The Holmes-Dracula File

Chapter One

There can be little doubt that if the cudgel descending on that old man's skull had been of lead or iron, rather than some stout timber of the English forest, not much would have come of the attempt—at least nothing worthy of your attention and mine at this late date. The street beside the East India docks was very nearly empty in the dawn, and to any assault with mere metal he would have responded vigorously, and then would have gone on his way to meet his love in Exeter, lighthearted with the sense of having done the metropolis of London a good turn en passant, ridding it of one or two of its more rascally inhabitants.

It is however an important fact of history—I do not exaggerate—that the force of that stealthy blow, delivered from behind by an assailant of breathtaking cunning, was borne in wood. The old man fell down senseless on the spot; he felt neither the slime of the street's stones nor the rough hands that lifted him and bore him off, their owners doubtless grumbling at his unexpected weight.

There was a great pain in the old man's head when he awoke, and he awoke to nothing better than a crippled awareness, bereft of useful memories. He was in a poor little bedchamber, quite strange to him. And when the old man tried to move, he found that his arms and legs were fettered with iron, held tight to the peculiar high, narrow bed or cot on which he lay. On making this discovery he began, as you may well imagine, very earnestly to consider his situation. But no, he could neither remember nor guess how he might have come to such a pass.

He had no more than shards of memory, all recent but quite incomplete: a sailing ship, a gangplank, the happy feel of solid land beneath his feet once more, the fog-wreathed dawn… the great pain in his head.

Now here he was locked to his bed, in a small room he did not know. The lone window was heavily blocked with blinds and curtains, but still admitted more light than he required to take stock of his surroundings. Above it on the stained ceiling a smear of reflected daylight quivered, signaling that water lay outside in the sun. On the far side of the room stood a high old chest of drawers in need of paint, holding on its top an unlit candle in a brass stick, a chipped wash-basin, and a pitcher. A stark chair of dark wood waited inhospitably beside the chest, and that completed the room's furnishings save for the bed itself, which seemed to be fashioned almost entirely of heavy metal.

It might be morning still, or afternoon. The Cockney cries of a coster, hawking vegetables, came from somewhere outside and below. The room, though small, was furnished with two doors, set in adjacent walls. One door was fettered by two closed padlocks, which were large and strong, and mounted upon separate heavy hasps. Little splinters of bright, raw wood about these showed that their installation had been recent. The other door was also closed, but had no lock at all, at least not on the old man's side.

Wafting, oozing from somewhere, was a certain smell…

The pain and damage in his head had left his mind confused and wandering. Yes, a whole symphony of smells was in the city's air. Below and beyond the others was the sea, perceptible to a keen nose though miles away. That and his fragmented memory of being recently aboard ship reminded him that this was London. What was he doing here, so far from home? So far from…

Not till his thoughts had reached this point did the old man realize that he no longer knew who he was. If he had been at all susceptible to fear, he would have known it then.

At wrists and ankles, elbows and knees, his arms and legs were clasped to the high, narrow bed by rings of steel, fitted too tightly to leave the smallest chance of wriggling free. When he raised his head as far as possible he could see that his lanky body, still clothed even to elegant frock coat and boots, lay on a sheet of patterned oilcloth. Beneath this, some thin padding covered the hard top and metal frame of this odd cot. It was a sturdy bit of furniture. The old man strained his wiry arms until they quivered, without eliciting so much as a creak from their constraints.

What was that smell? Something to do, he thought, with wild animals. With…

Footsteps were approaching, outside his room, and he lay back as if no more than semiconscious, and quite too weak to move. Presently the unlocked door was swung in, by a heavyset figure in workman's garb: shabby dirt-colored coat over a gray sweater, baggy trousers, drab cloth cap. Below blue eyes and heavy, blackish brows, most of the man's beefy face was hidden behind a mask of white gauze, held on by strings that looped behind his hairy ears. That mask would look familiar to you now, from films and television if not from direct experience in surgery, but it was strange and puzzling to our old man. In 1897, few people had ever seen the like of it.

" 'E's awyke, Guv'nor." The grating voice that came out through the gauze was addressed to another man not yet in sight, whose steps were drawing near across uncarpeted wood floors. "Plyin' peek with us, 'eis."

The rough-voiced workman moved aside to let in a much leaner and somewhat taller man, dressed as a gentleman in frock-coat and dark trousers, but masked in the same mysterious style. "So he is," this newcomer commented, in an upperclass voice that fit his clothes, and came right over to the waist-high bed. His fair hair was well groomed, and his penetrating blue eyes assessed the old man's condition with a professional economy of movement. With skilled fingers he pressed impersonally about the back of the old man's skull, a region which radiated pain as glowing iron sends out heat. "Hit in the usual spot? Quite. Excellently done. No sign of fracture, not even a hematoma. Well, no reason he should not go to the rat at once."

The old man, who had let his eyelids sag completely shut again, liked to think that in the last few years he had gained a certain facility in English. New bits of slang and jargon, however, continually surprised him. Was "rat," in this context, yet another vulgar synonym for latrine? He felt no need for any such facility. Indeed, despite the hurt confusion in his mind, it was for some reason almost amusing to imagine that he might.

The costermonger outside had trundled his leeks into another street; his voice came faintly now. Within, the two masked insiders, experts enjoying the mystification of their patient, conferred in low and cryptic words. They had turned from his bed and, keys in hand, were rattling open the padlocks upon the little bedroom's second door. It was from behind that door that the smell came, the old man now discovered, the smell of… no, it was still impossible for him to think. A hard-wheeled cart assaulted paving stones beneath the window. The cart was being pulled by a big gelded horse whose left front foot felt sore.

Inside the house a third set of human footsteps now drew near. These seemed to be—yes, assuredly they were—the footsteps of a woman, although her shoes clopped the bare floors with authority bold enough for any man. She entered the room, drew near the bed and stopped, and the old man once more cracked an eyelid to observe. She was not large, but held herself erect with the energy of one who lives to dominate. The woman was well dressed in the English style, and it came as no surprise that she should be gauze-masked like the two men.

They must have expected her entrance, for they did not react to it. When the rough-voiced workman had finished taking the locks off the second door, he came over to tie a cloth bag, evidently meant as a blindfold, around the prisoner's head.

The bed, by starting to roll when it was pushed, now proved itself to be a cart. The tall man walked ahead of it, holding open the door that had just been unlocked, while the woman came in the rear, now and then muttering imperious and doubtless unnecessary orders to Rough-voice, on how he should maneuver this strange conveyance into the room adjoining.

Upon the old man's being wheeled into this new chamber, all background smells of the city, the house, the people—in 1897 the modern passion for changing clothes and keeping sterile armpits still had a long way to develop—all common smells, I say, were suddenly wiped out for him, by the sharp tang of carbolic acid. A good deal of this disinfectant was being sprayed and swabbed about. Also the old man's keen ears informed him that his three caretakers were all donning extra clothing. Each was putting a voluminous garment over what he or she already wore.

After these preliminaries had been got through, there proved to be yet another door which must in its turn be unlocked and opened, another threshold to be bumped over on his cart. In this third room, a soft click brought out the unnatural radiance of electric light, perhaps from some kind of handheld torch. Its rays probed at the old man's blindfold and even faintly warmed his exposed hands. All this time he had kept on feigning to be unconscious, largely because in his damaged state he was unable to think of any stratagem more promising. And now, despite the steady olfactory roar of the carbolic, there came back, stronger than ever, the animal smell at which he had first wondered.

He could place it now: it was the stink of rodent. Rats, or a rat, but magnified, transformed, intensified. Despite a certain original flavor it was essential Rat, and therefore familiar and unmistakable to that old man, and even almost reassuring. He ought to be able to—to—

To do what? The terrible pain in his head went on, and it was still impossible to think. Impossible to try… he did not even know what effort he should try to make.

Almost touching his cart, there were more locks and bolts now being operated. These opened no ordinary door, but something that sounded all metal when part of it skreeked back, all metal and full of space as a skeleton.

"Be careful of the screen!" the woman warned. And next moment, the heartbeat and the breathing of a single large inhuman creature were almost within the old man's reach. Here was the radiant center of the rodent smell.

The prisoner's hands began to strain again at their steel restraints, uselessly though with more strength than any victimized old man should have been able to command. But no hunger or rage beat in the animal's heart, so he made his hands relax. Experience counseled waiting, though what experience in his blind past had been remotely like this one he could not guess. Still he felt sure that this was not the first time in his long life that he had been chained and blindfolded. And when the torture started, presently, they would find him no trembling virgin in that field of endeavor either.

Torture? All that came, in apparent anticlimax, was the opening of his clothing at the chest, followed by the pressure there, against his bare skin, of a smooth empty circle like the rim of a glass jar. Inside the circle, a sudden flea crawled on the old man's hide, a tiny timid creature almost frightened by this alien, white and nearly hairless world. Yes, the old man knew it was a flea. He had been for many years a soldier, long ago, and like many another warrior he had become an unwilling connoisseur of vermin. After a moment a second flea came onto his skin, and then by ones and twos additional reinforcements, until he could no longer count the nervous, jumping creatures confined within the circle of the jar. He disliked these creatures, and so he awed them with a great, voiceless, soundless shout, at which command they ceased to jump and huddled in abject obedience.

The glass-rim contact was maintained for several minutes, while the four people in the room were silent. Eventually the woman barked out an order, as if at the conclusion of some timed interval. At this, a thin plate of metal or glass was slid in beneath the glass rim, against the old man's chest and belly. Then cover, jar and fleas were adroitly withdrawn together.

Again locks clashed, and metal bars. In reverse order, doors were opened, the cart was wheeled, carbolic splashed, doors closed, et cetera, and in a few minutes the four human participants were all back in the same room in which the strange charade had started. The old man's blindfold was pulled off by Rough-voice, and this time the old man let his eyes stay open, thinking what the hell or something to that effect. But no one cared if he was wide awake or not. His three tormentors had already turned their backs on him and tramped out. Rough-voice went last, closing the door without padlocks behind him. Before the three began to talk among themselves again they were too many rooms away for the old man to understand a word.

He lay there thinking. To say that he was trying to think would be more accurate. He was still unable to cope with the pain and confusion in his head, the lasting damage of that most savage oaken blow.

Torture, he thought, by fleas. Tickled into trauma by the tripping of their tiny toes. Mangled by their fierce jaws—if he had let them bite. Absurd. Maniacal. But if the intention had not been torture, what? It had all been most deadly serious, in any case.

The blotch of daylight, faint though it was upon the ceiling just above the blinded window, was somehow oppressive to his injured brain. And now his weariness hung like a diver's weights upon his every fettered limb. He could not sleep upon that cart, nor truly rest, but did fall into a kind of trance.

When he came wide awake again it was still full daylight. Again feet were approaching his room's door, the one that had its locks upon the side away from him. With a great clatter it was pushed open, and Rough-voice tramped in, masked as before. His huge hands held a small metal tray bearing a slab of bread, tea steaming in a mug, a glass of water.

With the old man now watching openly, the tray was set down upon a peculiar kind of rest that his brawny keeper snapped up from the bed's right side. Then when the attendant turned a crank somewhere, his aged prisoner's forequarters were elevated, putting him nearly into a sitting position. Rough-voice then brought out a key, and presently one of the manacles restraining the old man's right arm clicked and let go. Now the prisoner could just reach the tray, and might have lifted food and drink from it up to his mouth. He snarled instead and lashed out with a backhanded blow of long-nailed fingers. The tray and its repulsive cargo went splash-and-scatter on the bare floor.

"Ar! Yer a rum cove, ain' cher?" Rough-voice, massive fists on his broad hips, displayed that almost good-humored appreciation not infrequently offered by strong and ruthless people to opposition that is at once spirited and hopelessly weak. "Go dry an' empty then, bein' as you likes it better so!" And with smiling eyes Rough-voice went out by the door where he had entered, not forgetting to re-imprison the old man's wrist.

Outside the room he could be heard squeaking a small, wheeled cart along, and entering one after another a pair of nearby rooms, in each of which his entry was followed by a dull clatter of utensils.

The old man, listening, decided that he shared his captivity with at least two other prisoners. Now that he made the effort, he thought that he could hear their faint and sickly breathing from their separate apartments. Not that he felt any the less alone for the discovery. Rough-voice moved on with his cart, and now, in yet another room, he paused to make report. "Number One, sir, 'e didn't tyke no water, even."

"Oh?" The responding voice was that of the skillful prober of skulls. "Does he show fever?"

"Not as he could notice. Didn't touch 'im."

"Quite right. How are the other two?"

"Both given up on shoutin'. Two's eatin, 'three's asleep."

"Very good. Try Number One again in an hour or so. He should eat and drink. And if he's acting strangely, we should have someone with him through the night. His case is not established yet."

"Beg pardon, Guv'nor, but me own orders is't' go out, on that other little job at Barley's. I'll very likely be hangin' around there all night."

"Yes, to be sure." Well-bred vexation in the voice. "Of course there must be no question of deviating from your orders. But it will leave us short-handed."

"There's the girl, Guv'nor."

A little hum of disapproval. Then: "Have you any suggestions?" The question was in a new tone, obviously addressed to someone other than the churlish workman.

It was answered by the woman with the military walk. "I't'ink we must use the girl." Number One could now discern a stratum of German underneath her cultivated English.

The doctor pondered for a few seconds. "Can we be sure of her?"

"More than uff anyone else we could recruit on such short notice."

"True enough." Another hesitation; then decision. "Yes, we must use her, I suppose. Her reputation is for reliability." Again a switch in his words' aim. "Bring Sally up to keep an eye on Number One tonight. Be sure she stays away from Two and Three; they're too far along to need watching. Impress upon her that she's to stay in the one room, and see that she understands what'll happen to her if she does not hold her tongue about this place."

"Ar."

A door closed, and the voices, already remote and so low that their owners must feel securely private, became too faint for even that old man's ears. He tried to follow them and failed, and then was swamped again by the murderous weariness that only got worse the longer he lay here motionless upon his back. Not cramped or stiff, not even sleepy, but deathly tired. He closed his eyes, and opened them again. This was, he knew, an impossibly wrong place for him to get the rest he craved. But just where would the right place be?

The day wore on. He was not hungry or thirsty. At least—turning his head to glance at the garbage he had knocked to the floor—not for anything like that.

Night crept at last upon the city, and its approach brought to the aged captive at least a partial return of health and strength. The sounds of casual activity that had gone on through the day had faded, and some time had passed in silence, when the old man heard two pairs of feet approaching from a long way off. Shortly Rough-voice walked into the room, a supple, poorly-clad young woman after him. Both of them were masked in gauze.

" 'Ow is it 'e's all bound up like that?" The voice of the girl bore traces of gentleness, if not concern.

"Told yer, didn't I? 'E's a violent one when 'e gets the chance." The man was about to turn and hurry out of the room when he paused in afterthought. " 'Asn't said a bloody word since we got 'im, but that don't mean 'e can't. Might be a real sweet-talker when 'e wants't' be."

"Won't matter a bit't' me," the girl said lightly. And like the visiting nurse she parked a cloth bag that she was carrying atop the tall chest of drawers, and looked about her for a place to settle. There was only the one hard chair.

"See that it don't. Well, then, I'm off."

"Ah." It was almost the man's ar.

Rough-voice shut the door behind him. His tread receded, went jauntily bouncing down some distant stairs.

Left alone with the old man, the young girl turned to size him up more thoroughly. Her eyes were brown and hard, fragments of London cobblestone above the border of her white mask, whose strings where they went back to her ears were hidden by brown curls. The sun was setting now, and the room had grown much darker in the last few minutes, but in keeping with all the other seeming perversities of his situation, the old man only saw her all the better for the failing of daylight. Her dress was coarse and plain and patched, and he thought that the scarf she draped on the chair's back would have been better suited to a man.

"Well," she said, and came over to stand beside his bed, looking at the floor. "A pretty mess you've made. And none o' them'd ever think of cleaning up, of course."

Sally. But the name could be a weapon, the only weapon he had, and he must wait for the proper time to strike with it.

"Release me," the old man told her suddenly, his voice so deep and firm that it surprised himself. "And I will clean up what I have spilled." To have begun with something that sounded like cleverness would surely have put a clever girl on guard.

"Well, well, 'e talks! And like a bloody toff. Dressed like 'un, too." But still Sally hardly looked at the old man, as she bent to pick up the spilled refuse. The stain from the tea was large, yet scarcely conspicuous on worn floorboards long since abandoned to their fate. Bread, mug, glass and tray the girl carried to some outer room, whence sounded a dull clatter of utensils. She came back in a minute, chewing on something, and stood before him with folded arms as if to ask him silently: How am I to stand your company for hours and hours?

On his part hoping for long hours of isolate companionship, the old man spoke again, letting his voice take on a certain sound of stagy tragedy. "No, girl, I was quite wrong to ask you to release me. If there be more chains you can add, I bid you bring them here and lock them on." He was not one for thinking through his plans with any complete logic; perhaps he tried this zig-zag tactic on the chance that the girl would feel she ought to do the opposite of anything he urged her. Well, he was still half-addled.

Whatever Sally might have felt, she did not sound surprised. "Don't 'ave no more chains. Do 'ave some scrag I might bring in, if you'll promise not't' fling it all about this time."

He let his voice sag down to being weakly friendly. "I promise that."

"I'll myke some tea." Coolly practical, she left the door ajar and went off to what must have been the kitchen. In the middle distance he could hear her, now pouring water, now cutting bread. Now came the subtle sound of a knifeblade spreading out a heap of jam. His imagination's picture of the rich red stuff brought on a wave of hunger, mixed with a little nausea.

The irrelevant smell of tea soon took form on the night air. The old man strained his limbs again and then lay back, unable to budge his iron bonds, hissing his exhaustion. Good God but they were strong. Had this bed-cart been constructed to confine a mad gorilla?

Here Sally came back to him, replenished tea-tray in her hands. It was now so dark that she must grope her way, and she had removed her mask, which must have been an annoyance to keep on for hours and hours. The old man could now plainly see her face, which would have been pretty were it not for a great birthmark, covering her whole right cheek and jaw, more strawberry than the stuff which she had spread upon the bread—and were it not, of course, for the corollary of this disfigurement, a set of resignation in all her facial muscles, the look of bitter, sullen surrender to all the world's foul ugliness.

She felt secure, of course, that in this lightless room he'd never see her face. Meanwhile he watched the innate and unconscious grace with which, even unable to see the way, she moved across the room.

" 'Ere. Can you see it?" She put the tray down where it had been before, upon the stand that branched out from the bed.

"My hand could find it in the dark. Alas, I cannot move a finger."

Sally went away and groped for the stiff chair and brought it back, sat down in it an arm's length distant. Perhaps I have exaggerated the room's darkness; there must have existed a little ghost of light, oozing from the shaded window at her back, to fall across his bed. No doubt she could see him at least faintly, while believing that her own face was fully hidden from his eyes.

She tore off a morsel of the bread and held it toward his lips. " 'Ere. It's crusty, but you 'as a good mouthful o' teeth for an old 'un. I could see that when you first spoke't' me."

His neck muscles reflexively turned his head away. It was not red jam that he hungered for. "I thank you deeply, but I find I cannot eat."

"Ah." There was again some gentleness in her voice. Sally popped the morsel into her own mouth. "Want some tea?" She spoke as one who does not wish to dine alone.

"Where am I, girl?"

"You've 'ad a knock on the 'ead, you 'ave. So you're—in 'ospital."

"But in what city?" Although of that, at least, he had no doubt.

"How 'bout some tea: 'Spect I'll have it meself if you won't."

"Thank you, but no. Some water, if you please," he added, so he should not seem too strange. With water his old guts could cope, he felt.

"Right-o." She held the glass for him, while being careful, he noted, to touch neither his gray lank hair that straggled before his face, nor his clothing, nor his skin. He managed to raise his head enough to drink whilst his arms stayed bound down. Water slid toward his stomach, where it lay unabsorbed, like liquid glass.

"Girl…" He lay back, blowing through wet lips. "What shall I call you?"

"Never you mind." Then there occurred a thought that pleased her privately. "You can call me 'Miss.' "

"Miss. Will you then be kind enough to tell an old man why he is being held a prisoner?" Night deepened; he was waking up. The words had begun to dance along naturally, without thought on the old man's part. The finger-movements of a violinist, tuning a new instrument, whose hands over the long, long years have cradled a thousand others like it.

"I told you, yer in 'ospital." Making herself cold and abrupt was not something that came naturally to Sally. She had practiced for enough years, though, to do it well. She could be ruthless. Now she was eating, quite neatly, the rest of the bread and jam he had refused.

"Miss. Please." The old man played for pity. She could be ruthless but it did not suit her, and he supposed he must look shriveled and senile as he lay bound before her. Her own dear father was somewhere tonight… but one had to be careful along that route. Across the room the cracked fragment of a mirror leaned upon a high shelf close to the chest of drawers, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to see himself in it. Besides…

Besides what? Something important had come and gone before he could grasp it. So much was gone, so much remaining was now jumbled, broken, useless, inside this savage persisting pain that felt as if it must deform his head. Anyhow she had called him old, and there was his gray hair twisting before his eyes. And he could see his own hands, and thought that they looked old. Wrinkled and gray-furred on the backs, yes, old-looking despite the strong long nails and the incongruous firm plumpness of the palms that so contrasted with the leanness of his wrists where they emerged from newly dirty cuffs.

"Why am I shackled, Miss? I have done no one any harm."

"You gets violent at times. Out 'o yer 'ead, so't' speak. That's why you 'as't' be restrained a bit." She had a relish for the jam that she was finishing, but not for lies.

He would now strike with the name, and see what magic wound he might inflict. "I hope devoutly, Sally, that…"

Right in the heart. She jumped up, chair almost toppling back, breadcrumbs scattering to the floor. " 'Ow'd you know my nyme?"

"Ah, my dear girl! I did not realize that your name was a secret, too. Do you know mine? It has been taken from me." Which was the all-too-painful truth.

Her face hung over him. Her fists were clenched. " 'Ow'd you know?"

He had seen and heard far too many real menaces to take this one very seriously. Her anger was not aimed at him, of course. "My dear… I had no wish to upset you. You have been kind to me. The others mentioned your name, with some laughter… as if there were some joke. But then, perhaps I am mistaken."

"Joke? Tell me wot joke!" She leaned over him, still trying to sound threatening. But one hand was now raised to conceal her disfigurement, in case the dark should fail her at close range.

"Perhaps I am mistaken, as I said. Perhaps, for all I know, it is mere accident that yours is the only name my caretakers have spoken freely. There is no reason, is there, why the names of my attendants should be secret?"

"Ow, damn them!" Sally fell back into her chair, muttering to herself, and perhaps not hearing the old man at the moment. "Damn all their ber-luddy eyes!"

"And the names of the doctor in charge, and his good wife?"

That caught Sally's attention back, and for a moment it seemed she might be going to utter a harsh laugh. "Huh! Wife? Not 'er!" Then the girl retreated abruptly into a silence so quick and accomplished that it must have been an habitual defense.

Now wait, the old man told himself. Wait for a little while before you push again. His brain still throbbed, distracting him with pain, refusing to yield his rightful memories. How could he plan or act? Yet he must do the best he could.

Presently, in this deep night that was to his eyes clear as brightest day, the girl got up and moved about the room. Standing for a moment by the window, she pulled the curtain back for a furtive, nervous peek, looking out blankly, not as if she really expected to see anything of importance. Then she went to the tall chest of drawers, fondled the candle in its holder for a moment, and put it down again. Next with decisive steps she left the room, to come back shortly, once more masked, and carrying a lighted oil lamp which she set on the tall chest. She moved the chair back closer to the light and, somewhat to the old man's surprise, extracted from her bag a small book. This she settled down to read.

"What are you reading, Sally?" Though he could see the faded printing on the cover: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Fair.

She raised her eyes to his some seconds before answering. "A long poem, like. A lady wrote it." She told him what the title was.

"And are the goblins in it terrible?"

"Oh, no sir." The "sir" seemed quite unconscious. "Least I don't think they are." Sally was on the verge of confiding more, but changed her mind, blanked her face, and dropped her eyes back to the safety of the printed page. She read with an occasional lip-movement, but well enough for all that, to judge from the deft shuttling of her eyes. Outside, the night was growing darker, and there came a hint of ozone in the air, even before the old man could hear the distant thunder. Still faintly audible were the two sets of his fellow prisoners' lungs, in nearby rooms—they sounded like two old men slowly dying.

"The word 'goblin,' " he remarked, "derives I believe from the Greek kobalos, and means 'rogue.' "

"Ah." Above Sal's mask her eyes came back to fasten on his face, as if unwillingly. "How old are you, Sally?"

"Turned seventeen last Easter. Look 'ere sir, you sure you don't want no tea?"

"Quite sure."

"And they spoke out my name, hey?" The book went down in her lap. "Wot'd they say?"

"Very little."

"Come on, wot?"

"That you were to stay with me, tonight." His voice was low and tired and patient. "And there was some indelicacy, which I should prefer not to repeat. And something, somehow, amused them—having a connection with your appearance, perhaps; I could not hear them clearly. I say, is there anything wrong? I'm sorry."

She had frozen in her chair, and under her mask there might now be a ghastly kind of smile. I have not said he was a kindly, good, benevolent old man.

At last the thunder of the approaching storm rolled near enough for her to hear it, and broke in upon her poisoned reverie. She glanced at the closed window, then back at the old man. And then back to her book.

He let her turn two pages. Then: "Sally, what lies behind that door?" When the girl looked up he indicated with a movement of his head the doubly padlocked portal.

"Ah, just some drugs an' medicines an' things." She was making up an answer to avoid being bothered by the question. Her deeper thoughts were elsewhere—without doubt, still brooding upon those vicious employers of hers who laughed at her blotched face. Now, how could she get back at them? Oh, he was not a considerate, truthful old man at all. But long-lived, yes indeed.

He asked: "No living thing is kept in there?"

She put her book down in her lap again, forefinger holding place. "Why, barrin' a mouse or a bug or two, I don't s'pose there's any. Kept, you say? Wot kind o' livin' thing?"

"Go listen at the door." The thunder grumbled closer. The giant Rat liked not the coming storm, and in between its atmospheric slams and rumbles the prisoner now and again perceived a huffing squeal that issued from no human throat.

Sally automatically started to get up, as if to do what the old man had bidden her. Then she caught herself.

"Ahh, it's the storm you're hearin'," she decided, and sat down. Still, in doing so, she unconsciously hitched her chair a little closer to the old man, though this caused the light to fall more dimly on her book.

Next time the thunder came he could hear, beneath her patched dress, the life pump more quickly through young veins and arteries. He thought: Look up, and her eyes lifted and were caught on his.

Ah, that old man could hypnotize, sometimes. But his broken memory made him uncertain of himself, and his powers of concentration were flawed by injury. More important, this particular young girl was quite reluctant to deliver her own will completely to another. She might have fought free of the softest, most enticing web he could have woven on his best day.

Still, in some corner of her heart, she must have welcomed this approach so much like wooing—even as, with a shake of her head, she spurned it. "Look 'ere, lemme get you another drink at least."

"That would be kind." And while she was out, this time, he turned his head and regurgitated, in a clear stream that vanished into the visual mosaic of that experienced floor, the small amount of water he had swallowed earlier.

This movement of his head, with neck stretched out as much as he could manage, dislocated the poor oilcloth pad from under his bruised skull. Sally's first instinct when she returned to him was to reach out and set this right; and when she leaned over the old man, his mind was dazzled by the soft throbbing in her slender throat of the great vessels there that tinged the fair skin blue above them.

She put the pad straight, and then remembered orders and stood back a step. "I wasn't to touch you, not your bed even. Very firm on that point, 'e was, and I shouldn't be surprised if 'e should 'ave some means o' tellin'."

"I would never betray one who sought to help me."

She stood there without answering, and held the glass of water for him as before.

He drank, as if it were a great boon, and lay back exhausted by the effort. "Thank you."

"Ah well. Now I's'pose I could hand yer the bedpan or bottle if y'wish. I've done a bit o' nursin' in me time."

"No thank you. Sally." He paused to look at her with yearning concentration. "You do have the kind hands of a nurse, I see. The body of a good graceful dancer. And that mask cannot hide your beauty from me."

"Ar," she said, and started looking round to see where she had left her book. She was quite good at not letting any feelings show. More than a decade she must have practiced that, since first she looked into a mirror with understanding.

"Of course I do not know your face. But what I mean is, even if you had no face at all, or if your face were far from what the world calls pretty, yet when I saw it your beauty would be just the same, unmarred for me."

Sally hardly hesitated as she turned away and went to where her book lay on the chair. The rain roared suddenly upon the nearby roofs. He let his tensed neck-sinews soften; his head lolled back upon the pad that she had straightened for him. Why oilcloth? Easy to clean? But nobody cared about that, as a rule.

And somewhere in his upper jaw a faintly delicious aching had begun. To be precise, the ache lay at two points, the toothroots of his canines. But the continuing skull pain soon squashed this interesting sensation jealously out of perception's range, continuing to hold for itself the center of the stage.

"I wish I had my memory intact," he said. "Then I could tell you the name of that great beauty… a certain girl I knew when I was young, who is recalled to me when I behold your youth and grace."

"Oh, sir." What with one thing and another, he had her upset now, enough so that she gave up trying to conceal it. Dismayed, angered, delighted all at once. She must have been aware with one part of her mind that he was telling her some wild tales, but she was greatly taken with them all the same.

The violinist's fingers warmed and flew. If his old brain had not been quite so traumatized, he could have found the precise words, the exactly right expression. The girl and victory should have been his, in full, before the muddy dawn came round. But as true history went, he had some fuddled moments, in which he lost his best line of attack. Unable to put off wondering who he was, he said to her: "Has none of them ever spoken my name in front of you?"

"No sir. I doubt they knows your name." Then she feared that she had said more than was prudent.

"Sally. If this unjust, cruel imprisonment must end in my death—if it must, then let it be my heart's last wish, that my eyes may behold your beauty near me, as they close." Oh yes, I know. But really it was not the words he said so much as the way he said them; nor even the way the old man said them, so much as the hunger of the girl who listened. And at the time and place of which I write, real men and women really entreated one another in these and similar terms. People were moved by words like these to weep real tears—as Sally wept that night, before the dawn. In the late twenty-first century we all—all of us who are still quick above the ground—shall marvel at the styles of speech and writing that we admired back in the twentieth.

"Sally, the keys."

"Oh, sir, I 'aven't got them, on my soul."

"But you know where they are."

"Oh, sir, I daren't even think of that. God, no!"

His head hurt, hurt, hurt. The storm blew past, the short hours of the summer night dragged with it. In inner thought, beneath his saintly victim's mask, he raged at the poor bedeviled girl who could not quite make up her mind.

Time was running out on that old man. "They mean to kill me, girl." It was a statement bald and true.

Books and all else forgotten, she alternately huddled in the chair and paced the floor. "I don't know that, sir. I do know wot they'll do't' me should I do aught to cross 'em. Lord!"

The little strength and wit that he had left were failing. Dawn was near, time running, running out. He heard the four-wheeler coming along the otherwise deserted street. He heard it long before Sally did, yet there was nothing more that he could do.