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

   She looked a question at me still, but unlocked and pushed back the door.

   It was deep dark within; though not to my eyes, of course. But Sal started at the scrape of clothing on rough blankets, as the man who had been sprawled upon the room’s one cot rose up. One of his great hands swept up from a nearby table a portable electric torch and flashed it in our faces.

   “Gorblimey, Sal!” growled out a rough, familiar voice, thick with astonishment. “These ain’t no days for bringin’ home a trick...”

    Matthews’ voice died as his eyes, widening, fastened upon my face.

   Sal ran in to him at once, beginning to babble some apology or explanation, and completely forgetting or ignoring my last words to her. They had not been idle chatter. I, vampire, am unable to enter even the meanest dwelling unless once invited directly to do so.

   Her pleading to Matthews did her no more good this time than last. His left hand set down the torch and with easy power seized her hair. He bent her neck, holding her immobile, whilst in his right hand a wicked clasp knife came to be, so smoothly that eyes less experienced than mine might have seen only the flower of the motion, not the growth.

   Still wide-eyed, incredulous, he grinned at me but spoke to her. “Now, Sal—yer mean yer don’t know who this be?”

   “Jem, no! It ain’t who you think—the man you think it be is dead.”

   “Dead! Ar!” It was almost a laugh. “Not ’im! My eyes are workin’ fine!”

   By now I felt almost as bewildered as the girl. Matthews had never seen me on my feet before, nor with a comparatively youthful face. Beyond doubt he thought he recognized me, but—it dawned upon me rapidly— not as the wretched oldster on the cart. He must know, he must be convinced in his bones as well as in his mind, that that victim was still at the bottom of the Thames. Then who did he think I was?

   He held the knife now at Sal’s throat, and the wonder in his eyes was blending into triumph. His harsh voice rasped at me: “Now let’s see just where yer revolver’s hid. Tyke off yer coat real slow, and drop it on the floor. Else this gal’s done for where she stands—Mr. Great Detective.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

   “Why, Watson, do you maintain that it was your fault that the man eluded capture?” Sherlock Holmes, in dressing-gown and slippers, put the question to me as he stood before the fire in our sitting room. It was nearly midnight, an hour after the climax of the affair at Barley’s. A chill rain had begun to tap upon our windows, and Holmes’ hands were spread toward the blaze while he turned his penetrating eyes in my direction. The wrinkles and black hair-dye of his disguise were gone, and he seemed in general none the worse for his desperate struggle to escape Gregson, Moore, and myself. Yet I did not much care for his pale, finely drawn appearance.

   “Why should it have been your fault?” Holmes repeated. “I understand that the suspected killer had already made good his escape before you chose me as your quarry. And even if you had not stopped me, I would not have caught him—I must admit that I was in pursuit of other game myself.”

   I took a chair beside the fire, and tasted the brandy he had just poured for me. “Holmes, I saw no point in confessing to the police that it was I who collared one of their men, and thus deliberately gave the murderer his chance to get free. But I must confess it now.”

   Holmes sat down across from me. “You collared a policeman?” His voice sounded too tired to express the full surprise that he must naturally have felt. “My dear old fellow—why?”

   “It is very simple. Because I did not know the man escaping was the maniac whom the police had launched the raid to capture. I was convinced that the man escaping was yourself.”

    Holmes leaned back in his chair, and there was a long pause before he spoke. “He looked like me, then. Very much like me.” The words were quiet, with a fatalistic lack of emotion in them.

   Peering anxiously at my friend’s haggard features, I went on: “With the first good look I got at the fellow’s face, I recognized—there is no other way to put it—I recognized it as yours. The same aquiline nose, the same strong chin and piercing eyes. Yes, even the same figure, tall and lean and very active.”

   “The very same. I see,” Holmes echoed in that doomed voice.

   “Oh, there were some differences, I admit.” I frowned at my friend’s uncharacteristically passive acceptance of this news. “I think he was an older man than you. His hair was longer and grayer, and his eyebrows bushy. His color was less healthy.” Although, even as I was speaking, I thought that there was no longer much difference of complexion.

   “You heard him speak?”

   “No.”

   “Go on.”

   “There is little more to tell. I am well acquainted, of course, with your skill at disguise, and it struck me as perfectly natural that you should have altered your appearance before visiting a place like Barley’s, where some enemy might otherwise recognize you.”

   Holmes’ eyes glittered. “Did it not then seem strange that you could recognize me at once?”

   “Perhaps,” I went on, somewhat wounded by this petulance, “you do not believe the resemblance was as strong as I have painted it?”*

   •Readers who doubt the strength of this similarity would do well to re-read the descriptions of Holmes and myself set down by our contemporary chroniclers in the 1890s.—D.

   “My dear fellow,” he muttered, “excess imagination is not your great fault. Yes, Watson, I believe you. I only wish that I