and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily
away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw
the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew then that we were safe till
morning did we desire it; but the Professor told me that we should not
want more than an hour at most. Again I felt that horrid sense of the
reality of things, in which any effort of imagination seemed out of
place; and I realised distinctly the perils of the law which we were
incurring in our unhallowed work. Besides, I felt it was all so useless.
Outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead
nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to
open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own
eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders, however,
and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on his own road,
no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened the vault, and again
courteously motioned me to precede. The place was not so gruesome as
last night, but oh, how unutterably mean-looking when the sunshine
streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to Lucy s coffin, and I followed.
He bent over and again forced back the leaden flange; and then a shock
of surprise and dismay shot through me.
There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her
funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever; and I
could not believe that she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than
before; and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom.
Is this a juggle? I said to him.
Are you convinced now? said the Professor in response, and as he spoke
he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled back the
dead lips and showed the white teeth.
See, he went on, see, they are even sharper than before. With this
and this --and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below
it-- the little children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend
John? Once more, argumentative hostility woke within me. I _could_ not
accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested; so, with an attempt to
argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said:--
She may have been placed here since last night.
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