The Holmes-Dracula File

Chapter Eight

Lestrade, Peter Moore, and I were still standing around the oilcloth bag, and the surprise with which we gazed at its contents and at each other was still fresh, when a ring at the bell was followed by the delivery of a telegram. The message was from Holmes himself, addressed to me:

AM ON A FRESH TRAIL. WILL TRY TO RETURN TONIGHT, BUT NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN IF I DO NOT. SH.

Even as I finished reading this aloud, the inspector voiced his suddenly developed suspicions regarding Peter Moore: "If you're asking me to believe, Dr. Watson, that this gentleman is just visiting here upon some other business entirely, when I just happen to bring in these darbies, and he just happens to be the man who made 'em—well, no policeman worth his badge is going to accept that sort of thing as a coincidence."

"Accept it or not, as you choose," Moore answered, with some irritation. "I tell you, my firm built these restraints, and I saw them packed off with John Scott to Sumatra. And I saw them again—either these very items, or others from the same lot—less than a month ago, in a warehouse here in London."

Lestrade's gaze, fixed on the young American, grew sharper than ever. "I should like to know, sir, just what connection your business with Mr. Holmes has with a certain murder that I have under investigation."

Moore returned Lestrade's gaze stonily. "A murder? As far as I know, there is no connection at all."

"Then you would have no objection to discussing with the police the business that has brought you to Mr. Holmes?"

"As a matter of fact, I have already tried to do so." Moore's irritation had grown to anger. "Yesterday morning Miss Sarah Tarlton and I were at Scotland Yard, doing our best to impress the men there with the importance of the matter. It is not our fault that we were put off."

Lestrade was silenced for the moment. I took the opportunity to outline for him the problem of the missing American physician and his equipment. The inspector listened intently, and I judged that again a new evaluation of the case—of both cases, which now seemed more than ever to be connected—was developing in his mind.

When I was done, Peter Moore inquired: "See here, I now seem to be the only one present who knows only half the story. What is this murder you keep speaking of? Who was killed, and by whom? Is there any evidence that John Scott might have been in any way involved?"

"I don't see him as the killer at all, sir," Lestrade answered. "The man who took the things from the warehouse was a cool customer, if nothing else, while our killer's an absolute maniac if there ever was one. But some connection there must be… Mr. Moore, I apologize in the name of Scotland Yard, for not giving your problem the attention it undoubtedly deserves. Now if you and this young lady, Miss…"

"Sarah Tarlton. She and John were engaged to be married."

"Ah, yes. Now if you and I were to go and call at Miss Tarlton's hotel, do you suppose that she would be willing to come along to the Yard with us and tell her story again? I'll give my solemn word that this time she'll be listened to."

"I'm sure Sarah will agree, if it will help to find him."

Carrying off his oilcloth bag of evidence in one hand, while the other rested in most friendly fashion on the arm of Peter Moore, Lestrade very soon bade me good-bye. I stood for a moment at the window, and watched the two men get into a four-wheeler.

It was to be a busy evening at Baker Street. Scarcely had I finished my solitary dinner, when two visitors were announced. Once again Sarah Tarlton and Peter Moore entered our sitting room, this time together. Both were badly upset, and Miss Tarlton in particular was almost speechless with indignant rage. It did not take me long to learn the cause.

"Oh, Dr. Watson, that dreadful little man! We had been talking to him in his office for five minutes before I got the drift of his questions… oh, it makes my blood boil to think of it! He suspects. John of… oh, I can't talk about it!"

Moore, himself pale but much less distraught than the young lady, alternately held her hand and patted her arm, with a concern perhaps something more than merely friendly. "It was just as Sarah says, Dr. Watson. The inspector wouldn't come right out and say so, but I'm sure this sudden interest of the police in finding John is only because they suspect him of being—involved—in this horrible murder. As I understand it, they think some violent patient of his must have escaped… it's really completely stupid. Where's Mr. Holmes? Is he ever coming back?"

Suddenly Miss Tarlton's anger was temporarily exhausted, and she trembled on the verge of tears. "If only they would simply look for John—I keep picturing them shooting him down like a dog, on sight…"

Glad to be able at last to say something genuinely helpful, I hastened to reassure her that the Metropolitan Police were not generally in the habit of carrying firearms (though I knew that Lestrade for one was seldom without his pocket pistol), let alone discharging them promiscuously at suspects. When I had repeated my assurances several times Miss Tarlton seemed at last willing to believe them, but her general anxiety for her fiance was scarcely abated.

She dabbed at her eyes. "Dr. Watson, we are abusing your kindness, taking up your time…"

"Not at all. Not a bit."

"Did Mr. Holmes seem hopeful when he went out? Have you no idea at all when he'll be back?"

"Hopeful? That would be difficult to say," I replied. "I do not even know whether the fresh trail he mentions in his telegram is connected with Dr. Scott's case or some other. As to when he will return, I speak from long experience when I say it may not be till morning, or even later."

Peter Moore pressed the girl's hand again. "Come along now, Sarah. I'll see you back to the hotel."

"I will not be soothed and quieted!" she burst out. "Not while they are hunting John, who may be out there somewhere, needing me! He could be ill or dying—God, how can I simply rest?"

"Sarah, you must save your strength. If later—"

"Never mind later, they are hunting him now. Peter, I am going to go back to Scotland Yard and wait. If John is brought in I'll be there. After coming all the way across the Atlantic, I am not going to be sent off like a child to bed. You may go to your hotel and rest if you are tired."

There followed some five minutes' dispute between the two, which I found rather embarrassing. Moore's angry pleas and arguments had no more effect upon the lady's determination than did the milder protests which I, at intervals, dared to interject. At last I judged it would be wiser to comply with her ideas as far as I reasonably could, and shortly all three of us were in a cab and headed for Scotland Yard. It seemed to me that her return visit there would be less difficult for all concerned if I were present to act as intermediary; I was well known in those precincts after so many years as Holmes' associate. His parting instructions were, of course, also fresh in my mind.

Our old acquaintance Tobias Gregson was, as I soon found out, the detective in charge of tracing all connections between the Scott case and the Grafenstein killing, while his old rival Lestrade continued to direct the overall search for the murderer.

Gregson, tall, stooped, and fair, quite courteously led the two young Americans to a comfortably furnished anteroom where, as he said, they were welcome to wait, and where any fresh news of John Scott would be brought to them at once. Then the detective beckoned me away, asking for a word in private. As soon as we were alone, I detected something like triumph in his pale face.

"Well, Dr. Watson, I suppose Mr. Holmes is close on the heels of some suspect in the killing?"

"I am sure he is very busy."

"But not on the brink of a solution?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Then, Doctor, I'd just like you to hear this."

So saying, Gregson led me along a narrow corridor. Stopping before a plain door, my guide motioned me to silence, and then opened a small spyhole in the door, indicating with a gesture that I should look in. The room revealed was large enough to hold on one of its walls a vast map of London, and a couple of policemen seated with their backs toward me. In another chair, facing the spyhole, sat an emaciated old man, wrapped from his shoulders down in a prison blanket which he kept clutched about him.

"And is that your mad killer, Gregson?" I asked, closing the judas window and turning away.

"Him?" The detective laughed softly. "Not by a long way. No, he's charged only with stealing a blanket—not the one he has wrapped about him now, but one he pinched through an open window in Whitechapel. Nor has he the least idea that a murder's under investigation. But I think you and Mr. Holmes are both going to be mighty interested in what he has to say."

Gregson opened the door and we both went in. The old man, who by his speech and manners gave the impression of belonging to the lower classes, looked up briefly startled, and then went on with what he had been saying:

"I tells you gentlemen, I took that bit o' cloth only in the name o' common decency, and meanin' to bring it back in the morning when the shops and stalls opened, and I could buy some proper clothes."

Bit by bit, under the prodding questions of the policemen, the man's story came out, interspersed with his objections at being made to repeat it to them once again. The essence of his account was that he had reached into someone's window for the blanket only because he had been compelled, during the night, to sell almost all the clothing he had been wearing to a stranger. The mysterious man who had forced him into the transaction under threat of bodily harm had then paid him for his rags with gold.

"Oh, come off it, now!" Gregson's voice was suddenly thick with convincing doubt. He picked up an envelope from a desk in the center of the room, and slid a gold coin out of it into his hand. "You stole this sovereign just as you stole the blanket. Now didn't you?"

"I never! Nossir! Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but I sold my clothes for that. Sold 'em fair, I did, and I was just a-borryin' the blanket to see me over until—"

"Yes, yes. Let's hear just once again how you came to sell your clothes. Who bought 'em?"

The man unburdened himself of a hopelessly weary sigh. "You've 'eard all that."

"The good doctor here hasn't," Gregson prodded, meanwhile casting a faintly triumphant glance in my direction. "Now, once more, if you please."

"Well, sir." The old man sighed again, this time resignedly. "It were this 'ere madman, like."

"Who?"

"Lor' bless you, sir, I didn't know 'im. And I wish I may never see the like of 'im again. Stark nekkid 'e was—talk of decency! Grip like a vise 'e 'ad, I swear. And 'is eyes—I don't like't' think on 'em, and that's a fact."

The old man was now warming somewhat to the repetition of the tale, which after all earned him the respectful attention from an assemblage of persons who may perhaps have seemed to him important. "The madman? I'll tell you. Myke a noise, says 'e, and the next noise 'eard in this 'ere street'll be the crunch o' yer bones a-breakin'. 'Ere, tyke this coin, 'e says, a-'oldin' up that wery sovereign, an' toss me over yer rags. An' I tossed 'em over, sir—you would, too, an' that's the Lord's truth. An' bless meif'e didn't pay me, just as 'e said 'e would."

I said in an earlier chapter that I would return to this point later, and now seems as good a time as any.

Those who think me unlikely to pay fairly, even generously, for goods got from the innocent do not know me. They know only the stories told by my enemies and their dupes, from my breathing days in the 15th century, through the 19th when Van Helsing concocted his lurid lies, down to the present. As if by some law of social entropy, when one's reputation changes, the change is almost always for the worse; and five centuries of life give time for a great deal of change.

That my name is ever going to improve again must be considered problematical at best, but at least its past deterioration can be charted. Let the serious students of 15th century affairs assure more casual readers that in my breathing days, as Prince of Wallachia, I was accused by some of being too scrupulously honest. Certain troublemakers, dissidents in my realm, groaned that I expected too much in the way of trustworthiness from my subjects!

Of course it was not the merchants who so charged me; they did not find the stench of robbers' bodies, staked up beside my roads as admonition, too much for their nostrils. Nor was it my country's peasants, or any of its honest poor, who launched the legend of my unexampled deviltry. When I ruled, their doors could stay unbarred by night, whilst their wives and daughters walked abroad in peace and safety. I am, and was, a strong-willed man; else were I dead, five hundred years ago, from sword-wounds at the hands of my less loyal subjects. The troublemakers claimed to find unbearable the mere rumors that issued from the dungeons underneath my castles, where I had those who preyed upon the innocent conveyed as speedily as possible; nor did nobility of blood preserve them from my justice. But all this is as a story that is told. —Dracula.

A door opened behind me, and Lestrade came quietly into the room, a gleam of suppressed excitement in his eye. He exchange a cryptic glance with Gregson, who quietly went out. After a nod to me, Lestrade, who had evidently heard the old man's story at least once before, took over the questioning.

"Now, dad, just where did this strange encounter of yours with the naked man take place?"

" 'Twas in Upper Swandam Lane, yer honor."

"And when?"

"Long 'bout the middle o' last night."

Lestrade placed two fingers, close together, upon the huge map of London that occupied one wall. "Upper Swandam Lane, Doctor, and right here's the pier where the, er, evidence was found." To the witness: "What did this strange man look like, apart from not being dressed?"

The fellow in the chair looked from one of us to the other. "Well, he were a sight taller than either of you gentlemen. Lean enough so that 'is ribs stuck out. But not wasted nor feeble; strong as an ox, 'e was."

"Dark or fair? Young or old?"

"Well, 'e was gray, or partly so." All this description, I noted to myself, tallied well with Holmes' account of the man who had worn the shirt. Lestrade pressed on. "Any sign that this chap had been shot? Wounded?"

"Huh! Not 'im!"

After another question or two, Lestrade beckoned me to follow him out into the corridor. Gregson was there, and with him a one-eyed, rascally-looking fellow, accoutered in some of the garments of a sailor. This man the detectives introduced to me as "Jones," one of the most valuable informers in the pay of the CID. I remember thinking that the pay of an informer must be modest indeed, for this man appeared not much this side of starvation.

Jones' story, which he repeated in a rough and hurried whisper at the request of the detectives, was that he had been last night at the Salvation Army shelter on Sidney Street, where he had witnessed an incident so incredible that he had decided it must be brought directly to Lestrade's attention; though not until this evening, I gathered, had the inspector been receptive to his story.

The informer was carrying with him a ragged, dirty cloth cap, which he said had been left behind at the shelter by an incredibly strong man. This individual had spoken to Jones there, had shared his soup and tea, and then had suddenly jumped up out of his bed and departed. At midnight the doors were kept locked, but the man had forced them open barehanded. This was such a display of strength that, as Jones put it, he would hesitate to describe it to us, were it not that the shattered wood and metal must be still available as evidence. The patrolman on the beat had been summoned to the shelter, and his report would doubtless be coming through channels.

Lestrade nodded. "Yes, you did well to tell us. Let me see the cap."

With it in hand, Lestrade went into a small, dusty storeroom, from which he emerged a few minutes later with two more, almost as old and worn, but each of a different cut and color. Taking all three together in his hand, he led us back to the door of the room in which the elderly witness was being questioned.

Opening the spy-hole, Lestrade gestured for the informer to look through. "Was it him?"

"No sir, not much likeness at all," came the quick answer. "Same general build, is all. This one looks quite feeble. The other—very weak he was, I don't think! If you doubts my word on that, sir, you'd better go along and look at those hostel doors."

"I suppose I had. But there's just a bit more to do here, first." Bringing me with him—Jones stayed in the outer darkness of the corridor—Lestrade re-entered the interrogation room.

The witness was now somewhat more at ease; an older constable, with hair as gray as his own, had come in to talk and joke with him. Lestrade in turn now jollied him along a bit, and, when he had put his man as much at ease as possible, presented him with the three caps, asking him to choose which was the one he had sold to the naked stranger.

After only the smallest hesitation, the old man selected the cap that the informer had brought with him.

When Lestrade and I were out in the hall again, he turned in my direction, looking positively gleeful. "And now I had really better visit the hostel, where the trail is going to be hottest. Dr. Watson, I think you can tell Mr. Sherlock Holmes that this is one case in which his theories are not going to be needed, and the plain evidence in the hands of the police is quite sufficient."

I murmured some reply, that was perhaps no more courteous than it had to be. A minute later I had rejoined my two companions, and shortly after that the three of us were on our way back to Baker Street, Miss Tarlton having at last been persuaded that the search for John Scott was giving no sign as yet of bearing fruit.

She stubbornly insisted, however, on coming on to Baker Street to see if Sherlock Holmes were yet at home. "Then I promise, Dr. Watson, that we will cease to bother you—oh, but you have been a great help and comfort to me tonight."

I found my annoyance melting.

As the cab drew up before our rooms, I could see that they were dark. Miss Tarlton had just admitted, with some reluctance, that it was time to call an end to the day's adventures, and I had just got down from the cab and turned to bid the two young people goodnight, when from behind me sounded a soft shuffling of naked feet upon the pavement. I turned to confront the shabby figure of young Murray.

The boy's eyes were excitedly alight. "Dr. Watson, sir? Will Mr. Holmes be back soon?"

"I cannot say."

"Well, sir, when 'imself is not available, I'm to give to you, privately, any important news I should discover."

Murray's dancing eyes made it superfluous to ask whether he had at present any news he considered of importance. After a moment's thought I signed to the people in the cab to wait, and drew the lad aside. As soon as I had heard his information, I led him back to where the others waited. "Tell these people," I ordered, "what you have just told me."

"Well sir—ma'm—two hours ago I was at Barley's—that's in Soho, a public house, and famous for their sporting entertainments. It seemed to me a likely place to find out who's been buyin' rats, for they has thousands in their show—and there was a man there just answered the description of this Dr. Scott that Mr. Holmes is lookin' for. And I heard Barley 'imself say to this man, 'Doctor.' "

Miss Tarlton emitted a little gasp, compounded of equal parts of fear and joy. I wished with all my heart that Holmes were present, but he was not. Peter Moore and I looked at each other, in prompt and silent agreement that we had better go at once to Barley's. And I suppose we both knew from the beginning that there would be no hope of persuading Miss Tarlton to stay away.