Dracula
even at this moment if it were best. Nay, were it safe! But my
child----” For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his
throat; he gulped it down and went on:--
“There are here some who would stand between you and death. You must not
die. You must not die by any hand; but least of all by your own. Until
the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not
die; for if he is still with the quick Un-Dead, your death would make
you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to
live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. You must fight Death
himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy; by the day, or the
night; in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you
do not die--nay, nor think of death--till this great evil be past.” The
poor dear grew white as death, and shock and shivered, as I have seen a
quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide. We were all
silent; we could do nothing. At length she grew more calm and turning to
him said, sweetly, but oh! so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand:--
“I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall
strive to do so; till, if it may be in His good time, this horror may
have passed away from me.” She was so good and brave that we all felt
that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we
began to discuss what we were to do. I told her that she was to have all
the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we
might hereafter use; and was to keep the record as she had done before.
She was pleased with the prospect of anything to do--if “pleased” could
be used in connection with so grim an interest.
As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was
prepared with an exact ordering of our work.
“It is perhaps well,” he said, “that at our meeting after our visit to
Carfax we decided not to do anything with the earth-boxes that lay
there. Had we done so, the Count must have guessed our purpose, and
would doubtless have taken measures in advance to frustrate such an
effort with regard to the others; but now he does not know our
intentions. Nay, more, in all probability, he does not know that such a
power exists to us as can sterilise his lairs, so that he cannot use
them as of old. We are now so much further advanced in our knowledge as
to their disposition that, when we have examined the house in
Piccadilly, we may track the very last of them. To-day, then, is ours;
and in it rests our hope. The sun that rose on our sorrow this morning
guards us in its course. Until it sets to-night, that monster must
retain whatever form he now has. He is confined within the limitations
of his earthly envelope. He cannot melt into thin air nor disappear
through cracks or chinks or crannies. If he go through a doorway, he
must open the door like a mortal. And so we have this day to hunt out
all his lairs and sterilise them. So we shall, if we have not yet catch
him and destroy him, drive him to bay in some place where the catching
and the destroying shall be, in time, sure.” Here I started up for I
could not contain myself at the thought that the minutes and seconds so
preciously laden with Mina’s life and happiness were flying from us,
since whilst we talked action was impossible. But Van Helsing held up
his hand warningly. “Nay, friend Jonathan,” he said, “in this, the
quickest way home is the longest way, so your proverb say. We shall all
act and act with desperate quick, when the time has come. But think, in
all probable the key of the situation is in that house in Piccadilly.
The Count may have many houses which he has bought. Of them he will have
deeds of purchase, keys and other things. He will have paper that he
write on; he will have his book of cheques. There are many belongings
that he must have somewhere; why not in this place so central, so quiet,
where he come and go by the front or the back at all hour, when in the
very vast of the traffic there is none to notice. We shall go there and
search that house; and when we learn what it holds, then we do what our
friend Arthur call, in his phrases of hunt ‘stop the earths’ and so we
run down our old fox--so? is it not?”
“Then let us come at once,” I cried, “we are wasting the precious,
precious time!” The Professor did not move, but simply said:--
“And how are we to get into that house in Piccadilly?”
“Any way!” I cried. “We shall break in if need be.”
“And your police; where will they be, and what will they say?”
I was staggered; but I knew that if he wished to delay he had a good
reason for it. So I said, as quietly as I could:--
“Don’t wait more than need be; you know, I am sure, what torture I am
in.”
“Ah, my child, that I do; and indeed there is no wish of me to add to
your anguish. But just think, what can we do, until all the world be at
movement. Then will come our time. I have thought and thought, and it
seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all. Now we wish to get
into the house, but we have no key; is it not so?” I nodded.
“Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could
not still get in; and think there was to you no conscience of the
housebreaker, what would you do?”
“I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the
lock for me.”
“And your police, they would interfere, would they not?”
“Oh, no! not if they knew the man was properly employed.”
“Then,” he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, “all that is in doubt is
the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to
whether or no that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. Your
police must indeed be zealous men and clever--oh, so clever!--in reading
the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No, no, my
friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty house in this
your London, or of any city in the world; and if you do it as such
things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done,
no one will interfere. I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine
house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland
and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and
got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out
and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he
have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice;
and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of
that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him
that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away
within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all
they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland
he find only an empty hole where his house had been. This was all done
_en règle_; and in our work we shall be _en règle_ too. We shall not go
so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem
it strange; but we shall go after ten o’clock, when there are many
about, and such things would be done were we indeed owners of the
house.”
I could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of Mina’s
face became relaxed a thought; there was hope in such good counsel. Van
Helsing went on:--
“When once within that house we may find more clues; at any rate some of
us can remain there whilst the rest find the other places where there be
more earth-boxes--at Bermondsey and Mile End.”
Lord Godalming stood up. “I can be of some use here,” he said. “I shall
wire to my people to have horses and carriages where they will be most
convenient.”
“Look here, old fellow,” said Morris, “it is a capital idea to have all
ready in case we want to go horsebacking; but don’t you think that one
of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of
Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our purposes?
It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east; and
even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we are going to.”
“Friend Quincey is right!” said the Professor. “His head is what you
call in plane with the horizon. It is a difficult thing that we go to
do, and we do not want no peoples to watch us if so it may.”
Mina took a growing interest in everything and I was rejoiced to see
that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the
terrible experience of the night. She was very, very pale--almost
ghastly, and so thin that her lips were drawn away, showing her teeth in
somewhat of prominence. I did not mention this last, lest it should give
her needless pain; but it made my blood run cold in my veins to think of
what had occurred with poor Lucy when the Count had sucked her blood. As
yet there was no sign of the teeth growing sharper; but the time as yet
was short, and there was time for fear.
When we came to the discussion of the sequence of our efforts and of the
disposition of our forces, there were new sources of doubt. It was
finally agreed that before starting for Piccadilly we should destroy the
Count’s lair close at hand. In case he should find it out too soon, we
should thus be still ahead of him in our work of destruction; and his
presence in his purely material shape, and at his weakest, might give us
some new clue.
As to the disposal of forces, it was suggested by the Professor that,
after our visit to Carfax, we should all enter the house in Piccadilly;
that the two doctors and I should remain there, whilst Lord Godalming
and Quincey found the lairs at Walworth and Mile End and destroyed them.
It was possible, if not likely, the Professor urged, that the Count
might appear in Piccadilly during the day, and that if so we might be
able to cope with him then and there. At any rate, we might be able to
follow him in force. To this plan I strenuously objected, and so far as
my going was concerned, for I said that I intended to stay and protect
Mina, I thought that my mind was made up on the subject; but Mina would
not listen to my objection. She said that there might be some law matter
in which I could be useful; that amongst the Count’s papers might be
some clue which I could understand out of my experience in Transylvania;
and that, as it was, all the strength we could muster was required to
cope with the Count’s extraordinary power. I had to give in, for Mina’s
resolution was fixed; she said that it was the last hope for _her_ that
we should all work together. “As for me,” she said, “I have no fear.
Things have been as bad as they can be; and whatever may happen must
have in it some element of hope or comfort. Go, my husband! God can, if
He wishes it, guard me as well alone as with any one present.” So I
started up crying out: “Then in God’s name let us come at once, for we
are losing time. The Count may come to Piccadilly earlier than we
think.”
“Not so!” said Van Helsing, holding up his hand.
“But why?” I asked.
“Do you forget,” he said, with actually a smile, “that last night he
banqueted heavily, and will sleep late?”
Did I forget! shall I ever--can I ever! Can any of us ever forget that
terrible scene! Mina struggled hard to keep her brave countenance; but
the pain overmastered her and she put her hands before her face, and
shuddered whilst she moaned. Van Helsing had not intended to recall her
frightful experience. He had simply lost sight of her and her part in
the affair in his intellectual effort. When it struck him what he said,
he was horrified at his thoughtlessness and tried to comfort her. “Oh,
Madam Mina,” he said, “dear, dear Madam Mina, alas! that I of all who so
reverence you should have said anything so forgetful. These stupid old