feel the painful though harmless flick of a silver bullet between my ribs. If he does that, I thought, I shall turn back and insert his bullet, if I can recover it, into his own anatomy at some painful and inconvenient place. But he did nothing, and I betook myself to my newly acquired house to gaze over the moonlit trees of the Green Park toward Victoria's palace and think my foolish thoughts. A war, then, was inevitable. But how was I to fight it?
When Van Helsing rejoined his companions on the following day he told them that he had seen nothing during his dangerous vigil, and let it go at that. Free as he was with words, he was a close-mouthed scoundrel whenever it came to giving out hard facts to people who worked with him or tried to do so. But he must have been wondering how much I actually knew about those failed operations of his on the Continent and in what way I might use my knowledge to embarrass him. Needless to say, I would have done so if I could, but had no specifics to make known nor any way of quickly finding them out.
What Van Helsing did do on that day was gather his troops for another expedition to the Westenra tomb. This time he enlisted not only Seward, but Arthur Holmwood-who had now become Lord Godalming, by reason of his father's recent death-and the American, Quincey Morris. In a pep talk the professor assured them all-I am not making this up, you will find it in Seward's diary!-that there was a 'grave duty' to be done. And some have called Van Helsing a humorless man! Well, he was, but only when he tried to joke.
Naturally they all agreed to accompany him, though so far only Seward could have had any inkling of just what the 'grave duty' was likely to involve. As far as the others knew, Lucy was simply though unhappily dead.
'I have been curious,' Arthur protested after some discussion in Van Helsing's hotel room, 'as to what you mean. Quincey and I have talked it over; but the more we talked the more puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm up a tree as to any meaning about anything.'
Nor was he to be rapidly enlightened. The professor strung them all along with earnest pleas for their continued trust, enlivened with hints that Lucy might stand in some vague danger of hell-fire-I think Arthur almost hit him at one point-or that she might not have been dead-exactly-when she was buried. It was a masterly performance by a compelling personality, and Van Helsing not only avoided being punched but in a little while had reduced the three younger men to a state that I can only describe as quietly submissive hysteria. Thus he got them out to the graveyard once again, on the night of September twenty-eighth.
After finding Lucy's ravaged coffin empty-again-the four men left what Seward called 'the terror of that vault' for the fresh air outside. There Van Helsing got down to business. As Seward's diary has it:
First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, waferlike biscuit, which were carefully rolled up in a white napkin; next he took out a double handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands… rolling it into thin strips, he began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. I asked him… what he was doing.
He answered: 'I am closing the tomb so that the Un-Dead may not enter.'
'And is that stuff you have got there going to do it?' asked Quincey. 'Great Scott! Is this a game?'
'It is.'
'What is that which you are using?' This time the question was by Arthur.
Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered: 'The host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an indulgence.' It was an answer that appalled the most skeptical of us.
And should have had a similar effect on the most knowledgeable and reverent. The scoundrel! An indulgence, indeed! As if any worthy priest would have pretended to be able to give him such to carry on his superstitious nonsense. At any rate, after an aching wait the men saw amid the gloom of distant trees 'a white figure' carrying a small child. This form at last came close enough to be recognized as:
Lucy Westenra, but how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out… the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide: by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood.
Although the child, as Van Helsing later admitted, was 'not much harm.'
When Lucy-I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape-saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's eyes in form and color, but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing: had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.
Lucy flung down her victim-her plaything, rather, that she had grabbed up in her addled state-and gazed on Arthur, the lover she still tenderly remembered. Then 'with outstretched arms and a wanton smile' she advanced on him, whereupon 'he fell back and hid his face in his hands.'
She still came forward, however, saying in 'diabolically sweet' tones: 'Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!'
On hearing this appeal Arthur 'seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix.' Angered by this meddling which followed her beyond the grave, and I suppose utterly dismayed by Arthur's meek submission to it, Lucy 'recoiled, and with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.' But her wish to gain that shelter was thwarted by Van Helsing's putty, which doubtless contained an admixture of garlic.
She turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which now had no quiver from Van Helsing's iron nerves… the beautiful color became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, bloodstained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death-if looks could kill-we saw it at that moment.
Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur 'Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?'
Arthur threw himself on his knees and hid his face in his hands as he answered: 'Do as you will… there can be no horror like this ever anymore.'
This agreement extracted, Van Helsing took some of his paste from the tomb's door.
We all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice where scarce a knifeblade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door.
The professor and his acolytes went home then for a much-needed rest. But next afternoon all were back, and when the churchyard was otherwise deserted they went into the busy tomb-'Arthur trembling like an aspen'-and opened Lucy's coffin for the fifth time since her interment.
Van Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then a small oil lamp, which… burned at fierce heat with a blue flame; then his operating knives, which he placed to hand; and last a wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor's preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation.
His bracing preparations finished, Van Helsing found time for another speech, leading to the conclusion that Lucy's forthcoming impalement was bound to make her ultimately happy, as it meant the termination of her hellish vampire life and it would be most intensely joyful for her if accomplished by 'the hand of him that loved her best; the hand of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose… tell me if there be such a one among us.'
All looked at Arthur, who, now thoroughly brainwashed by the old sadist, stepped forward bravely. Van Helsing quickly gave directions.
Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together until the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered… his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it; the sight of it gave us courage so that our
