Free TW08 The Dracula Caper NEW by Simon Hawke

taking too much time. Brant and Craven were now on full-time surveillance duty, watching H. G. Wells, but he was going on about his normal routine and nothing unusual had happened. For all they knew, nothing would. It could be simple coincidence that Wells had foreseen so many future developments, coincidence that he had written about a scientist named Moreau who was engaged in biological experimentation, coincidence that he had written about time travel. And there had been nothing unusual in Conan Doyle's behavior. either. He kept consulting with Inspector Grayson, but otherwise, he did not seem to he involved in any temporally anomalous events. Only Neilson had come up with any significant information as a result of his cover position at the crime lab. What he had come up with wasn't much, but it was cause for worry.
    "I think we've got at least two of them." Neilson was saying. "The Crewe murder was different from the other two. She fits the classic profile of a vampire's victim in fiction. Whatever happened to her, she apparently went along with it willingly, or at least willingly in the sense that she wasn't assaulted with the same physical force as the other victims. There may have been some other form of duress, perhaps psychological, maybe even biochemical, because she apparently never complained about what happened to her."
    "What do we know about her?" Steiger said.
    "From what Grayson told Conan Doyle in my presence." Neilson said, "all I know is that she had recently arrived in London from Richmond Hill. Her family is very well off. They weren't very pleased about her wanting to become an actress. She was seeing a young man named Tony Hesketh, who has apparently disappeared. Hesketh may have been bisexual. Ile was close to some of the young men in Oscar Wilde's circle and he was last seen at the Lyceum Theatre in the company of a dark, foreign looking man dressed in elegant evening clothes and an opera cape, described as a Mediterranean type, a gentleman, elegant and striking looking, with a title."
    "Sounds like Count Dracula." said Finn Delaney. Steiger gave him a sharp look. "You don't think . . ."
    "I was only kidding." said Delaney. An anxious expression crossed his face. "I think."
    "Let me see those lists," said Andre. She grabbed the lists of recent bank depositors and real estate leasehold transactions and started scanning them.
    "Oh, come on," said Steiger. "Drakov would never be that obvious."
    "I don't know," said Delaney. "It could be just the sort of thing that would amuse him, throwing down the gauntlet that way. Jesus, a genetically engineered vampire. And if such a creature's genetic makeup was also contagious—"
    "It would be, knowing Drakov," Steiger said.
    "How about that for temporal terrorism?" said Delaney. "Unleashing a plague of vampires and werewolves on Victorian London. And the timing is positively macabre. Just one year before Brain Stoker started work on
Dracula.
One year before
The Time Machine
was published."
    "And it was always believed that Stoker based his character on the historical Dracula from the 15th century," said Andre, still scanning the lists. "Drakov might just have decided to make the character
truly
historical. And the similarity of their names, that would only be one more thing that would make the idea appeal to him."
    "Anything?" said Steiger, watching her scan the lists. She shook her head.
    "You know, we may be overlooking something, sir." said Neilson. "What about rentals?"
    "Jesus, rentals!•• Steiger said. "How the hell would we ever track down rentals? There's just no way!"
    "Possibly not, sir," Neilson said, "but on the other hand, would Drakov really go in for a bed-and-breakfast sort of deal? I mean, it doesn't seem very likely that he'd rent ordinary moms like your average London boarder. He'd want something bigger, probably, more private. An unused estate, maybe, or a warehouse—"
    "A warehouse!" said Delaney. "And
all
the killings so
far
occurred