had come to find the child. So finally we decided that we would
take it to the Heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would
leave it where he could not fail to find it. We would then seek our
way home as quickly as we could. All fell out well. At the edge of
Hampstead Heath we heard a policeman's heavy tramp, and laying the
child on the pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he
flashed his lantern to and fro. We heard his exclamation of
astonishment, and then we went away silently. By good chance we got
a cab near the `Spainiards,' and drove to town.
I cannot sleep, so I make this entry. But I must try to get a
few hours' sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon. He
insists that I go with him on another expedition.
27 September.—It was two o'clock before we found a suitable
opportunity for our attempt. The funeral held at noon was all
completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken
themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump
of alder trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew
that we were safe till morning did we desire it, but the Professor
told me that we should not want more than an hour at most. Again I
felt that horrid sense of the reality of things, in which any
effort of imagination seemed out of place, and I realized
distinctly the perils of the law which we were incurring in our
unhallowed work. Besides, I felt it was all so useless. Outrageous
as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a
week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to open
the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own
eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders,
however, and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on
his own road, no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened
the vault, and again courteously motioned me to precede. The place
was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how unutterably mean
looking when the sunshine streamed in. Van Helsing walked over tolooking when the sunshine streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to
Lucy's coffin, and I followed. He bent over and again forced back
the leaden flange, and a shock of surprise and dismay shot through
me.
There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night
before her funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful
than ever, and I could not believe that she was dead. The lips were
red, nay redder than before, and on the cheeks was a delicate
bloom.
"Is this a juggle?" I said to him.
"Are you convinced now?" said the Professor, in response, and as
he spoke he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder,
pulled back the dead lips and showed the white teeth. "See," he
went on,"they are even sharper than before. With this and this,"
and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below it, "the
little children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend
John?"
Once more argumentative hostility woke within me. I could not
accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested. So, with an
attempt to argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said,
"She may have been placed here since last night."
"Indeed? That is so, and by whom?"
"I do not know. Someone has done it."
"And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time
would not look so."
I had no answer for this, so was silent. Van Helsing did not
seem to notice my silence. At any rate, he showed neither chagrin
nor triumph. He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman,
raising the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening
the lips and examining the teeth. Then he turned to me and
said,
"Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded.
Here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by
the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking, oh, you start.
You do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it later, and
in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she
dies, and in trance she is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differdies, and in trance she is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ
from all other. Usually when the Un-Dead sleep at home," as he
spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to
a vampire was `home', "their face show what they are, but this so
sweet that was when she not Un-Dead she go back to the nothings of
the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard
that I must kill her in her sleep."
This turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I
was accepting Van Helsing's theories. But if she were really dead,
what was there of terror in the idea of killing her?
He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for
he said almost joyously, "Ah, you believe now?"
I answered, "Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing
to accept. How will you do this bloody work?"
"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I
shall drive a stake through her body."
It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the
woman whom I had loved. And yet the feeling was not so strong as I
had expected. I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence
of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing called it, and to
loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all
objective?
I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he
stood as if wrapped in thought. Presently he closed the catch of
his bag with a snap, and said,
"I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is
best. If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this
moment, what is to be done. But there are other things to follow,
and things that are thousand times more difficult in that them we
do not know. This is simple. She have yet no life taken, though
that is of time, and to act now would be to take danger from her
forever. But then we may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell
him of this? If you, who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw
the wounds so similar on the child's at the hospital, if you, who