TW08 The Dracula Caper NEW (4 page)

Henry Irving had no idea that he would soon reach the peak of his career by becoming the first actor to receive a knighthood.

"No, no.
no!"
he shouted, storming across the stage and running his hands through his long hair, his long, thin-featured face distraught. "For God's sake, Angeline, you must
project!"

He said the word "project" as if it were two words, rolling the "r" for emphasis. His strong, mellifluous voice filled the empty theatre.

"You are understudying Miss Ellen Terry! Consider the burden, the
responsibility
that is upon your shoulders! You arc
whispering!
No one shall hear you beyond the second row!"

The young blond actress covered her face with her hands. "I'm sorry, Mr. Irving," she said in a small voice. "I . . . I am not feeling very well. I ..."

She swayed and almost fell. Irving caught her, a sudden expression of concern upon his face He lifted her chin and looked into her face intently. "Good lord. Angeline, you're white as a corpse!"

"I am sorry. Mr. Irving." she said her voice fading. "I fell ...cold ... so very cold . . ." She sagged in his arms.

"Angeline!" said Irving, holding her up. "Angeline? Heavens, she's fainted. Stoker!
Stoker!"

Irving's manager, a large, red-headed man with a pointed heard, came hurrying from the wings.

"Help me with her," Irving said. They gently lowered her to the stage.

"Angeline?" said Stoker. He picked up her hand and patted her wrist. There was no response. He placed his hand upon her forehead, then felt her pulse. "Dear God," he said. "She's dead!”

Irving gaped at him, thunderstruck. “
Dead!"
lie shook his head. "No, that's not possible. She merely swooned."

"There is no pulse, I tell you!" said Stoker. tic bent down and put his car close to her mouth and nose. "Nothing. Not a whisper of a breath.”

"Mother of God," said Irving. "And I said she was as white as a corpse!" He put his hand to his mouth.

Stoker felt for a pulse in her throat. He shook his head with resignation. "Her heart's stopped beating," he said "Hello? What's this?"

He pulled aside the lace at her throat. There were two small marks over her jugular vein.

"What is it, Bram?" said Irving.

"Take a look," said Stoker.

"Pinpricks?"

"More like bite marks," Stoker said.

"What?"

"Look how pale she is," said Stoker softly. "White as a corpse," he murmured, repeating Irving's words.

"What are you talking about?" said Irving.

"I am almost afraid to say it," Stoker said. "Perhaps my imagination is merely overactive. But those marks are not imaginary."

"Bram, for God's sake! What is it?"

"Have you read
Carmilla.
by Le Fanu?” Stoker said.

Irving stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"
What? Sheridan Le Fanu, the novelist? What are you . . . “ His voice trailed off as he stared at the marks on Angeline's throat. "You mean that story about a countess who was a—" He caught himself and lowered his voice so that only Stoker could hear him, "—a
vampire?"

He swallowed hard and shook his head. "No, no
,
that is absurd, a fantasy. Such creatures don't exist."

"How can we say for certain?" Stoker said. "I admit it sounds incredible.

Henry. but how else can you explain those marks upon her throat?"

"She must have accidentally stabbed herself with something. a brooch.

perhaps."

"Twice? Both times, directly over the jugular vein

"No. I have heard enough." said Irving. "I am sending everyone home before you have the entire cast in a panic."

"I do not think that would be wise," said Stoker. "The police will probably want to question everyone."

"The police! Must we have the police?"

"I see no avoiding it." said Stoker. "We have a dead young woman on our hands and no explanation for her demise. The police will have to be called in. An investigation must he

Irving passed his hand riser his eyes. "Oh, dear Heaven! Very well, Bram, you handle everything. But for God's sake, be careful what you tell them! Please, make no fanciful suggestions. As for myself, I am quite done in by all of this. God, she died in my very arms! If the police wish to speak with me, they can find me at home, but if there is any way it can be avoided--

"I will handle things. Henry." said Stoker.

"Yes. Yes, you'll see to everything, won't you?"

"I always do," said Stoker.

"And for Heaven's sake, no wild theories about ... you know."

Stoker glanced up at him and then looked back down at the dead girl. "Yes,"

he said. "I know."

Electricity had come to London. but it had not yet arrived in Limehouse.

Westminster Bridge was the first place to receive electric lighting in 1858, but it was not until 1887 that the first station of the Kensington and Knightsbridge Electric Lighting Company was opened. The first large power station started operation in Dwptford in 1889; the London Electricity Supply Company was formed and the city was lit electrically from fleet Street to Aldgate, but it took a long time for electricity to completely replace gas and in 1894, much of London was still illuminated by gaslight. The gas companies were consuming over six million tons of coal per year and the malting effects could be seen in London's famous fogs. An atmosphere permeated by soot particles had blackened the city's buildings and it was frequently so thick that coach traffic was forced to move at a snail's pace and pedestrian trawlers often became lost in their own neighborhoods due to lack of visibility.

The lime kilns around the docks which gave Limehouse its name dated back to the 14th century. It was a center of shipbuilding, a part of the industrial East End. Most of the area's residents were employed in the shipyards and on the ducks and most of them were poor. There was a large population of immigrant Chinese, especially around the Limehouse Causeway, where gambling houses and opium dens could be found by those in search of London's more decadent diversions. It was in Limehouse that Sax Rohmer's evil Oriental mastermind, Fu Manchu, made his London headquarters.

Just off the Limehouse Causeway, in a tiny side street that was little more than an alleyway, there was a small apothecary shop owned and operated by an elderly Chinese named Lin Tao. The old man was bowed and wrinkled, with a stringy white beard that reached halfway down his chest and a white braid that hung down his back to his waist.

His forehead was high and he always wore a small, embroidered cap, not unlike a Jewish yarmulke. His slanted eyes, rather than giving him the so-called "cruel" aspect stereotypically attributed to his people. were soft and kind. He spoke English excellently, in a quiet, musical voice with a Chinese accent, and he lived in the back rooms of his establishment with his young orphaned granddaughter, Ming Li, whom he was educating in the trade.

Ming Li preferred to go by the name Jasmine, which had been bestowed upon her by an old ship's captain who frequently came to Lin Tao's apothecary shop for a preparation to ease the pain of his arthritis. Jasmine was the scent she wore and most of Lin Tao's non-Chinese customers called her by that name. She was nineteen years old and very beautiful, with thick, jet black hair that hung down to her hips and a narrow, oval face. She was as slender as a bamboo stalk and her legs were long and exquisitely formed.

She had long since learned what most men wanted from her, but she was not as vulnerable as she looked. Although few people knew it, her grandfather, for all his withered appearance, was a master of an ancient Oriental form of combat and he had taught it to his granddaughter. In China, he had once been an important man. It was for that reason they had left, booking passage on a freighter of the Blue Funnel Line. Lin Tao had become too important and too well known. And his age had made him vulnerable to ambitious younger men. He had started anew in London and in Limehouse; he had become a respected man in the Chinese community. A man of authority, A man whose granddaughter no one in the know would touch, because an insult to Ming Li would have meant death. Besides, Jasmine knew how to protect herself. And Jasmine was in love.

The man Jasmine was in love with lived upstairs in a small room above the apothecary shop. He helped her grandfather in the shop and he seemed to know a great deal about the apothecary's art, though his knowledge was of a different sort than Lin Tao's. They often spent long evenings in discussion over tea, sharing their respective knowledge. The man was secretive about his past, but Lin Tao understood that and he had instructed Jasmine not to bother him with questions. He respected his boarder's privacy. He also respected his wisdom. This man had come into the shop two months ago, looking for work. He had been penniless. At first, her grandfather meant to turn away this bearded stranger with the shabby clothes, but it quickly became apparent to him that this man had culture. He also possesed a great deal of unusual knowledge, though he would not say how he came by it. He had proper manners, unusual in an occidental, and he spoke the language of the mandarins as if he had been born in China. He also spoke a number of other languages with equal fluency, a definite advantage in a community of Chinese and Lascars and numerous other foreigners, many from the ships that called at the West India Docks. He said he was a doctor. When Jasmine was alone, she sometimes said his name out loud to herself, enjoying the sound of it. Morro. Dr. Morro.

In her imagination, she had created a romantic past for him, knowing nothing of his real history. He had once been an important man, a man of position, but something terrible had happened, some tragedy which had hurt him deeply, making him turn his back on everything he knew. He kept this secret hurt close to his heart, punishing himself for whatever it was that he had done. He was an older man, old enough to be her father, but Jasmine did not see him in that light. She wondered what it would be like to ease his hurt, to take it from him with her love. to help him find his way to a place of position in the English society as a respected physician, a surgeon perhaps, in one of London's better hospitals with an office of his own in Harley Street and a fine home in Grosvenor Square which she would share with him as his wife.

But, although Dr. Morro was always kind to her, his manner towards her was more that of an uncle than a potential lover. He did not look at her as other men did, with desire clearly written in his eyes. And he was often preoccupied, so that sometimes he did not hear her when she spoke to him and she had to raise her voice slightly to break through his train of thought. There were times when he would be sitting with her grandfather, drinking tea and talking quietly, and they would abruptly stop their conversation the moment she came in. Then they would resume it once again, as if casually, but Jasmine knew that they were no longer talking about the same thing. Her curiosity got the best of her and she started to eavesdrop on their conversations. She learned that Dr. Morro was looking for a man, a man he was certain had to be somewhere in London. An evil man. And Jasmine knew that this evil man had somehow been the cause of Dr. Morro's troubles. His name was Drakov. It was not an easy name for her to say. Nikolai Drakov.

The Hotel Metropole on Northumberland Avenue was one of London's newer and more luxurious establishments. The soldiers of the Temporal Corps were gathered in the suite occupied by "Prof." Finn Delaney and his colleague, "Dr."

Steiger, under their cover as visiting academic researchers from the States. Their "secretary," Miss Andre Cross, occupied an adjoining suite, since an unmarried woman sharing rooms with two single men would have been considered a highly improper arrangement in this time period. The adjoining suites had become a temporal command post and the frequent comings and goings by the Temporal Corps soldiers stationed at various points in the city were structured to maintain the fiction of an ongoing research project funded by an American foundation, ostensibly the writing of a series of textbooks concerning the social history of England.

Members of the cleaning and maintenance staff had brought in several writing tables and they regularly found the suites cluttered with piles of books and papers which they had been specifically instructed not to disturb. The "student assistants" and "copyists" who supported the research made a point of frequenting several of the local pubs, where
they could he observed in animated discussion over pints of bitters, engrossed in arguments about the history of the city and its people. Often, other patrons of the pub would be consulted for their "local expertise" and the word was that these young researchers and their professors were not bad sorts, for Americans; they were polite and enthusiastic about their subject, attentive listeners, full of questions.

No one suspected that these eager young academicians were anything other than what they seemed. In fact, the live young men and two young women were all soldiers from the 27th century, trained by the Temporal Observer Corps and programmed through their cerebral implants with more information about Victorian England than the average citizen could ever hope to possess. They each maintained two separate cover identities, one as members of an academic research team from America and another as British subjects. It was a complicated temporal stakeout which had taken months to set up, but for soldiers of the Temporal Corps, time was a flexible commodity.

Pvt. Scott Neilson had secured a position as a laboratory assistant at the Metropolitan Police crime lab in New Scotland Yard. Cpl. Thomas Davis had found work with
The Daily Telegraph as
a reporter. Pvt. Richard Larson had obtained employment with
The Police Gazette.
Pvt. Paul Ransome was a clerk with the Bank of England. Sgt. Anthony Rizzo was at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. Sgt. Christine Brant had found a job as a barmaid at the Cafe Royal. a hotbed of society gossip, and Pvt. Linda Craven was employed at the Haymarket Theatre, where she was an assistant to the wardrobe mistress and in excellent position to monitor the theatre district. They were temporal agents on the trail of a cross-time terrorist, a man named Nikolai Drakov.