We had barely reached the landing of 221B when Mrs Hudson appeared. It was not the kind of unsociable hour that our landlady would usually keep, and her presence set me at once on guard.
“Mr Holmes, Dr Watson, something terrible has happened!” she cried.
Holmes sprang to action before she could even explain, and barged into our rooms. I followed, alert to danger. The rooms—never the tidiest by any stretch of the imagination—were now in complete disarray. Whomever had come here had been thorough in their search, and utterly callous in their destruction of property. Every drawer of the desk was upturned on the floor. Every book was strewn from the shelves. Holmes’s unopened correspondence had been taken from its place upon the mantelpiece, where it traditionally sat transfixed by a knife-point, and now only one lonely page remained behind. Our armchairs had been overturned and the fabric across the undersides ripped open to search for concealed items. Papers, broken crockery and even our clothing lay on the floor. The open doors to the bedrooms told us at once that we would find a similar situation there. 221B Baker Street, so long our headquarters and sanctuary, was compromised.
“I did not call a constable, Mr Holmes,” sniffed Mrs Hudson, entering the room behind us. “I know how you always complain about the police stomping all over your evidence. I am only sorry I could not stop them.”
Holmes spun around. “You saw them?”
“Yes. They… they…” she trembled, unable to say more.
I patted Mrs Hudson’s hand. “There, there,” I said. “Surely they did not threaten you?”
Our landlady, who always seemed so formidable, now shook like a leaf, and nodded, tears in her eyes. “They threw me down into the armchair and told me to say not a word, or they would… they would…” She could not finish.
Holmes’s features contorted into a violent thunder for a second. He strode over to the Persian slipper by the hearth, and fumbled about in the toe for his tobacco. Only when he had filled his briar and lit it did he finally speak.
“Mrs Hudson, I am so terribly sorry you were involved in this unpleasantness. You have my word that it shall not happen again. As for the men who did this—were they two large, foreign gentlemen perchance?”
“They were, Mr Holmes.”
“Fair of hair?”
“I could not tell. It was dark—they wore hats, and had scarves about their faces. I only knew they were foreign when they ordered me to be quiet.”
“Was anyone else with them?”
“I saw no one else.”
“What time did you discover them?”
“I heard a noise, just a few minutes before midnight. At first I thought you had returned. Even when the banging and crashing began, I thought it might be you, if you’ll pardon me, Mr Holmes. You have been known to keep strange hours and peculiar habits. But as time went on I thought better of it.”
“Can you remember anything else that may assist us? Any detail, no matter how trifling?”
“I can do more than that, Mr Holmes. I remembered how much you value these things, and so I followed them downstairs.”
“Mrs Hudson!” I exclaimed.
“Watson is right,” Holmes said. “These are dangerous men. However, if you have learned anything that may be of use, it is possible that the risk was worth taking. What did you see?”
“They got into a carriage—a private one.”
“Liveried?”
“No, plain black.”
“But a driver?”
“Yes. I got close enough to hear their instruction to the driver, though they spoke foreign.”
“They spoke to the driver in German?” Holmes mused. “Mrs Hudson, did you make out any part of what they said? Think! It is of the utmost importance.”
“They said only three words, and I did my best to remember them for you. But… but it sounded so vulgar.”
“That’s German for you. Lean forward, Mrs Hudson, and whisper it, to spare Dr Watson’s blushes.”
Mrs Hudson whispered in Holmes’s ear, and at once my friend stepped back and laughed.
Mrs Hudson turned beetroot red. Holmes apologised at once and adopted a more sober expression.
“Oh, Mr Holmes. Is… is this what comes of your line of work?” Mrs Hudson asked tearfully.
“Do not fear, Mrs Hudson, I shall have all of this made right. Watson—perhaps Mrs Hudson requires one of your tonics, for the shock.”
“Of course, Holmes,” I said, and at once ushered Mrs Hudson away, seeing that Holmes needed some peace to make a thorough examination of our rooms, which were now a crime scene.
When I returned, I found Holmes writing a letter, creating an awful frowst while he was at it by puffing incessantly on his pipe.
“Have you found anything of use?” I asked.
“Nothing I did not already know. The letter that was left behind on the mantelpiece was the missive sent to me by Van Helsing. It was not there originally, because as you know only unopened post is kept there. The letter had been removed from the desk drawer and pinned to the mantelpiece—an obvious message from the good professor that he now has the upper hand. We are dealing with professionals here, Watson. They wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. Their shoes were clean, and they were careful not to drop anything that might incriminate them. I found a small mound of ash from an imported German cigarillo on the carpet over there, but it is not of an uncommon type, and not the cigars smoked by Van Helsing. It tells us nothing new about the intruders.”
“This is an outrage, Holmes,” I said. I had contained my anger in Mrs Hudson’s presence, but now it spilled forth. “Twice now these Germans have threatened a defenceless woman. I would like to see how they fare against men!”
“You may have your chance, Watson, but these men are not the immediate danger. They have what they came for, and I imagine they shall leave us be, for a while at least.”
“And what have they taken?”
“The Dracula Papers, Watson,” he said. “Every scrap of evidence we have gathered so far. They have it all—the log of the Demeter, Cotford’s journal, Kate Reed’s letters, even Pike’s message… confound it all! I have inadvertently put lives at risk.”
“Holmes, you weren’t to know.”
“I should have known. We must have been seen about Whitby carrying a ledger from the harbourmaster’s office, which is now in the hands of our enemy.”
“Will you at least tell me what Mrs Hudson said to you that so amused you?”
“Oh, yes,” Holmes said. “The phrase that Mrs Hudson thought she overheard, and made a fairly bad fist of repeating, was ‘Die Botschaft, schnell’. That adds to my suspicions.”
“My German is not what it once was, Holmes. What does it mean?”
“Among other things, it means ‘the embassy, quickly’. Our German friends may not be mere ruffians—they could be spies of the German government. It is reasonable to imagine, therefore, that Van Helsing is a spy also.”
“You are saying we now find ourselves embroiled in espionage? Against the German government, no less! Should we not call upon Mycroft at once?”
“Not yet. We have lost our evidence, and now only have the hearsay of our landlady. Mycroft would disavow us immediately, and Van Helsing would probably sue us for barratry.”
“A fine state of affairs! Well, what are we to do now, Holmes?” I asked, weary and utterly downhearted over this latest setback.
“I need to make a further search of these rooms to see if our burglars left any other clues behind. While I do that, you must go out, Watson, at once.”
“Holmes, it shall soon be dawn…” I groaned.
“Which is why I must send you—there will be no messengers about, but you may be able to persuade a cabbie.”
I sighed. It was not merely the prospect of hard work and a night without rest—I felt deeply guilty about Mrs Hudson’s predicament too.
“What am I to do?” I said, resigning myself.
“Take these letters. This one must be given in at Langdale Pike’s club—for all his influence, Pike has made himself a target by assisting us, and it would be remiss not to warn him. These two letters must be sent to Exeter. One is a warning for Miss Reed, the other a note for the police inspector there, asking him to remain vigilant lest the woman receives any unwelcome visitors. Lastly, you must give this missive to Bradstreet.”
“He won’t be happy about that! We’ve only been apart this last two hours.”
“We must be careful in whom we place our trust. Bradstreet is in our confidence, and only he will do for now.”
There was little more to be said. Before long I was on my way, feet leaden and head fuzzy. The fog had by now reached the city, and would soon take on an ominous, orange glow when the dawn’s light struck it. I sighed. There were no hansoms about, and so I began the walk to the nearest livery stable office at Regent Street, at least thankful that the lack of sleep would stave off nightmares about bloofer ladies and headless corpses.