The West End Horror (15 page)

“What do you propose, then?”

He looked at his watch in the light of the street lamp. “A little past eight,” he noted. “The theatres are busy. Would you care to accompany me on an excursion, Doctor?”

“An excursion? Where?”

“Number Fourteen Porkpie Lane, Soho.”

“To Bram Stoker’s flat?”

“
We
are going to burgle
it?”

“
If you’ve no objection.”

“None whatever. But why, if you reject my theory, does the place interest you?”

“We have no choice in view of recent developments–” he gestured with a crooked thumb in the general direction of the jail–“but to eliminate even the outside suspects in this matter. I can emerge with no theory of my own, and Stoker taunts us like an apparitiorn, Perhaps we can exorcise his influence on our thinking. For this purpose I have brought a bull’s-eye and some keys whiich may be useful to us. Are you coming? Good. Cab!”

The cab took us into a
part
of the West End with which I was not familiar. We threaded our way at first through well, if garishly lit neighbourhoods, listening to raucous laughter and tinny music, and then passed into an area where even the occasional street lamp proviided scant illumination. Looking about in the gloom, I felt little inclined to remain in one place and did not like the thought of being stranded there. Not many folk were about in this quarter of the town; at any rate, not many were visible, but I sensed them behind windows, around corners, and in the menacing shadows of buildings. Our cab was obviously a novelty in the vicinity, a distinction keenly felt by the driver, who I could hear muttering an unceasing string of maledictioins above us. The horse’s hooves echoed eerily on the deserted cobblestones.

Number
14
Porkpie Lane was a three-storey affair which looked positively squeezed between its neighbours, two seedy constructions on either side of
it.
Somewhat taller, they leaned towards one another over the roof of number
14
, creating a vise-like impression.

“Which is
it?”
I asked, looking up at the queer structure.

“On the second storey, in. the middle. The window’s dark, as you can see. It has a lititle ledge beneath
it.”

“Someone thought of putting a balcony there once.”

“Very likely.”

We descended from the cab and made arrangements with the unwilling driver to cone back in an hour and fetch us home. He was not loath to go, and I could not blame him, for the setting was not in any way appealing. I only hoped he would prove as good as his word and return.

We waited in the shadows of the nearest edifice until the horse had clattered ‘round the corner. Then, looking carefully about, Holmes produced a latchkey from his pocket and held it up to the faint light.

“A very useful item, this,” said he softly. “I had it from Tony O’Hara, the sneak thief, when I nabbed him. You recall the case, Watson? It was a sort of parting gift, an entire ring of these little beauties. Each will tackle a great many simple locks of the same make. If one fails, you have only to move ‘round the ring.”

“You chose only two this night,” I pointed out as he inserted the key in the front door lock and began to fiddle and twist with it. “How did you know which to bring?”

“By examining the locks this afternoon,”

“I had no idea you were so adept at breaking and entering.”

“Quite adept,” he replied cheerfully, “and always ready in a good cause. It is always the cause that justifies little felonies such as these.” His eyes twinkled in the dark.
“L’homine c’est rien, l’oeuvre c’est tout.
Come along, Watson.”

The lock had yielded to his gentle ministrations, and now the door opened before us, the small passage on the other side of it leading instantly to a rickety flight of stairs. We ascended without hesitation, judging that the less time we spent exposed to view, the safer we should be. I looked about as we climbed, wondering what sort of place it was.

A
step or two behind me on the stair, the detective read my thoughts. “It’s a sort of boarding house of the kind that caters to transient characters,” he informed me. “Keep moving.”

It took rather more time to open the door to the flat, but after some delicate manipulations, this obstacle was also overcome and we found ourselves in the private sanctuary of Bram Stoker.

Holmes opened the bull’s-eye, and we surveyed the small room.

“Not suffused with romance,” he commented drily, holding the lantern high above his head and turning slowly. The room, though shabby, was nonetheless neat and spare. There were only three articles of furniture to be seen: a desk, chair, and small day bed. On the desk was a lone inkwell and a blotter. The cracked and peeling walls boasted not a single picture nor decoration of any sort.

“Scarcely a trysting place,” I agreed, looking at Holmes.

He grunted by way of reply and moved towards the desk. “I begin to see the logic of it, Watson. Our Mr. Stoker’s secret mistress is the muse of literature. But why all the circumspection?” He sat down before the desk, setting the lantern on top of it, and began pulling open drawers. I advanced behind him and looked over his shoulder as he drew forth bundles of paper covered with small, neat, surprisingly feminine handwriting.

“Have a look at some of this.” He passed me a sheaf, and I began to read, standing next to him for want of a chair or other source of light. The man had apparently copied out a series of letters, extracts from diaries and personal notes written or exchanged among people named Jonathan Harker, Lucy Westenra, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Arthur Holmwood, and Mina Murray.

“This must be some sort of novel,” Holmes intoned softly, bent over a portion of it.

“A novel? Surely not.”

“Yes, a novel, written in the form of letters and journals. Does nothing strike you about the name Jonathan Harker?”

“I suppose it vaguely resembles Stoker’s real name.”

“Vaguely? It contains precisely the number of syllables, and they are distributed between Christian and surnames in exactly the same manner. Stoker and Harker are almost identical, and Jonathan and Abraham are culled from the same source, the Bible. Harker must be his literary self.”

“Why, then, is there a Doctor
Abraham
Van Helsing?” I asked, showing him the name. He read it, frowning.

“Name games, name games,” he murmured. “Obviously that part of my assumption was incorrect–or at any rate incomplete.” He continued reading, turning over the pages of the manuscript in an orderly fashion, his lips pursed with concentration.

“Look at this,” he said after the space of a few minutes’ silence. I returned from an idle tour of the room and read over his shoulder again:

“Great heavens!” I exclaimed, looking up and passing a hand before my eyes. “This is depraved.”

“And this.” He set down another passage before me;

“. . . and you are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin; my bountiful wine press for a while.” He then pulled open the shirt with his long, sharp nails, and opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I might either suffocate or swallow some of the –oh, my God, what have I done?

“Holmes, what sort of mad work is this?”

“No wonder he writes in secrecy,” the detective remarked, looking up. “Have you noticed anything else?”

‘What do you mean?”

“Only that our Mr. Stoker knows how to induce swallowing.” I looked at the two passages again, and we stared at each other, horror written on our faces.

“Can we have been forced to drink blood?” I whispered in awed tones.

Before he could answer, we were both made aware of the clip-clop of horse’s hooves entering the lane.

“The cab’s not due back yet,” Holmes observed, snapping shut the bull’s-eye and plunging the room into darkness. He peered through the shutters into the street. “Great Scott! It’s
he!”

“The cabbie?”

“Stoker!”

“Hurry, Watson.” Rapidly Holmes assembled the papers and replaced them in the drawers from which he had taken them. As we heard the cab door slam in the stillness, he leapt to the door of the flat and locked it from within.

“But, Holmes–”

“The balcony, man! Quick!”

In less time than it takes to report, we threw open the window and passed out on to the precarious ledge, closing the shutters behind us as Stoker’s heavy tread became audible on the stair.

“Don’t look down,” were my companion’s last
instructions
as we flattened ourselves against the building wall and awaited further developments.

We had not long to wait. Within seconds of our gaining tenuous positions of safety, the door to the flat was reopened and Stoker entered the room. He closed and locked the door behind him, then proceeded to his desk, lit the gas, and pulled open the drawers. He took out pens, fresh paper, and what he had already written, spent some minutes ordering his materials, but did not appear to notice anything amiss. Without further preamble he settled down to work on his ghastly manuscript.

How long we stood on that slender shelf, clutching the bottom of the window frame for support, it is difficult to say. The moon had risen, pinning us like specimens beneath an observation light. We dared not move, for we were so near the clandestine novelist that our merest sound was certain to excite his suspicions. As the time passed and we prayed for the return of our cab, our hands, even in their gloves, began to lose sensation. The stillness around us was broken only by an occasional cough from within.

After what seemed a year, the silence was abruptly shattered by the hoofbeats of another horse. Holmes and I exchanged looks, and he signed for me to peer under the shutters. I did so and was able to discern the bending author in pursuit of his story, happily indifferent to any disturbance outside his mad world. I looked again at Holmes, indicating with a blink of my eyes that all was well, and he gestured with a free hand, explaining that we must jump on to the roof of the cab as it stopped underneath.

The poor cabby entered the alley nervously and looked about. Holmes signalled from our perch above and waved him over, placing a finger on his lips in a theatrical plea for silence. The man appeared quite dumbfounded by the sight of us hanging, as it were, from the moon but responded to the detective’s repeated gesticulations and moved the vehicle hesitantly forward. When he had arranged the cab’s position perfectly, we lowered ourselves gingerly to the roof before him, making but little noise in the process.

When we had landed, Holmes clapped the cabby on the back in a grateful embrace. “Baker Street,” he urged quietly, and we returned to our lodgings, leaving the fiendish Mr. Stoker to his queer literary efforts.

“Your theory has had another hole punched in it,” Holmes remarked as we climbed the seventeen steps to our rooms. “Bram Stoker’s secret lair is used for his writing, not his rendezvous, given that his pastime is one of which his family and employer disapprove.”

“I can see why,” I acknowledged. “But what about the passages in the book–the ones in which folk are compelled to drink–?”

“I was thinking about them on our way back,” he returned, stopping on the stair. “You will find that if you wish to induce swallowing, there is only one way to go about it. No, Watson, I am afraid matters have come to a very serious pass. We might wish Bram Stoker to be our man, but he is not–no more than is that miserable wretch Lestrade has arrested. The only difference between them,” he added, opening the door, “is that if we cannot find the true murderer, Achmet Singh will hang. Hullo! Who is here? Why, it’s young Hopkins!”

It was indeed the sandy-haired policeman, who was just being shown to a chair by our landlady as we entered. He rose awkwardly at once and explained that Mrs. Hudson had told him he might wait for us there.

“Quite right, Mrs. Hudson,” Holmes assured her, interrupting her flow of oratory on the subject. “I know that you don’t like policemen standing about in your parlour.”

The long-suffering woman referred briefly to the strange goings-on of late (by which she meant, I knew, Holmes’s appearance in disguise that afternoon) and withdrew.

“Now, then, Hopkins,” Holmes began as soon as the door had closed, “what brings you to Baker Street at an hour when most off-duty policemen are at home, resting their feet? I perceive that your route here has been a circuitous one and that you have taken great pains to avoid being seen.”

“Heavens, sir, how can you tell that?”

“My dear young man, you have divested yourself of every vestige of your police uniform, which means you probably stopped at home first. And then, look at your trouser leg. There must be seven different splashes there, each evidently from a different part of town. I believe I recognise some mud from Gloucester Road, the cement they are using at the Kensington–”