Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 02 - The Holmes-Dracula File

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Chapter I
There can be little doubt that if the cudgel descending on that old man's skull had
been of lead or iron, rather than some stout timber of the English forest, not
much would have come of the attempt-at least nothing worthy of your attention
and mine at this late date. The street beside the East India docks was very nearly
empty in the dawn, and to any assault with mere metal he would have responded
vigorously, and then would have gone on his way to meet his love in Exeter,
lighthearted with the sense of having done the metropolis of London a good turn
en passant, ridding it of one or two of its more rascally inhabitants.
It is however an important fact of history-I do not exaggerate-that the force of
that stealthy blow, delivered from behind by an assailant of breathtaking
cunning, was borne in wood. The old man fell down senseless on the spot; he felt
neither the slime of the street's stones nor the rough hands that lifted him and
bore him off, their owners doubtless grumbling at his unexpected weight.
There was a great pain in the old man's head when he awoke, and he awoke to
nothing better than a crippled awareness, bereft of useful memories. He was in a
poor little bedchamber, quite strange to him. And when the old man tried to
move, he found that his arms and legs were fettered with iron, held tight to the
peculiar high, narrow bed or cot on which he lay. On making this discovery he
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began, as you may well imagine, very earnestly to consider his situation. But no,
he could neither remember nor guess how he might have come to such a pass.
He had no more than shards of memory, all recent but quite incomplete: a sailing
ship, a gangplank, the happy feel of solid land beneath his feet once more, the
fog-wreathed dawn… the great pain in his head.
Now here he was locked to his bed, in a small room he did not know. The lone
window was heavily blocked with blinds and curtains, but still admitted more
light than he required to take stock of his surroundings. Above it on the stained
ceiling a smear of reflected daylight quivered, signaling that water lay outside in
the sun. On the far side of the room stood a high old chest of drawers in need of
paint, holding on its top an unlit candle in a brass stick, a chipped wash-basin,
and a pitcher. A stark chair of dark wood waited inhospitably beside the chest,
and that completed the room's furnishings save for the bed itself, which seemed
to be fashioned almost entirely of heavy metal.
It might be morning still, or afternoon. The Cockney cries of a coster, hawking
vegetables, came from somewhere outside and below. The room, though small,
was furnished with two doors, set in adjacent walls. One door was fettered by
two closed padlocks, which were large and strong, and mounted upon separate
heavy hasps. Little splinters of bright, raw wood about these showed that their
installation had been recent. The other door was also closed, but had no lock at
all, at least not on the old man's side.
Wafting, oozing from somewhere, was a certain smell…
The pain and damage in his head had left his mind confused and wandering. Yes,
a whole symphony of smells was in the city's air. Below and beyond the others
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was the sea, perceptible to a keen nose though miles away. That and his
fragmented memory of being recently aboard ship reminded him that this was
London. What was he doing here, so far from home? So far from…
Not till his thoughts had reached this point did the old man realize that he no
longer knew who he was. If he had been at all susceptible to fear, he would have
known it then.
At wrists and ankles, elbows and knees, his arms and legs were clasped to the
high, narrow bed by rings of steel, fitted too tightly to leave the smallest chance
of wriggling free. When he raised his head as far as possible he could see that his
lanky body, still clothed even to elegant frock coat and boots, lay on a sheet of
patterned oilcloth. Beneath this, some thin padding covered the hard top and
metal frame of this odd cot. It was a sturdy bit of furniture. The old man strained
his wiry arms until they quivered, without eliciting so much as a creak from their
constraints.
What was that smell? Something to do, he thought, with wild animals. With…
Footsteps were approaching, outside his room, and he lay back as if no more
than semiconscious, and quite too weak to move. Presently the unlocked door
was swung in, by a heavyset figure in workman's garb: shabby dirt-colored coat
over a gray sweater, baggy trousers, drab cloth cap. Below blue eyes and heavy,
blackish brows, most of the man's beefy face was hidden behind a mask of white
gauze, held on by strings that looped behind his hairy ears. That mask would
look familiar to you now, from films and television if not from direct experience
in surgery, but it was strange and puzzling to our old man. In 1897, few people
had ever seen the like of it.
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"'E's awyke, Guv'nor." The grating voice that came out through the gauze was
addressed to another man not yet in sight, whose steps were drawing near across
uncarpeted wood floors. "Plyin' peek with us, 'eis."
The rough-voiced workman moved aside to let in a much leaner and somewhat
taller man, dressed as a gentleman in frock-coat and dark trousers, but masked in
the same mysterious style. "So he is," this newcomer commented, in an
upperclass voice that fit his clothes, and came right over to the waist-high bed.
His fair hair was well groomed, and his penetrating blue eyes assessed the old
man's condition with a professional economy of movement. With skilled fingers
he pressed impersonally about the back of the old man's skull, a region which
radiated pain as glowing iron sends out heat. "Hit in the usual spot? Quite.
Excellently done. No sign of fracture, not even a hematoma. Well, no reason he
should not go to the rat at once."
The old man, who had let his eyelids sag completely shut again, liked to think
that in the last few years he had gained a certain facility in English. New bits of
slang and jargon, however, continually surprised him. Was "rat," in this context,
yet another vulgar synonym for latrine? He felt no need for any such facility.
Indeed, despite the hurt confusion in his mind, it was for some reason almost
amusing to imagine that he might.
The costermonger outside had trundled his leeks into another street; his voice
came faintly now. Within, the two masked insiders, experts enjoying the
mystification of their patient, conferred in low and cryptic words. They had
turned from his bed and, keys in hand, were rattling open the padlocks upon the
little bedroom's second door. It was from behind that door that the smell came,
the old man now discovered, the smell of… no, it was still impossible for him to
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think. A hard-wheeled cart assaulted paving stones beneath the window. The cart
was being pulled by a big gelded horse whose left front foot felt sore.
Inside the house a third set of human footsteps now drew near. These seemed to
be-yes, assuredly they were-the footsteps of a woman, although her shoes
clopped the bare floors with authority bold enough for any man. She entered the
room, drew near the bed and stopped, and the old man once more cracked an
eyelid to observe. She was not large, but held herself erect with the energy of
one who lives to dominate. The woman was well dressed in the English style,
and it came as no surprise that she should be gauze-masked like the two men.
They must have expected her entrance, for they did not react to it. When the
rough-voiced workman had finished taking the locks off the second door, he
came over to tie a cloth bag, evidently meant as a blindfold, around the prisoner's
head.
The bed, by starting to roll when it was pushed, now proved itself to be a cart.
The tall man walked ahead of it, holding open the door that had just been
unlocked, while the woman came in the rear, now and then muttering imperious
and doubtless unnecessary orders to Rough-voice, on how he should maneuver
this strange conveyance into the room adjoining.
Upon the old man's being wheeled into this new chamber, all background smells
of the city, the house, the people-in 1897 the modern passion for changing
clothes and keeping sterile armpits still had a long way to develop-all common
smells, I say, were suddenly wiped out for him, by the sharp tang of carbolic
acid. A good deal of this disinfectant was being sprayed and swabbed about.
Also the old man's keen ears informed him that his three caretakers were all
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donning extra clothing. Each was putting a voluminous garment over what he or
she already wore.
After these preliminaries had been got through, there proved to be yet another
door which must in its turn be unlocked and opened, another threshold to be
bumped over on his cart. In this third room, a soft click brought out the unnatural
radiance of electric light, perhaps from some kind of handheld torch. Its rays
probed at the old man's blindfold and even faintly warmed his exposed hands.
All this time he had kept on feigning to be unconscious, largely because in his
damaged state he was unable to think of any stratagem more promising. And
now, despite the steady olfactory roar of the carbolic, there came back, stronger
than ever, the animal smell at which he had first wondered.
He could place it now: it was the stink of rodent. Rats, or a rat, but magnified,
transformed, intensified. Despite a certain original flavor it was essential Rat,
and therefore familiar and unmistakable to that old man, and even almost
reassuring. He ought to be able to-to-
To do what? The terrible pain in his head went on, and it was still impossible to
think. Impossible to try…he did not even know what effort he should try to make.
Almost touching his cart, there were more locks and bolts now being operated.
These opened no ordinary door, but something that sounded all metal when part
of it skreeked back, all metal and full of space as a skeleton.
"Be careful of the screen!" the woman warned. And next moment, the heartbeat
and the breathing of a single large inhuman creature were almost within the old
man's reach. Here was the radiant center of the rodent smell.
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The prisoner's hands began to strain again at their steel restraints, uselessly
though with more strength than any victimized old man should have been able to
command. But no hunger or rage beat in the animal's heart, so he made his hands
relax. Experience counseled waiting, though what experience in his blind past
had been remotely like this one he could not guess. Still he felt sure that this was
not the first time in his long life that he had been chained and blindfolded. And
when the torture started, presently, they would find him no trembling virgin in
that field of endeavor either.
Torture? AH that came, in apparent anticlimax, was the opening of his clothing
at the chest, followed by the pressure there, against his bare skin, of a smooth
empty circle like the rim of a glass jar. Inside the circle, a sudden flea crawled on
the old man's hide, a tiny timid creature almost frightened by this alien, white
and nearly hairless world. Yes, the old man knew it was a flea. He had been for
many years a soldier, long ago, and like many another warrior he had become an
unwilling connoisseur of vermin. After a moment a second flea came onto his
skin, and then by ones and twos additional reinforcements, until he could no
longer count the nervous, jumping creatures confined within the circle of the jar.
He disliked these creatures, and so he awed them with a great, voiceless,
soundless shout, at which command they ceased to jump and huddled in abject
obedience.
The glass-rim contact was maintained for several minutes, while the four people
in the room were silent. Eventually the woman barked out an order, as if at the
conclusion of some timed interval. At this, a thin plate of metal or glass was slid
in beneath the glass rim, against the old man's chest and belly. Then cover, jar
and fleas were adroitly withdrawn together.
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Again locks clashed, and metal bars. In reverse order, doors were opened, the
cart was wheeled, carbolic splashed, doors closed, et cetera, and in a few minutes
the four human participants were all back in the same room in which the strange
charade had started. The old man's blindfold was pulled off by Rough-voice, and
this time the old man let his eyes stay open, thinking what the hell or something
to that effect. But no one cared if he was wide awake or not. His three
tormentors had already turned their backs on him and tramped out. Rough-voice
went last, closing the door without padlocks behind him. Before the three began
to talk among themselves again they were too many rooms away for the old man
to understand a word.
He lay there thinking. To say that he was trying to think would be more accurate.
He was still unable to cope with the pain and confusion in his head, the lasting
damage of that most savage oaken blow.
Torture, he thought, by fleas. Tickled into trauma by the tripping of their tiny
toes. Mangled by their fierce jaws-if he had let them bite. Absurd. Maniacal. But
if the intention had not been torture, what? It had all been most deadly serious, in
any case.
The blotch of daylight, faint though it was upon the ceiling just above the
blinded window, was somehow oppressive to his injured brain. And now his
weariness hung like a diver's weights upon his every fettered limb. He could not
sleep upon that cart, nor truly rest, but did fall into a kind of trance.
When he came wide awake again it was still full daylight. Again feet were
approaching his room's door, the one that had its locks upon the side away from
him. With a great clatter it was pushed open, and Rough-voice tramped in,
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masked as before. His huge hands held a small metal tray bearing a slab of
bread, tea steaming in a mug, a glass of water.
With the old man now watching openly, the tray was set down upon a peculiar
kind of rest that his brawny keeper snapped up from the bed's right side. Then
when the attendant turned a crank somewhere, his aged prisoner's forequarters
were elevated, putting him nearly into a sitting position. Rough-voice then
brought out a key, and presently one of the manacles restraining the old man's
right arm clicked and let go. Now the prisoner could just reach the tray, and
might have lifted food and drink from it up to his mouth. He snarled instead and
lashed out with a backhanded blow of long-nailed fingers. The tray and its
repulsive cargo went splash-and-scatter on the bare floor.
"Ar! Yer a rum cove, ain' cher?" Rough-voice, massive fists on his broad hips,
displayed that almost good-humored appreciation not infrequently offered by
strong and ruthless people to opposition that is at once spirited and hopelessly
weak. "Go dry an' empty then, bein' as you likes it better so!" And with smiling
eyes Rough-voice went out by the door where he had entered, not forgetting to
re-imprison the old man's wrist.
Outside the room he could be heard squeaking a small, wheeled cart along, and
entering one after another a pair of nearby rooms, in each of which his entry was
followed by a dull clatter of utensils.
The old man, listening, decided that he shared his captivity with at least two
other prisoners. Now that he made the effort, he thought that he could hear their
faint and sickly breathing from their separate apartments. Not that he felt any the
less alone for the discovery. Rough-voice moved on with his cart, and now, in
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yet another room, he paused to make report. "Number One, sir, 'e didn't tyke no
water, even."
"Oh?" The responding voice was that of the skillful prober of skulls. "Does he
show fever?"
"Not as he could notice. Didn't touch 'im."
"Quite right. How are the other two?"
"Both given up on shoutin'. Two's eatin, 'three's asleep."
"Very good. Try Number One again in an hour or so. He should eat and drink.
And if he's acting strangely, we should have someone with him through the
night. His case is not established yet."
"Beg pardon, Guv'nor, but me own orders is't' go out, on that other little job at
Barley's. I'll very likely be hangin' around there all night."
"Yes, to be sure." Well-bred vexation in the voice. "Of course there must be no
question of deviating from your orders. But it will leave us short-handed."
"There's the girl, Guv'nor."
A little hum of disapproval. Then: "Have you any suggestions?" The question
was in a new tone, obviously addressed to someone other than the churlish
workman.
It was answered by the woman with the military walk. "I't'ink we must use the
girl." Number One could now discern a stratum of German underneath her
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