“I would; if there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a pain, and so desperate an effort!”
She looked at him meaningly as she spoke.
He was sitting down; but now he rose and came close to her and put his hand on her head as he said solemnly:
“My child, there is such an one if it were for your good.
For myself I could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were best. Nay, were it safe!
But my child——” For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throat; he gulped it down and went on:— “There are here some who would stand between you and death.
You must not die.
You must not die by any hand; but least of all by your own.
Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die; for if he is still with the quick Un-Dead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live!
You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable.
You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy; by the day, or the night; in safety or in peril!
On your living soul I charge you that you do not die—nay, nor think of death—till this great evil be past.”
The poor dear grew white as death, and shock and shivered, as I have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide.
We were all silent; we could do nothing.
At length she grew more calm and turning to him said, sweetly, but oh! so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand:—
“I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall strive to do so; till, if it may be in His good time, this horror may have passed away from me.”
She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to do.
I told her that she was to have all the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter use; and was to keep the record as she had done before.
She was pleased with the prospect of anything to do—if “pleased” could be used in connection with so grim an interest.
As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was prepared with an exact ordering of our work.
“It is perhaps well,” he said, “that at our meeting after our visit to Carfax we decided not to do anything with the earth-boxes that lay there.
Had we done so, the Count must have guessed our purpose, and would doubtless have taken measures in advance to frustrate such an effort with regard to the others; but now he does not know our intentions.
Nay, more, in all probability, he does not know that such a 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.”