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

   Right in the heart. She jumped up, chair almost toppling back, breadcrumbs scattering to the floor. “ ’Ow’d you know my nyme?”

   “Ah, my dear girl! I did not realize that your name was a secret, too. Do you know mine? It has been taken from me.” Which was the all-too-painful truth.

   Her face hung over him. Her fists were clenched. “ ’Ow’d you know?”

   He had seen and heard far too many real menaces to take this one very seriously. Her anger was not aimed at him, of course. “My dear…I had no wish to upset you. You have been kind to me. The others mentioned your name, with some laughter…as if there were some joke. But then, perhaps I am mistaken.”

   “Joke? Tell me wot joke!” She leaned over him, still trying to sound threatening. But one hand was now raised to conceal her disfigurement, in case the dark should fail her at close range.

   “Perhaps I am mistaken, as I said. Perhaps, for all I know, it is mere accident that yours is the only name my caretakers have spoken freely. There is no reason, is there, why the names of my attendants should be secret?”

   “Ow, damn them!” Sally fell back into her chair, muttering to herself, and perhaps not hearing the old man at the moment. “Damn all their ber-luddy eyes!”

   “And the names of the doctor in charge, and his good wife?”

   That caught Sally’s attention back, and for a moment it seemed she might be going to utter a harsh laugh. “Huh! Wife? Not ’er!” Then the girl retreated abruptly into a silence so quick and accomplished that it must have been an habitual defense.

   Now wait, the old man told himself. Wait for a little while before you push again. His brain still throbbed, distracting him with pain, refusing to yield his rightful memories. How could he plan or act? Yet he must do the best he could.

   Presently, in this deep night that was to his eyes clear as brightest day, the girl got up and moved about the room. Standing for a moment by the window, she pulled the curtain back for a furtive, nervous peek, looking out blankly, not as if she really expected to see anything of importance. Then she went to the tall chest of drawers, fondled the candle in its holder for a moment, and put it down again. Next with decisive steps she left the room, to come back shortly, once more masked, and carrying a lighted oil lamp which she set on the tall chest. She moved the chair back closer to the light and, somewhat to the old man’s surprise, extracted from her bag a small book. This she settled down to read.

   “What are you reading, Sally?” Though he could see the faded printing on the cover: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Fair.

   She raised her eyes to his some seconds before answering. “A long poem, like. A lady wrote it.” She told him what the title was.

   “And are the goblins in it terrible?”

   “Oh, no sir.” The “sir” seemed quite unconscious. “Least I don’t think they are.” Sally was on the verge of confiding more, but changed her mind, blanked her face, and dropped her eyes back to the safety of the printed page. She read with an occasional lip-movement, but well enough for all that, to judge from the deft shuttling of her eyes. Outside, the night was growing darker, and there came a hint of ozone in the air, even before the old man could hear the distant thunder. Still faintly audible were the two sets of his fellow prisoners’ lungs, in nearby rooms—they sounded like two old men slowly dying.

   “The word ‘goblin,’ ” he remarked, “derives I believe from the Greek kobalos, and means ‘rogue.’ ”

   “Ah.” Above Sal’s mask her eyes came back to fasten on his face, as if unwillingly.

   “How old are you, Sally?”

   “Turned seventeen last Easter. Look ’ere sir, you sure you don’t want no tea?”

   “Quite sure.”

   “And they spoke out my name, hey?” The book went down in her lap. “Wot’d they say?”

   “Very little.”

   “Come on, wot?”

   “That you were to stay with me, tonight.” His voice was low and tired and patient. “And there was some indelicacy, which I should prefer not to repeat. And something, somehow, amused them—having a connection with your appearance, perhaps; I could not hear them clearly. I say, is there anything wrong? I’m sorry.”

   She had frozen in her chair, and under her mask there might now be a ghastly kind of smile. I have not said he was a kindly, good, benevolent old man.

   At last the thunder of the approaching storm rolled near enough for her to hear it, and broke in upon her poisoned reverie. She glanced at the closed window, then back at the old man. And then back to her book.

   He let her turn two pages. Then: “Sally, what lies behind that door?” When the girl looked up he indicated with a movement of his head the doubly padlocked portal.

   “Ah, just some drugs an’ medicines an’ things.” She was making up an answer to avoid being bothered by the question. Her deeper thoughts were elsewhere—without doubt, still brooding upon those vicious employers of hers who laughed at her blotched face. Now, how could she get back at them? Oh, he was not a considerate, truthful old man at all. But long-lived, yes indeed.

   He asked: “No living thing is kept in there?”

   She put her book down in her lap again, forefinger holding place. “Why, barrin’ a mouse or a bug or two, I don’t s’pose there’s any. Kept, you say? Wot kind o’ livin’ thing?”

   “Go listen at the door.” The thunder grumbled closer. The giant Rat liked not the coming storm, and in between its atmospheric slams and rumbles the prisoner now and again perceived