mild . . . I have taken it, and am waiting for
sleep, which still keeps aloof. I hope I have not done wrong, for as
sleep begins to flirt with me, a new fear comes: that I may have been
foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking. I might want
it. Here comes sleep. Goodnight.

CHAPTER 20

JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 October, evening.--I found Thomas Snelling in his house at Bethnal
Green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything.
The very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him
had proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected
debauch. I learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor
soul, that he was only the assistant of Smollet, who of the two mates
was the responsible person. So off I drove to Walworth, and found Mr.
Joseph Smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, taking a late tea out
of a saucer. He is a decent, intelligent fellow, distinctly a good,
reliable type of workman, and with a headpiece of his own. He
remembered all about the incident of the boxes, and from a wonderful
dog-eared notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptacle
about the seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries
in thick, half-obliterated pencil, he gave me the destinations of the
boxes. There were, he said, six in the cartload which he took from
Carfax and left at 197 Chicksand Street, Mile End New Town, and
another six which he deposited at Jamaica Lane, Bermondsey. If then
the Count meant to scatter these ghastly refuges of his over London,
these places were chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he
might distribute more fully. The systematic manner in which this was
done made me think that he could not mean to confine himself to two
sides of London. He was now fixed on the far east on the northern
shore, on the east of the southern shore, and on the south. The north
and west were surely never meant to be left out of his diabolical
scheme, let alone the City itself and the very heart of fashionable
London in the south-west and west. I went back to Smollet, and asked
him if he could tell us if any other boxes had been taken from Carfax.

He replied, "Well guv'nor, you've treated me very 'an'some", I had
given him half a sovereign, "an I'll tell yer all I know. I heard a
man by the name of Bloxam say four nights ago in the 'Are an' 'Ounds,
in Pincher's Alley, as 'ow he an' his mate 'ad 'ad a rare