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

   I did not know what else to say, and with a gesture tried to convey as much. Then we were both silent for a time. A coal falling in the grate made what seemed a loud, intrusive noise. Holmes’ gaze had turned in that direction, introspectively, and the look of his face now made me fear a return of his illness of the early spring. “Yes, I believe you,” he repeated at length. “And it is no blame to you that the fellow got away. If we are to assign blame for that, we must charge the Fates, or Fortune... but what good ever comes of that? You were quite right, too, not to speak of the incident to Lestrade or the others.”

   “You did not see this man at Barley’s yourself, Holmes?”

   “I?” He roused himself, as if surprised to find me still in the room. “No, not to my knowledge, save for a fleeting glimpse of his ragged back. I had never thought that Fate would send the waterfront killer there... but the identification seems well-founded. I am told that Jones—as Lestrade’s latest pet informer calls himself—is completely positive that the man whose presence at Barley’s he reported is the same who was with him at the hostel, and there broke down the doors. I mean to speak to Jones tomorrow, and form my own estimate of his reliability. Meanwhile...”

   Holmes sighed sharply. With an air of casting introspection to the winds, he raised his hands and clapped them down decisively on the chair arms. “Watson.”

   “Yes?”

   “What do you know of vampires?”

   “Vampires? Some species of tropical bats.”

   “Good old Watson! I am speaking of vampirism in human beings.”

   I was chilled by my friend’s apparent seriousness. “Walking corpses? Of course it is all pure-rubbish.” I had been about to say, pure lunacy; but with that pale, tormented, utterly intent face before me, I found myself suddenly unable to use the word.

   “Not corpses, Watson.” Holmes studied me carefully. Then his manner became—deliberately, as I thought—more casual. “It is in the realm of legend, of course. But think of it nevertheless. You will do that much if I ask it, will you not?”

   “Certainly, but... “Again, I did not know how to continue. The silence this time stretched on until I, at least, felt it grow painful, and was constrained to speak. “Lestrade said that the fellow killed again.”

   “Meaning the constable killed on the roof.” Holmes stood up and stretched, an action reassuringly normal. “Join me, Watson? I perceive a cold partridge upon the sideboard, and a bottle of Montrachet. Have I told you that I now know the name of the man impersonating Scott? It is David Fitzroy-a thoroughly bad man, and a clever one. He is a doctor himself—I think you have heard me say before that when a doctor does go bad, he has the nerve and the knowledge to make him the worst of criminals. I should not be at all surprised to find a medical man at the very bottom of this evil tangle.”

   “But not, in this case, a killer.”

   “In that I think you and Lestrade are wrong. The constable was shot, remember. Fitzroy fled through the trapdoor to the roof just ahead of the man from the docks, and I rather doubt whether my look-alike was carrying firearms, or would have used them.”

   “Why on earth not, seeing that he killed so savagely before?”

   Again Holmes bestowed a long, speculative look upon me before he answered. “I think you may take my word for it, that pistols would not be consistent with his—peculiar madness.”

   I did not understand, but neither did I wish to concentrate my friend’s attention any further upon that individual whose exploits seemed to disturb him so. “Are the two men somehow in league, then? I wonder what the connection can be between them?”

   We were at the sideboard now, and. Holmes poured each of us a glass of wine. “For one thing, Watson: rats. Fitzroy wanted—I think he wanted desperately, for some reason—to purchase a thousand or more of them, and soon. He said he intended using them in some kind of show, similar to Barley’s—all purely a blind, of course, though in my guise as fellow entrepreneur I pretended to believe him, and expressed a wish to sell him some.”

   Holmes moved to take down the Medical Directory from my shelf, and opened it. “Aha. We see here, that as late as two years ago, Dr. David Fitzroy was one of the young physicians working with Sir Jasper Meek himself, in precisely the same field of research as that which sent John Scott off to Sumatra. Fitzroy has accompanied Sir Jasper on at least one expedition to that area.”

   “The connections grow, then.”

   “They do indeed.”

   I picked at the food upon my plate. “Is it possible, I wonder, that Lestrade is right? That the madman who killed Frau Grafenstein is Dr. Fitzroy’s escaped patient?”

   Holmes, I was glad to see, was attacking his own food with determination if not actually relish. He did not answer me directly, but asked: “Have you ever wondered, Watson, just what the lady was doing in such a place at midnight?”

   “I have wondered, but could think of no good reason for her presence.”

   “You should endeavor, then, to think of a possible bad one. According to my informants, the Grafenstein woman was considered, some ten years ago, to be one of the most brilliant young biologists on the Continent. She was forced to resign her university position, under a cloud whose exact nature I have as yet been unable to discover, but which seems to have had some substance. I have as yet no clue as to just what she was doing here in London—aha.”

   As he spoke, Holmes had moved near the window. The drizzle continued, with fog, and traffic was light in Baker Street. At such a late hour,