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power exists to us as can sterilise his lairs, so that he cannot use |
them as of old. We are now so much further advanced in our knowledge as |
to their disposition that, when we have examined the house in |
Piccadilly, we may track the very last of them. To-day, then, is ours; |
and in it rests our hope. The sun that rose on our sorrow this morning |
guards us in its course. Until it sets to-night, that monster must |
retain whatever form he now has. He is confined within the limitations |
of his earthly envelope. He cannot melt into thin air nor disappear |
through cracks or chinks or crannies. If he go through a doorway, he |
must open the door like a mortal. And so we have this day to hunt out |
all his lairs and sterilise them. So we shall, if we have not yet catch |
him and destroy him, drive him to bay in some place where the catching |
and the destroying shall be, in time, sure." Here I started up for I |
could not contain myself at the thought that the minutes and seconds so |
preciously laden with Mina's life and happiness were flying from us, |
since whilst we talked action was impossible. But Van Helsing held up |
his hand warningly. "Nay, friend Jonathan," he said, "in this, the |
quickest way home is the longest way, so your proverb say. We shall all |
act and act with desperate quick, when the time has come. But think, in |
all probable the key of the situation is in that house in Piccadilly. |
The Count may have many houses which he has bought. Of them he will have |
deeds of purchase, keys and other things. He will have paper that he |
write on; he will have his book of cheques. There are many belongings |
that he must have somewhere; why not in this place so central, so quiet, |
where he come and go by the front or the back at all hour, when in the |
very vast of the traffic there is none to notice. We shall go there and |
search that house; and when we learn what it holds, then we do what our |
friend Arthur call, in his phrases of hunt 'stop the earths' and so we |
run down our old fox--so? is it not?" |
"Then let us come at once," I cried, "we are wasting the precious, |
precious time!" The Professor did not move, but simply said:-- |
"And how are we to get into that house in Piccadilly?" |
"Any way!" I cried. "We shall break in if need be." |
"And your police; where will they be, and what will they say?" |
I was staggered; but I knew that if he wished to delay he had a good |
reason for it. So I said, as quietly as I could:-- |
"Don't wait more than need be; you know, I am sure, what torture I am |
in." |
"Ah, my child, that I do; and indeed there is no wish of me to add to |
your anguish. But just think, what can we do, until all the world be at |
movement. Then will come our time. I have thought and thought, and it |
seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all. Now we wish to get |
into the house, but we have no key; is it not so?" I nodded. |
"Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could |
not still get it; and think there was to you no conscience of the |
housebreaker, what would you do?" |
"I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the |
lock for me." |
"And your police, they would interfere, would they not?" |
"Oh, no! not if they knew the man was properly employed." |
"Then," he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt is |
the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to |
whether or no that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. Your |
police must indeed be zealous men and clever--oh, so clever!--in reading |
the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No, no, my |
friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty house in this |
your London, or of any city in the world; and if you do it as such |
things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done, |
no one will interfere. I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine |
house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland |
and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and |
got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out |
and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he |
have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; |
and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of |
that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him |
that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away |
within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all |
they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland |
he find only an empty hole where his house had been. This was all done |
_en règle_; and in our work we shall be _en règle_ too. We shall not go |
so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem |
it strange; but we shall go after ten o'clock, when there are many |
about, and such things would be done were we indeed owners of the |
house." |
I could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of Mina's |
face became relaxed a thought; there was hope in such good counsel. Van |
Helsing went on:-- |
"When once within that house we may find more clues; at any rate some of |
us can remain there whilst the rest find the other places where there be |
more earth-boxes--at Bermondsey and Mile End." |
Lord Godalming stood up. "I can be of some use here," he said. "I shall |
wire to my people to have horses and carriages where they will be most |
convenient." |
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