"Very well, Van Helsing, we will have bluntness. I know your name, but nothing good of it. What are your intentions now?"
"That the so-young Miss Lucy shall have rest, and peace."
"And as regards me?"
"If it so may be," he said with a grim, measured determination, "that you shall trouble none other as you have troubled her."
I turned away and strolled about a little among the tombs, my hands behind my back and beneath my cloak, somewhat in the way that I have seen Napoleon walk when deep in thought. "Why?" I asked, stopping to face my antagonist once more.
And then I saw in his face, in his eyes, that he probably really did not understand my question.
"I mean why, Professor, do you persecute and torment us? I know of one vampire that you have slain near Brussels, and two more, a man and wife, near Paris…"
"Man and wife!" He was outraged. "If there are marriages not in heaven, as the Scripture say, then surely not in hell either!"
"And we are hellish, of course; more so than other folk, I mean. Tell me, Van Helsing, if I took that cross from out of your grasp and hung it 'round my own neck, would you still be so certain that I came from hell?"
His pudgy fingers tightened on the gold. "By your works I know you, Dracula. I fear there is much power to you, and that you may play tricks with crosses, and the other things of holiness. In Brussels where I did my work of mercy I heard your name, and in Paris too; and I have read the journal of young Harker, from his stay at your damned castle, from which the powers of heaven so blessedly delivered him."
"Ah! And is Jonathan well, and back in London now?" As I spoke I recalled the notebook with Harker's ciphers in it. "I would be pleased to know that he is well, but saddened if he found my hospitality so hard to bear as your grim tones and looks imply."
Van Helsing now held silent, regretting perhaps that he might have given something away by mentioning Harker at all. Utter loathing was in his eyes, which remained fixed on me, but also the beginning of something like triumph as he saw that my renewed pacing brought me never any nearer to his crosses, nor to the white envelope in his right hand, whose contents I thought I had already guessed. He put this hand back into his pocket now whilst he swiveled the little gold crucifix to keep it facing squarely toward me as if it were a loaded gun.
Three quick strides, a twisting of my arms, and he would have been a vastly surprised corpse. But others-Harker, Dr. Seward, I could not guess who else-were certain to know of Van Helsing's vigil here tonight. They might even be watching us at the moment from somewhere nearby. Was I then to kill them too? The more I killed, the more the ranks of my enemies must grow, fed from the ocean of unbelievers in which both hunters and vampires were now no more than vastly scattered drops.
What should I do, then? Kneel down and pray a rosary? I might have done so, but never to placate a foe, and least of all a smirking, self-righteous enemy like this one.
I tried fair, honest words again. "I have not come to London to make war, Van Helsing, but to make peace with all mankind-"
"Then, monster, what of the girl? This so sweet young miss who was put in those walls of cold stone; and, worse, who do not stay-"
"Van Helsing, you may believe if you wish that being a vampire is worse than being dead; I see I am not likely to sway you by any argument. But forcing the consequences of misbelief upon others is something else again."
"You dare to speak of forcings, monster!" His courage continued to grow as he saw that I continued to keep my distance. "You who forced that girl to yield to you her very blood and life-"
"Not so, murderer!" Now I did move closer to him by a step. "You who drove those splintered stakes into the living breasts of my three friends in Brussels and in Paris! And as for Lucy, it was to save her life that I drank deep enough of her sweet blood to make her what she is-it was really you who sent her to the tomb!"
He gave his massive head a little shake, smiling all the while, not so much denying the accusation as failing even to understand it yet.
I leaned toward him. "You stopped her breath with the pouring of the alien blood into her veins."
"No!" Now understanding came.
"Yes." He started further protest, which I overrode: "Now shall I call her forth to testify?"
There was silence in the graveyard, save for a restless owl, and far away the rumbling of a wagonload of freight, and under that the polyphonic voice of distant London, that for a thousand years had not been truly quiet.
Van Helsing stood much as before, still holding me-as he thought-at a safe distance with his golden cross; but, reading his face through the dark night, I saw that my shot had told.
"You have done it before, butcher," I pressed on, guessing, and seeing that my guess was accurate as his face registered yet another inner blow. "And with some similar result. Is it not so? Has any victim of your blood-exchanging surgery yet lived?"
His smile was gone, his hands and jaw were trembling as he again brought out the small white folded envelope and raised it toward me with the cross. "Begone! To hell!" The words exploded from his mouth.
"Nothing wiser than that to say to me, Professor?"
"It shall be-" His voice cracked and he had to begin again. "It shall be war between us, vampire. War to the death."
"Let it be peace, I say. Or rather, tolerance. But remember that I have overcome in war a hundred stronger men than you." And with sad and angry heart I turned my back on that bad man and walked away, half expecting to feel the painful though harmless flick of a silver bullet between my ribs. If he does that, I thought, I shall turn back and insert his bullet, if I can recover it, into his own anatomy at some painful and inconvenient place. But he did nothing, and I betook myself to my newly acquired house to gaze over the moonlit trees of the Green Park toward Victoria's palace and think my foolish thoughts. A war, then, was inevitable. But how was I to fight it?
When Van Helsing rejoined his companions on the following day he told them that he had seen nothing during his dangerous vigil, and let it go at that. Free as he was with words, he was a close-mouthed scoundrel whenever it came to giving out hard facts to people who worked with him or tried to do so. But he must have been wondering how much I actually knew about those failed operations of his on the Continent and in what way I might use my knowledge to embarrass him. Needless to say, I would have done so if I could, but had no specifics to make known nor any way of quickly finding them out.
What Van Helsing did do on that day was gather his troops for another expedition to the Westenra tomb. This time he enlisted not only Seward, but Arthur Holmwood-who had now become Lord Godalming, by reason of his father's recent death-and the American, Quincey Morris. In a pep talk the professor assured them all-I am not making this up, you will find it in Seward's diary!-that there was a "grave duty" to be done. And some have called Van Helsing a humorless man! Well, he was, but only when he tried to joke.
Naturally they all agreed to accompany him, though so far only Seward could have had any inkling of just what the "grave duty" was likely to involve. As far as the others knew, Lucy was simply though unhappily dead.
"I have been curious," Arthur protested after some discussion in Van Helsing's hotel room, "as to what you mean. Quincey and I have talked it over; but the more we talked the more puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm up a tree as to any meaning about anything."
Nor was he to be rapidly enlightened. The professor strung them all along with earnest pleas for their continued trust, enlivened with hints that Lucy might stand in some vague danger of hell-fire-I think Arthur almost hit him at one point-or that she might not have been dead-exactly-when she was buried. It was a masterly performance by a compelling personality, and Van Helsing not only avoided being punched but in a little while had reduced the three younger men to a state that I can only describe as quietly submissive hysteria. Thus he got them out to the graveyard once again, on the night of September twenty-eighth.