The Dracula Tape

TRACK FIVE

Of these events surrounding Lucy's murder, as I say, I knew nothing at the time. When I left her alone with Van Helsing in the graveyard I considered that it was beyond my power to protect her further, and so turned all my thoughts toward the problem of my own survival.

Lucy had told me that one of her physicians was a Dr. Seward, director of an asylum in Purfleet; and unless that whole neighborhood were given over to madhouses, I judged it likely that Seward was my own next-door neighbor as well as a consultant of Van Helsing. Then there was Harker, whose journal at least Van Helsing had somehow read; and Harker, who had arranged so much for me, knew that I was likely to be found at Carfax.

I did not know if Harker himself was back in England, or even if he was still alive, or sane. Nor did I know where in England Van Helsing might be staying. Dr. Seward was of course another matter, and I judged his asylum the best place to start in keeping an eye upon my enemies. It was a very old stone house-though not quite as ancient as Carfax-of many rooms, on two floors, much of the ground floor being given over to the rooms or cells for lunatics. The clientele came from the upper classes, and some of the best families of England were represented-Renfield himself was an example.

On the night of September twenty-ninth I ghosted in bat-form around this converted mansion, observing what I could wherever blinds were open. The first figure that I recognized was that of my erstwhile visitor Renfield, sitting placidly, with folded hands, in a ground-floor room whose window had been lately reinforced with heavy metal bars and fresh timbers. As I flew past I saw a sort of inner light come over the madman's face, and he started up from his poor chair-that with a simple cot made the chief furnishing of his room-and began to approach the window; but I flapped on my way, not wishing to provoke any sort of outburst from him.

In other ground-floor rooms the handful of other patients then in residence rocked ceaselessly upon their beds, or stared at their contorted fingers, or paced the floor. And from behind the half-closed blind of one such room came utterance in tones of such dismal, groaning sorrow that even I must draw near to see whose voice it was. I caught a glimpse of book shelves, paneled walls, and then…

It was Dr. Seward's study, and in fact his voice, although it did not issue from his throat. Seated at a desk with her back to me was a sturdy, brown-haired young woman, her fingers poised above the keys of a strange machine that clacked rhythmically and printed words upon a sheet of paper that wound itself spasmodically through it on a roller. Upon the young woman's curly head rested a device of forked metal whose cupped ends managed to embrace both her ears, and from these ear cups issued Seward's voice-though of course I did not recognize it then-tuned to a groaning slowness that enabled the typist to keep up. From the headset a wire ran to a nearby table, where a cabinet contained a spring-driven mechanism that made things turn, and a needle rode lightly in the groove that wound about a waxen cylinder.

It was a simple type of early phonograph, of course-how far from that to this small wonder that I hold in my hand!-on which Seward was wont to keep his journal, which his new ally Mina had just volunteered to transcribe. I recognized her almost at first sight as Lucy's friend, the girl who had come to lead Lucy home from the Whitby churchyard at midnight.

On Mina's finger a wedding ring now gleamed, where none had been before; but I had no doubt of my identification. A female servant chanced to enter the room and Mina's voice, coming out faintly through the leaded glass when she spoke briefly to the girl, was the same that had called out "Lucy! Lucy!" on Whitby's tall cast cliff, that August night that already seemed so long ago.

The servant went out and a few moments later a stalwart man of about thirty entered. He had a rather stern, commanding look, though his voice when he spoke was mild enough: "And how is the work progressing?"

Mina's machine ceased clacking and she removed her headset. "Slowly but surely, Dr. Seward."

"I expect it will be a great help to have it all in typescript, Mrs. Harker."

What Mina replied, I do not know. I sat there on the windowsill for a full two minutes, blinking my little bat eyes, stunned by the club of coincidence once again. When at last I rose and flew, I was already over the wall and into Carfax before I remembered that it could no longer offer me safety for my rest. I flew on to one of my new lairs, in Bermondsey, thankful that my plan of dispersing boxes was already so far advanced, and pondered what new snares Fate might have laid in my path. That Harker and his wife should now know Seward came as no surprise; but that the wife of the guest I left in Transylvania should chance to be the second girl I saw in England was a staggering concurrence of events.

Harker himself was at that time in Whitby, trying to pick up my trail there. He had been galvanized into becoming one of my most enthusiastic persecutors by his recent meeting with Van Helsing. As it turned out, however, there was not a great deal for him to learn in Whitby, beyond confirming that my boxes had been sent on to London; and on the next day, September thirtieth, Harker was back in Purfleet, at the asylum, where his wife was already established in guest quarters. They were joined there on the same day by Van Helsing, Arthur, and Quincey Morris.

When I came to reconnoiter the asylum again that night I at once perched on a high windowsill of Seward's study; and it was with a sense of fortune at last deciding to smile upon me that I saw the blinds were partially open and a strategy meeting was in progress before my eyes.

There was Van Helsing at the head of a large table, with Mina, notebook open on her lap, sitting at his right hand as secretary. Her husband sat beside her, looking fully restored to health. Flanking Dr. Seward on the table's other side were a tall young Englishman, obviously of the upper classes-this was Arthur, as I soon understood-and a fresh-faced young American, Quincey Morris, who sat closest to the table's foot.

Van Helsing, as usual, was speaking whilst his disciples listened. Their expressions were varied, ranging from horror, through incredulity, to a sort of numbness that still was not exactly boredom; the subject matter of the address was of a kind to transcend deficiencies of treatment.

"He is of cunning more than mortal," were the first words I heard as I began to eavesdrop. "For his cunning be the growth of ages; he have still the aids of necromancy… and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute… he can, within limitations, appear at will when and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements; the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things; the rat, and the owl, and the bat-the moth, and the fox, and the wolf…"

Could I have commanded the pinworm and the body louse I would have sent a plague of them upon him. Apart from the superstitious rubbish about necromancy, though, he was doing a reasonably good job of describing the wanted man, of whose identity not one of his hearers was in doubt. The spellbinder's words went on and on. Something of the same dazedness that I observed upon the patrician features of Lord Godalming no doubt began to glaze my own mean little bat eyes as we both listened to this litany.

"For if we fail in this fight he must surely win, and then where end we? Life is nothing; I heed him not. But to fail here is not mere life or death; it is that we become as him… foul things of the night…"

Harker had taken his wife's hand, which action interfered with her shorthand stenography; not that she seemed to mind the interference a great deal. I was surprised to feel something like a pang of jealousy, which I sternly put down. When the professor paused for breath the newlyweds exchanged a loving glance.

"I accept the challenge, for Mina and myself," Harker said then, resolutely. He had evidently been listening after all. And Mina, who had just opened her own mouth, thought better of expressing her opinions, and held her peace.

"Count me in, Professor," the young American declared in drawling Texas accents that were then quite strange to my ears.

"I am with you," Lord Godalming said. "For Lucy's sake, if for no other reason."

All stood up then and clasped their hands together above the table; their deadly purpose toward me was being sealed in a most solemn compact, and with a tiny sigh I realized that I might have to kill, and kill again, to thwart it.

But how then was I to resume my pursuit of peace?

They all sat down again and Van Helsing launched into a fresh harangue. I must have been near dozing at the window, for somehow I missed Morris's keen glance in my direction; and when from the corner of my myopic bat vision I saw him rise and leave the room, I thought only that nature must have called him, or some innate intelligence forbade him to hear more.

There was a little pause, in which others observed his exit, some not without envy, but said nothing. Then the professor resumed: "We know that from the castle to Whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all of which were delivered at Carfax; we also know, from seeing wagons and workmen there, that at least some of these boxes have been removed. It seems to me that our first step should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house, or whether any more have been removed. If the latter, we must trace-"

The bullet from Morris's pistol came at me from behind and traversed the upper part of my right wing and then the right front quadrant of my tiny skull; had I been bat in truth, my small, furred body would have convulsed and fallen dead without managing a single wing flap toward escape. As matters stood I felt the pain and shock of the leaden bullet's supersonic passage as it interpenetrated the alien matter of my flesh and then passed on without spilling blood or breaking skin. Glass shattered in the window and the bullet whanged off the top of the embrasure and ricocheted inside the room, where Mina screamed in startled fright.

Mastering an impulse to descend in man-form to the ground and mangle the author of the agony that still reverberated through me, I took to my wings instead. Off into the wooded portion of the grounds I flew, there to change to man-form, lean against a tree, and try to think. The pain of being shot ebbed but slowly, like some molten silver tide, through all my throbbing nerves. The effect was worse than if I had been full size when I was hit.

"Sorry!" came Morris's voice, from the direction of the house. But it was not to me he spoke. "I fear I have alarmed you. I shall come in and tell you about it." And I heard the opening and closing of a door. Later I learned that Morris had not really identified me on the window-sill; it was just that in recent days he had taken to shooting casually at every bat he saw. He had nursed a dislike for the creatures ever since my breathing, winged South American namesakes had drained a favorite horse of its blood.

At any rate, it had been time for me to leave my observation post, for I had learned enough. The opposing forces were going to come, belatedly but with determination and ruthlessness, to Carfax. What should I do? Defend my property forcefully against intrusion? But the old objection remained in full force: the more successfully I used violence against my enemies the greater public belief in me would grow. Against Van Helsing I might logically hope to win a war but against England I could not. No, stealth and cunning were still going to be my most effective weapons, and with that fact in mind I held my own solitary council and made my plans…

They were brave enough, or foolhardy enough perhaps, to launch their attack that very night. Mina of course was left back in the Harkers' cozy guest rooms. The men had decided that from this point on she was to be told only so much of their desperate adventures as would be good for her delicate female nature to know; and though she recorded in her diary that this chivalrous treatment was "a bitter pill" for her to swallow, she decided that she "could say nothing" against it, and went off obediently to her bed.

I was spending the remainder of the night on watch in my woods and of course was not surprised by the five men coming somewhat clumsily over my wall, their burglars' bags in hand. They approached my house with what stealth they could manage, sticking mainly to the shadows, as if they felt more comfortable there, where only God and Dracula could watch their slightest move.

At my front porch they stopped, and Van Helsing issued garlic to them all, and crucifixes, and-for "enemies more mundane," as he expressed it in a whisper-knives and revolvers. The well-equipped if somewhat tardy adventurers received also small portable electric lamps that could be clipped onto their clothing; and last, but scarcely least, each was given a small envelope like that I had seen Van Helsing clutching in Lucy's churchyard, containing a portion of the sacred wafer.

It was a tempting thought that I might quietly join their party whilst they milled around in the darkness of the porch, perhaps receive an issue of weapons from Van Helsing's bag, and later whisper a few words softly in his ear if I could get him alone in some dark inner chamber of the house. But I had no time for recreation, and contented myself with watching their preparations from the shadows of some trees. I wanted to make sure that they were in the house and fully occupied before I set forth on an expedition of my own.

All in readiness at last, the trespassers opened my front door with a skeleton key and turned it back on screaming hinges. They paused to invoke the blessing of the Lord on their endeavors, and then passed in over my threshold. All in all, they found their visit not enjoyable from that time on. Harker in his journal complains of a "nauseous stench" and of the dust they were forced to endure whilst in that "loathsome place," where they could observe to their further dissatisfaction that only twenty-nine of my fifty boxes now remained.

In order to entertain my guests whilst urgent business compelled me to be elsewhere I had called up from surrounding fields and farms a hundred or so rats-Harker records "thousands," a pardonable exaggeration under the circumstances-and enjoined them to mingle with the visiting men on terms of as close an intimacy as possible. The men took a dislike to this and managed to disperse my auxiliaries with a trio of terriers, which Arthur through foresight or by some accident had brought along to the asylum.

But I had not waited to watch the battle of the rats. At about the same moment that Lord Godalming was whistling up his dogs, and the other invaders coughed in dust and brushed at cobwebs, I was approaching the madman Renfield's window on the ground floor of the asylum.

Whatever the nature of his peculiar perceptions, he was aware of my approach and even of my wish for silence; for though his joy at the event seemed almost beyond bearing, yet he controlled any physical demonstration of it. Eyes popping wide, gray hair falling wildly around a gray-stubbled, broad face contorted with the effort of suppressing mad excitement, he was waiting for me amid the shabby respectability of his room. From outside the bars of his newly fortified window I let him see my face and I expressed with a gesture my desire to be admitted.

I had to wait a moment before he could control himself enough to speak the invitation that I required: "C-come in. Lord and Master!" And as I oozed between the window bars he bowed himself away as he might have done in the presence of an emperor. Later on, in a dying statement made to the doctors, Renfield was to claim that to obtain entry I had promised him the lives of rats and flies, which he had long found agreeable to his palate. But it was not so. Certainly I would have done as much, and more, to be able to get in, but no promises or gifts were necessary to win Renfield to my cause. He was my worshiper already, though on a false premise, which I did not fully understand until a later meeting.

It was not rats and bugs he wanted from me; that sort of life he could get on his own or with some cooperation from his keepers. In fact it was women that he craved, whose lives and bodies alike he wanted to consume. This truth was never quite made plain in the prim journals of my enemies, but truth it was. And, since Renfield had first seen her on the day of her arrival at the asylum, it was Mina in particular he wanted. She was the boon he desired from me, the goal of all his prayers.

These entreaties, in a low, reasonable, and terribly earnest voice, began the moment I first stood inside his room. Even in the brief space of time before I could cross his worn rug to reach the door he managed to inform me, in several disgusting variations, of his plans for that fresh young girl when she should fall into his power.

He was a madman, certainly, and I paid these mouthings little heed just then, but gave him a smile and nod in passing. No more did I think the doctors would heed him if he spoke of my visit.

I laid my ear to the crack of his room's massive, locked, and bolted door, then passed on through when I was satisfied that the hallway outside was untenanted. Now I found myself in a passage that ran nearly the whole length of the house. In other rooms nearby, servants and inmates were making their several kinds of moderate noises but at the moment no one was in sight.

Renfield was quiet behind me, whether in disappointment or satisfaction I did not care. I ghosted in mist-form to find a set of stairs, ascended them, and passed almost invisibly along another hall. Now, if my estimates were accurate regarding the configuration of the house and the distances I had traversed, I must be outside the door of the rooms occupied by the Harkers. The upper hallway was, at the moment, as deserted as the lower had been, and quieter. I resumed man-form, took off my hat, and tapped prosaically on Mina's door.

"Yes?" The answer in her familiar voice came through the door at once. She evidently had not been asleep.

"Mrs. Harker?" I called softly. "I am a neighbor of Dr. Seward's, and I bear a message concerning your husband."

There were quick footsteps inside the room, the shuffle of a robe being put on, and a moment later the door opened, to reveal a kind of small sitting room, comfortably furnished, with another door beyond that must lead to a bed chamber. Mina's face, rather broad but attractive, firm and intelligent, looked out at me framed by her brown curls. "Has something happened to Jonathan?" She seemed capable of bearing bad news if it had come.

"No, no." I hastened to be reassuring now that my foot, so to speak, was in the door. "At least he was in good health and reasonably good spirits but a short time ago." As I answered I marked that her concern for her husband, though genuine, did not seem at all exaggerated, or even quite as deep as might have been expected, given the circumstances. I saw also in her eyes that she recognized me, or was at least on the point of doing so. How this could be I did not know, being then ignorant of her observation of me in Piccadilly, but I saw that the situation required the finest handling.

"You will understand," I pressed on, in as matter-of-fact a voice as some four centuries of practice could give me, "that circumstances of some urgency compel me to perform my own introduction. I am Count Dracula."

She completed a movement already begun, a half step backward from the door. She had been on the point of trying to slam it in my face. But there I stood in the attitude of a distinguished male visitor in upper-class dress. Not trying to force my way in, not menacing at all but very formidable; I doubt that any Victorian girl could have mustered up the nerve to slam that door. And I was smiling, as I know how to smile at women, with four centuries of practice in that art also. My eyes were fixed on hers…

I cast no hypnotic spell upon her then; I can never do so against the firm will of the person being hypnotized. But it seemed almost that such was her state, as she half unwillingly remained before me, one hand, still somewhat sun-browned from her summer holiday, holding the door open, the other raised to clutch her dressing gown tight at the throat. She had started to open her sweet mouth as if to scream for help, but then was still.

She shook her head then, whilst her most beautiful eyes clung to me and drank me in, till I began to feel almost like a hypnotic subject myself.

"May I come in, madam? There are some vitally important matters I must discuss with some representative of this household, and I suspect you are its most intelligent member. Pray let me reassure you that you have not the slightest cause for concern over your own safety." When Mina still made no move I added-very calmly, though now I could hear a servant moving on the stairs: "My visit really does concern the future safety of your husband."

Being thus provided with an acceptable reason for letting me in, Mina backed away and I entered the sitting room and closed the door behind me.

Almost as if in a daze, she gestured to a chair. "Will you sit down?" As I accepted she seated herself most decorously and then said in halting words: "Count… you… if I understood your words correctly through the door, you described yourself as a neighbor?"

"I have that honor, madam!" I held my tall hat straight upon my knee. "My estate, Carfax, is just behind the high stone wall you may have noticed that abuts upon these premises to the east." She was nodding, still dazedly. "Your husband, I regret to say, is over there in my house now, together with Lord Godalming, Drs. Seward and Van Helsing, and an American gentleman, if that is the proper word, who fired a shot at me last night."

"Quincey Morris," Mina breathed.

I acknowledged the information with a small seated bow. "Tonight they are trying to find me. If they should be successful they would do their best to run me through with a wooden stake and then cut off my head." I smiled slightly, inviting her to acknowledge just how ridiculous the whole business sounded.

"As they did with Lucy," Mina murmured softly, and in the midst of her words I could hear her fear beginning, just beginning, to rise up again.

"A very shocking business, that, involving Miss Westenra." I nodded, letting my own face show distress. "Dear Mrs. Harker, you see before you a man who is-most horribly misunderstood." I let my eyes fall, as if they had suddenly gone shy, away from hers. "Let me reassure you again, if there is still any need to do so, that you yourself have not the slightest cause for concern that I will ever do aught to c-cause you harm." Note that single deliberate stutter there. Gets 'em every time, as the Americans might say.

"Why should I wish you harm, dear lady?" I pressed on. "It is not you who trespasses on my land, breaks into my house, destroys my property, bears lethal weapons against me through the night." I looked up again. "Your husband, it gives me great pain to say, does all these things, persists in doing them, and because of unfortunate misunderstandings he seems likely to persevere in this mad course until he comes to grief. Yes, grief! And what am I to do? How can I possibly prevent it, without help? The men have come one and all under the influence of that fanatic Van Helsing, and their eyes and ears are closed to any entreaty of mine. It is my humble hope that with your help and guidance I may find a way to enlighten them, to turn their feet back to the paths of sanity and safety, before it is too late!"

Mina had not yet recovered enough from my introduction to be her true, quick-witted self. "Too late for what, Count Dracula?"

I leaned toward her and spoke slowly. "Too late for their own good, dear Mrs. Harker. I am not going to let myself be killed. What they did to Lucy they shall not do to me."

"I don't understand this," the lady murmured, and started to her feet and then sat down again, continuing to gaze at me. "I fear I do not understand this, at all. I think perhaps I'm dreaming."

I shook my head and remained sitting in a dignified position, top hat held resting on my knee.

"Count-did none of the servants offer to take your hat?"

"The servants are not aware that I am here, madam. I judged it wiser to speak to you in secrecy."

"Count Dracula-for so you seem to be in truth-how can you explain the fearful things that happened to my husband whilst he was visiting your castle?"

"Madam, I myself left the castle before he did. As to precisely how long he remained after my departure, or what may have happened to him in the interval, I cannot say, although of course some ultimate responsibility may be mine. As for what may have happened to him at Castle Dracula before I left, I am willing to offer an explanation on any point where you desire to have one."

"My dear Count…"

I braced myself.

"… who were those three women?"

Within half an hour we were chatting more or less at our ease. Sweet Mina was perturbed at being able to offer me nothing in the way of hospitality, but I assured her that I did not eat or drink. "With one exception, of course, and even that is not really as you must suppose."

"No? Then you must tell me how it is."

I spoke to Mina on that night almost as I might have spoken to an intelligent and sympathetic breathing man, had there been any such creature in my universe. I touched only briefly upon the uncommon aspects of my life, and stressed my yearnings for a free and open life, my sore need for someone in whom I might sometimes trust and confide, and above all the absence from my existence of any gleam of true affection. Not that I rawly enumerated all these needs, but rather I gradually let their existence swim into her ken. Strange to say, or perhaps not so strange, the lady seemed to see into my heart of hearts right from the first.

Somewhat belatedly I steered the conversation back to the problem of how we might save Jonathan and the others from the dangers of their headstrong course. But before Mina and I could reach any constructive agreement on action to be taken, my keen ears brought me the sounds of the weary hunting party's shuffle-footed return across the grounds of the asylum.

When I announced her husband's imminent arrival Mina started up. "Oh! If you should be discovered here, what will happen?"

"Good Madam Mina, they shall not discover me: that is, they shall not if you and I can quickly reach agreement that I may call on you again tomorrow night? Or whenever your husband next absents himself. We have yet to decide upon a course of action."

"Oh." She listened to the opening of a door belowstairs, to the hunters coming in with earnest, tired voices that must have been almost inaudible to her. "Yes, yes, you may come. I see we must consult, for Jonathan's own good."

I bowed and kissed her hand, turned to the window, and in a moment I was gone.

Shortly her husband tiptoed into the room to find her somewhat paler than usual, and, as he thought, asleep. He sat down and wrote in his journal, mentioning among other things his concern for his wife, and a decision the men had arrived at, regarding Mina, on their inglorious way home.

I hope that the meeting tonight has not upset her. I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear… henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world. I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours; but I must be resolute, and tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight's doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened. I rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her.

Much later in the morning, when the sun was high and all the rest of the household up and about, Jonathan "had to call two or three times before Mina awoke." She did not even seem to recognize her husband immediately, but looked at him at first "with a sort of blank terror." Her life had been changed during the night, and for the moment neither she nor her husband had any inkling of how great a change had been wrought. Nor, in fact, had I any real idea of how my own life would be transformed from that point on.

Mina as usual wrote in her journal on this day, the first of October. But this time she wrote not of what had really happened on the night before. Rather it was an oblique and coded kind of entry, relating an experience of a dream, or dreamlike state, in which she had beheld mist creeping across the lawn and pouring in 'round her bedroom door, and a vague vision of red eyes. Rather diffidently she showed it to me, as a sort of maiden literary effort, when I came back the next evening.

My enemies were busy that October first, trying to trace the dispersal of my boxes from Carfax. Engaged in this task, Jonathan was out again, this time in Walworth, toward the south of London, when I arrived.

On this visit I found an attendant posted, evidently as a guard or lookout, in the corridor outside Renfield's room. The madman had suddenly become so cheerful, "singing gaily" and snapping up houseflies as of old, that Seward was made suspicious. It was Renfield himself, with many winks and grimaces and pointings of his thumb, who notified me of the presence of this lookout as soon as I came in through his window. Of course I was not required to pass through Renfield's room at all after once gaining admission to the house, but I had already begun to feel somewhat uneasy about Mina, lodged as she was in rooms directly above that of this inhumanly powerful man who yearned to rape and torture her. I thought I would try to soothe the lunatic with a few soft, calming words, as from his lord and master.

But first of all there was the attendant in the hallway to be dealt with. It was no great trick to send this sentry, who already nodded on its brink, toppling safely into the abyss of sleep. I did it by creating a certain electrical resonance between my brain and that of the subject, a means that your science is now beginning to discover.

Then I put my hands on Renfield's shoulders and gave him a few soft words. He took them rather sulkily, I thought. It was not peace and calm he wanted. But I tried…

I left him quiet, if not pacified. Then, wraith-like, I went out of his room and past the guard who nodded in his chair, and up the stairs again. Listening outside the door of the Harkers' apartment, I could hear only one set of lungs at work within-Mina's, that I had already come to be able to recognize. And there came also to my sensitive ears the soft, thick murmur of her heart, so tender a pump that pushed such pure elixir through her veins. The fang roots in my upper jaw were aching as I tapped lightly at her door. And at my tapping her breath inside, that had already been quick with anticipation, quickened more…

If chastity can be defined as that which is protected by a chastity belt, then Mina, like Lucy before her, was always chaste with me. But as I am concerned to speak the truth I must relate that Mina gave herself to me as fully as she could, as early as that night, our second meeting. Very little in the way of making plans did we accomplish then, for ourselves even, let alone for her husband's future welfare… ah, Mina! My true, enduring love! Dear one, heart of my heart…

Harker on his tardy return home-to the asylum, that is-on that night of first October found Mina fast asleep, and thought her a little too pale; her eyes look as though she has been crying. Poor dear, I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But… it is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business… indeed, it may not be a hard task after all, for she herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the count and his doings ever since we told her of our decision.

The next day, October second, I rested, glassy-eyed, in trance. That day saw Arthur and Quincey out looking at horses, with a view to purchasing some in case any sort of cavalry action should be required; they were basically men of action, chafed by Van Helsing's deviousness and delays. Harker continued his interviews with teamsters, by which he was methodically tracking down my boxes-though of course he had not discovered that several of them no longer contained their original soil. Seward had enough work of his own about the asylum to keep him out of mischief; and one of the most advanced scientists of his day was reportedly at the British Museum's reading room, "searching for witch and demon cures" that he had told Seward "might be useful later." Mina got some rest during the day, but the mental strain of her ambiguous new position was affecting her, and Harker on rejoining her in the afternoon thought she still looked wan.

She made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful… it took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of keeping her out of our grim task. She seemed somehow more reconciled; or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders…

He had just found my house in Piccadilly, ripe for plundering; but had to record regretfully that he could not tell the other men of the day's great discovery whilst his wife was hanging about.

So after dinner-followed by a little music to save appearances even amongst ourselves-I took Mina to her room and left her to go to bed. The dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me as though she would detain me; but there was much to be talked of and I came away. Thank God, the ceasing of telling things has made no difference between us.

So many a cuckolded husband has comforted himself, I should imagine, as his last chance to retain first place in his girl's heart slips through his hands, unnoticed by himself.

Now come we to a night that formed another major turning point for all of us. When after dark I slipped into Renfield's room I found him seated moodily on a stool in the middle of his small floor. All day he had evidently been brooding, and had convinced himself that I had deliberately tricked and misled him, promised him Mina and then snatched her away for my own enjoyment. He looked sidelong at me as I came in and for the first time did not rush to fawn over me and protest his loyalty. His very stillness made me slow my passage through his chamber and look at him well, and mark the cunning of violent madness that gleamed so in his eyes.

He addressed me then in a most soft and beseeching voice, and wearing the face of perfect sanity that he put on periodically in his discussions with Seward and the rest; but Seward had never been taken in by this appearance, and no more was I.

Renfield pressed me again to grant him Mina for his obscene delight, as if she were some slave or chattel, whose favors and very flesh and blood were mine to do with as I chose. When I would hear no more, and made to walk past him in man-form to reach the door, he at last exploded in frustrated wrath.

"God! God! God!" he screamed. "Then I shall take her for myself. Twice before I have escaped and fled to plead my cause with you; the next time I go straight to her and do with her what I will!" He had a little more to say, namely some details of his plans, that I shall not repeat. And with that he hurled himself upon me, maniacal fingers reaching for my throat.

In all the years since I first rose from the grave I have never felt a stronger human grip; but if Renfield's strength in his full fit of madness was that of four stout men or five, why mine is normally that of four or five such robust raving madmen as himself; and when I heard his threats against Mina my sinews too were amplified by rage.

It gave me savage satisfaction to come to honest grips with a foeman at last. I lifted him like a scarecrow and slammed him to the floor, once, again, how many times I do not know. I heard bones grind and break, and when I let him go I marked the twisted way in which he lay. His blood, his life, poured freely out from several lacerations on his head and face. The last I saw of Renfield was that spreading scarlet pool, which I disdained as carrion as I turned my back on him and hastened to where my beloved waited in her rooms.

The struggle made noise enough to rouse the dozing attendant in the hallway. He, after a quick look in through the door's observation panel, hurried to tell Seward of the "accident." I had made myself nearly invisible before the man looked in at the door, and by the time Seward had got himself down to Renfield's room I was up above in Mina's, where Harker snored in bed, with honest oafish weariness, and where my lady sat in her nightdress gazing out the window, as if she sought the solace of the moon, or mayhap a pair of flapping wings.

My entry was utterly silent, but in a moment she was somehow aware of my tall presence near the door, and looked around with an intake of breath.

"What are you doing?" she cried to me in a fierce whisper, her gaze meanwhile darting to her husband's sleeping form and back to mine.

I glanced at him and listened to his breath, and marked the rhythms of his heart and sleeping brain.

"Jonathan will not heed us," I remarked, and went on: "There is some news. The madman Renfield downstairs was utterly determined to supplant your husband and myself as well; I cooled his ardor as I passed, so you may still sleep easily tonight."

"Sleep easily?" she cried. "God, Vlad, how may that be?" Mina stared a long moment at me as if she had never truly seen me before. "Is Renfield dead, then?"

I bowed slightly. "It was done to protect your life, my lady, which is dearer to me now than my own."

"Oh, Vlad." Her voice lowered briefly to a whisper of pure horror. "And you and Jonathan stalking each other like-like-"

"I am not stalking him, dear heart." A blase snore came from the bed. I went on: "I now have relatively secure lodgings available elsewhere, away from Carfax, and I am going to abandon my estate. We shall be neighbors no longer."

Mina came to my arms, moaned softly as I nuzzled her, and then stood back, raising her head proudly to look me in the eye. "Take me with you," she demanded.

There was a brief silence, in which I could find nothing soft or smooth to say. Again, a faint and flaccid snore came from the bed. Downstairs, feet ran, and an attendant's footsteps climbed rapidly to our level but did not approach our door. I could hear the man tapping at another door, probably Van Helsing's, and then talking in low, urgent tones.

"You do not know what you are asking me," I said at last.

"You do not want me with you, then? But I cannot enduring this-this tension-anymore."

Our voices were both near breaking and I could resist no longer. Mina raised her arms and I caught up and crushed her soft body-ah, so tenderly, gently, my hands of twentyfold strength held in such exquisiteness of control-crushed her against me, and my lips sought hers before they moved on down to worship at her throat…

Passion blinded and deafened both of us for a while. Mina, drained and white, but shuddering with the aftermath of ecstasy, clung close against my chest when I at last released her. "Now I am yours entirely," she sighed. "And you must take me with you."

"Yes, yes, my darling. But first I must think, and find a way." I had capitulated; but in point of fact she was not fully mine as yet, not in the physically irreversible way she seemed to think. And therefore to take her with me would be a hare-brained plan, as she herself must realize soon enough, if the attempt were made. Though she could in time become a vampire-nay, must become one if things went on as they were-she was not a vampire yet. She could not give up normal food, or be immune to cold or heat, or sleep on mold and dust in airless places, or pass as I do through a hair's breadth chink.

Nor would my enemies ever be persuaded to leave my trail, once I had taken her. Most important of all, once she became a vampire our love, though it went on, would be platonic, almost incapable of physical expression. It would then be like incest, and worse, for us to try to suck each other's veins, and she would seek out breathing lovers, as would I… I did not want that, not for a long, long time to come.

Mina, in her temporarily weakened state, had turned back to the bed, and Harker's breathing altered slightly as she sank down beside him. I deepened his slumber somewhat, as I had done for the attendant outside Renfield's door.

And still I wanted with all my soul to carry Mina away with me, although I knew the plan was sheer romantic foolishness.

"Mina," I whispered, "in the eyes of the world you are my enemy's wife. But in both our hearts we know that you are mine."

"Yes, Vlad." Her whisper was small and frightened now.

"And we shall find a way to be together. Come, I will bind us with a further tie." And, pulling open my clothing above my heart, I drew the sharp nail of my left forefinger across my flesh, deep enough to let the blood well out. "Drink."

Before she drank she murmured that her hands were cold, and I clasped both of them in one of mine-did you think that vampire flesh is always chill? Not so; it can be warming, too. And with my right hand I fondled the back of her strong neck as I raised her to a kneeling position on the bed. She stood higher for a moment, to kiss the scar her husband's shovel stroke had left upon my forehead. And then her lips came down to the level of my heart, and came tenderly against my bleeding wound, and she drank into herself some portion of my life…

Thus you, Mina, my best-beloved one, became flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful winepress…

In that position were we, heedless of all the world, when the door leading from the bedroom to the hall burst in with a sudden crash and Van Helsing, Seward, Morris, and Arthur nearly fell into the room. The professor actually did fall, and so impeded the first onrush of the others.

The two doctors had spent some time in attendance upon Renfield, since the noise of our brawl had drawn attention to his room. Van Helsing and Seward had performed on the spot a hasty trephining operation, which the patient did not long survive-not that the best of surgeons could have saved him then-and from his dying words they learned that I was his killer and had gained access to the house.

The doctors soon roused their male companions in the hunt, and all-except for Harker-quickly armed themselves with the same collection of symbols and rubbish that they had carried on their invasion of my house. They understood in just what room I was likely to be found, and with Renfield's battered corpse before them still chose not to be headlong in their pursuit.

Eventually, no doubt eyeing one another and trying to think of alternative plans, they climbed the stairs.

Outside the Harkers' door we paused. Art and Quincey held back and the latter said:

"Should we disturb her?"

"We must," said Van Helsing grimly. "If the door be locked I shall break it in."

"May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual to break into a lady's room."

Regardless of who might have been terribly frightened, they finally brought themselves to the unusual act. When they hurled their bodies at the door it crashed in quite satisfactorily, and there I was, clasping Mina on the bed.

Taken unawares and at a peak of passion, I was prepared to react in a most uncivilized way to this intrusion. Pushing Mina back on the bed, out of harm's way, I turned on them with a loud snarl. The professor, who had just started to regain his feet, fell down again and all the others cowered back.

A whiff of stale garlic came from the crowd of them, standing there in their garlands, foreshadowing malodorous flower children of a much later age. In trembling hands they waved at me their small white envelopes, like supplicants before St. Peter at the gates who think they have the proper admission tickets in their hands but are still a little doubtful all the same.

I admit, this time it was those envelopes that tipped the scales and held me back. If I had followed my first impulse, and ground their bones to bits within their well-fed skins, or left them lying like so many Renfields in a bright lake of their own blood, it would have been impossible to avoid some further, grievous desecration of the Sacred Host. What else could it be they waved at me?

Infirm though my own faith may often be, and reprehensible my behavior on occasion, I draw the line at desecration of the Sacrament. And, when this reluctance on my part had given me a moment in which to take thought, I found my old objections to mass violence as valid as they had ever been. It must eventually array the overwhelming force of multitudes against me and bring down great sorrow and travail on Mina's head as well. That quick-witted girl was lying back now on the bed, with eyes closed as if she had been stunned…

Seward records that at this point he and his friends advanced, lifting their crucifixes, whilst it was the evil count who cowered back. To one unacquainted with mirrors it is always helpful to have the objective evaluation of others regarding little details of personal appearance, for example:

The hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap into his face. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion; the great nostrils of his white aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge; and the white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood-dripping mouth, clamped together like those of a wild beast.

A moon-covering cloud momentarily plunged the room into full darkness and I bent down to whisper into Mina's ear: "Say that I took you by force; adieu for now." And before the moon had brightened again I was gone, unseen out into the hall. Scarcely had I left the room before she emitted the most bloodcurdling scream, so that even in mist-form I started with alarm, and came near going back to rescue her, should Van Helsing have his stake point already at her breast. I realized in time, however, that the outcry had been calculated for effect, and hurried on my way.

My path led down to Seward's study. Mina had mentioned to me in an earlier talk that the hunters' records of their search-diaries, journals, and so on-were now kept mostly in that room, and it seemed to me wise to stop there and feed the fireplace such of their papers as I could quickly find. This I did, piling on also in the flames as many of the wax cylinders from Seward's phonograph as came to hand. All burned, but it was largely wasted effort on my part, for by this time most of their records existed elsewhere in duplicate, ironically as a consequence of Mina's stenographic service.

I was not interrupted in the study nor confronted by my foe on my way out of the house afterward. Arthur and Quincey were the first to come downstairs in pursuit, and even they were not all that quick about it. Whilst making my departure in bat-form I observed young Quincey in the shadow of a yew tree, observing me; this time he did not shoot. Turning my back on Carfax, I flapped on toward the city to the west, hurrying from the first presagings of the dawn that marked the sky behind me.

I could not win a war against all England but neither did I intend to give up, now that I had found her, the woman for whom my heart had yearned for centuries. Subterfuge, and not brute strength, must carry the day if Mina and I were to survive and continue to enjoy each other's love.