Seance for a Vampire

Twenty

Of course at the moment our immediate problem was not to interpret a conversation held in Russian, but to convey Rebecca Altamont safely out of the house. We had garbed the young woman first in a robe over her nightdress, then a light summer coat, chosen from a wardrobe not occupied by a chloroformed maid. We had put slippers on Miss Altamont’s feet and had got her standing beside the bed. Then, despite her continued mumbled protests, we cajoled and led and half-carried her out of the room and halfway down the hall.

We had just rounded the last turn of the dim hallway before the stair when the sound of voices and the sight of figures just ahead forced us to pause, and seek concealment in a kind of niche containing the closed door of another room. As we were coming out of a bedroom like kidnappers, we chose not to try to brazen out the threatened encounter.

So far, the doors in this part of the hall had fortunately remained closed. Still, we could not remain indefinitely where we were, nor could we reach the stairway without passing directly in front of the large alcove where Rasputin and Kulakov were having their strange confrontation. I now observed that the alcove also contained some nameless lady of the Russian nobility, whose elegantly gowned form was lying senseless upon a bearskin rug. both of the men ignored her completely. I could see her stir at intervals, a movement suggesting that at any moment she might regain sufficient consciousness to complicate our situation even further.

In this awkward situation, Holmes and I exchanged whispered comments. Neither of us could understand what might have happened to Prince Dracula, who had supposedly been on guard in the very alcove where Kulakov and the strange-looking peasant were now conversing.

We were forced to the conclusion that in one way or another, the prince must have been put at least temporarily out of action.

Within a few moments–though the time seemed vastly longer– Holmes succeeded in somehow positively identifying a figure visible through a distant window, silhouetted against a brightening eastern sky. It appeared that our ally was now standing, strangely motionless and facing outward, upon a balcony on the next floor up. If Kulakov and his companion were aware that anyone was on the balcony, they paid that motionless figure no attention.

Shaking my head, I whispered: “What shall we do? Dracula stands like one mesmerized.”

“That must be it!”

And we realized further that the rising sun, due to appear in a few minutes, must destroy our comrade in arms. The balcony faced the east, where the orb of day would soon appear out of the endless bulk of enigmatic Asia.

Clearly we could not allow this, if there was any way to prevent it, and Holmes whispered as much to me. Hastily we worked out a plan between us. While I remained with our young charge, supporting her, still dazed and uncooperative, on her feet, Holmes walked boldly forward–there was no other way to reach the stair or climb to the level of the balcony where the prince stood so serenely poised to watch the sunrise.

To judge by the growing brightness of the eastern sky, dawn could not be more than a minute or two away–the sun never goes very far below St. Petersburg’s horizon at this season of the year. And today, for once, the morning promised to be cloudless.

The two men in the alcove at the end of the hall looked up sharply as Holmes approached. but his walk had altered, become the light, obsequious tread of a servant, and it must have seemed to them that a dark-clad footman or waiter had gone by with averted face.

Evidently Kulakov had not recognized his own former prisoner. Still, something about the briskly moving figure apparently jarred the former pirate into suspicions regarding his present hostage. Mumbling inaudibly, moving slowly at first, he started out of the alcove–glanced up the stair after Holmes, shook his head as if in doubt–then turned again, proceeding straight down the central hallway in the direction of the room where Miss Altamont had been confined. by good fortune, he had chosen the other branch of corridor from the one where she and I were waiting.

My opportunity, as I saw it, had come, and I did my best to take advantage of it. Quickly I resumed my efforts to persuade Rebecca to walk along the corridor toward the stairs. My urging had little effect on the girl, who remained no more than half-conscious. After a moment, I picked her up bodily in my arms and strode along.

Evidently Kulakov, once distracted from his conversation with Rasputin, needed perhaps half a minute to clear his mind fully of the light trance into which, under the ministrations of the healer, he had begun to descend. by that time Miss Altamont and I had reached the stairs and were making steady progress down them. They were broad, marble stairs, gracefully curved, and discouragingly well-lighted compared with the dim bedroom corridors above. Although at the moment the young lady and I had the way all to ourselves, the sounds of ribald merriment proceeding from the several doorways visible below us suggested strongly that that state of affairs could not last long.

Meanwhile the count, going to check on his victim, needed only a few moments to discover that she was not in her room. Alarmed, he dashed straight back to the stairs, where one look down showed him that his prisoner was being carried out of his control.

Kulakov came charging, leaping downstairs after us, roaring like the madman he was. The vampire did not change form, and it crossed my mind, even in the moment of crisis, that perhaps daylight was already too far advanced to permit him to do that. The first rays of the rising sun, striking in through the skylight far above us in the roof, produced a crystalline, slightly dazzling effect, but I knew well that here in the house we were too sheltered and shaded to allow me to depend substantially upon the sun for our defense.

My revolver was already in my hand, and as that dark, snarling figure came bounding downstairs toward us, reaching out with taloned fingers, I fired repeatedly.

Fortunately my aim was true, and at least two or three of Von Herder’s heavy wooden bullets pierced our attacker’s body.

The effect was devastating. Kulakov went tumbling past us down the broad curving marble stairway, his flesh, even as he fell and rolled, hissing and dissolving as though submerged in some vat of acid. In another moment the vampire’s body had been claimed by the true death.

With all the noisy celebration still in progress, no one in the house paid much attention even to the sound of gunfire; a few heads looked round corners toward the stairs, and laughter ceased briefly, only to resume as loud as before. The body, being that of an old vampire, dispersed in mist-form, clothing and all, before anyone could see it, and before I or my companions could be embarrassed by the necessity of explaining a corpse.

Rasputin had come out of the alcove and looked down once, from the landing. I am not sure that he actually saw Kulakov die, but I believe that through occult knowledge or instinctive wisdom, the peasant understood what had just happened, and that he then simply and prudently took himself away. I can only say that the man’s later notoriety, seemingly at its peak in this year of 1917 in which I write, does not surprise me at all.

Meanwhile, once Holmes had reached the balcony where the prince was standing, it became possible for my friend to invoke a certain name effectively, that of a lady to whom the prince had long shown sincere devotion. Also, I suspect Holmes’s studies in Tibet might have served him well when the need arose to break a hypnotic trance. He led an awakened Dracula indoors before the direct sunlight could do his cousin fatal injury.

By that time it was possible for them to see that Miss Altamont and I had safely reached the street; and moments later, Dracula and his cousin had joined their co-conspirators in the street and were running to board the waiting carriage with them.

Fortunately, with Kulakov’s death, Rebecca Altamont quickly recovered from her hypnotized state and was soon able to cooperate actively in her own rescue. Soon we had succeeded in removing her to a place of relative safety.

We determined to cable this happy result to England as soon as possible, but then decided we had better not delay our departure to do so.

Meanwhile, in the course of our forced delay inside the house, Holmes and Dracula between them had by accident overheard a fairly detailed account, by Kulakov himself, of those peculiar events involving vampires, an execution, and stolen treasure in London in 1765. After a few minutes of intense thought upon these matters, Dracula’s cousin hastily dispatched a cable, this one coded, back to Mycroft in London.

Having done this, the detective, in a smug, elated mood, promised all of us, to our astonishment, that he had identified the pirate treasure, and hoped soon to be able to explain where it had been hidden for the past one hundred and thirty-eight years.

Some hours after Holmes had dispatched his cable to Mycroft–in fact, as we were about to board our ship to leave St. Petersburg–he received an answer, this time in the form of a clear transmission. It ran as follows: MATERIAL FOUND IN PLACE DESCRIBED ALL SATISFACTORY HERE MYCROFT.