Day 71
564 Words
"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 c****s 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."
- Writer
