at least into the kitchen or scullery. Certainly a distant crash of falling furniture and crockery indicated that the party was getting out of hand.
Rasputin, however, plainly preferred to keep his distance from such goings-on. Though a peasant and a mystic, he moved upon a different plane from gypsies with their innocuous spells and love potions. He said to Kulakov: “Where hast thou been, my friend? I have not seen thee for months.”
Kulakov: “I have been to England. I told thee months ago that I was going there.”
Rasputin said something that neither I (nor Cousin Sherlock, who as you will see was also eavesdropping) could clearly hear.
“–I told you, Little Father, that there were people in England who had robbed me. I went to get back what was mine. Also, to make them pay for what they did to me.”
Rasputin: “That was not what I advised thee to do. Dost thou love God, Alexander Ilyich?”
“I need help, Gregory Efimovich. Help me. The bad dreams have come back, and I have trouble sleeping, and my neck hurts all the time.”
The holy man told his patient sit in the soft chair where I had been. “Consider the sun and stars, and He who made them. The pain will go. And the dreams, also. I see that thou art worried. but nothing in life is worth worrying over–it all passes.”
Kulakov, the murderous vampire, as if drifting toward sleep, murmured something in a soft, childlike voice.
Then Rasputin spoke again: “Tell me about this treasure thou sayest is lost. What is there about it that is so important?”
And Kulakov, under deep hypnosis, told Rasputin word for word what had passed between himself and Doll, back in 1765.
There, I have told some of it. Almost the worst part, though that is yet to come. I must rest. Watson...
The voices spoke in Russian, and of course I could make nothing of them. but for Holmes, the matter was quite different.
Of course at the moment our immediate problem was not to interpret a conversation held in Russian, but to convey Rebecca Altamont safely out of the house. We had garbed the young woman first in a robe over her nightdress, then a light summer coat, chosen from a wardrobe not occupied by a chloroformed maid. We had put slippers on Miss Altamont’s feet and had got her standing beside the bed. Then, despite her continued mumbled protests, we cajoled and led and half-carried her out of the room and halfway down the hall.
We had just rounded the last turn of the dim hallway before the stair when the sound of voices and the sight of figures just ahead forced us to pause, and seek concealment in a kind of niche containing the closed door of another room. As we were coming out of a bedroom like kidnappers, we chose not to try to brazen out the threatened encounter.
So far, the doors in this part of the hall had fortunately remained closed. Still, we could not remain indefinitely where we were, nor could we reach the stairway without passing directly in front of the large alcove where Rasputin and Kulakov were having their strange confrontation. I now observed that the alcove also contained some nameless lady of the Russian nobility, whose elegantly gowned form was lying senseless upon a bearskin rug. both of the men ignored her completely. I could see her stir at intervals, a movement suggesting that at any moment she might regain sufficient consciousness to complicate our situation even further.
In this awkward situation, Holmes and I exchanged whispered comments. Neither of us could understand what might have happened to Prince Dracula, who had supposedly been on guard in the very alcove where Kulakov and the strange-looking peasant were now conversing.
We were forced to the conclusion that in one way or another, the prince must have been put at least temporarily out of action.
Within a few moments–though the time seemed vastly longer– Holmes succeeded in somehow positively identifying a figure visible through a distant window, silhouetted against a brightening eastern sky. It appeared that our ally was now standing, strangely motionless and facing outward, upon a balcony on the next floor up. If Kulakov and his companion were aware that anyone was on the balcony, they paid that motionless figure no attention.
Shaking my head, I whispered: “What shall we do? Dracula stands like one mesmerized.”
“That must be it!”
And we realized further that the rising sun, due to appear in a few minutes, must destroy our comrade in arms. The balcony faced the east, where the orb of day would soon appear out of the endless bulk of enigmatic Asia.
Clearly we could not allow this, if there was any way to prevent it, and Holmes whispered as much to me. Hastily we worked out a plan between us. While I remained with our young charge, supporting her, still dazed and uncooperative, on her feet, Holmes walked boldly forward–there was no other way to reach the stair or climb to the level of the balcony where the prince stood so serenely poised to watch the sunrise.
To judge by the growing brightness of the eastern sky, dawn could not be more than a minute or two away– the sun never goes very far below St. Petersburg’s horizon at this season of the year. And today, for once, the morning promised to be cloudless.
The two men in the alcove at the end of the hall looked up sharply as Holmes approached. but his walk had altered, become the light, obsequious tread of a servant, and it must have seemed to them that a dark-clad footman or waiter had gone by with averted face.
Evidently Kulakov had not recognized his own former prisoner. Still, something about the briskly moving figure apparently jarred the former pirate into suspicions regarding his present hostage. Mumbling inaudibly, moving slowly at first, he started out of the alcove–glanced up the stair after Holmes, shook his head as if in doubt–then turned again, proceeding straight down the central hallway in the direction of the room where Miss Altamont had been confined. by good fortune, he had chosen the other branch of corridor from the one where she and I were waiting.
My opportunity, as I saw it, had come, and I did my best to take advantage of it. Quickly I resumed my efforts to persuade Rebecca to walk along the corridor toward the stairs. My urging had little effect on the girl, who remained no more than half-conscious. After a moment, I picked her up bodily in my arms and strode along.
Evidently Kulakov, once distracted from his conversation with Rasputin, needed perhaps half a minute to clear his mind fully of the light trance into which, under the ministrations of the healer, he had begun to descend. by that time Miss Altamont and I had reached the stairs and were making steady progress down them. They were broad, marble stairs, gracefully curved, and discouragingly well-lighted compared with the dim bedroom corridors above. Although at the moment the young lady and I had the way all to ourselves, the sounds of ribald merriment proceeding from the several doorways visible below us suggested strongly that that state of affairs could not last long.
Meanwhile the count, going to check on his victim, needed only a few moments to discover that she was not in her room. Alarmed, he dashed straight back to the stairs, where one look down showed him that his prisoner was being carried out of his control.
Kulakov came charging, leaping downstairs after us, roaring like the madman he was. The vampire did not change form, and it crossed my mind, even in the moment of crisis, that perhaps daylight was already too far advanced to permit him to do that. The first rays of the rising sun, striking in through the skylight far above us in the roof, produced a crystalline, slightly dazzling effect, but I knew well that here in the house we were too sheltered and shaded to allow me to depend substantially upon the sun for our defense.
My revolver was already in my hand, and as that dark, snarling figure came bounding downstairs toward us, reaching out with taloned fingers, I fired repeatedly.
Fortunately my aim was true, and at least two or three of Von Herder’s heavy wooden bullets pierced our attacker’s body.
The effect was devastating. Kulakov went tumbling past us down the broad curving marble stairway, his
