Saberhagen, Fred - Dracula 02 by The Holmes-Dracula File

Author:The Holmes-Dracula File
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter XI

In his good journeyman style-if not in what I should count as sparkling prose-the late Dr. Watson has provided a substantially correct account of the affair at Barley's upon that long-ago June night. Still there are, to my mind, one or two points where the reader may benefit from a change of viewpoint and a small amount of overlap. Therefore I resume my history at approximately the moment when the police pushed open Barley's front door.

Of course I might have heard them coming from afar, had my attention not been riveted upon that same small private office into which Watson and Moore had been so clumsily attempting to spy. As Watson has noted, my duties as rat-factor had brought me upstairs; but, at the risk of seeming boastful or tedious, let me reiterate for the last time that my hearing is far keener than that of almost any breathing human; so keen that, had the animals and enthusiasts about me been less noisy over their blood sports, I would have had a good chance of understanding almost all that Barley and the other two were saying down in the office, though their voices were quite low.

Their talk was on a subject that lately had begun to grow in fascination for me-rats. One participant of course was Barley-the booming rumble of his voice was unmistakable, however he tried to mute it. The second voice I did not recognize; but the third was indubitably that of my old acquaintance, the still-nameless doctor. I heard it with a throbbing in the needle-marks that scarred my arms-yes, metal can sometimes wound and torture even those it cannot kill.

Regrettably, the hubbub of slaughtered rodents and wounded dogs, and the scarcely more human sounds emitted by the men who watched and wagered, prevented my hearing more than scraps of that distant conversation. And what I could hear of it was damnably oblique and fragmentary, as conversations are wont to be when the subject is a familiar one to all participants and they are arguing technical details. About all I could learn was that the doctor was out to buy several thousand rats as quickly as he could. I thought he expressed some preference forRattus rattus; and it seemed that Barley and the other man were going to act somehow as brokers.

This was not much learned, yet was I content with my situation. I had determined that when my erstwhile oppressor left Barley's, as sooner or later he must, I should not be far behind him; that I should then take the first opportunity to find a place where we would not be interrupted, and speak with him alone; and that in the course of thistete-a-tetehe would recite to me in a loud, clear voice the names, descriptions, and probable locations of each and every one of his associates in the damnable and mysterious scheme wherein my kidnapping and death were to have been the merest incidents.

The three of course left their real business in the

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