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

men who had been holding Holmes now released his inert form and came to lay their hands on me as well. Their leader still brandished his hypodermic, and as one of his confederates pushed up the sleeve of my right arm, he pressed it home. The last thing I saw before lapsing into unconsciousness was a smile of evil triumph disfiguring Jack Seward’s handsome face. .

   My return to awareness was a slow and painful process, marred again and again by irresistible relapses into drugged sleep, a sleep shot through with strange dreams or visions. At one point it seemed to me that I was manacled helplessly to a peculiar cart or bed. Again, the comely face of a young woman in a high-collared gown, a complete stranger to me, was hovering near; and I thought she exchanged words with some unseen personage just outside my range of vision. As she gazed at me the young woman seemed concerned about my plight, though she was evidently unwilling or unable to take any helpful action.

   When at last I fully recovered my senses, there was no woman to be seen. To my dismay, however, the metal cart and the shackles holding me to it proved to be only too horribly real. I was held down on my back, unable to do much more than turn my head, in a small room that was more like a cell than a bedchamber. It was sparsely furnished, and the paint on the walls was old and worn. Through shutters and bars, a sectioned shaft of wan, orange-yellow sunlight entered the sole window almost horizontally, suggesting that the day was nearly spent. The effects of the drug had evidently lasted many hours.

   On turning my head I was shocked to discover a still figure similarly bound to another cart, not five feet from my own. I leave it to the reader to imagine my sensations on recognizing in the dim light the face of Sherlock Holmes, pale and motionless as death.

   I whispered his name repeatedly, each time louder than the last, but he made not the least response; and I had about decided to see what I could accomplish in the way of obtaining help by using my lungs at their loudest, when a key rattled sharply in the lock of the stout door that formed the only entrance to the room. It opened, and Seward came in, a small lighted lamp in hand.

   “What does this mean?” I demanded of him, in quiet rage.

   He seemed not to hear, but closed the door behind him, then put on his spectacles and came forward, holding up his lamp. He bent over the inert form on the cart beside mine, and looked for a long moment before he straightened up.

   “Incredible!” Seward muttered then, as if speaking only to himself. “An amazing likeness to the Count—yes, now I see.”

   “You know Count Dracula?” I asked—rather stupidly, I am afraid. It may have been that the last traces of the injected drug were still affecting my brain.

   He turned to me with a short, unpleasant laugh. “Oh yes, Watson—Dracula and I are old acquaintances, though I had thought him six years dead. What can you tell me of how he came to be involved in this?”

   I could not have given the villain a helpful answer had I wanted to; but rather than even give the appearance of cooperation, I simply pressed my lips together.

   He shook his head, as if at an obstinate patient. “You are mistaken, if you imagine you will be able to withold information from me. There are some things I mean to learn, from Holmes or from you; and the sooner I learn them, the less painful your remaining hours will be.” He looked at me, shrugged, and drew from a pocket of his coat a small case of surgical instruments, such as any doctor might carry about with him. When the case snapped open in his hand, the gleaming knives and scissors, all familiar tools of my own trade, appeared to me in a light in which I had never before seen them.

   Seward’s hand was hovering over the open case, as if doubtful which bright implement to choose, when there came a sudden bold rattle at the door. From just outside, a woman’s voice, young and carefree, called out: “Jack? I say, are you in there?”

   Muttering something under his breath, Seward snapped shut the case again and replaced it in his pocket. Going to the door, he unbolted it and opened it very slightly. “Mina,” he remonstrated calmly, “I am afraid that there are patients here.”

   Through the partially open door I could catch just a glimpse of a young woman’s face in the brighter hallway outside. It was the very face that I had seen, and taken for part of a dream, while I was still half-conscious.

   Now she replied lightly: “Oh, I am so dreadfully sorry, Jack. You look somewhat harried; is there anything that Jonathan or I can do?”

   “No, nothing, thanks. I have my attendants on call.”

   “I met one just now.” She lowered her voice. “A rather brutal-looking fellow, who scowled at me when I came down this way from upstairs.”

   “I shall speak to him. However, I am afraid I am not as free of professional matters as I had hoped to be.”

   “But two patients in one room? Isn’t that odd?” Now she was trying boldly to peer in past his shoulder.

   “Help!” I croaked, loud as I could through my parched throat, thinking that I should never get a better chance. “Send for the police!”

   Seward, not in the least perturbed, went on without even looking back in my direction. “Unusual, yes. But don’t worry your pretty head, my dear. What the French call folie a deux, meaning two patients with a shared delusion. Just for the present I don’t want to separate them.”

   “Police!” I repeated hoarsely. “Tell