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"I have not yet read them I have seen only the headlines. I am afraid "
"Then the most startling particulars are true I mean, that he has been carried
off by how does the newspaper put it? by 'some mysterious agency'?
Following what does it say? 'an attempt to communicate with the spirits of the
dead'?"
"I suppose the stories are substantially correct," I admitted.
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Fred Saberhagen - Séance for a Vampire
"Although I have not read them yet. The attempt was made to reach one spirit
only," I amended and again could not think of what I
ought to say next.
"The spirit of the recently deceased young woman, Louisa
Altamont?"
"Yes. At the request of her parents... of her mother in particular."
"And you are telling me that this attempt to reach beyond the grave... in some
way succeeded?" I could sense him waiting with a feverish concentration for my
answer.
"I..."
Mycroft's keen brain his brother considered him his intellectual
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superior evidently read volumes into my sheer clumsy hesitation.
"I beg of you, John, tell me the truth. Tell me all you know about the
'mysterious agency' that carried Sherlock off."
"It was a human agency, of that much I am sure."
"One man?"
"I believe so, yes."
"A man, I take it, of phenomenal powers of a truly extraordinary nature?"
"Yes, Mycroft. Yes."
There came over the wire what sounded like a despairing sigh.
"John, I am going to ring off now. I am coming round to Baker
Street to see you." This announcement, to anyone who knew
Mycroft's fixed habits, was startling in the extreme. "I have in hand another
matter or two of the greatest urgency, requiring my
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Fred Saberhagen - Séance for a Vampire attention first. But you may expect me
within the hour."
Mrs. Hudson, who had also seen the newspapers, was naturally disturbed by my
confirmation of the fact that Holmes was missing.
But, as she reminded me with determined cheerfulness, we had weathered many a
crisis in the past; and this latest difficulty did not delay her orders that
my bath be drawn at once, and that a hearty breakfast be made ready for me
when I came down to the sitting room shortly after noon.
Freshly bathed, shaved, dressed, and fed, I felt my energies somewhat renewed.
Still I had to force myself to put aside my worries concerning Mycroft, and
all other matters not bearing directly on the problem at hand, and concentrate
upon the effort now required of me, to establish contact with Prince Dracula.
This task had been the reason for my return to London.
To begin with, I had no idea of where the prince might presently be found, no
reason to believe that he was even in England. As far as I
was aware, Holmes had maintained no steady or regular contact with Dracula
over the six years since our first encounter. But years ago my friend had had
the foresight to inform me that a definite summoning procedure had been
arranged, at the same time warning me that it was to be used only in case of
emergency. The necessary information, Holmes had assured me, was filed,
indexed by means of code words I was required to memorize, among his papers in
our lodgings. Duplicate materials were stored in the vault of the Capital and
Counties bank.
As I began my search, I could not rid my mind of my worries
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Fred Saberhagen - Séance for a Vampire regarding Mycroft. And in fact the man
himself arrived, and was shown up to our rooms while my preparations were
still under way.
As Sherlock Holmes had once remarked upon a similar occasion, I
could not have been more startled to see a planet departing from its orbit, so
proverbial was the fixity of the man's daily routine. The morning of each
business day saw Mycroft leave his rooms in Pall
Mall for his (deceptively small and unassuming) office in
Whitehall; the evening saw him walk back to his lodgings; and he was seen
nowhere else, save in the Diogenes Club, which was just opposite his rooms.
One glance at the materials I had begun to arrange upon the table
the old book, the mirror, the candle, and the tied-up lock of graying human
hair sufficed to reveal the truth of the matter to him at once.
"So," he murmured abstractedly, rubbing his massive, clean-shaven chin with a
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