"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

a while, finding no response, I knocked and rang again; still no
answer. I cursed the laziness of the servants that they should lie
abed at such an hour- for it was now ten o'clock- and so rang and
knocked again, but more impatiently, but still without response.
Hitherto I had blamed only the servants, but now a terrible fear began
to assail me. Was this desolation but another link in the chain of
doom which seemed drawing tight around us? Was it indeed a house of
death to which I had come, too late? I knew that minutes, even
seconds, of delay might mean hours of danger to Lucy, if she had had
again one of those frightful relapses; and I went round the house to
try if I could find by chance an entry anywhere.

I could find no means of ingress. Every window and door was fastened
and locked, and I returned baffled to the porch. As I did so, I
heard the rapid pit-pat of a swiftly driven horse's feet. They stopped
at the gate, and a few seconds later I met Van Helsing running up
the avenue. When he saw me, he gasped out:-

"Then it was you, and just arrived. How is she? Are we too late? Did
you not get my telegram?"

I answered as quickly and coherently as I could that I had only
got his telegram early in the morning and had not lost a minute in
coming here, and that I could not make any one in the house hear me.
He paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly:-

"Then I fear we are too late. God's will be done!" With his usual
recuperative energy, he went on: "Come. If there be no way open to get
in, we must make one. Time is all in all to us now."

We went round to the back of the house, where there was a kitchen
window. The Professor took a small surgical saw from his case, and
handing it to me, pointed to the iron bars which guarded the window. I
attacked them at once and had very soon cut through three of them.
Then with a long, thin knife we pushed back the fastening of the
sashes and opened the window. I helped the Professor in, and
followed him. There was no one in the kitchen or in the servants'
rooms, which were close at hand. We tried all the rooms as we went
along, and in the dining-room, dimly lit by rays of light through
the shutters, found four servant-women lying on the floor. There was
no need to think them dead, for their stertorous breathing and the
acrid smell of laudanum in the room left no doubt as to their
condition. Van Helsing and I looked at each other, and as we moved
away he said: "We can attend to them later." Then we ascended to
Lucy's room. For an instant or two we paused at the door to listen,
but there was no sound that we could hear. With white faces and
trembling hands, we opened the door gently, and entered the room.

How shall I describe what we saw? On the bed lay two women, Lucy and
her mother. The latter lay farthest in, and she was covered with a