Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - For if he is still with the quick Undead, your...
For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he isNo, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakableYou must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joyBy the day, or the night, in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you do not dieNay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past
The poor dear grew white as death, and shook and shivered, as I have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tideAt length she grew more calm and turning to him said sweetly, but oh so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand, "I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall strive to do soTill, if it may be in His good time, this horror may have passed away from me
She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to doI told her that she was to have all the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter use, and was to keep the record as she had done beforeShe was pleased with the prospect of anything to do, if "pleased" could be used in connection with so grim an interest
As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was prepared with an exact ordering of our work
"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 thereHad 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 othersBut now he does not know our intentionsNay, more, in all probability, he does not know that such a power exists to us as can sterilize 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 themToday then, is ours, and in it rests our hopeThe sun that rose on our sorrow this morning guards us in its courseUntil it sets tonight, that monster must retain whatever form he now hasHe is confined within the limitations of his earthly envelopeHe cannot melt into thin air nor disappear through cracks or chinks or cranniesIf he go through a doorway, he must open the door like a mortalAnd so we have this day to hunt out all his lairs and sterilize themSo 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 impossibleBut 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 sayWe shall all act and act with desperate quick, when the time has comeBut think, in all probable the key of the situation is in that house in PiccadillyThe Count may have many houses which he has boughtOf them he will have deeds of purchase, keys and other thingsHe will have paper that he write onHe will have his book of chequesThere are many belongings that he must have somewhereWhy not in this place so central, so quiet, where he come and go by the front or the back at all hours, when in the very vast of the traffic there is none to noticeWe shall go there and search that houseAnd 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 shop it
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