Dracula: The Missing Boxes

While Mina rested, Jonathan went across London to find the men who had carried the Count’s boxes away from Carfax.A carter named Smollet told him that he had taken six boxes to Mile End and another six to Bermondsey.Another carter, Sam Bloxam, had taken nine more boxes to an old house in Piccadilly.

“The old gentleman helped me lift them,” said Bloxam, “and he was the strongest fellow I ever met.”He described an old man with a white moustache, so thin that you would think he couldn’t throw a shadow.Jonathan shivered, because he knew exactly who that old gentleman was.

Later, a letter from the house agents said that the Piccadilly house had been bought by a foreign nobleman, “Count de Ville.”Twenty-nine boxes at Carfax, twelve in the east and south of London, and nine in Piccadilly: now they knew where all fifty had gone.Meanwhile Mina looked paler and more tired every day, but no one guessed why.

At the asylum, Renfield had become strange again, and he talked to Seward about life and souls.“I don’t want any souls,” he said. “Life is all I want.”He no longer cared about flies and spiders, and Seward began to fear that the Count had promised him something much bigger.

From then on, Seward had a man keep watch outside Renfield’s door at night.For a while all was quiet, and the friends made plans to get into the house in Piccadilly.Then, late one night, the attendant burst into Seward’s room: Renfield was lying on the floor, covered in blood.