When Saigô Shirô arrived at Renbei-jyuku at six o’clock, some light remained in the western sky. But there was no sign of his teacher Jigorô, even though he had said he would stop by later.
“Oh, well.”
He went behind Renbei-jyuku and hid around a corner to the south where he could monitor the house.
He waited, and as the minutes became hours, it was now around midnight by Shirô’s guess.
The rain clouds, which had come in the afternoon, had blown away by nightfall, and now a beautiful moon lit the night sky. Even from a distance, Shirô could see a great many things. He had made it a part of his training to practice fighting on moonless nights with only the stars to see by.
“Sensei sure is late,” he muttered to himself for the fiftieth time. A horse-drawn cab came from the direction of Ochanomizu and pulled up 165 to 200 feet away from Renbei-jyuku. Jigorô emerged and stepped out into the light of a nearby lamp.
After the cab drove away, Shirô tried to go out to greet his teacher, but Jigorô gestured for him to stay where he was. Although he was not a big man, he had lately put on some weight, and there was almost a swagger to his leisurely walk. He made his way with agile steps toward Shirô. The sight of him awed Shirô. So this is what a seasoned martial artist looked like.
Noticing the black leather bag in Jigorô’s hand, Shirô offered, “Let me take that for you.”
But shaking his head, Jigorô shot a hard look toward the fence of the Kashiwabara mansion.
“Anything out of the ordinary?” he asked.
“No, nothing.”
“It’s still early. But he must be awake by now.”
“Who?”
“Count Dracula.”
“Huh?” Shirô was confused. Here he was spying on Renbei-jyuku like he was some kind of detective. And now, something about the count…
“Please explain, Sensei.”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I couldn’t believe it myself. How such a devil could ever exist…”
Jigorô’s expression became stiff.
“Sensei, who are you talking about?”
Shirô watched Jigorô’s face slowly tilting upward.
Shirô followed his stare.
Something big flew across the dark sky.
“It’s a bat,” Shirô said, looking back at Jigorô. Jigorô’s hand was raised, which made Shirô look again.
“It’s him,” Jigorô said.
“But that’s just a—”
“According to Transylvanian legend, he is said to change his form into a bat.”
“Huh?” He snapped his head back to his teacher, but seeing his face, Shirô looked for the bat again. He watched it circle above Renbei-jyuku two or three times. Then it dropped and disappeared behind the fence.
“Sensei, I think the bat landed in the yard.”
“Let’s go, Shirô,” said Jigorô as he ran out. Shirô chased after him, puzzled.
Shirô thought they were headed for the entrance, but Jigorô shouted, “Hide over by the fence!”
“Huh?” said Shirô. But his teacher’s voice sounded so urgent that he ran full speed ahead, overtaking Jigorô, and squatted down in front of the fence.
Without slowing down, Jigorô put a foot on Shirô’s back and leaped into the air. He jumped easily over the fence, which was nearly ten feet high, and landed in the yard.
“Amazing, Sensei,” Shirô said, unable to hide his amazement. At the same time, he kicked the ground.
He had once fought some men who knew an old style of jujitsu. Every time these gigantic men had thrown him, he had astonished them by spinning in the air and landing nimbly on his feet like a cat. Shirô had learned this by watching a cat fall from a roof, and now he jumped as if he were a cat himself.
Although it was impossible to simply jump over the fence, he put one hand on the top and swung himself over, like an upside-down pendulum, in one quick move.
Neither man had made a sound when he landed.
“Let’s go.” Jigorô gestured toward the main house, apparently not having given a thought to the possibility that the fence might hinder Shirô.
They were surrounded by bamboo trees.
The Kashiwabara property was three hundred tsubo[1] in size. In the spacious yard was a large pond and bamboo groves, such as the one they were standing in.
All the windows of the Kashiwabara house were dark.
Shirô said anxiously, “Sensei, is this allowed? It looks like we’re—”
“We’re not breaking in. We’re trying to help someone,” Jigorô answered. “I admit this is strange. But we have no choice, given who we are up against.”
“Is the count nearby?”
Jigorô walked through the grove without answering.
“Damn!”
It was the first time Shirô had ever heard his teacher’s voice filled with such shock and fear.
Shirô looked to the side and gasped.
One hundred feet away, on the western edge of the pond, stood two shadows.
It was a girl in a white gown and a man in black.
Although the girl’s face was visible, the man had his back turned and his face hidden.
“Sensei, they’re kissing,” Shirô blurted out. Just then, from a window behind where the girl stood, appeared another girl’s face.
The girl in the window cried, “Akane!”
It was Chizuru.
Akane fell to the ground like a wilted flower.
The man spun around. Behind the black sleeve covering his face, two crimson orbs burned. They were eyes.
“Somebody help!” Chizuru screamed.
The man ran about twenty feet and kicked the earth.
Shirô swallowed. He couldn’t believe it. The man had transformed into a bat.
“Sensei!?”
“Chase him. He can’t stay that way for long. Find out where he lives.”
“If it’s the count, he lives—”
“No, he must be aware that I know who he is from our earlier conversation. He has most likely moved to another place. Chase him, but try to avoid a confrontation. Your judo skills will be useless against him.”
Shirô didn’t like hearing that his judo skills were useless, but he did not question his master.
He went back to the fence and cleared it just as easily as he had the first time.
Once back on the street, he looked up and saw the bat flutter away toward the west.
“You won’t get away.”
As he broke into a sprint, he was stunned by a realization: his teacher had ordered him to wear shoes instead of sandals because he had foreseen all this.
One of the students, a boarder at the Kashiwabara house, carried Akane inside.
Chizuru had been saddened when her father had been admitted to the hospital, but now she thought that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.
She asked several students to stand guard around the house and yard and sent out a hired hand to fetch the family doctor. Then the doorbell rang.
The maid went to answer the door and returned immediately.
“Sensei Kanô is here.”
Chizuru’s eyes became round.
“He said he’s coming from a meeting and stopped by for a visit.”
He had, of course, slipped over the fence soon after Shirô had left, and, after watching the students come out, he boldly made his appearance at the door.
Chizuru felt her suspicion give way to happiness. That Kanô Jigorô had studied medicine informally in his youth was common knowledge, which was why the old jujitsu masters had criticized him—a scholar trying to become a martial artist!
He was led into the one Western-style room in the Kashiwabara mansion. Seeing Akane lying in bed, Jigorô asked everyone but Chizuru to step out of the room.
“What happened?”
Chizuru explained. “I couldn’t sleep because of what happened to my father. I noticed that the house had suddenly become very cold. There was a draft, so I went out into the hall to see if any of the windows were open. That’s when I noticed the door to this room was open.”
Although it was dark inside the room, the moonlight was enough for her to see that Akane’s bed was empty. And the window was open. Ignoring the cold wind, Chizuru went to the window to see where her sister had gone.
At the edge of the pond, Akane was embracing the man in black.
The rest Jigorô knew all too well.
He focused his eyes on a single point.
The opening of the gown… at Akane’s throat.
There were two puncture wounds on the girl’s pale throat and dried blood that had trickled down from the wounds.
“Right above the carotid artery,” Jigorô said softly so that Chizuru would not hear.