The Holmes-Dracula File

Chapter Thirteen

I can only describe the pressure that kept me from entering Sal's apartment by comparing it with the force that would prevent either breathing man or vampire from leaping in a single bound to the top of a hundred-story building; just so impossible was it for me to move a centimeter past the threshold without invitation.

"The coat!" Matthews rasped at me again, from across the squalid room. "Just tyke it off now, real easy-like." The knife in his hand prodded with precise calculation at the girl's soft throat, where one small bright drop of blood appeared.

My own right hand, extended at shoulder height, was hidden from his view behind the frame of the doorway in which I stood. It had gone to work with all its strength on the old masonry that mouldered there. Tired mortar crunched and cracked beneath my rage-driven talons, and a fist-sized stone was loosening.

To cover the sounds made by my busy fingers, and to try to gain time for them to complete their work, I endeavored to draw my enemy into an argument. As he obviously took me for some detective or other, I played the role: "Think what you are doing, Matthews. This is not a killing matter—not yet. Put down the knife, release the girl, and you shall never stand in the dock for any crime you may have committed so far. You have my solemn word on that."

Matthews had no intention of believing me, or even of listening. "Your coat, I said! Or, by God, I'll carve her!"

My straining fingers at last pulled the stone out of the wall. Time was when my right hand knew cunning with spear and lance and javelin. I twisted my body and threw with all the force that I could muster. The hurled stone cracked Matthews' wrist, jarring the blade out of his hand—but from there the stone glanced on in a way that I had not foreseen, to smash into his forehead. He fell without a groan, to hit the floor almost before his clashing weapon.

Sal cried out, and she too went down, although the blade had left only the merest scratch upon her throat. For a long moment there was stark silence in the cellar, save for her solitary, gasping breath, and the uneven thumping of her heart. Then she raised her head, grasping the fact that the deadly peril of the knife had somehow been averted. She jumped up, hysterical though still almost silent, and would have run past me to the street.

I caught her gently in the doorway. "Sally, you must invite me in. Bid me come into your dwelling, dear. Sally—?"

It took a minute to extract from her the coherent words I needed. With their pronouncing, the overwhelming resistance to my entry was gone at once. (It could have been only psychological, you say? But so is life.) Now I could walk her to a chair, where I settled her and soothed her, and kissed the thrice-marred whiteness of her throat. Leaving her still quietly a-tremble, I walked over to the far wall, to see if a source of information might be salvaged.

Alas, it was at once apparent that no sort of appeal—even from me—was going to make much impression upon my quondam opponent. His eyes were half open and his vital signs had all but disappeared. Where the stone had struck his forehead there was a visible depression. Cursing my ill-fortune, I let him fall back to the floor.

At this, Sal let out a faint shriek, and I turned to regard her thoughtfully. Tremoring and twitching, staring now into space, she was seemingly indifferent even to the full display of her great birthmark in the reflected harshness of the electric lantern which still glowed where Matthews had left it on the table. I sighed. It was becoming plain to me, however belatedly, that Sal's good-hearted nature was very ill-suited to stresses of the kind that Fortune had lately visited upon her. The very gentleness and sensibility which could not bear to see a sick old man disposed of in the Thames, now began to appear as possible liabilities to that old man's cause.

Ah, Sal! If only, before Jem Matthews, there had come into your life some solid London workman, with love that could be blind to your marked face—but of course at seventeen she had had very little time for such a miracle.

I stood before her and patiently held out my hand, until hers came to take it. She shuddered at the contact now. Her face began to turn away, but stopped because her gaze had locked itself almost unwillingly on mine. There were the two little raw punctures on her throat. They would be extremely slow to heal; but heal they would, if we embraced no more, and with their disappearance all signs and shadows of my vampire presence would vanish from her mind and body.

Now softly I entreated her. "My dear? Dear Sal?" And when at length I saw enough awareness in her eyes I went on: "We must now consider how best to keep you safe. If any of Matthews' associates observe you in this state, they are sure to consider you dangerously unreliable. And should they connect you even indirectly with his death—well, you would not be safe at all. I can of course remove his body from your dwelling, but—"

Terror had been slowly replacing the blankness in her face. "It was you on that bloody cart." She made it an accusation. "In irons, lookin' like an old 'un—I seen you there." Her voice fell to an awed whisper. "I know they drowned you—didn't they? Or was it smothered? Yer a dead 'un now."

I shook her—oh, just a little, very gently—and persisted. "Never mind about all that—about the old man. The question now is, what is to be done with you?" Sal's gaze had turned toward the still form huddled by the wall. "He was my man—my Jem. You killed 'im… broke 'is neck like a chicken… like a bloody rat…"

Now this was neither accurate nor apposite, to say nothing of the lack of gratitude it showed. I resumed my shaking of the wench, this time with a little briskness of irritation. Still there was no restorative effect, and I soon let her go.

I paced around the wretched room, came back. "My own thought, my dear," I said, "is that you had best be taken straight to the police. They can protect you both day and night, as long as those who work with Matthews are still alive. Are you presently wanted by the police? For anything, I mean, besides giving the alarm at Barley's?"

Sal continued to stare at the body of the one she thought of—now, at least—as "her man." She did not answer me at all.

Oh, I might have brought her out of it, even restored her to a temporary gaiety. There are ways. But those ways would not have been good for her in the long run. And the danger to her from her criminal associates would have remained. "Come! Answer!"

She turned to face me, and swallowed. "No-no, the peelers don't want't' buckle me, 'cept fer wot I did at Barley's."

"Then to the peelers, as you call them, you shall go. And you must tell them all you can—be willing to give evidence and they'll protect you day and night. Tell them where that building is, where I was held a prisoner. And say you'll testify against that young doctor—what's his name?"

"Dr. David Fitzroy. I 'eard it once."

"Fitzroy." I breathed the name a few times, savoring its syllables. "And also any of the others whom they can manage to arrest. Name them all. Fitzroy is the leader?"

"Not 'im. The way 'e talked sometimes, I know 'e got 'is orders that 'e 'ad't' follow."

"From?"

"I dunno who." A ghost of Sal's normal spirit showed in her eyes, and glad I was to see it. "Me turn evidence? Stand up't' peach on 'em in court? Ah, if I on'y dared! Jem'd be alive now if it weren't fer them."

"You must dare. Never fear, you will not be called upon to testify, as they shall never come to trial. I swear it, as I swore the same to Matthews."

"Ah… "

"Fitzroy." Once more I enjoyed the name. "Yes, you must tell the peelers all you can, even about me, I shall not mind. And they will keep you safe—for long enough."

"Ah…"

"But all you mean to tell them, you must tell me first…"