Séance for a Vampire Fred Saberhagen (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📖

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At WORSHIP-STREET, the two men charged with attempting to defraud Frederick Wensley of £2,225 by means of a trick–the sale of brass filings as gold dust–were brought up on remand...

SERIOUS ILLNESS OF THE POPE–A sudden change in the condition of Leo XIII caused great anxiety...

THE UNITED STATES (from our own correspondent)– The President celebrated the Fourth of July by announcing at Huntington, “There is not a cloud of a handbreadth in the sky. We are on good terms with all the peoples of the world.”

THE ASSASSINATION OF A RUSSIAN GOVERNOR...

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A MEDICINE OF IMPERIAL REPUTE

WOODWARD’S

“GRIPE WATER”...

SEQUEL TO THE TSAR’S RECENT MANIFESTO–The optimistic hopes of many of the Russian Liberals that the Tsar’s recent manifesto heralded a large extension of local autonomy will hardly be upheld by the publication of the reprint of the conference held at Tsarskoe Selo on May 16... “One seems to encounter the Muscovites everywhere these days,” I remarked.

Watson, lapsing into the comfortable manner of one London clubman communicating with another, grunted from the opposite chair some comradely agreement. Since I had played so important a role in the rescue of Cousin Sherlock, he evidently was content at least to tolerate me. For the time being. Currently his boots were off and his stocking feet elevated on an ottoman, his upper half invisible behind his newspaper. I suspected that he was half asleep.

Need I say that my feelings toward that most unimaginative man were–and still are–mixed? but I had responded to his summons as quickly as I could, and with a sense of urgency, confident that the invocation had not been made frivolously.

I read on.

CRICKET

GENTLEMEN vs PLAYERS

The second day’s play in the Gentlemen vs Players match at Lord’s yesterday presented in every way, except the weather, a great contrast to the first...

CHURCH OF ENGLAND HOMES FOR WAIFS AND STRAYS...

ST. PETERSBURG–A Wireless Telegraph station has been established at Port Arthur, with the object of organizing regular telegraphic communication with Russian warships...

I cast my newspaper aside. Watson’s had now collapsed into a kind of tent, behind which he was snoring. Holmes came into the room shortly, and I, Dracula, began to argue with him, because I still felt real doubts as to whether Holmes’s kidnapper should be regarded as the only villain in the piece. For all we knew, young Louisa Altamont might have yielded willingly to her fanged seducer, even before the boating “accident”—and that traumatic event, if carefully investigated, might bear some different interpretation.

My cousin the detective did not care much for my tentative hypothesis, though he conceded to me that it was entirely possible that a treasure had been stolen from our mysterious Russian-speaking vampire at some time in the past.

Presently abandoning the argument, which had never been very intense, I announced my immediate intentions, or some of them anyway, and nipped out of doors. Shifting quickly to bat-form under cover of the blessed night, I made my second visit in a few hours to Sarah Kirkaldy, who I must confess was beginning to seem more and more attractive. Tut-tut, you say. With brother Abraham still laid out in his coffin in the parlor downstairs?

Actually, I refrained from any romantic endeavors on that night. I found Sarah keeping vigil by the coffin. For a while, I peered in through a window at this touching scene, then flew round the house, making an estimate of its security, before deciding that my seduction of Sarah had better wait. Maybe at least until tomorrow night.

While looking in the parlor window I also observed, briefly and more chastely, Rebecca Altamont, who like a good girl was reading another book–I could not make out the title–and keeping bereaved Sarah company in her deathwatch. That dutiful young woman was spending most of her time with her parents now, trying to shield them from further hurt.

I thought that the younger Miss Altamont, too, stood at some risk from her family’s mad enemy. I decided that tomorrow Mr. Prince must find an opportunity to warn becky, as he had already warned Sarah, of the dangers of taking the night air unaccompanied. Of course rebellious becky, if she knew Mr. Prince to be secretly associated with Mr. Holmes, would probably spurn the warning.

Even postponed for one more night, such early wooing would have to be classifed as very impetuous. but certainly there was good reason not to leave Sarah unattended. I would go to her, when I went again, with the genuinely altruistic motive of offering protective advice, and real protection.

Readily enough I imagined myself the scene that might take place upon my finding her in her room, restless and unable to sleep...

At my blackguardly intrusion, her gasp, of outrage mixed with other things. “Where did ye coom from?”

“You called me, Sarah.”

“I didna!” Pulling the bedclothes up ever more tightly under her chin. but her outrage was hollow.

“Perhaps it was your beauty alone that called... with such a voice that I was quite unable to resist.”

Well, soon enough I would probably play out that scene, or one much like it, in reality. I wondered whether my new potential conquest had been in communication with our chief foe since the former disastrous séance. Or whether this Count Kulakov–if that was really his name–his mind wandering as Cousin Sherlock said it did, or else focused sharply on revenge, had forgotten about Sarah and her dead brother for a time. A blessing for them if it were so–but one cannot always rely on blessings.

When I, Dracula, felt that I had done all that could reasonably be done to enhance Sarah’s security, and that of the household in general, I flew back to rejoin Cousin Sherlock and the worthy Watson at the