Dracula: Three Letters

Jonathan Harker woke in his own bed and could not tell whether the terrible scene with the three women had been a dream, although his clothes were folded strangely and his watch, which he always wound at night, had stopped.In daylight he went back to the door of that room and found it shut so hard that the wood had splintered, and he understood with a sinking heart that it had been no dream.That evening the Count smoothly asked him to write three letters: one saying that his work was nearly done, one saying that he was leaving the next morning, and one saying that he had already left the castle and reached the town of Bistritz.

Jonathan wanted to refuse, but he was completely in the Count’s power, so he pretended to agree and asked what dates to put on the letters.The Count thought for a minute and said, “The first should be June the twelfth, the second June the nineteenth, and the third June the twenty-ninth,” and Jonathan knew at once that he had just been told how long he had to live.A few days later a band of Szgany travellers camped in the courtyard, and Jonathan secretly threw two letters through the bars of his window with a gold coin, one for Mr. Hawkins, his employer, and one, written in shorthand, for his fiancée Mina.

That evening the Count sat beside him with both letters in his hand and calmly burned one of them in the lamp, calling it an outrage upon hospitality, while politely handing the other back so that Jonathan could put it in a clean envelope.After that he was kept locked in, and one morning he found that all his paper, his travel notes, his money papers and even his travelling suit and coat had vanished from his room.Some days later two great wagons rolled into the courtyard carrying large empty boxes with rope handles, but when Jonathan cried out to the drivers from his window, they only laughed and turned away.

On the night of June the twenty-fourth, Jonathan watched from a high window and saw the Count climb out of his own window, head first down the wall like a lizard, dressed in Jonathan’s own travelling suit.He understood the plan at once: villagers would see a man in Jonathan’s clothes posting letters, and any crime the Count committed would be blamed on the real Jonathan.Determined to find the key, Jonathan took off his boots the next morning and crept out along the narrow stone ledge outside his window, careful never to look down, until he reached the Count’s window and climbed in.

The room was empty and dusty, with a great heap of old gold in one corner, and a heavy door led to a stair that wound down to an old ruined chapel where fifty wooden boxes stood filled with fresh earth.In one of them lay the Count himself, so still that he seemed dead, yet his eyes were open and his lips were red, and when Jonathan searched for the key, the eyes held such hatred that he fled back the way he had come.On June the twenty-ninth the Count announced that Jonathan might leave the next day, and to prove it he led him to the great front door, which swung open, but at the howling of wolves outside, Jonathan cried out that he would wait until morning.

At dawn the great door was locked again, and later, from the Count’s room, Jonathan heard the Szgany hammer the boxes shut, carry them out and drive away.Left alone in the castle with the three women, and knowing that the Count’s boxes were bound for London, Jonathan decided that he would rather risk climbing down the castle wall than wait for the night.