Slave Of Dracula (2 page)

“Just now, sir, when Hardy was takin’ him his supper.” Lang-more had acquired a lantern in one hand,
a strait-jacket rolled up under the other arm. The patient Renfield, though gray-haired, stood over six feet
tall and was built like an oak-tree.

“Bashed me up against the wall like I was a kid, sir,” added Hardy, stepping out the door behind
Seward. He was easily Ren-field’s size, towering over Seward’s five-feet-ten-inch slightness. The side of
his face was purpling where he’d been struck. “And him so quiet and gentlemanly-like.” He shrugged into
an oil-skin mac.

“Like I’s tellin’ you, Hardy.” Langmore shook his grizzled head. “It’s the quiet ones you gotta watch.
Sly, they is.” He glanced at Seward, like a soldier waiting for his captain to lead him to battle.

Seward took a deep breath. “Check along the wall by the road first,” he said. “Then check the east
wall. That’s the lowest, and in the worst repair. If he goes over there, he’ll just find him-self in the grounds
of Carfax. Thank God the place is deserted, and the house well-locked. Blow your whistles if you need
assis-tance.”

The two burly night attendants looked momentarily non-plussed as it sank in that Seward wasn’t going
to go with them, then took a second look at their employer’s dinner-jacket and polished shoes, and
nodded, belatedly putting two and two to-gether. Seward supposed, as they faded into the utter
darkness beyond the thin pools of gaslight from Rushbrook’s windows, that if they had even average
intelligence, they would have been able to find employment as something other than hired strong-men at a
madhouse.

Yet having dispatched them to an adventure he considered himself too well-dressed to participate in,
Seward found himself unable to simply return to the house. It was his duty to make sure Renfield got
back to his room in safety. He had branded himself already in his own eyes as a shirker by staying here
on the relatively dry rear step. He could not further betray his trust by settling down to a comfortable
dinner with the girl he loved while one of his patients was loose-the more so because he was fairly certain
that if Renfield wasn’t found, neither Langmore nor Hardy would interrupt him at his dinner a second
time.

Damn it. Seward fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette case. Curious, how the mad always had
such fiendish timing in their outbursts. As if they could tell which were the most important events
in the lives of those around them, and waited for the most utterly disruptive moment to make their
move.

Could they? he wondered. Did they have an extra sensitivity, an extra faculty o f observation?
He shivered, for the night was raw and bitterly cold. Everyone speaks of the connection be-tween
madness and artistic talent-do both states share roots in a greater capacity for perception o f
detail? He would, he reflected, have to write to his old teacher in Amsterdam about the matter. Van
Helsing was always fascinated by such connections.

His heart warmed a little at the thought of the sturdy old Dutchman, a pleasant recollection washed
away entirely by a gust of wind that blew rain over him, soaking the shoulders of his jacket.

So he might as well have gone out running through the mire after all.

Good God, what horrors was Hennessey telling Miss West-enra and her mother in his absence?

Lanterns flashed dimly through the trees, jogging up and down as if the men were running. They
vanished then, but Sew-ard’s jaw tightened. Along the eastern wall, then, which being built of large stones
rather than bricks made it far easier to climb. He strained his ears for the sound of the whistles. If
Ren-field got over the dilapidated barrier that divided Rushbrook’s park from that of Carfax, the
long-neglected estate immediately to the east, it could easily take them the rest of the night to lo-cate him.
Like Rushbrook, Carfax was an enormous house, but it was infinitely older and falling into ruin. When
first he’d come to Rushbrook, Seward had gone over the wall himself and as-certained that the old house
and its attendant chapel were at least tightly locked. An escapee would have had a hard time go-ing to
earth inside. But its park was a jungle, nearly twenty acres of overgrown groves and woods, mired with
standing pools around a small lake.

Damn, thought Seward again. Damn, damn, damn …

A fine future I have to offer poor Miss Westenra. What made me ever think she’d consider my
offer? He recalled his own in-ner smile when, a few days ago, his friend Quincey Morris had spoken to
him of his own adoration for the delicate blonde girl. Quincey was a stringy, awkward-handed Texan
whom Seward and the Honorable Arthur had met during their adventurous year of travel in the company
of the Honorable Uncle Harry. Arthur had invited Quincey to spend a season in London with him, and
though the Texan’s speech still bore the twang of the American plains, his manners were meticulously
good and his self-made fortune-in land, cattle, and Colorado gold-had made him mar-ginally acceptable
to a certain segment of the more impoverished Society mamas.

Though Seward liked Quincey enormously, he had never for a moment considered him genuine
competition for Lucy West-enra’s hand. He couldn’t imagine that lively, sociable girl agree-ing to go live
in a ranch-house in San Antonio, be it never so spacious and comfortable. The memory of his own
patronizing attitude sliced him now like a flaming whip: And you think she would be any more
likely to revel in “cozy” quarters in Rush-brook House, listening to the screaming of
the mad on still nights?

But the flare of hope was like a little white flame somewhere behind his sternum. She might …

And the memory of the scent of her hair, and the thoughtful pucker between those delicate brows,
warmed him again. She was an exceptional girl. He would assure her that this situation was only
temporary-

Darkness thickened in the darkness, first a bumbling outline, then a Laocoon that resolved itself into
three inter-tangled shapes, Renfield’s bowed gray head and enormous shoulders seeming to dominate the
attendants who walked on either side. All three were covered with mud. The lanterns had gone out.
Renfield was strait-jacketed and there was blood on Langmore’s lined face, but there was no suggestion
of violence now, only a kind of sly petu-lance in Renfield’s eyes as he was pushed into the reflected light
near the house.

“I’m not trouble,” he muttered, twisting his head to look down at Langmore. “I’m not trouble to
anyone.”

“If you’re not trouble, mate, I’d like to see what is,” retorted the little attendant. “But you come along
quiet, and we’ll go easy with you this time. Won’t even put you on the Swing, will we, Hardy?”

Renfield flinched at the mention of the Swing, something Seward noticed with annoyance. Hennessey
swore by the Swing, claiming that the motion of being swooped up and down blind-folded for hours
calmed the patients’ minds. In the six months he’d been Superintendant, it had not escaped Seward that
for all Hennessey’s claims of theraputic value, his colleague had only to threaten its use for most patients
to calm down immedi-ately, in terror at the nausea and disorientation the “calming” device produced.

“We’ll be kind to you, oh, yes,” agreed Hardy, with a bad–tempered look. “First one’s free, innit?”

“I’m not the one you should be looking for,” added Renfield, turning his head over his shoulder to
speak to the bigger atten-dant. “I’m not the one.”

“He did come along quiet, once we’d both laid hold on him, sor.” Langmore wiped the raindrops from
his eyes to look at Seward. “Gave us a nasty run, though. You want him in a crib for the rest of the
night?”

Seward, watching Renfield’s face, again saw the twitch of dread at mention of being locked into what
was to all intents and purposes a latticework metal coffin, barely the depth of a man’s breast or the width
of his shoulders. Unable to move, un-able to turn over, unable even to reach one arm across to scratch
an itch …

More humane than chaining, of course, but in Seward’s opin-ion, not much more. All very well to
go on about moral treat-ment, lad, Hennessey had said patronizingly, when Seward had begun
making changes in the House’s patient routines. You just see how your “moral treatment”
answers when you’ve got some foaming mooncalf coming at you swinging his bed
round his head like a club. You’ll be putting those wall-rings back into the cells quick
enough.

He pushed the soaked hair out of his eyes. “No, take him to his room and strap him to his cot. I’ll be
along in a moment and give him some chloral hydrate. He should sleep through ’til morning. Once you’ve
done that, please go on back to the dining-room. I’m sure Simmons and Mr. Blaine need your help.”

Langmore’s grin was wry. “Like nuthin’ never happened, sor.”

“Exactly.” Seward shivered with the cold, and crushed out his cigarette on the wet stone of the
doorstep as he turned back to his recaptured patient. Standing on the step, he was at eye level with the
bigger man. Dark blue eyes, Seward noted again, under an almost anthropoid shelf of brow. Though
Renfield’s hair was graying, his heavy eyebrows were still nearly black. “Mr. Renfield, your family-and
you yourself-have been as-sured that there’s nothing to fear from me or from anyone else at Rushbrook
House. Why did you flee?”

Under the dripping brows, the muck-plastered hair, the dark blue gaze was calm and altogether sane.
“My question,” Ren-field replied, “is, Why do you not?”

***

Lucy got quickly to her feet as Seward came back into the dining-room, and would have crossed to
him in the pantry doorway had not her mother halted her with a glare. The girl hesitated, napkin still in
hand, then asked, “Is everything all right? Did they find the poor man?”

“‘Course they did, acusbla.” Dr. Hennessey jovially lifted his glass to Seward in a mock toast. “Told

you they would. That Langmore has a nose on him like a bloodhound. And he’s a good tracker besides!”
And he relapsed into gales of inebriated chortles of appreciation at his own jest.

Across the curdled remains of the fish course, which had not been removed in the nearly seventy-five
minutes that had elapsed since Langmore’s hesitant summons, Mrs. Westenra regarded Seward with a
gaze like frozen slag.

“My dear Mrs. Westenra!” Seward cried, identifying the im-mediate priority in the situation, “I am most
terribly sorry! I in-structed Simmons to carry on in my absence. I cannot imagine what happened . . .” He
held Lucy’s chair for her as she re-seated herself. “Yes, Miss Westenra, to answer your question, the
patient was brought back safely and unhurt. I’ve just come now from giving him a sedative injection . . .”

And changing into gray tweeds that looked hopelessly out of place next to Hennessey’s rumpled and
straining dinner clothes, and the expensive silks of the two ladies.

“You don’t actually let your patients roam loose about the house, as Dr. Hennessey said?” Lucy looked
timidly up over her shoulder at Seward. “Do you?” To her left, Hennessey grinned drunkenly and winked.

When Langmore and Simmons brought in the Hindle Wakes-a German specialty slightly beyond
Cook’s skills-the chicken was stone cold and the lemon-cream sauce had separated.

The rest of the dinner proceeded in silence.

“I told you how it would be, Lucy,” Seward heard Mrs. Westenra’s voice as their carriage pulled away.
“I doubt that even that absurd American would have subjected you to . . .”

Rain, darkness, and the sloppy squish of hooves and wheels obliterated the rest. Seward quietly closed
the door, made his night rounds of the thirty-six lost souls under his charge-most of them sleeping heavily
under the calming magic of laudanum, chloral hydrate, or tincture of Cannabis indica-then returned to
his room, to dictate the account of Renfield’s escape and re-capture into the phonographic daybook.
That chore accom-plished, the entire fiasco of the dinner-party began to unfurl itself, like infinitely
repeating performances of a bad play, across his mind. Of course there had been no question of asking
Lucy’s mother for her daughter’s hand after deserting her to Hen-nessey’s company.

I’ll be in London Tuesday, he told himself. I shall send a note to their house on Chatham Street,
call on them. They aren’t leaving for Whitby until next week. There is still time to speak to her,
still time to ask her–

Plans for the future produced more anxiety, if anything, than a review of the immediate past. At last,
Seward went downstairs to the dark dispensary, made up an injection of chloral hydrate for himself, and
returning to his room, joined Renfield and the others in the relief of oblivion and dreams.

***

Renfield felt the cold, heard the howling of the wolves long be-fore the rest of the dream came into
focus.

He shivered. He had always hated cold, always hated the bleak chill of London, the gray dreary

wintertides in Notting-ham after the thick heat and riotous color of India. Since his return from half a
lifetime in the East, the sounds of England had seemed harsh to him, like dropped money clanking on
stone. Clattering carriages, rattling shoe-heels, nattering nasal voices, after the slower rhythms, the
multifarious voices of bird-calls, the eternal hum of insects.

His dream was a dream of silence. The silence of the dead.

It was raining there, too, a bitter whisper against stone walls. Renfield saw firelight, like handfuls of
jewels, nearly lost in an immense hearth whose overmantle was supported by carved grotesques,
wolf-faces whose shadow-cloaked grins mocked the young man imprisoned in that unknown room.
Renfield knew he was a prisoner because he saw him try the door, not once but many times-saw him
pace like a caged animal, as he himself, Renfield reflected, had paced for days now in his cell. When the
young man came near the hearth, he saw his face, hollow and haunted under a tumbled shock of dark
hair.

Saw his breath, a whisper of flame-dyed smoke when he walked more than a stride or two from the
fire.