Seance for a Vampire

Eighteen

Reeling under the shock of the horrible threat directed at Rebecca Altamont, our little group met in a council of war to determine what our next move should be.

We were all horrified, of course, at Kulakov’s new challenge; the most terrible aspect was his threat to carry his helpless hostage away to one of his remote country estates, where the lord of the manor customarily ruled as a law unto himself, unfettered by any of the constraints imposed by an urban society; and where we would find it much more difficult if not impossible to reach either the criminal or his victim.

Prince Dracula of course was something of an exception when it came to considering impossibilities. On being informed of Kulakov’s challenge he announced stiffly that, even if we were to fail in St. Petersburg, he would probably consider that his honor required him to mount an extended campaign, spending years if necessary, to recover the girl or at least to take vengeance on her abductor.

We appreciated this attitude on the part of the prince, but at the same time we took rather less satisfaction from the idea of mere vengeance serving as a substitute for rescue.

We considered the idea of trying to communicate our proud defiance, and the grimmest possible warning, to our foe, but soon decided that the only good response would be effective action.

The more I saw of the city and its people, the more I found St. Petersburg a very foreign place to English eyes, despite its homelike fogs and dampness. but at the same time, the metropolis struck me as quite European–not Eastern or Asiatic–and exceedingly impressive.

The city sprawled over nineteen islands, most of them at the time of our visit green with summer trees, and for miles along the ragged, swampy edge of mainland. It is divided down the middle by the river Neva, which seemed to carry with its flow the smells of pure wilderness water and bitter cold. I was startled to learn that the broad Neva is only forty-six miles in length. It drains Lake Ladoga, which, in turn, is fed by a number of streams flowing out of the infinite northern forests.

The islands upon which the city had been built included: the Island of the Apothecaries, with its botanical gardens; Kamerny Island, where are situated the Church of the Nativity of John the baptist, and the Summer Theater; Ielagin Island, with its palace and famous oak-trees; and Krestovsky Island, with a medieval castle, gardens, and yacht club.

These and other outlying districts were invaded in summer by city-dwellers hungry for space and fresh air. Restlessly seeking out our several professional contacts, we prowled joylessly among the cheerful throng dining in restaurants, eagerly surrounding bandstands, and attending the café concerts.

The layout and architecture of the city were far less Russian than European, especially Italianate.

People still talked about the bicentenary celebration that had been held in and for the city, only two or three months earlier, back in May 1903.

We were all of us occupied in our own ways with seeking information in and about the city; I for one became well acquainted with its cabdrivers (izvoshniki), many of whom spoke French or even English to some degree, and who were all alike attired in a sort of uniform, chiefly consisting of a long, blue coat, thickly padded and secured with a brightly colored belt. The summer outfit included a small top hat of a peculiar shape, making the wearer look, as I thought, like some fanciful creature from the pen of Lewis Carroll. The cabs, strangely, in a place where winters were so severe, were not tightly enclosed, and only leather hoods protected their passengers from rain.

Fortunately I could manage tolerable French, which most of the Russian nobility preferred to their native tongue; and to my relief, that proved adequate to see me through most encounters in my pose of casual traveler.

Holmes, endeavoring to ascertain whether either of Rebecca’s parents might have recovered sufficiently to be informed of the latest news about their surviving daughter, exchanged cables with Mycroft almost on a daily basis. The name of an intermediary in London was used, since it was judged desirable for several reasons to keep Mycroft’s name out of the public eye as much as possible.

Had our situation in St. Petersburg not been so tragic and so desperate, I believe that Holmes would have thoroughly enjoyed his visit. He was now able to meet personally with men whom he had heretofore communicated with only by letter and by cable, and to exchange with the Petersburg police important information on a number of professional matters.

To an Englishman, the main streets of this city are startlingly wide and straight, (the elegant bolshaya Morskaya has signs in French and some in English over the windows of its shops) and many of the buildings which line them have imposing stone façades. The dampness and fog tend to make the English feel at home. Cathedrals and smaller churches abounded.

The bronze Horseman, a monumental statue of Peter the Great, celebrated by Pushkin in a famous poem, stands just east of the English Embankment, near the Admiralty. The equestrian statue, commissioned by Catherine the Great to honor her illustrious predecessor, shows Peter in Roman wreath and toga, right arm outstretched toward the west, making his bronze horse rear on a huge rock, trampling under its hooves the serpent of sedition.

With renewed determination, we pressed our search for our quarry and his prisoner relentlessly through the city, and even through the suburbs.

It was only after a nerve-racking delay, following several days of fruitless search and investigation, that we succeeded in locating Kulakov’s townhouse in St. Petersburg. Our task had been rendered more difficult by the fact that the legal documents of ownership were in another name.

Carefully we approached the house, and observed it from front and rear. Wherever the master might currently be, at the moment he was clearly not in residence, no more than he had been in his rented country house in England. In fact, the St. Petersburg house and its small garden had the look of having been long unoccupied. Shortly after our discovery of the place, and even while we still had it under observation, a small squad of servants appeared and hastily plunged into the task of airing the building and evidently preparing it for occupation. Holmes, through his official and unofficial contacts, soon managed to learn that the count, while en route from England, had sent his housekeeper a cable from Copenhagen.

That night we four men approached the building stealthily, managed to enter without disturbing any of the servants in their sleep, and subjected the premises to a thorough search. It did not take long to convince ourselves that the prisoner we sought could not be here, and that therefore Kulakov himself was almost certainly still taking his daytime slumber elsewhere.

The terrible thought haunted us that the Russian pirate’s hostage might already have been dispatched to some remote Siberian province, and was being borne hourly, by carriage or by rail, farther and farther out of our reach. Prince Dracula and Sarah Kirkaldy were still conducting their daily hypnotic sessions, and the evidence from these was against Rebecca’s having been carried out of the city–Kulakov was still in the city, and there were times when he seemed to be looking directly at his captive. but still, the horrible possibility loomed.

Then, just when all prospects seemed dark, encouraging news came to us–by precisely what route, I will not specify, even now, after the lapse of some fourteen years. Evidence came into our hands that the woman we sought was being kept out of sight in the house of a certain eminent person who was perhaps allied deliberately with Kulakov, or perhaps was being forced, by blackmail or other means, to accommodate the vampire’s wishes.

Taking counsel quickly among ourselves, we hunters decided to risk everything and enter the mansion in question, by stratagem if possible, by force if necessary, and to do whatever was required to rescue Rebecca Altamont–whether she was still breathing, or had become nosferatu– from her evil captor. To this end, we joined our hands in a solemn pledge.