When we arrived at the Berkely Hotel, Van Helsing found a
telegram waiting for him.
"Am coming up by train. Jonathan at Whitby. Important news. Mina
Harker."
The Professor was delighted. "Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina," he
said, "pearl among women! She arrive, but I cannot stay. She must
go to your house, friend John. You must meet her at the station.
Telegraph her en route so that she may be prepared."
When the wire was dispatched he had a cup of tea. Over it he
told me of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me
a typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker's diary at Whitby.
"Take these," he said,"and study them well. When I have returned
you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter
on our inquisition. Keep them safe, for there is in them much of
treasure. You will need all your faith, even you who have had such
an experience as that of today. What is here told," he laid his
hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may
be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another, or it
may sound the knell of the Un-Dead who walk the earth. Read all, I
pray you, with the open mind, and if you can add in any way to the
story here told do so, for it is all important. You have kept a
diary of all these so strange things, is it not so? Yes! Then we
shall go through all these together when we meet." He then made
ready for his departure and shortly drove off to Liverpool Street.
I took my way to Paddington, where I arrived about fifteen minutes
before the train came in.
The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to
arrival platforms, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might
miss my guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty looking girl stepped up
to me, and after a quick glance said, "Dr. Seward, is it not?"
"And you are Mrs. Harker!" I answered at once, whereupon she
held out her hand.
"I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy, but… " She
stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.
The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at
ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own. I got her luggage,
which included a typewriter, and we took the Underground to
Fenchurch Street, after I had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have
a sitting room and a bedroom prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.
In due time we arrived. She knew, of course, that the place was
a lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a
shudder when we entered.
She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my
study, as she had much to say. So here I am finishing my entry in
my phonograph diary whilst I await her. As yet I have not had the
chance of looking at the papers which Van Helsing left with me,
though they lie open before me. I must get her interested in
something, so that I may have an opportunity of reading them. She
does not know how precious time is, or what a task we have in hand.
I must be careful not to frighten her. Here she is!
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
29 September.—After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr.
Seward's study. At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I
heard him talking with some one. As, however, he had pressed me to
be quick, I knocked at the door, and on his calling out, "Come in,"
I entered.
To my intense surprise, there was no one with him. He was quite
alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from
the description to be a phonograph. I had never seen one, and was
much interested.
"I hope I did not keep you waiting," I said, "but I stayed at
the door as I heard you talking, and thought there was someone with
you."
"Oh," he replied with a smile, "I was only entering my
diary."
"Your diary?" I asked him in surprise.
"Yes," he answered. "I keep it in this." As he spoke he laid his
hand on the phonograph. I felt quite excited over it, and blurted
out, "Why, this beats even shorthand! May I hear it say
something?"
"Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it insomething?"
"Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in
train for speaking. Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread
his face.
"The fact is," he began awkwardly."I only keep my diary in it,
and as it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be
awkward, that is, I mean … " He stopped, and I tried to help
him out of his embarrassment.
"You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end. Let me hear how she
died, for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful. She was
very, very dear to me."
To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his
face, "Tell you of her death? Not for the wide world!"
"Why not?" I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming
over me.
Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an
excuse. At length, he stammered out, "You see, I do not know how to
pick out any particular part of the diary."
Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said
with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the
naivete of a child, "that's quite true, upon my honor. Honest
Indian!"
I could not but smile, at which he grimaced."I gave myself away
that time!" he said. "But do you know that, although I have kept
the diary for months past, it never once struck me how I was going
to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it
up?"
By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who
attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our
knowledge of that terrible Being, and I said boldly, "Then, Dr.
Seward, you had better let me copy it out for you on my
typewriter."
He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said, "No! No! No!
For all the world. I wouldn't let you know that terrible
story.!"
Then it was terrible. My intuition was right! For a moment, I
thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for
something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch
of typewriting on the table. His eyes caught the look in mine, and