“Yes, Doctor. Oh, he is my enemy now, and I will hunt him down and kill him. but I found myself in a somewhat similar situation, that of the hunted vampire, about twelve years ago, on my first visit to britain, before I had met either you or my distinguished cousin.
“Perhaps I will someday tell you that story, Doctor.”
Ambrose Altamont, still denying the fact that his older daughter was truly dead at last, now assured us that his younger daughter, Rebecca, was only visiting a friend and would return at any hour.
Altamont’s back was bent now, like that of an old man. He peered at us timidly, and his voice and hands alike were quivering. “Surely becky will be back with us by this evening. Then we will have our next sitting. You gentlemen are welcome to attend.”
With our former client in this condition, and with Mrs. Altamont still prostrated by brain fever, there was obviously no point in our attempting any further explanations... either of vampires or on any other point. Instead, we nodded and smiled and said our good-byes, promising to call again, with good news, when we could.
At least, as I commented to Holmes a little later, Louisa’s parents had been spared the ultimate shock of being present when their daughter was staked as a vampire.
Mycroft was as good as his word, and with the benefit of his powerful though hidden influence, discreetly exercised, our expeditionary force was able to obtain, quickly and quietly, the use of a fast steamer for the journey to St. Petersburg. The vessel provided was in fact the private steam-yacht of one of the Sea Lords–I think that even now I had better not be more specific regarding the vessel’s ownership or the circumstances in which we obtained its use.
There had been some discussion of our using a naval vessel, but Holmes had promptly decided that would be inappropriate. “Owing to the essentially private nature of our business, a privately owned craft is preferable to a ship of His Majesty’s navy, which would inevitably attract attention, and would require some diplomatic prearrangement.”
Another advantage of a private ship was that she could stand by unobtrusively in the Russian port, ready to carry us on the return voyage–but haste in returning should not be necessary.
The craft we were privileged to obtain had engines similar to those of the new turbine-powered destroyers, capable of making more than thirty knots. Most naval vessels of the time could sustain no more like half that speed.
During our voyage, Count Kulakov’s motives and behavior were naturally the subject of intense discussion. So were those of Rebecca Altamont, the question being by what combination of force and guile she had been compelled to accompany him. Our party included Sherlock Holmes, Prince Dracula, Armstrong, and myself, as well as Sarah Kirkaldy, without whose genuine psychic capabilities we might never have been able to follow the escaping Kulakov with any accuracy.
While the Russian’s vampirish bloodlust had played a part in his behavior, obviously his prime motive in his attacks upon the Altamonts was–or had been–revenge. Even so, that left unexplained many details of his behavior. Nor was it very helpful simply to say that the man was mad, though that undoubtedly seemed to be the case. And there was still the matter of the mysterious treasure. Did that exist only in the fevered imagination of a deranged vampire?
“It will of course be difficult, or impossible, to arrest the man we seek, in Russia even more so than in England–but it would be useless to arrest him anywhere. Courts, fines, and imprisonment are meaningless threats to him. The only practical way to punish a vampire is by the application of direct physical violence.”
We could not but agree with Holmes.
At the same time, of course, Rebecca Altamont was making the voyage with Kulakov. We were sure that she must be in some sense his prisoner, though we could not say by what combination of threats, actual violence, and mesmeric power he might be forcing her to his will.
At one point Armstrong asked me whether becky, having made the voyage with her captor, would be unloaded in an earth-filled trunk, and whether she had been brought aboard his ship and spent most of the voyage thus confined. We all assured him that this was unlikely–unless Rebecca had already become a vampire. Such intimations as we could receive through the entranced mind of Sarah Kirkaldy indicated that this was not the case, but we could not be sure.
Our sea route to St. Petersburg took us through the North Sea, among the islands and peninsulas of Denmark, and past Copenhagen, with a brief stop there to see if a cable might have arrived from Mycroft–the wireless was not yet available on ships–before entering the baltic. Our journey in itself was almost completely uneventful, leaving us plenty of time for discussion of vampirism and related phenomena. I realized only belatedly that the favorable winds and generally calm seas we enjoyed were at least in part a result of Prince Dracula’s efforts in an occult way.
Whether Kulakov might be capable of exercising a similar influence upon the weather, we did not know; in any event, we gained a day or more on his ship during the voyage, so that we arrived at our destination only a day, perhaps only a few hours, after he did. We were elated to see that the ship on which Kulakov and his hostage had traveled–her name was plainly visible–was actually still at the quay, and in the process of unloading cargo, when we arrived in St. Petersburg. This was indeed an encouraging sign, showing that our enemy and his helpless hostage could as yet be at no very great distance from the city.
With our own vessel berthed, we disembarked amid dense fog and intermittent rain, conditions almost identical to those under which we had left Hull. Under Armstrong’s guidance we had little difficulty in finding our way about the Russian capital. Our party took rooms at the Hotel de l’Europe. Here our windows overlooked Nevsky Prospekt, the great boulevard which runs for two and a half miles through the city’s heart. When the fog cleared, which it soon did, the view was quite impressive. We saw the avenue thronged with people under black umbrellas, both of its sides lined by palaces and churches, by business establishments and government buildings of all sorts.
There were an amazing number of uniforms to be seen among the native populace, and no immediate way for the stranger to know which type of costume belonged to high officials and which to mere minor functionaries.
The hotel stood on the north side of the boulevard, less than half a mile east of the Kazan Cathedral, whose colonnade had been copied from that of St. Peter’s in Rome, and whose interior boasted the regimental flags and imperial eagles captured from the ravaged army of Napoleon. A block past the cathedral, one reached the luxurious shops of the Morskaya, where I almost thought I might have been in Paris.
Traffic here kept to the right, which added yet another minor strain to our difficulties.
A mile to our north and out of sight from our hotel, on the far bank of the broad Neva, there rose the sullen, dun-colored walls of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, at once a stronghold and a prison. Towering four hundred feet above those walls, and visible from most parts of the city, rose the slender golden spire marking the site of the cathedral contained within the fortress.
For three miles along the southern bank of the Neva ran a solid quay of pink Finnish granite, lined on its inland side by the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, the foreign embassies, and the palaces of the great nobles, and the wealthy merchants and landowners.
Currently the Russian capital was a city of about a million and a half people. This made it not as large as London, but still to be classified as one of the great cities of Europe and the world. And from the bustle of commerce along the quays, and the evident respect shown toward the monarchy by most of the people, it was plain that their Majesties Nicholas and Alexandra were still secure on their thrones, despite the continual ferment of terrorists seeking to incite revolution.
The Winter Palace, a huge and, as one might expect, an imposing edifice, built in the eighteenth century by the Empress Elizabeth, was seldom occupied by royalty at this season of the year. The Tsar and Tsarina, as Armstrong informed us, were in the habit of spending their summers at Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar’s village, a
