clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud
grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white
moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck
of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver
lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any
kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught
of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with
a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange
intonation.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He
made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as
though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant,
however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively
forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which
made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it
seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.
Again he said,

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something
of the happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so
much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had
not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person
to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively,
"Count Dracula?"

He bowed in a courtly way as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you
welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill,