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

brute fell dead into the spreading flames. “Watson!” cried a familiar voice. “Thank God!” A face loomed over me, coughing in the smoke, and altered by false bushy eyebrows, but still beyond all doubt the face of Sherlock Holmes.

   Though volunteers from the nearest houses soon came to fight the fire, it had gained too great a start to be controlled before it had destroyed the entire building. The gray light of dawn found me wrapped in a blanket donated by some kindly neighbor, and seated on a stump in the half-wooded grounds of the old asylum while I contemplated the smoldering wreckage.

   With the exception of some trifling burns, I was uninjured. So were Holmes and Lestrade, who had searched the building for me at considerable danger to themselves, after besting Seward’s two remaining henchmen in a deadly struggle on the floor above. My friends had then carried me out of the building, cart and all, to a spot far enough removed from the blaze for Holmes to take the time to pick the locks that shackled me.

   Nor had any of the Harker family, Seward’s guests, been hurt. All of them were dressed as if they had been hastily aroused, and were the picture of innocence and shock—Mrs. Harker, the young woman I had already seen and heard; her husband Jonathan, a rather pudgy man of about forty, prematurely white-haired; and their two small children with a young governess. Mrs. Harker, so she said, had chanced to be awake, and had smelled smoke, thus giving her entire family a chance to get safely to the open air. In the presence of the folk from neighboring villas and houses, she said not a word—nor did Holmes or Lestrade—of shots or fighting or indeed anything out of the ordinary beyond the fire itself.

   The blaze was blamed for the extermination of most of the staff of the institution, of which only an innocent cook and stableboy appeared to have survived—and for the death of Dr. Fitzroy, who, it seemed, had been visiting in connection with some animal experiments. In these, it appeared, I also had been taking part, and I was the sole survivor of those who had done so. Lestrade, who of course had at least some idea of the true state of affairs, hastened to assure other police arriving on the scene that I would give a statement in due time, but was in no condition to be questioned just at present.

    Right after the police came Lord Godalming, in his own carriage, to exchange shocked words with his old friends the Harkers, and then with Holmes and Lestrade.

Then he came, shaking his head, to where I sat upon my stump. “Dr. Watson,” he muttered, “very fortunate that you could get out alive. They tell me there were five dead in all, including poor Jack.”

   “Six,” corrected Lestrade. “We found one chap just over there at the edge of the trees. He was running for help, I should guess, and in his panic evidently fell and broke his neck... a bad business, very bad.”

   I shivered slightly, thinking the broken neck not at all likely to have been an accident. But for the time being I said nothing.

   “Very bad,” His Lordship agreed, distractedly. “Watson, I suppose you have met the Harkers?”

   I was thereupon introduced properly to the husband; the wife smiled gallantly and said: “Dr. Watson and I did meet last night, though we scarcely had a chance to speak to each other—the men were so busy with their work. I did mean to come back, Doctor.” These words she spoke very earnestly. “But I was delayed.”

   “I do appreciate the thought,” I murmured. My eye at this moment chanced to fall upon the Harker children; they were a boy and a girl, and as I now saw, undoubtedly twins. When the girl looked at me I thought I saw in her face something wild and savage—a passing shade that I never should have recognized before I had met the Count. It may have been my imagination, for the strange look was gone in a moment, leaving only a child who regarded me thoughtfully.

   At this point we were distracted by another arrival, that of Peter Moore and Sarah Tarlton, who held hands as they dismounted from a hansom and approached us. Word of the fire had reached them through the police, as I discovered later. I saw Miss Tarlton pale at the sickening smell of death-by-fire that hovered over the still-smoldering ruins. Holmes broke off a whispered conversation with Lestrade to greet them.

   “I must report that my investigations have had an unhappy conclusion as regards the object of your search,” my friend informed her. “There is no longer any doubt that John Scott perished in the South Seas.”

   His words were painful to the girl, but it was obvious that she no longer found them in the least surprising. She raised her chin. “And was his death a natural one?”

   “I fear that it was not. But you have my solemn word, for whatever comfort it may provide, that those responsible have already paid the full penalty for their crime.”

   A few minutes later Holmes and I were on our way back to Baker Street. It was, as I well remember, June 22, the day of Her Majesty’s Jubilee procession. Somewhere musicians had risen early to begin their final practice, and from the distance, strains of martial music drifted to our ears. Though traffic was already snarled in places, the whole metropolis was in a festive mood, for which its people had even better reason than they knew.

   We had continued our progress for some distance into the increasingly busy streets before I broke a silence by remarking: “He is not dead, you know.”

   “He?”

   “Holmes... do not play games.”

   My friend gave the ghost of a chuckle. “I do not doubt for a moment that the Count still lives. When he