, save for the addition of a pair of spectacles, in the three or four years since I had seen him last. “Why, Jack Seward! Nor I you, if it comes to that.” Eight or nine years younger than I, Seward had first entered the circle of my acquaintances some fifteen years earlier, when he was a dresser in the surgery at Bart’s. I was aware that in the last seven or eight years he had risen rapidly, and when last I met him he had become a specialist in mental illness and was in charge of an asylum at Purfleet.

   Seward explained that he had come to Barley’s chiefly at the request of a friend of his; this was a tall and rather taciturn gentleman at his side, whom he called Arthur and then introduced to us as Lord Godalming. His Lordship had with him a brace of terriers, one of which he held and petted like a child. These he had brought along, as he put it, to see how they might do; other blood sports were out of season and angling had not yet begun.

   “And are you still in charge at the asylum?” I inquired, making conversation, while simultaneously managing—as I prided myself—to keep nearly the whole room under observation.

   “Oh, yes—damned drafty old place—more room than we need for the patients, but that’s as well at present.” Seward removed his spectacles and squinted rather nearsightedly around the room. “Have some guests in from Exeter, to see the Jubilee.”

   There was some question, it seemed, of the dogs being weighed in and examined in advance of their call to enter the pit for combat, and Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward soon bade us a temporary farewell and took the small, nervous animals upstairs, a development I rather welcomed as giving me a freer hand for business.

   The chief decorations of Barley’s parlor were glass cases, each containing one or more stuffed dogs. Every preserved animal was labeled with its name, and the dated record of some no doubt remarkable number of rats it had killed in the pit within a specified interval of time. I noticed Peter Moore fall out of his assumed character far enough to shake his head disgustedly on reading one of these accounts; and my own feelings were fully in accord with his. There is, in my view, no justifiable comparison between the pitting of trapped animals and free sport in the open fields; and I rejoice that in 1911 rat-killing was at long last placed outside the law, along with the similar spectacles—dog-fighting, badger-baiting, cock-fighting—that were declared illegal in the 19th century.

   Meanwhile our observations in Barley’s parlor continued to be in vain. I could discover no one at all who looked like a particularly close match for John Scott’s photograph, and Peter Moore’s silence and the continued look of anxiety upon his face assured me that his luck was no better than my own. Yet so large was the room, and so well-filled by men who