The Dracula Caper

2

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 staf 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.

"The interview of H. G. Wells did not produce any leads to the whereabouts of Drakov," Steiger was saying as he paced slowly in the sitting room of the suite. The support team was seated all around him, listening attentively. "I am of the opinion that maintaining contact with Wells is too risky. Captain Delaney does not agree. Lieutenant Crass is inclined to support Captain Delaney, but she is in favor of only the most limited contact for the present. Before we go any further with this briefing, I want to hear some feedback on that question. Opinions?"

"Is there any reason why we can't use our cover to legitimize further contact with Wells?" said Corporal Davis. "Since he's currently engaged in writing newspaper articles about everyday aspects of British life, wouldn't that support our consulting him in that capacity, as if we were asking him to help in our research?"

"No, that's definitely out," said Delaney. "Talking to people in pubs is one thing, but consulting Wells in that capacity would involve creating an episode in his life that never happened. We couldn't risk having him be involved in an academic project that never existed. We're supposed to be writing textbooks, remember? If he was to mention it in his own writings at any point, it would create the problem of having to alter any historical records he might leave. A bigger problem is that it might also affect the direction his own writing may take, since he did write historical works, and that would involve a risk of temporal contamination. Besides, he's completely dependent on his writing for his survival at this point and he's not going to be eager to have people pestering him for help in some sort of nebulous research project. -

"I agree" said Sergeant Brant. She glanced at Davis and shook her head. "I don't think we can take the risk of getting close to Wells ourselves. The more contact we have with him, the more chance there is of our influencing him in some way. I'm in favor of covert surveillance. If Drakov contacts him, that may change everything, but why take unnecessary chances? We still haven't found any evidence of his presence here."

"I'm not so sure of that” said Private Neilson. "I was going to wait with this, but I think it may be important. Something unusual came up this morning at the crime lab. Late last night, a policeman was murdered at Whitechapel Station. His throat was torn open and his face was ripped to shreds. No one saw anything, but the man in charge of the case. Chief Inspector William Grayson. has issued specific orders to keep it quiet. And he's also brought in Dr. Conan Doyle to assist in the investigation in an unofficial capacity.”

"Arthur Conan Doyle?" said Delaney.

"Yes, the same man who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories." said Neilson, nodding. "He's very sharp. He examined the body and concluded that the wounds on the face were inflicted by a clawed hand, with four fingers and an opposed thumb, and that the wounds on the throat were probably made by animal teeth. He also checked the fingernails of the deceased and found several small hairs, which he examined under a microscope. He said the hair apparently came from a wolf. I couldn't confirm that, because Doyle took the samples with him for further study, but I was able to examine the body. There was a significant loss of blood, which could be accounted for by the severed jugular, but there were also traces of human saliva around the wound. I couldn't find any more hair samples, but I managed to obtain some skin scrapings from under the deceased's fingernails. There's a limit to what I can do given the primitive equipment at the crime lab, so I brought the samples with me. I'll admit it's a long shot, sir, but I think there's a chance we may be looking at some custom-tailored DNA here. I'd like permission to clock back to base and see if there are any lupine chromosomes in this sample.”

"Wait a minute." said Steiger, “ lupine chromosomes? Are you telling me you think this policeman was killed by a werewolf?"

"Well, you did say not to overlook any possibilities, sir, no matter how farfetched or remote, — said Neilson. "Since we know Drakov's been creating humanoid lifeforms through genetic engineering, I considered the various possibilities. Conan Doyle could be wrong, in which case we've got somebody running around in the East End who apparently likes to drink human blood and needs one hell of a manicure. Or else Doyle is right and those hairs he found were wolf hairs, in which case it could he that we've got a psycho with a blood fetish who's also got a trained wolf. Or maybe he puts sonic sort of metal claw tips on the ends of his lingers and wears a mask made out of real wolf hair, to make people think he's a werewolf. Or… he's really a werewolf. Chromosome mapping of the skin scrapings should tell us if we're dealing with a normal human or one that's been genetically designed."

Private Larson glanced from Neilson to Steiger. "A werewolf? Jesus, Fleet Street would have a field day with that. Especially after the Whitechapel murders."

"That was six years ago," said Corporal Davis, who was assigned to The Daily Telegraph. "There weren't any newspaper records of killings in London at this time that would lit that sort of pattern. Either it was completely hushed up or we've got a possible temporal anomaly on our hands."

"I think this may be the break we've been looking for, sir.- said Neilson. "We know Drakov had Moreau design hominoids patterned after characters out of mythology, such as those creatures you encountered on your last mission. Well. why not a werewolf?"

"It's wild, but it sounds like just the sort of thing he might do," Delaney said, glancing at Steiger. "I say we check it out. It shouldn't take long."

"Do it,' Steiger said to Neilson. "Set your warp disc for a thirty-second clot: Muck. I want that chromosome analysis now."

"Yes, sir," said Neilson. He programmed his warp disc and disappeared, clocking ahead to TAC headquarters in the 27th century.

He reappeared exactly thirty seconds later, looking tired and needing a shave. He looked slightly ill. Temporal transition often produced nausea and dizziness and some soldiers never became accustomed to it.

Well?" said Steiger.

"There's no doubt about it, sir," said Neilson, for whom hours had passed. "I've been up all night, going over the results. I had them run the samples three times to verify the results. They came out the same each time. The chromosome maps of the samples show definite hybridization with lupine genetic material. probably virally fixated. It's got our genetics people tremendously excited. They say it's extremely sophisticated engineering, very trick. They're guessing that there's a hormonal trigger, which would make the change cyclical. Most of the time, the infected person probably looks completely normal, but once the hormonal cycle triggers expression of the lupine genes. a definite physical change would occur. It looks like we've got a real live werewolf on our hands, sir."

Damn," said Steiger. "We've hit pay dirt. Good work. Neilson. You've earned some rest. Go next door and get some sleep."

Neilson grimaced wryly. "Are you kidding? Who could think of sleeping at a time like this?"

"I want you to get some rest," said Steiger. "I'm going to need everybody at a hundred percent from now on. We can't afford any mistakes. A genetically engineered werewolf is bad enough. Conan Doyle's involvement raises the stakes. This could get real tricky."

"What about Wells?" said Delaney. "All things considered, we'd better keep tabs on him, too."

"Right," said Steiger. "It's not a wild goose chase anymore. Neilson, you follow Conan Doyle's involvement in the case down at the police lab. Keep me informed of Inspector Grayson's progress. I want to he notified the minute any similar killings occur. Rizzo, I want a report from the Public Record Office on all recent real estate leasehold transactions within the last six months. Ransoms, ditto with recent depositors at the Bank of England, anyone who opened accounts containing significantly large sums. Drakov likes to high roll. If he's here, you can be sure he's got a pile of money with him. I want those two lists compared as soon as possible. Brant, you're assigned to H. G. Wells. I want him under twenty-four- hour surveillance as of now. Private Craven will relieve you. You'll work in shifts. Quit your cover jobs, I'll want you completely mobile from now on. Andre, you take Conan Doyle when he's not down at the police lab. Be careful, we know he's highly observant, so don't get spotted. Finn. you relieve Andre. Davis and Larson, I want you two to continue covering Fleet Street. You know what to look for. If any of this breaks, try to get assigned to the stories. I want to be kept up to date on anything the newspapers get a hold of, before they get the information."

"Sir, if the story does break in the papers." said Davis, "we'll be expected to write something. How do you want us to handle the coverage?"

"Keep it reasonably straight," said Steiger. "Above all else, I want to avoid any sensational coverage that comes too close to the truth. Cooperate with the police. They'll appreciate reporters working with them for a change. That should give you an inside track. I don't want anybody writing stories about werewolves.

Play the other reporters off against each other. Do whatever you can to keep a lid on this."

"Yes. sir."

"All right. Drakov is here. probably somewhere in London. I want him nailed this time. The command post will he manned around the clock. I want that creature found and neutralized. but Drakov is the first priority. If you find the creature, don't kill it unless you absolutely have to. It could lead us to Drakov."

Neilson cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, sir, but with all due respect. I think we'd better concentrate on taking out the creature first. As soon as possible." I understand your concern. Neilson." said Steiger. "but Drakov has to be stopped and we're not going to be getting any reinforcements. Considering the crisis, we were lucky to get you people. We can try to minimize the loss of life, but there's no avoiding the fact that we're going to have casualties."

"I don't think you understood me, sir." said Neilson. "I'm sorry. I'm a little tired; I guess I didn't make it clear. Loss of life is not the only problem. There was just enough of the viral genome left in the lupine hybrid to render it infectious. This creature is contagious. sir. If any of its victims should happen to survive, there's a good chance they'll come down with a serious case of lycanthropy.'

Steiger stared at him. "Infectious DNA?"

Delaney gave a low whistle, "Trust Drakov to come up with a real nightmare. Anybody know where we can get a good supply of silver bullets?"

"Why do you even bother to ask me for my opinion'?" said Ian Holcombe, the Yard's chief of forensics. "Why not simply trot down to Baker Street and ask Mr. Sherlock Holmes? He'll look at the soil markings on the dead girl's petticoats and tell you in which cow pasture she had her last assignation. He'll smell her handkerchief and trace down her lover through the chemist's where he bought her perfume. And then he'll examine the callosities on the lover's hands and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blackguard strangled her and there you'll have your case solved, neat as a pin. What do you need with me?"

"Steady on, Holcombe." Grayson said wearily. "I merely asked Dr. Doyle for his opinion on the case. Don't get your back up. I should think you'd be glad for the help. It's not as if you lack for things to do."

"Wolf hairs, indeed!" said Holcombe. "Wolves in London! Next I expect he'll he telling us that Westminster Abbey is infested with vampire hats!"

"Ian, just tell me what caused this young woman's death and I'll cease troubling you." said Grayson. "I've had a long night and I am very tired. I haven't even had an opportunity to cat breakfast this morning."

"Well, I beg your pardon," Holcombe said with exaggerated courtesy, snorting through his thick moustache. "You're not the only one who's overworked, you know. My assistant hasn't shown up yet and I'm trying to do twenty things at once. Tell me, do you think you could manage to bring me a corpse that expired in some ordinary manner, shot or stabbed or hacked to pieces with an axe, perhaps? Why do you insist on finding people who have been torn to pieces by wild animals or drained of all their blood?"

"Holcombe, what in Heaven's name are you talking about?" said Grayson.

"This girl," said Holcombe. gesturing at the sheet-shrouded body on the table. "She died from shock brought about by a profound loss of blood. Insult to the system, you know. It's astonishing that she had the strength to move about at all."

"What caused it?" Grayson said.

"Undoubtedly, she was bled by Sweeny Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street." Holcombe said sarcastically. "Perhaps it happened when she went in for her shave. Or some Styrian countess gave her a love bite. how should I know? Why not call Le Fanu and ask him? Better yet, call Robert Louis Stevenson. Maybe Mr. Hyde was in need of a transfusion."

"Ian. please…" said Grayson, shutting his eyes.

"Well, look for yourself,” said Holcombe, throwing back the sheet. "All I could find were those two marks on her throat there. See? It's obvious. Varney the Vampire has claimed another victim. Call Thomas Prest, he wrote the book, ask him what old Varney has been up to lately. Scribblers of penny dreadfuls in the crime lab! I've never heard of such a thing! This isn't Scotland Yard anymore, it's a bloody literary society. Ah. Neilson, there you are! Where the devil have you been? You look as if you have been up all night. Do you think I could manage to distract you from your carousing long enough to get some work done?"

"I'm sorry. Dr. Holcombe," said Neilson, putting on his apron. "I'm afraid I overslept this morning. I-"

"I don't wish to hear any excuses. I'd simply be tremendously flattered if you managed to show up on time. This place is a veritable madhouse. People coming and going, why already this morning you have missed Miss Mary Shelley. She was here with Inspector Grayson, looking for the odd spare part or two."

"Ian, is it even remotely possible that I might get a straight answer from you this morning?" Grayson said, exasperated.

"I don't know how she managed to lose such a great deal of blood," said Holcombe. "There. are you satisfied? I've proven my ineptitude. Perhaps she was a hemophile. Perhaps young Neilson did it, he was obviously out all night, stalking unwary actresses. Open your mouth. Neilson, let's see your teeth."

"Sir?" said Neilson. frowning.

"We seem to be infested with wolves and vampires this week," said Holcombe. "Do try to keep up, Neilson. Inspector Grayson has promised us a surprise later in the afternoon. He's going to bring us someone who's been turned to stone by one of the Gorgon sisters. Oh, and while you're at it. after you've finished cleaning up, see if you can find me a large mallet and a wooden stake. It wouldn't do to have this young lady stumbling about the lab and knocking things over after we have closed up for the night."

There was a knock at the laboratory door. Neilson opened it to admit Conan Doyle. "I was told that I could find Inspector Grayson here," said Doyle.

"Ah. there you are, Watson!" said Holcombe. "Come in. conic in. the game's afoot! Professor Moriarty has bitten an actress in the neck and we're all terribly concerned! Do let me know how it all comes out. I'm off to down a few pints myself. at the pub across the street. I'm obviously only in the way here!"

He stormed past an astonished Conan Doyle and slammed the door on his way out.

"Has that man gone mad?” said Doyle.

Grayson sighed. "Please accept my apologies. Dr. Doyle. I'm afraid that Holcombe's not himself today. Apparently, his professional pride's been stung a bit over-"

"Say no more, I quite understand." said Conan Doyle. "In point of fact, I am something of an interloper here. I think I can understand his irritation."

"Ian Holcombe's a good man," said Grayson. "I suspect his irritation is directed more at himself than at you. It seems I've brought him another body to confound him.'

"What'? Not another one?" said Doyle, coming closer.

"No, not a 'werewolf this time," Grayson said, smiling wryly. "This time, we apparently have the victim of a vampire."

"A what?"

" See for yourself." said Grayson. "Miss Angeline Crewe, an actress with

Mr. Irving's company at the Lyceum. She collapsed on stage during a rehearsal and apparently died within moments of her collapse. Notice the marks upon her throat."

"Hmmm. yes. I see." said Conan Doyle. "Definitely teeth marks. And cause of death was a significant loss of blood?"

"Yes, that is what Holcombe said. An insult to the system, as he put it. Surely you're not suggesting that she was killed by a vampire?"

"Rubbish, Grayson." said Conan Doyle. "That's utter nonsense. What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their graves by stakes driven through their hearts? It's pure lunacy. However, the vampire of legend was not necessarily a dead man. A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth. We must seek our answers among the natural, rather than the supernatural phenomena."

"What do you mean?" said Grayson.

"There are any number of contributing factors that could combine to sustain the legend of an undead vampire." Conan Doyle said. "For example, did you know that teeth appear longer in an exhumed corpse because the tissue of the gums" shrinks after death?"

"I didn't know that," Grayson said.

Conan Doyle nodded as he examined the body. "It's quite true. In the past, there were few, if any, truly reliable tests for death, you see, and this gave rise to an uncommon number of premature burials. You will, no doubt, be familiar with the practice once followed by many of the coffin makers, who had devised various sorts of bellfries to stand atop the graves, with ropes leading down through tubes into the coffins so that someone buried prematurely could pull upon the rope and ring the bell as a signal for rescue. It never proved to be a very practical solution. Exhumed corpses found with blood upon their mouths were sometimes thought by the more imaginatively inclined to have left their graves and fed upon the flesh of the living. The actual explanation was a great deal less dramatic, though no less tragic. They were not really dead at the time of their burial and when they awoke in their coffins. they often bit themselves in their frenzy to escape. Also, for a long time, there was ignorance of the tact that hair and nails continue to grow for some time after death. This also contributed to the erroneous belief that the corpse was still 'living.' Unusual soil conditions in various parts of the world, particularly in volcanic regions, can result in an antiseptic environment that delays decomposition, which would account for reports of unusual preservation of dead bodies. Again, people often seized upon the more melodramatic explanations rather than the actual truth. Incomplete observation is worse than no observation at all, Grayson, and under properly observed conditions, all such things can be logically explained. Someone happens to see a so-called body leave a mausoleum and we have a report of walking dead, when a more careful investigation would undoubtedly have unearthed — you will excuse the pun-the explanation that a derelict had broken into a tomb to find shelter from the cold."

"But you spoke of living persons having the habit of vampirism," said Grayson.

"Quite so." said Conan Doyle. "There was, for example, the famous case of the notorious Gilles de Rais of France, tried in the year 1440 for the murder of over two hundred children. He stabbed them in their jugular veins and allowed their blood to spurt upon him so that he could drink it while he abused himself. At approximately the same period, there was also a Wallachian prince named Vlad Dracula, who built the citadel of Bucharest in 1456 and was so fond of impaling people upon spikes that he became known as Vlad Tepes, from the word repo in his native language, meaning 'spike.' He impaled over twenty thousand Turkish prisoners after one battle alone. From there, perhaps, stems your folklore concerning impaling vampires with wooden stakes. And then there was the case of the Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Bathory, brought to justice in the year 1611 for the killing of over six hundred young girls. She tortured them in her dungeons, bled them and then bathed in their blood, supposedly to benefit her complexion."

"Good God," said Grayson.

"Yes, shocking examples of human brutality at its worst," said Conan Doyle, "hut nevertheless, brutality practiced by living humans, not dead ones. This sort of vampirism, Grayson. is a grotesque aberration, an insanity which I suspect may have its roots in a twisted sexual depravity. However, it is a disease of the living. not the dead. As for this poor girl, there is no question but that she was bitten in the neck by another human. A human with sharp teeth, however, quite possibly filed, in the manner of the cannibal tribesmen of New Guinea. As to the massive loss of blood, there could be any number of explanations. Possibly, she was a bleeder. a hemophiliac, or perhaps she was profoundly anemic. She may have lost a great deal of blood in some other manner upon which I would not care to speculate given so little evidence, but I would venture to suggest, if I may, a careful investigation of her co-workers and associates. There is a strong possibility that practices of perversion may have been involved here. In such a case, it will be difficult to ferret out the truth, as such secrets are darkly kept. But in any case I would not recommend that you trade in your truncheon for a string of garlic bulbs."

You have missed your calling, Dr. Doyle," said Grayson. You would have made a brilliant detective. "Nonsense," said Doyle. I am merely well informed on a wide variety of peculiar subjects, of little use to the average man, but of some value to one who writes romances. Besides, I have not the temperament for police work.

"Well, the literary world's gain is Scotland Yard's loss," said Grayson. "And I will conduct a thorough investigation of Miss Crewe's fellow actors and her friends, as well. I am most grateful for your assistance. Speaking of which-"

"Ah. yes, of course." said Conan Doyle, "The hair samples." He frowned. "Most unusual. They are extremely like a wolf's, but then again, they do not quite compare. You may be seeking a man with unusually coarse hair of a steel gray or silver color. In such a case I would expect this coarseness to extend to his features, as well. He would be very hirsute. a primitive looking sort of individual, possibly of Mediterranean blood."

"You can tell all this from some samples of his hair?" said Grayson, amazed.

"Simple inference and deduction, Grayson, based upon what we know of physical types. In any case, you would be looking for an unusually powerful man. It would have taken one to bring down a strong man such as Constable Jones. Some savage derelict perhaps, but undoubtedly a madman. As for the nature of the wounds, I have a theory about the weapon which might have been used, but I would like to consider it some more." He looked down at the body of Angeline Crewe and frowned. "It may even be possible that this poor girl's death is connected with the murder of Constable Jones. Savagery is the common factor, Grayson. Savagery and bloodlust."