18 September.—­I drove at once to Hillingham and arrived early.  Keeping my cab at the gate, I went up the avenue alone.  I knocked gently and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy or her mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door.  After 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 round us?  Was it indeed a house of death to which I had come, too late?  I know 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 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.