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Occult Detective Fiction

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The House Among the Laurels
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Case of the Tragedies in the Greek
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Occult Detective Fiction

Occult detective stories combine the tropes of the detective story with those of supernatural
horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective the occult detective is employed in cases
involving ghosts, curses, and other supernatural elements. He or she is often a doctor inclined
to metaphysical speculation. Some occult detectives are portrayed as being themselves
psychic or in possession of other paranormal powers.
Literature
It is difficult to settle on the very first of any fictional character type; however, Fitz James
OBriens Harry Escott is a contender for first occult detective in fiction. A specialist in
supernatural phenomena, Escott investigates a ghost in "The Pot of Tulips" (1855) and an
invisible entity in "What Was It? A Mystery" (1859). The narrator of Robert Bulwer-Lyttons
novella "The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain" (1859) is another
student of the supernatural who probes a mystery involving a culprit with paranormal
abilities.
Sheridan Le Fanu's Dr. Martin Hesselius appeared in "Green Tea" (1869) and later became a
framing device for Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872).
The next prominent figure in this tradition was Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's
Dracula (1897), followed closely by E. and H. Heron's Flaxman Low, featured in a series of
stories in Pearson's Magazine (189899), Algernon Blackwood's Dr. John Silence, and
William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder. The adventures of Carnacki have been
continued by A. F. Kidd in collaboration with Rick Kennett in 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki,
the Untold Stories (2000) and by William Meikle in Carnacki: Heaven and Hell (Colusa, CA:
Ghost House Press, 2011). Other supernatural sleuths in fiction dating to the late nineteenth
century include Alice & Claude Askew's Aylmer Vance and Champion de Crespigny's Norton
Vyse.
Sax Rohmer's collection The Dream Detective features the occult detective Moris Klaw, who
utilises "odic force" in his investigations. The occultist Dion Fortune made her contribution to
the genre with The Secrets of Dr Taverner (1926), consisting of psychic adventures of the
Sherlock Holmeslike Taverner as narrated by his assistant, Dr Rhodes. Aleister Crowley's
Simon Iff featured in a series of stories, some of which have been collected in book form.
Dennis Wheatley's occult detective was Neils Orsen.
Though never large, the occult detective subgenre grew to include such writers as Seabury
Quinn (with his character Jules de Grandin); Manly Wade Wellman, whose character John
Thunstone investigated occult events through short stories in the pulps, collected in The Third
Cry to Legba and Other Invocations (2000) and in the novels What Dreams May Come (1983)
and The School of Darkness (1985); and "Jack Mann" (E. C. Vivian), who chronicled the
adventure of his occult detective Gregory Gordon George Green, known as "Gees", in a series
of novels. Pulp writer Robert E. Howard created stories about Steve Harrison, an occult
detective, in the Strange Detective Stories magazine. Margery Lawrence created the character
Miles Pennoyer in her occult detective stories collected in Number Seven, Queer Street.
Modern writers who have used the occult detective theme as a basis for supernatural
adventures include Peter Saxon (The Guardians series), John Burke (Dr Alex Caspian), Frank
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Lauria (Dr Owen Orient), Lin Carter (Anton Zarnak), and Joseph Payne Brennan (Lucius
Leffing).
The occult detective theme has also been used with series characters devised by such
contemporary writers as Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently), F. Paul Wilson (the Repairman Jack
series), Steve Rasnic Tem (Charlie Goode), Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Miss Penelope
Pettiweather), David Rowlands (Father O'Connor), Rick Kennett (Ernie Pine), Brian Lumley
(Titus Crow), Robert Weinberg (Sydney Taine), Simon R. Green (John Taylor), Steve Niles
(Cal McDonald), Mike Carey (Felix Castor), Mercedes Lackey (Diana Tregarde), Laurell K.
Hamilton (Anita Blake), and Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal). Jim Butcher's best-selling
book series The Dresden Files is another well-known example. Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy
stories and Dean Koontz's The Haunted Earth are examples in which occult detectives operate
in a world where the occult is simply an accepted part of mundane life.
A useful recent anthology collecting specimens of the genre is Mark Valentine, ed., The Black
Veil & Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths (ISBN 978-1-84022-088-9), published by
Wordsworth Editions in 2009. Earlier themed anthologies include Stephen Jones, ed., Dark
Detectives: Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths (Fedogan & Bremer, 1998) and Peter
Haining, ed., Supernatural Sleuths: Stories of Occult Investigators (William Kimber, 1986).
Film and television
In the 1970s, there were a number of attempts at occult detective television series. While not
overtly occult detectives, the heroes and heroine of the sixties series The Champions inherited
occult powers from a Tibetan lama and used these powers to investigate crime. Other
examples include The Norliss Tapes (1973) with Roy Thinnes as a reporter investigating the
supernatural; Fear No Evil (1969) and its sequel, Ritual of Evil (1970), starring Louis Jourdan
as psychologist David Sorrell; Spectre (1977), starring Robert Culp and Gig Young as
criminologists turned demonologists; The World of Darkness (1977) and its sequel, The
World Beyond (1978), starring Granville Van Dusen as a man who battles the supernatural
following his own near death experience; and a British production, Baffled! (1973), starring
Leonard Nimoy and Susan Hampshire as a pair of ghost-hunters. The most successful effort
of this period was the short-lived television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974), starring
Darren McGavin; the weekly series was based on two backdoor pilots (The Night Stalker and
The Night Strangler) produced by Dan Curtis and scripted by Richard Matheson based on an
unpublished work by Jeff Rice. Kolchak's adventures have been continued in books by Rice
and in the comic book Kolchak Tales. Matheson's Kolchak Scripts have also been published.

THE HOUSE AMONG THE LAURELS

By
William Hope Hodgson
"This is a curious yarn that I am going to tell you," said Carnacki, as after a quiet little dinner
we made ourselves comfortable in his cosy dining-room.
"I have just got back from the West of Ireland," he continued. "Wentworth, a friend of mine,
has lately had rather an unexpected legacy, in the shape of a large estate and manor, about a
mile and a half outside of the village of Korunton. The place is named Gannington Manor,
and has been empty a great number of years; as you will find is almost always the case with
houses reputed to be haunted, as it is usually termed.
"It seems that when Wentworth went over to take possession, he found the place in very poor
repair, and the estate totally uncared for, and, as I know, looking very desolate and lonesome
generally. He went through the big house by himself, and he admitted to me that it had an
uncomfortable feeling about it; but, of course, that might be nothing more than the natural
dismalness of a big, empty house, which has been long uninhabited, and through which you
are wandering alone.
"When he had finished his look round, he went down to the village, meaning to see the onetime Agent of the Estate, and arrange for someone to go in as caretaker. The Agent, who
proved by the way to be a Scotchman, was very willing to take up the management of the
Estate once more; but he assured Wentworth that they would get no one to go in as caretaker
and that histhe Agent'sadvice was to have the house pulled down, and a new one built.
"This, naturally, astonished my friend, and, as they went down to the village, he managed to
get a sort of explanation from the man. It seems that there had been always curious stories
told about the place, which in the early days was called Landru Castle, and that within the last
seven years there had been two extraordinary deaths there. In each case they had been tramps,
who were ignorant of the reputation of the house, and had probably thought the big empty
place suitable for a night's free lodging. There had been absolutely no signs of violence, to
indicate the method by which death was caused, and on each occasion the body had been
found in the great entrance hall.
"By this time they had reached the inn where Wentworth had put up, and he told the Agent
that he would prove that it was all rubbish about the haunting, by staying a night or two in the
Manor himself. The death of the tramps was certainly curious; but did not prove that any
supernatural agency had been at work. They were but isolated accidents, spread over a large
number of years by the memory of villagers, which was natural enough in a little place like
Korunton. Tramps had to die some time, and in some place, and it proved nothing that two,
out of possibly hundreds who had slept in the empty house, had happened to take the
opportunity to die under shelter.
"But the Agent took his remark very seriously, and both he and Dennis, the landlord of the
inn, tried their best to persuade him not to go. For his 'sowl's sake,' Irish Dennis begged him to
do no such thing; and because of his 'life's sake,' the Scotchman was equally in earnest.
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"It was late afternoon at the time, and as Wentworth told me, it was warm and bright and it
seemed such utter rot to hear those two talking seriously about the impossible. He felt full of
pluck, and he made up his mind he would smash the story of the haunting, at once by staying
that very night, in the Manor. He made this quite clear to them, and told them that it would be
more to the point and to their credit, if they offered to come up along with him and keep him
company. But poor old Dennis was quite shocked, I believe, at the suggestion; and though
Tabbit, the Agent, took it more quietly, he was very solemn about it.
"It appears that Wentworth did go; though, as he said to me, when the evening began to come
on, it seemed a very different sort of thing to tackle.
"A whole crowd of the villagers assembled to see him off; for by this time they all knew of
his intention. Wentworth had his gun with him, and a big packet of candles; and he made it
clear to them all that it would not be wise for anyone to play any tricks; as he intended to
shoot 'at sight.' And then, you know, he got a hint of how serious they considered the whole
thing; for one of them came up to him, leading a great bull-mastiff, and offered it to him, to
take to keep him company. Wentworth patted his gun; but the old man who owned the dog,
shook his head and explained that the brute might warn him in sufficient time for him to get
away from the castle. For it was obvious that he did not consider the gun would prove of any
use.
"Wentworth took the dog, and thanked the man. He told me that, already, he was beginning to
wish that he had not said definitely that he would go; but, as it was, he was simply forced to.
He went through the crowd of men, and found suddenly that they had all turned in a body and
were keeping him company. They stayed with him all the way to the Manor, and then went
right over the whole place with him.
"It was still daylight when this was finished; though turning to dusk; and, for a little, the men
stood about, hesitating, as if they felt ashamed to go away and leave Wentworth there all
alone. He told me that, by this time, he would gladly have given fifty pounds to be going back
with them. And then, abruptly, an idea came to him. He suggested that they should stay with
him, and keep him company through the night. For a time they refused, and tried to persuade
him to go back with them; but finally he made a proposition that got home to them all. He
planned that they should all go back to the inn, and there get a couple of dozen bottles of
whisky, a donkey-load of turf and wood, and some more candles. Then they would come
back, and make a great fire in the big fire-place, light all the candles, and put them round the
place, open the whisky and make a night of it. And, by Jove! he got them to agree.
"They set off back, and were soon at the inn, and here, while the donkey was being loaded,
and the candles and whisky distributed, Dennis was doing his best to keep Wentworth from
going back; but he was a sensible man in his way; for when he found that it was no use, he
stopped. You see, he did not want to frighten the others from accompanying Wentworth.
"'I tell ye, sorr,' he told him, ''tis no use at all at all, thryin' ter reclaim ther castle. 'Tis curst
with innocent blood, an' ye'll be betther pullin' it down, an' buildin' a fine new wan. But if ye
be intendin' to shtay this night, kape the big dhoor open whide, an' watch for the bhlood-dhrip.
If so much as a single dhrip falls, don't shtay though all the gold in the worrld was offered ye.'
"Wentworth asked him what he meant by the blood-drip.

"'Shure,' he said, ''tis the bhlood av thim as ould Black Mick 'way back in the ould days kilt in
their shlape. 'Twas a feud as he pretendid to patch up, an' he invited thimthe O'Haras they
wassivinty av thim. An' he fed thim, an' shpoke soft to thim, an' thim thrustin' him, shtayed
to shlape with him. Thin, he an' thim with him, stharted in an' mhurdered thim wan an' all as
they slep'. 'Tis from me father's grandfather ye have the sthory. An' sence thin 'tis death to
any, so they say, to pass the night in the castle whin the bhlood-drip comes. 'Twill put out
candle an' fire, an' thin in the darkness the Virgin Herself would be powerless to protect ye.'
"Wentworth told me he laughed at this; chiefly because, as he put it:One always must laugh
at that sort of yarn, however it makes you feel inside. He asked old Dennis whether he
expected him to believe it.
"'Yes, sorr,' said Dennis, 'I do mane ye to b'lieve it; an', please God, if ye'll b'lieve, ye may be
back safe befor' mornin'.' The man's serious simplicity took hold of Wentworth, and he held
out his hand. But, for all that, he went; and I must admire his pluck.
"There were now about forty men, and when they got back to the Manoror castle as the
villagers always call itthey were not long in getting a big fire going, and lighted candles all
round the great hall. They had all brought sticks; so that they would have been a pretty
formidable lot to tackle by anything simply physical; and, of course, Wentworth had his gun.
He kept the whisky in his own charge; for he intended to keep them sober; but he gave them a
good strong tot all round first, so as to make things seem cheerful; and to get them yarning. If
you once let a crowd of men like that grow silent, they begin to think, and then to fancy
things.
"The big entrance door had been left wide open, by his orders; which shows that he had taken
some notice of Dennis. It was a quiet night, so this did not matter, for the lights kept steady
and all went on in a jolly sort of fashion for about three hours. He had opened a second lot of
bottles, and everyone was feeling cheerful; so much so that one of the men called out aloud to
the ghosts to come out and show themselves. And then, you know, a very extraordinary thing
happened; for the ponderous main door swung quietly and steadily to, as though pushed by an
invisible hand, and shut with a sharp click.
"Wentworth stared, feeling suddenly rather chilly. Then he remembered the men, and looked
round at them. Several had ceased their talk, and were staring in a frightened way at the big
door; but the greater number had never noticed, and were talking and yarning. He reached for
his gun, and the following instant the great bull-mastiff set up a tremendous barking, which
drew the attention of the whole company.
"The hall I should tell you is oblong. The south wall is all windows; but the north and the east
have rows of doors, leading into the house, whilst the west wall is occupied by the great
entrance. The rows of doors leading into the house were all closed, and it was towards one of
these in the north wall that the big dog ran; yet he would not go very close; and suddenly the
door began to move slowly open, until the blackness of the passage beyond was shown. The
dog came back among the men, whimpering, and for perhaps a minute there was an absolute
silence.
"Then Wentworth went out from the men a little, and aimed his gun at the doorway.

"'Whoever is there, come out or I shall fire,' he shouted, but nothing came, and he blazed both
barrels into the dark. As though the report had been a signal, all the doors along the north and
east walls moved slowly open, and Wentworth and his men were staring, frightened, into the
black shapes of the empty doorways.
"Wentworth loaded his gun quickly, and called to the dog; but the brute was burrowing away
in among the men; and this fear on the dog's part frightened Wentworth more, he told me,
than anything. Then something else happened. Three of the candles over in the corner of the
hall went out; and immediately about half a dozen in different parts of the place. More candles
were put out, and the hall had become quite dark in the corners.
"The men were all standing now, holding their clubs, and crowded together. And no one said
a word. Wentworth told me he felt positively ill with fright. I know the feeling. Then,
suddenly, something splashed on to the back of his left hand. He lifted it, and looked. It was
covered with a great splash of red that dripped from his fingers. An old Irishman near to him,
saw it, and croaked out in a quavering voice:'The bhlood-dhrip!' When the old man called
out, they all looked, and in the same instant others felt it upon them. There were frightened
cries of:'The bhlood-dhrip! The bhlood-dhrip!' And then, about a dozen candles went out
simultaneously, and the hall was suddenly almost dark. The dog let out a great, mournful
howl, and there was a horrible little silence, with everyone standing rigid. Then the tension
broke, and there was a mad rush for the main door. They wrenched it open, and tumbled out
into the dark; but something slammed it with a crash after them, and shut the dog in; for
Wentworth heard it howling, as they raced down the drive. Yet no one had the pluck to go
back to let it out, which does not surprise me.
"Wentworth sent for me the following day. He had heard of me in connection with that
Steeple Monster Case. I arrived by the night mail, and put up with Wentworth at the inn. The
next day we went up to the old Manor, which certainly lies in rather a wilderness; though
what struck me most was the extraordinary number of laurel bushes about the house. The
place was smothered with them; so that the house seemed to be growing up out of a sea of
green laurel. These, and the grim, ancient look of the old building, made the place look a bit
dank and ghostly, even by daylight.
"The hall was a big place, and well lit by daylight; for which I was not sorry. You see, I had
been rather wound-up by Wentworth's yarn. We found one rather funny thing, and that was
the great bull-mastiff, lying stiff with its neck broken. This made me feel very serious; for it
showed that whether the cause was supernatural or not, there was present in the house some
force exceedingly dangerous to life.
"Later, whilst Wentworth stood guard with his shot-gun, I made an examination of the hall.
The bottles and mugs from which the men had drunk their whisky were scattered about; and
all over the place were the candles, stuck upright in their own grease. But in that somewhat
brief and general search, I found nothing; and decided to begin my usual exact examination of
every square foot of the placenot only of the hall, in this case, but of the whole interior of
the castle.
"I spent three uncomfortable weeks, searching, but without results of any kind. And, you
know, the care I take at this period is extreme; for I have solved hundreds of cases of so-called
'hauntings' at this early stage, simply by the most minute investigation, and the keeping of a
perfectly open mind. But, as I have said, I found nothing. During the whole of the
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examination I got Wentworth to stand guard with his loaded shot-gun; and I was very
particular that we were never caught there after dusk.
"I decided now to make the experiment of staying a night in the great hall, of course
'protected.' I spoke about it to Wentworth; but his own attempt had made him so nervous that
he begged me to do no such thing. However, I thought it well worth the risk and I managed in
the end to persuade him to be present.
"With this in view I went to the neighbouring town of Gaunt, and by an arrangement with the
Chief Constable I obtained the services of six policemen with their rifles. The arrangement
was unofficial, of course, and the men were allowed to volunteer, with a promise of payment.
"When the constables arrived early that evening at the inn, I gave them a good feed; and after
that we all set out for the manor. We had four donkeys with us, loaded with fuel and other
matters; also two great boar hounds, which one of the police led. When we reached the house,
I set the men to unload the donkeys; whilst Wentworth and I set-to and sealed all the doors,
except the main entrance, with tape and wax; for if the doors were really opened, I was going
to be sure of the fact. I was going to run no risk of being deceived by ghostly hallucination, or
mesmeric influence.
"By the time that this was done, the policemen had unloaded the donkeys, and were waiting,
looking about them, curiously. I set two of them to lay a fire in the big grate, and the others I
used as I required them. I took one of the boar hounds to the end of the hall furthest from the
entrance, and there I drove a staple into the floor, to which I tied the dog with a short tether.
Then, round him, I drew upon the floor the figure of a Pentacle, in chalk. Outside of the
Pentacle, I made a circle with garlic. I did exactly the same thing with the other hound; but
over more in the north-east corner of the big hall, where the two rows of doors make the
angle.
"When this was done, I cleared the whole centre of the hall, and put one of the policemen to
sweep it; after which I had all my apparatus carried into the cleared space. Then I went over to
the main door and hooked it open, so that the hook would have to be lifted out of the hasp,
before the door could be closed. After that, I placed lighted candles before each of the sealed
doors, and one in each corner of the big room; and then I lit the fire. When I saw that it was
properly alight, I got all the men together, by the pile of things in the centre of the room, and
took their pipes from them; for, as the Sigsand MS. has it:'Theyre must noe lyght come
from wythin the barryier.' And I was going to make sure.
"I got my tape-measure then, and measured out a circle thirty-three feet in diameter, and
immediately chalked it out. The police and Wentworth were tremendously interested, and I
took the opportunity to warn them that this was no piece of silly mumming on my part; but
done with a definite intention of erecting a barrier between us and any ab-human thing that
the night might show to us. I warned them that, as they valued their lives, and more than their
lives, it might be, no one must on any account whatever pass beyond the limits of the barrier
that I was making.
"After I had drawn the circle, I took a bunch of the garlic, and smudged it right round the
chalk circle, a little outside of it. When this was complete, I called for candles from my stock
of material. I set the police to lighting them, and as they were lit I took them and sealed them
down on to the floor, just inside the chalk circle, five inches apart. As each candle measured
9

one inch in diameter, it took sixty-six candles to complete the circle; and I need hardly say
that every number and measurement has a significance.
"Then from candle to candle I took a 'gayrd' of human hair, entwining it alternately to the left
and to the right, until the circle was completed, and the ends of the final hairs shod with silver,
and pressed into the wax of the sixty-sixth candle.
"It had now been dark some time, and I made haste to get the 'Defense' complete. To this end,
I got the men well together, and began to fit the Electric Pentacle right around us, so that the
five points of the Defensive Star came just within the Hair-Circle. This did not take me long,
and a minute later I had connected up the batteries, and the weak blue glare of the
intertwining vacuum tubes shone all around us. I felt happier then; for this Pentacle is, as you
all know, a wonderful 'Defense.' I have told you before, how the idea came to me, after
reading Professor Garder's 'Experiments with a Medium.' He found that a current, a certain
number of vibrations, in vacuo, 'insulated' the Medium. It is difficult to suggest an explanation
non-technically, and if you are really interested you should read Garder's lecture on 'Astarral
Vibrations Compared with Matero-involuted Vibrations Below the Six-Billion Limit.'
"As I stood up from my work, I could hear outside in the night a constant drip from the
laurels, which as I have said, come right up around the house, very thick. By the sound, I
knew that a 'soft' rain had set in; and there was absolutely no wind, as I could tell by the
steady flames of the candles.
"I stood a moment or two, listening, and then one of the men touched my arm, and asked me
in a low voice, what they should do. By his tone, I could tell that he was feeling something of
the strangeness of it all; and the other men, including Wentworth, were so quiet that I was
afraid they were beginning to get shaky.
"I set-to, then, and arranged them with their backs to one common centre; so that they were
sitting flat upon the floor, with their feet radiating outwards. Then, by compass, I laid their
legs to the eight chief points, and afterwards I drew a 'circle' with chalk round them; and
opposite to their feet, I made the Eight Signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual. The eighth place was, of
course, empty; but ready for me to occupy at any moment; for I had omitted to make the
Sealing Sign to that point, until I had finished all my preparations, and could enter the 'Inner
Star.'
"I took a last look round the great hall, and saw that the two big hounds were lying quietly,
with their noses between their paws. The fire was big and cheerful, and the candles before the
two rows of doors, burnt steadily, as well as the solitary ones in the corners. Then I went
round the little star of men, and warned them not to be frightened whatever happened; but to
trust to the 'Defense,'; and to let nothing tempt or drive them to cross the Barriers. Also, I told
them to watch their movements, and to keep their feet strictly to their places. For the rest,
there was to be no shooting, unless I gave the word.
"And now at last, I went to my place, and sitting down, made the Eighth Sign just beyond my
feet. Then I arranged my camera and flashlight handy, and examined my revolver.
"Wentworth sat behind the First Sign, and as the numbering went round reversed, that put him
next to me on my left. I asked him, in a rather low voice, how he felt; and he told me, rather

10

nervous; but that he had confidence in my knowledge, and was resolved to go through with
the matter, whatever happened.
"We settled down then to wait. There was no talking, except that, once or twice the police
bent towards one another, and whispered odd remarks concerning the hall, that appeared
queerly audible in the intense silence. But in a while there was not even a word from anyone,
and only the monotonous drip, drip of the quiet rain without the great entrance, and the low,
dull sound of the fire in the big fire-place.
"It was a queer group that we made sitting there, back to back, with our legs starred outwards;
and all around us the strange blue glow of the Pentacle, and beyond that the brilliant shining
of the great ring of lighted candles. Outside of the glare of the candles, the large empty hall
looked a little gloomy, by contrast, except where the lights shone before the sealed doors, and
the blaze of the big fire made a good honest mass of flame on the monster hearth. And the
feeling of mystery! Can you picture it all?
"It might have been an hour later that it came to me suddenly that I was aware of an
extraordinary sense of dreeness, as it were, come into the air of the place. Not the nervous
feeling of mystery that had been with us all the time; but a new feeling, as if there were
something going to happen any moment.
"Abruptly, there came a slight noise from the east end of the hall, and I felt the star of men
move suddenly. 'Steady! Keep steady!' I shouted, and they quietened. I looked up the hall, and
saw that the dogs were up on their feet, and staring in an extraordinary fashion towards the
great entrance. I turned and stared also, and felt the men move as they craned their heads to
look. Suddenly, the dogs set up a tremendous barking, and I glanced across to them, and
found they were still 'pointing' for the big doorway. They ceased their noise just as quickly,
and seemed to be listening. In the same instant, I heard a faint chink of metal to my left, that
set me staring at the hook which held the great door wide. It moved, even as I looked. Some
invisible thing was meddling with it. A queer, sickening thrill went through me, and I felt all
the men about me, stiffen and go rigid with intensity. I had a certainty of something
impending; as it might be the impression of an invisible, but over-whelming, Presence. The
hall was full of a queer silence, and not a sound came from the dogs. Then I saw the hook
slowly raised from out of its hasp, without any visible thing touching it. Then a sudden power
of movement came to me. I raised my camera, with the flashlight fixed, and snapped it at the
door. There came the great flare of the flashlight, and a simultaneous roar of barking from the
two dogs.
"The intensity of the flash made all the place seem dark for some moments, and in that time of
darkness, I heard a jingle in the direction of the door, and strained to look. The effect of the
bright light passed, and I could see clearly again. The great entrance door was being slowly
closed. It shut with a sharp snick, and there followed a long silence, broken only by the
whimpering of the dogs.
"I turned suddenly, and looked at Wentworth. He was looking at me.
"'Just as it did before,' he whispered.
"'Most extraordinary,' I said, and he nodded and looked round, nervously.

11

"The policemen were pretty quiet, and I judged that they were feeling rather worse than
Wentworth; though for that matter, you must not think that I was altogether natural; yet I have
seen so much that is extraordinary, that I daresay I can keep my nerves steady longer than
most people.
"I looked over my shoulder at the men, and cautioned them, in a low voice, not to move
outside of the Barriers, whatever happened; not even though the house seem to be rocking and
about to tumble on to them; for well I knew what some of the great Forces are capable of
doing. Yet, unless it should prove to be one of the cases of the more terrible Saiitii
Manifestation, we were almost certain of safety, so long as we kept to our order within the
Pentacle.
"Perhaps an hour and a half passed, quietly, except when, once in a way, the dogs would
whine distressfully. Presently, however, they ceased even from this, and I could see them
lying on the floor with their paws over their noses, in a most peculiar fashion, and shivering
visibly. The sight made me feel more serious, as you can understand.
"Suddenly, the candle in the corner furthest from the main door, went out. An instant later,
Wentworth jerked my arm, and I saw that a candle before one of the sealed doors had been
put out. I held my camera ready. Then, one after another, every candle about the hall was put
out, and with such speed and irregularity that I could never catch one in the actual act of being
extinguished. Yet, for all that, I took a flashlight of the hall in general.
"There was a time in which I sat half-blinded by the great glare of the flash, and I blamed
myself for not having remembered to bring a pair of smoked goggles, which I have sometimes
used at these times. I had felt the men jump, at the sudden light, and I called out loud to them
to sit quiet, and to keep their feet exactly to their proper places. My voice, as you can imagine,
sounded rather horrid and frightening in the great room, and altogether it was a beastly
moment.
"Then I was able to see again, and I stared here and there around the hall; but there was
nothing showing unusual; only, of course, it was dark now over in the corners.
"Suddenly, I saw that the great fire was blackening. It was going out visibly, as I looked. If I
said that some monstrous, invisible, impossible creature sucked the life from it, I could best
explain my impression of the way the light and flame went out of it. It was most extraordinary
to watch. In the time that I watched it, every vestige of fire was gone from it, and there was no
light outside of the ring of candles around the Pentacle.
"The deliberateness of the thing troubled me more than I can make clear to you. It conveyed
to me such a sense of a calm, Deliberate Force present in the hall. The steadfast intention to
'make a darkness' was horrible. The extent of the Power to affect the Material was now the
one constant, anxious questioning in my brain. You can understand?
"Behind me, I heard the policemen moving again, and I knew that they were getting
thoroughly frightened. I turned half round, and told them, quietly but plainly, that they were
safe only so long as they stayed within the Pentacle, in the position in which I had put them. If
they once broke, and went outside of the Barrier, no knowledge of mine could state the full
extent or dreadfulness of the danger.

12

"I steadied them up by this quiet, straight reminder; but if they had known, as I knew, that
there is no certainty in any 'Protection,' they would have suffered a great deal more, and
probably have broken the 'Defense' and made a mad, foolish run for an impossible safety.
"Another hour passed, after this, in an absolute quietness. I had a sense of awful strain and
oppression, as though I were a little spirit in the company of some invisible, brooding monster
of the unseen world, who, as yet, was scarcely conscious of us. I leant across to Wentworth,
and asked him in a whisper whether he had a feeling as if something were in the room. He
looked very pale, and his eyes kept always on the move. He glanced just once at me and
nodded; then stared away round the hall again. And when I came to think, I was doing the
same thing.
"Abruptly, as though a hundred unseen hands had snuffed them, every candle in the Barrier
went dead out, and we were left in a darkness that seemed, for a little, absolute; for the light
from the Pentacle was too weak and pale to penetrate far across the great hall.
"I tell you, for a moment, I just sat there as though I had been frozen solid. I felt the 'creep' go
all over me, and seem to stop in my brain. I felt all at once to be given a power of hearing that
was far beyond normal. I could hear my own heart thudding most extraordinarily loud. I
began, however, to feel better, after a little; but I simply had not the pluck to move. You can
understand?
"Presently, I began to get my courage back. I gripped at my camera and flashlight, and waited.
My hands were simply soaked with sweat. I glanced once at Wentworth. I could see him only
dimly. His shoulders were hunched a little, his head forward; but though it was motionless, I
knew that his eyes were not. It is queer how one knows that sort of thing at times. The police
were just as silent. And thus a while passed.
"A sudden sound broke across the silence. From two sides of the room there came faint
noises. I recognised them at once, as the breaking of the sealing-wax. The sealed doors were
opening. I raised the camera and flashlight, and it was a peculiar mixture of fear and courage
that helped me to press the button. As the great belch of light lit up the hall, I felt the men all
about me jump. The darkness fell like a clap of thunder, if you can understand, and seemed
tenfold. Yet, in the moment of brightness, I had seen that all the sealed doors were wide open.
"Suddenly, all around us, there sounded a drip, drip, drip, upon the floor of the great hall. I
thrilled with a queer, realising emotion and a sense of a very real and present danger
imminent. The 'blood-drip' had commenced. And the grim question was now whether the
Barriers could save us from whatever had come into the huge room.
"Through some awful minutes the 'blood-drip' continued to fall in an increasing rain; and
presently some began to fall within the Barriers. I saw several great drops splash and star
upon the pale glowing intertwining tubes of the Electric Pentacle; but, strangely enough, I
could not trace that any fell among us. Beyond the strange horrible noise of the 'drip,' there
was no other sound. And then, abruptly, from the boar hound over in the far corner, there
came a terrible yelling howl of agony, followed instantly by a sickening, breaking noise, and
an immediate silence. If you have ever, when out shooting, broken a rabbit's neck, you will
know the soundin miniature! Like lightning, the thought sprang into my brain:IT has
crossed the Pentacle. For you will remember that I had one about each of the dogs. I thought
instantly, with a sick apprehension, of our own Barriers. There was something in the hall with
13

us that had passed the Barrier of the Pentacle about one of the dogs. In the awful succeeding
silence, I positively quivered. And suddenly, one of the men behind me gave out a scream,
like any woman, and bolted for the door. He fumbled, and had it open in a moment. I yelled to
the others not to move; but they followed like sheep, and I heard them kick the candles flying,
in their panic. One of them stepped on the Electric Pentacle, and smashed it, and there was an
utter darkness. In an instant, I realised that I was defenceless against the powers of the
Unknown World, and with one savage leap I was out of the useless Barriers, and instantly
through the great doorway, and into the night. I believe I yelled with sheer funk.
"The men were a little ahead of me, and I never ceased running, and neither did they.
Sometimes, I glanced back over my shoulder; and I kept glancing into the laurels which grew
all along the drive. The beastly things kept rustling, rustling in a hollow sort of way, as though
something were keeping parallel with me, among them. The rain had stopped, and a dismal
little wind kept moaning through the grounds. It was disgusting.
"I caught Wentworth and the police at the lodge gate. We got outside, and ran all the way to
the village. We found old Dennis up, waiting for us, and half the villagers to keep him
company. He told us that he had known in his 'sowl' that we should come back, that is, if we
came back at all; which is not a bad rendering of his remark.
"Fortunately, I had brought my camera away from the housepossibly because the strap had
happened to be over my head. Yet, I did not go straight away to develop, but sat with the rest
in the bar, where we talked for some hours, trying to be coherent about the whole horrible
business.
"Later, however, I went up to my room and proceeded with my photography. I was steadier
now, and it was just possible, so I hoped, that the negatives might show something.
"On two of the plates, I found nothing unusual: but on the third, which was the first one that I
snapped, I saw something that made me quite excited. I examined it very carefully with a
magnifying glass; then I put it to wash, and slipped a pair of rubber half-shoes over my boots.
"The negative had shown me something very extraordinary, and I had made up my mind to
test the truth of what it seemed to indicate, without losing another moment. It was no use
telling anything to Wentworth and the police, until I was certain; and, also, I believed that I
stood a greater chance to succeed by myself; though, for that matter, I do not suppose
anything would have got them up to the Manor again that night.
"I took my revolver, and went quietly downstairs, and into the dark. The rain had commenced
again; but that did not bother me. I walked hard. When I came to the lodge gates, a sudden,
queer instinct stopped me from going through, and I climbed the wall into the park. I kept
away from the drive, and approached the building through the dismal, dripping laurels. You
can imagine how beastly it was. Every time a leaf rustled, I jumped.
"I made my way round to the back of the big house, and got in through a little window which
I had taken note of during my search; for, of course, I knew the whole place now from roof to
cellars. I went silently up the kitchen stairs, fairly quivering with funk; and at the top, I went
to the left, and then into a long corridor that opened, through one of the doorways we had
sealed, into the big hall. I looked up it, and saw a faint flicker of light away at the end; and I
tiptoed silently towards it, holding my revolver ready. As I came near to the open door, I
14

heard men's voices, and then a burst of laughing. I went on, until I could see into the hall.
There were several men there, all in a group. They were well dressed, and one, at least, I saw
was armed. They were examining my 'Barriers' against the Supernatural, with a good deal of
unkind laughter. I never felt such a fool in my life.
"It was plain to me that they were a gang of men who had made use of the empty Manor,
perhaps for years, for some purpose of their own; and now that Wentworth was attempting to
take possession, they were acting up to the traditions of the place, with the view of driving
him away, and keeping so useful a place still at their disposal. But what they were, I mean
whether coiners, thieves, inventors, or what, I could not imagine.
"Presently, they left the Pentacle, and gathered round the living boar hound, which seemed
curiously quiet, as though it were half-drugged. There was some talk as to whether to let the
poor brute live, or not, but finally they decided it would be good policy to kill it. I saw two of
them force a twisted loop of rope into its mouth, and the two bights of the loop were brought
together at the back of the hound's neck. Then a third thrust a thick walking-stick through the
two loops. The two men with the rope, stooped to hold the dog, so that I could not see what
was done; but the poor beast gave a sudden awful howl, and immediately there was a
repetition of the uncomfortable breaking sound, I had heard earlier in the night, as you will
remember.
"The men stood up and left the dog lying there, quiet enough now, as you may suppose. For
my part, I fully appreciated the calculated remorselessness which had decided upon the
animal's death, and the cold determination with which it had been afterwards executed so
neatly. I guessed that a man who might get into the 'light' of these particular men, would be
likely to come to quite as uncomfortable an ending.
"A minute later, one of the men called out to the rest that they should 'shift the wires.' One of
the men came towards the doorway of the corridor in which I stood, and I ran quickly back
into the darkness of the upper end. I saw the man reach up and take something from the top of
the door, and I heard the slight, ringing jangle of steel wire.
"When he had gone, I ran back again, and saw the men passing, one after another, through an
opening in the stairs, formed by one of the marble steps being raised. When the last man had
vanished, the slab that made the step was shut down, and there was not a sign of the secret
door. It was the seventh step from the bottom, as I took care to count; and a splendid idea; for
it was so solid that it did not ring hollow, even to a fairly heavy hammer, as I found later.
"There is little more to tell. I got out of the house as quickly and quietly as possible, and back
to the inn. The police came without any coaxing, when they knew the 'ghosts' were normal
flesh and blood. We entered the park and the Manor in the same way that I had done. Yet,
when we tried to open the step, we failed, and had finally to smash it. This must have warned
the haunters; for when we descended to a secret room which we found at the end of a long and
narrow passage in the thickness of the walls, we found no one.
"The police were horribly disgusted, as you can imagine; but for my part, I did not care either
way. I had 'laid the ghost,' as you might say, and that was what I had set out to do. I was not
particularly afraid of being laughed at by the others; for they had all been thoroughly 'taken
in'; and in the end, I had scored, without their help.

15

"We searched right through the secret ways, and found that there was an exit, at the end of a
long tunnel, which opened in the side of a well, out in the grounds. The ceiling of the hall was
hollow, and reached by a little secret stairway inside of the big staircase. The 'blood-drip' was
merely coloured water, dropped through minute crevices of the ornamented ceiling. How the
candles and fire were put out, I do not know; for the haunters certainly did not act quite up to
tradition, which held that the lights were put out by the 'blood-drip.' Perhaps it was too
difficult to direct the fluid, without positively squirting it, which might have given the whole
thing away. The candles and the fire may possibly have been extinguished by the agency of
carbonic acid gas; but how suspended, I have no idea.
"The secret hiding places were, of course, ancient. There was also, did I tell you? a bell which
they had rigged up to ring, when anyone entered the gates at the end of the drive. If I had not
climbed the wall, I should have found nothing, for my pains; for the bell would have warned
them, had I gone in through the gateway."
"What was on the negative?" I asked, with much curiosity.
"A picture of the fine wire with which they were grappling for the hook that held the entrance
door open. They were doing it from one of the crevices in the ceiling. They had evidently
made no preparations for lifting the hook. I suppose they never thought that anyone would
make use of it, and so they had to improvise a grapple. The wire was too fine to be seen by the
amount of light we had in the hall, but the flashlight 'picked it out.' Do you see?
"The opening of the inner doors was managed by wires, as you will have guessed, which they
unshipped after use, or else I should soon have found them, when I made my search.
"I think I have now explained everything. The hound was killed, of course, by the men direct.
You see, they made the place as dark as possible first. Of course, if I had managed to take a
flashlight just at that instant, the whole secret of the haunting would have been exposed. But
Fate just ordered it the other way."
"And the tramps?" I asked.
"Oh, you mean the two tramps who were found dead in the Manor," said Carnacki. "Well, of
course it is impossible to be sure, one way or the other. Perhaps they happened to find out
something, and were given a hypodermic. Or it is quite as probable that they had come to the
time of their dying, and just died naturally. It is conceivable that a great many tramps had
slept in the old house, at one time or another."
Carnacki stood up and knocked out his pipe. We rose also, and went for our coats and hats.
"Out you go!" said Carnacki, genially, using the recognised formula. And we went out on to
the Embankment, and presently through the darkness to our various homes.

16

Carnacki, Supernatural Detective is a collection of supernatural

detective short stories by author William Hope Hodgson. It was
published first during 1913 (as "Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder") by the
English publisher Eveleigh Nash. A new edition, with three
additional stories, was published 1947 by Mycroft & Moran, an
edition of 3,050 copies. The Mycroft & Moran version is listed as
No. 52 in Queen's Quorum: A History of the Detective-Crime Short
Story As Revealed by the 100 Most Important Books Published in
this Field Since 1845 by Ellery Queen.
This collection contains all the stories.
No 5 in Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult.
162 pages
ISBN 9781409235118
Buy it directly from us!

17

CASE OF THE TRAGEDIES IN THE GREEK ROOM

By
Sax Rohmer
WHEN did Moris Klaw first appear in London? It is a question which I am asked sometimes
and to which I reply, "To the best of my knowledge, shortly before the commencement of the
strange happenings at the Menzies Museum."
What I know of him I have gathered from various sources; and in these papers, which
represent an attempt to justify the methods of one frequently accused of being an insane
theorist, I propose to recount all the facts which have come to my knowledge. In some few of
the cases I was personally though slightly concerned; but regard me merely as the historian
and on no account as the principal or even minor character in the story. My friendship with
Martin Coram led, then, to my first meeting with Moris Klawa meeting which resulted in
my becoming his biographer, inadequate though my infor-mation unfortunately remains.
It was some three months after the appointment of Coram to the curatorship of the Menzies
Museum that the first of a series of singular occurrences took place there.
This occurrence befell one night in August, and the matter was brought to my ears by Coram
himself on the following morning. I had, in fact, just taken my seat at the breakfast table,
when he walked in unexpectedly and sank into an armchair. His dark, clean-shaven face
looked more gaunt than usual and I saw, as he lighted the cigarette which I proffered, that his
hand shook nervously.
"There's trouble at the Museum!" he said, abruptly. "I want you to run around."
I looked at him for a moment without replying, and, knowing the responsibility of his
position, feared that he referred to a theft from the collection.
"Something gone?" I asked.
"No; worse!" was his reply.
"What do you mean, Coram?"
He threw the cigarette, unsmoked, into the hearth. "You know Conway?" he said; "Conway,
the night attendant? Wellhe's dead!"
I stood up from the table, my breakfast forgotten, and stared incredulously. "Do you mean that
he died in the night?" I inquired.
"Yes. Done for, poor devil!"
"What! murdered?"
"Without a doubt, Searles! He's had his neck broken!"
18

I waited for no further explanatians, but, hastily dressing, accompanied Coram to the
Museum. It consists, I should mention, of four long, rectangular rooms, the windows of two
overlooking South Grafton Square, those of the third giving upon the court that leads to the
curator's private entrance, and the fourth adjoining an enclosed garden attached to the
building. This fourth room is on the ground floor and is entered through the hall from the
Square, the other three, containing the principal and more valuable exhibits, are upon the first
floor and are reached by a flight of stairs from the hall. The remainder of the building is
occupied by an office and the curator's private apartments, and is completely shut off from
that portion open to the public, the only communicating dooran iron onebeing kept
locked.
The room described in the catalogue as the "Greek Room" proved to be the scene of the
tragedy. This room is one of the two overlooking the Square and contains some of the finest
items of the collection. The Museum is not open to the public until ten o'clock, and I found,
upon arriving there, that the only occupants of the Greek Room were the commissionaire on
duty, two constables, a plain-clothes officer and an inspectorthat is, if I except the body of
poor Conway.
He had not been touched, but lay as he was found by Beale, the commissionaire who took
charge of the upper rooms during the day, and, indeed, it was patent that he was beyond
medical aid. In fact, the position of his body was so extraordinary as almost to defy
description.
There are three windows in the Greek Room, with wall cases between, and, in the gap
corresponding to the east window and just by the door opening into the next room, is a chair
for the attendant. Conway lay downward on the polished floor with his limbs partly under this
chair and his clenched fists thrust straight out before him. His head, turned partially to one
side, was doubled underneath his breast in a most dreadful manner, indisputably pointing to a
broken neck, and his commissionaire's cap lay some distance away, under a table supporting a
heavy case of vases.
So much was revealed at a glance, and I immediately turned blankly to Coram.
"What do you make of it?" he said.
I shook my head in silence. I could scarce grasp the reality of the thing; indeed, I was still
staring at the huddled figure when the doctor arrived. At his request we laid the dead man flat
upon the floor to facilitate an examination, and we then saw that he was greatly cut and
bruised about the head and face, and that his features were distorted in a most extraordinary
manner, almost as though he had been suffocated.
The doctor did not fail to notice this expression. "Made a hard fight of it!" he said. "He must
have been in the last stages of exhaustion when his neck was broken!"
"My dear fellow!" cried Coram, somewhat irritably, "what do you mean when you say that he
made a hard fight? There could not possibly have been any one else in these rooms last
night!"
"Excuse me, sir!" said the inspector, "but there certainly was something going on here. Have
you seen the glass case in the next room?"
19

"Glass case?" muttered Coram, running his hand distractedly through his thick black hair.
"No; what of a glass case?"
"In here, sir," explained the inspector, leading the way into the adjoining apartment.
At his words, we all followed, and found that he referred to the glass front of a wall case
containing statuettes and images of Egyptian deities. The centre pane of this was smashed into
fragments, the broken glass strewing the floor and the shelves inside the case.
"That looks like a struggle, sir, doesn't it?" said the inspector.
"Heaven help us! What does it mean?" groaned poor Coram. "Who could possibly have
gained access to the building in the night, or, having done so, have quitted it again, when all
the doors remained locked?"
"That we must try and find out!" replied the inspector. "Meanwhile, here are his keys. They
lay on the floor in a corner of the Greek Room."
Coram took them, mechanically. "Beale," he said to the commissionaire, "see if any of the
cases are unlocked."
The man proceeded to go around the rooms. He had progressed no farther than the Greek
Room when he made a discovery. "Here's the top of this unfastened, sir!" he suddenly cried,
excitedly.
We hurriedly joined him, to find that he stood before a marble pedestal surmounted by a thick
glass case containing what Coram had frequently assured me was the gem of the collection
the Athenean Harp.
It was alleged to be of very ancient Greek workmanship, and was constructed of fine gold
inlaid with jewels. It represented two reclining female figures, their arms thrown above their
heads, their hands meeting; and the strings, several of which were still intact, were of
incredibly fine gold wire. The instrument was said to have belonged to a Temple of Pallas in
an extremely remote age, and at the time it was brought to light much controversy had waged
concerning its claims to authenticity, several connoisseurs proclaiming it the work of a
famous goldsmith of mediaeval Florence, and nothing but a clever forgery. However, Greek
or Florentine, amazingly ancient or comparatively modern, it was a beautiful piece of
workmanship and of very great intrinsic value, apart from its artistic worth and unique
character.
"I thought so!" said the plain-clothes man. "A clever museum thief!"
Coram sighed wearily. "My good fellow," he replied, "can you explain, by any earthly
hypothesis, how a man could get into these apartments and leave them again during the
night?"
"Regarding that, sir," remarked the detective, "there are a few questions I should like to ask
you. In the first place, at what time does the Museum close?"
"At six o'clock in the summer."
20

"What do you do when the last visitor has gone?"

"Having locked the outside door, Beale, here, thoroughly examines every room to make
certain that no one remains concealed. He next locks the communicating doors and comes
down into the hall. It was then his custom to hand me the keys. I gave them into poor
Conway's keeping when he came on duty at half-past six, and every hour he went through the
Museum, relocking all the doors behind him."
"I understand that there is a tell-tale watch in each room?"
"Yes. That in the Greek Room registers 4 A. M., so that it was about then that he met his
death. He had evidently opened the door communicating with the next roomthat containing
the broken glass case; but he did not touch the detector and the door was found open this
morning."
"Someone must have lain concealed there and sprung upon him as he entered."
"Impossible! There is no other means of entrance or exit. The three windows are iron-barred
and they have not been tampered with. Moreover, the watch shows that he was there at three
o'clock, and nothing larger than a mouse could find shelter in the place; there is nowhere a
man could hide."
"Then the murderer followed him into the Greek Room."
"Might I venture to point out that, had he done so, he would have been there this morning
when Beale arrived? The door of the Greek Room was locked and the keys were found inside
upon the floor!"
"The thief might have had a duplicate set."
"Quite impossible; but, granting the impossible, how did he get in, since the hall door was
bolted and barred?"
"We must assume that he succeeded in concealing himself before the Museum was closed."
"The assumption is not permissible, in view of the fact that Beale and I both examined the
rooms last night prior to handing the keys to Conway. However, again granting the
impossible, how did he get out?"
The Scotland Yard man removed his hat and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. "I
must say, sir, it is a very strange thing," he said; "but how about the iron door here?"
"It leads to my own apartments. I, alone, hold a key. It was locked."
A brief examination served to show that exit from any of the barred windows was impossible.
"Well, sir," said the detective, "if the man had keys he could have come down into the hall
and the lower room."
"Step down and look," was Coram's invitation.
21

The windows of the room on the ground floor were also heavily protected, and it was easy to
see that none of them had been opened.
"Upon my word," exclaimed the inspector, "it's uncanny! He couldn't have gone out by the
hall door, because you say it was bolted and barred on the inside."
"It was," replied Coram.
"One moment, sir," interrupted the plain-clothes man. "If that was so, how did you get in this
morn-ing?"
"It was Beale's custom," said Coram, "to come around by the private entrance to my
apartments. We then entered the Museum together by the iron door into the Greek Room and
relieved Conway of the keys. There are several little matters to be attended to in the morning
before admitting the public, and the other door is never unlocked before ten o'clock."
"Did you lock the door behind you when you came through this morning?"
"Immediately on finding poor Conway."
"Could any one have come through this door in the night, provided he had a duplicate key?"
"No. There is a bolt on the private side."
"And you were in your rooms all last night?"
"From twelve o'clock, yes."
The police looked at one another silently; then the inspector gave an embarrassed laugh.
"Frankly, sir," he said, "I'm completely puzzled!"
We passed upstairs again and Coram turned to the doctor. "Anything else to report about poor
Conway?" he asked.
"His face is all cut by the broken glass and he seems to have had a desperate struggle,
although, curiously enough, his body bears no other marks of violence. The direct cause of
death was, of course, a broken neck."
"And how should you think he came by it?"
"I should say that he was hurled upon the floor by an opponent possessing more than ordinary
strength!"
Thus the physician, and was about to depart when there came a knocking upon the iron door.
"It is Hilda," said Coram, slipping the key in the lock"my daughter," he added, turning to
the detective.

22

II
The heavy door swinging open, there entered Hilda Coram, a slim, classical figure, with the
regular features of her father and the pale gold hair of her dead mother. She looked unwell,
and stared about her apprehensively.
"Good morning, Mr. Searles," she greeted me. "Is it not dreadful about poor Conway!"and
then glanced at Coram. I saw that she held a card in her hand. "Father, there is such a singular
old man asking to see you."
She handed the card to Coram, who in turn passed it to me. It was that of Douglas Glade of
the Daily Cable, and had written upon it in Glade's hand the words, "To introduce Mr. Moris
Klaw."
"I suppose it is all right if Mr. Glade vouches for him," said Coram. "But does anybody here
know Moris Klaw?"
"I do," replied the Scotland Yard man, smiling shortly. "He's an antique dealer or something
of the kind; got a ramshackle old place by Wapping Old Stairssort of a cross between
Jamrach's and a rag shop. He's lately been hanging about the Central Criminal Court a lot.
Seems to fancy his luck as an amateur investigator. He's certainly smart," he added,
grudgingly, "but cranky."
"Ask Mr. Klaw to come through, Hilda," said Coram.
Shortly afterward entered a strange figure. It was that of a tall man who stooped, so that his
apparent height was diminisheda very old man who carried his many years lightly, or a
younger man prematurely aged; none could say which. His skin had the hue of dirty vellum,
and his hair, his shaggy brows, his scanty beard were co toneless as to defy classification in
terms of colour. He wore an archaic brown bowler, smart, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and a
black silk muffler. A long, caped black cloak completely enveloped the stooping figure; from
beneath its mud-spattered edge peeped long-toed continental boots.
He removed his hat.
"Good morning, Mr. Coram," he said. His voice reminded me of the distant rumbling of
empty casks; his accent was wholly indescribable. "Good morning" (to the detective), "Mr.
Grimsby. Good morning, Mr. Searles. Your friend, Mr. Glade, tells me I shall find you here.
Good morning, Inspector. To Miss Coram I already have said good morning."
From the lining of the flat-topped hat he took out one of those small cylindrical scent sprays
and played its contents upon his high, bald brow. An odour of verbena filled the air. He
replaced the spray in the hat, the hat upon his scantily thatched crown.
"There is here a smell of dead men!" he explained.
I turned aside to hide my smiles, so grotesque was my first impression of the amazing
individual known as Moris Klaw.

23

"Mr. Coram," he continued, "I am an old fool who sometimes has wise dreams. Crime has
been the hobby of a busy life. I have seen crime upon the Gold Coast, where the black fever it
danced in the air above the murdered one like a lingering soul, and I have seen blood flow in
Arctic Lapland, where it was frozen up into red ice almost before it left the veins. Have I your
permit to see if I can help?"
All of us, the police included, were strangely impressed now.
"Certainly," said Coram; "will you step this way?"
Moris Klaw bent over the dead man.
"You have moved him!" he said, sharply.
It was explained that this had been for the purpose of a medical examination. He nodded
absently. With the aid of a large magnifying glass he was scrutinizing poor Conway. He
examined his hair, his eyes, his hands, his fingernails. He rubbed long, flexible fingers upon
the floor beside the bodyand sniffed at the dust.
"Someone so kindly will tell me all about it," he said, turning out the dead man's pockets.
Coram briefly recounted much of the foregoing, and replied to the oddly chosen questions
which from time to time Moris Klaw put to him. Throughout the duologue, the singular old
man conducted a detailed search of every square inch, I think, of the Greek Room. Before the
case containing the harp he stood, peering.
"It is here that the trouble centres," he muttered. "What do I know of such a Grecian
instrument? Let me think."
He threw back his head, closing his eyes.
"Such valuable curios," he rumbled, "have historiesand the crimes they occasion operate in
cycles." He waved his hand in a slow circle. "If I but knew the history of this harp! Mr.
Coram!"
He glanced toward my friend.
"Thoughts are things, Mr. Coram. If I might spend a night hereupon the very spot of floor
where the poor Conway fellI could from the surrounding atmosphere (it is a sensitive plate)
recover a picture of the thing in his mind"indicating Conway"at the last!"
The Scotland Yard man blew down his nose.
"You snort, my friend," said Moris Klaw, turning upon him. "You would snort less if you had
waked screaming, out in the desert; screaming out with fear of the dripping beaks of the
vulturesthe last dreadful fear which the mind had known of him who had died of thirst upon
that haunted spot!"
The words and the manner of their delivery thrilled us all.

24

"What is it," continued the weird old man, "but the odic force, the ethersay it how you
please which carries the wireless message, the lightning? It is a huge, subtile, sensitive
plate. Inspiration, what you call bad luck and good luckall are but reflections from it. The
supreme thought preceding death is imprinted on the surrounding atmosphere like a
photograph. I have trained this"he tapped his brow"to reproduce those photographs! May
I sleep here to-night, Mr. Coram?"
Somewhere beneath the ramshackle exterior we had caught a glimpse of a man of power.
From behind the thick pebbles momentarily had shone out the light of a tremendous and
original mind.
"I should be most glad of your assistance," answered my friend.
"No police must be here to-night," rumbled Moris Klaw. "No heavy-footed constables, filling
the room with thoughts of large cooks and small Basses, must fog my negative!"
"Can that be arranged?" asked Coram of the inspector.
"The men on duty can remain in the hall, if you wish it, sir."
"Good!" rumbled Moris Klaw.
He moistened his brow with verbena, bowed un-couthly, and shuffled from the Greek Room.
III
Moris Klaw reappeared in the evening, accompanied by a strikingly beautiful brunette.
The change of face upon the part of Mr. Grimsby of New Scotland Yard was singular.
"My daughterIsis," explained Moris Klaw. "She assists to develop my negatives."
Grimsby became all attention. Leaving two men on duty in the hall, Moris Klaw, his daughter,
Grimsby, Coram, and I went up to the Greek Room. Its darkness was relieved by a single
lamp.
"I've had the stones in the Athenean Harp examined by a lapidary." said Coram. "It occurred
to me that they might have been removed and paste substituted. It was not so, however."
"No," rumbled Klaw. "I thought of that, too. No visitors have been admitted here during the
day?"
"The Greek Room has been closed."
"It is well, Mr. Coram. Let no one disturb me until my daughter comes in the morning."
Isis Klaw placed a red silk cushion upon the spot where the dead man had lain.
"Some pillows and a blanket, Mr. Klaw?" suggested the suddenly attentive Mr. Grimsby.

25

"I thank you, no," was the reply. "They would be saturated with alien impressions. My
cushion it is odically sterilized! The 'etheric storm' created by Conway's last mental emotion
reaches my brain unpolluted. Good-night, gentlemen. Good-night, Isis!"
We withdrew, leaving Moris Klaw to his ghostly vigil.
"I suppose Mr. Klaw is quite trustworthy?" whispered Coram to the detective.
"Oh, undoubtedly!" was the reply. "In any case, he can do no harm. My men will be on duty
downstairs here all night."
"Do you speak of my father, Mr. Grimsby?" came a soft, thrilling voice.
Grimsby turned, and met the flashing black eyes of Isis Klaw.
"I was assuring Mr. Coram." he answered, readily, "that Mr. Klaw's methods have several
times proved successful!"
"Several times!" she cried, scornfully. "What! has he ever failed?"
Her accent was certainly French, I determined; her voice, her entire person, as certainly
charming to which the detective's manner bore witness.
"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with all his cases, miss," he said. "Can I call you a cab?"
"I thank you, no." She rewarded him with a dazzling smile. "Good-night."
Coram opened the doors of the Museum, and she passed out. Leaving the men on duty in the
hall, Coram and I shortly afterward also quitted the Museum by the main entrance, in order to
avoid disturbing Moris Klaw by using the curator's private door.
To my friend's study Hilda Coram brought us coffee. She was unnaturally pale, and her eyes
were feverishly bright. I concluded that the tragedy was responsible.
"Perhaps, to an extent," said Coram; "but she is studying music and, I fear, overworking in
order to pass a stiff exam."
Coram and I surveyed the Greek Room problem from every conceivable standpoint, but were
unable to surmise how the thief had entered, how left, and why he had fled without his booty.
"I don't mind confessing," said Coram, "that I am very ill at ease. We haven't the remotest
idea how the murderer got into the Greek Room or how he got out again. Bolts and bars, it is
evident, do not prevail against him, so that we may expect a repetition of the dreadful
business at any time!"
"What precautions do you propose to take?"
"Well, there will be a couple of police on duty in the Museum for the next week or so, but,
after that, we shall have to rely upon a night watchman. The funds only allow of the
appointment of four attendants: three for day and one for night duty."
26

"Do you think you'll find any difficulty in getting a man:

"No," replied Coram. "I know of a steady man who will come as soon as we are ready for
him."
I slept but little that night, and was early afoot and around to the Museum. Isis Klaw was there
before me, carrying the red cushion, and her father was deep in conversation with Coram.
Detective-Inspector Grimsby approached me.
"I see you're looking at the cushion, sir!" he said, smilingly. "But it's not a 'plant.' He's not an
up-to-date cracksman. Nothing's missing!"
"You need not assure me of that," I replied. "I do not doubt Mr. Klaw's honesty of purpose."
"Wait till you hear his mad theory, though!" he said, with a glance aside at the girl.
"Mr. Coram," Moris Klaw was saying, in his odd, rumbling tones, "my psychic photograph is
of a woman! A woman dressed all in white!"
Grimsby coughedthen flushed as he caught the eye of Isis.
"Poor Conway's mind," continued Klaw, "is filled with such a picture when he breathes his
lastgreat wonder he has for the white woman and great fear for the Athenean Harp, which
she carries!"
"Which she carries!" cried Coram.
"Some woman took the harp from its case a few minutes before Conway died!" affirmed
Moris Klaw. "I have much research to make now, and with aid from Isis shall develop my
negative! Yesterday I learnt from the constable who was on night duty at the corner of the
Square that a heavy pantechnicon van went driving round at four o'clock. It was shortly after
four o'clock that the tragedy occurred. The driver was unaware that there was no way out, you
understand. Is it important? I cannot say. It often is such points that matter. We must,
however, waste no time. Until you hear from me again you will lay dry plaster of Paris all
around the stand of the Athenean Harp each night. Good morning, gentlemen!"
His arm linked in his daughter's, he left the Museum.
IV
For some weeks after this mysterious affair, all went well at the Menzies Museum. The new
night watchman, a big Scot, by name John Macalister, seemed to have fallen thoroughly into
his duties, and everything was proceeding smoothly. No clue concerning the previous outrage
had come to light, the police being clearly at a loss. From Moris Klaw we heard not a word.
But Macalister did not appear to suffer from nervousness, saying that he was quite big enough
to look after himself.
Poor Macalister! His bulk did not save him from a dreadful fate. He was found, one fine
morning, lying flat on his back in the Greek Room dead !
27

As in the case of Conway, the place showed unmistakable signs of a furious struggle. The
attendant's chair had been dashed upon the floor with such violence as to break three of the
legs; a bust of Pallas, that had occupied a corner position upon a marble pedestal, was found
to be hurled down; and the top of the case which usually contained the Athenean Harp had
been unlocked, and the priceless antique lay close by, upon the floor!
The cause of death, in Macalister's case, was heart failure, an unsuspected weakness of that
organ being brought to light at the inquest; but, according to the medical testimony, deceased
must have undergone unnaturally violent exertions to bring about death. In other respects, the
circumstances of the two cases were almost identical. The door of the Greek Room was
locked upon the inside and the keys were found on the floor. From the detector watches in the
other rooms it was evident that his death must have taken place about three o'clock. Nothing
was missing, and the jewels in the harp had not been tampered with.
But, most amazing circumstance of all, imprinted upon the dry plaster of Paris which, in
accordance with the instructions of the mysteriously absent Moris Klaw, had nightly been
placed around the case containing the harp, were the marks of little bare jeet!
A message sent, through the willing agency of Inspector Grimsby, to the Wapping abode of
the old curio dealer, resulted in the discovery that Moris Klaw was abroad. His daughter,
however, reported having received a letter from her father which contained the words
"Let Mr. Coram keep the key of the case containing the Athenean Harp under his pillow at
night."
"What does she mean?" asked Coram. "That I am to detach that particular key from the bunch
or place them all beneath my pillow?"
Grimsby shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm simply telling you what she told me, sir."
"I should suspect the man to be an impostor," said Coram, "if it were not for the extraordinary
confirmation of his theory furnished by the footprints. They certainly looked like those of a
woman!"
Remembering how Moris Klaw had acted, I sought out the constable who had been on duty at
the corner of South Grafton Square on the night of the second tragedy. From him I elicited a
fact which, though insignificant in itself, was, when associated with another circumstance,
certainly singular.
A Pickford traction engine, drawing two heavy wagons, had been driven round the Square at 3
A. M., the driver thinking that he could get out on the other side.
That was practically all I learned from the constable, but it served to set me thinking. Was it
merely a coincidence that, at almost the exact hour of the previous tragedy, a heavy
pantechnicon had passed the Museum?
"It's not once in six months," the man assured me, "that any vehicle but a tradesman's cart
goes round the Square. You see, it doesn't lead anywhere, but this Pickford chap he was
28

rattling by before I could stop him, and though I shouted he couldn't hear me, the engine
making such a noise, so I just let him drive round and find out for himself."
I now come to the event which concluded this extraordinary case, and, that it may be clearly
understood, I must explain the positions which we took up during the nights of the following
week; for Coram had asked me to take a night watch, with himself, Grimsby, and Beale, in the
Museum.
Beale, the commissionaire, remained in the hall and lower roomit was catalogued as the
"Bronze Room"Coram patrolled the room at the top of the stairs, Grimsby the next, or
Greek, Room, and I the Egyptian Room. None of the doors was locked, and Grimsby, by his
own special request, held the keys of the cases in the Greek Room.
We commenced our vigil on the Saturday, and I, for one, found it a lugubrious business. One
electric lamp was usually left burning in each apartment throughout the night, and I sat as near
to that in the Egyptian Room as possible and endeavoured to distract my thoughts with a
bundle of papers with which I had provided myself.
In the next room I could hear Grimsby walking about incessantly, and, at regular intervals, the
scratching of a match as he lighted a cigar. He was an inveterate cheroot smoker.
Our first night's watching, then, was productive of no result, and the five that followed were
equally monotonous.
Upon Grimsby's suggestion we observed great secrecy in the matter of these dispositions.
Even Coram's small household was kept in ignorance of this midnight watching. Grimsby,
following out some theory of his own, now determined to dispense altogether with light in the
Greek Room. Friday was intensely hot, and occasional fitful breezes brought with them banks
of black thundercloud, which, however, did not break; and, up to the time that we assumed
our posts at the Museum, no rain had fallen. At about twelve o'clock I looked out into South
Grafton Square and saw that the sky was entirely obscured by a heavy mass of inky cloud,
ominous of a gathering storm.
Returning to my chair beneath the electric lamp, I took up a work of Mark Twain's, which I
had brought as a likely antidote to melancholy or nervousness. As I commenced to read, for
the twentieth time, "The Jumping Frog," I heard the scratch of Grimsby's match in the next
room and knew that he had lighted his fifth cigar.
It must have been about one o'clock when the rain came. I heard the big drops on the glass
roof, followed by the steady pouring of the deluge. For perhaps five minutes it rained steadily,
and then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Above the noise of the water rushing down the
metal gutters, I distinctly detected the sound of Grimsby striking another match. Then, with a
mighty crash, came the thunder.
Directly above the Museum it seemed as though the very heavens had burst, and the glass roof
rattled as if a shower of stones had fallen, the thunderous report echoing and reverberating
hollowly through the building.
As the lightning flashed with dazzling brilliance, I started from my chair and stood,
breathless, with every sense on the alert; for, strangely intermingling with the patter of the
29

rain that now commenced to fall again, came a low wailing, like nothing so much as the voice
of a patient succumbing to an anaesthetic. There was something indefinably sweet, but
indescribably weird, in the low and mysterious music.
Not knowing from whence it proceeded, I stood undetermined what to do; but, just as the
thunder boomed again, I heard a wild cryundoubtedly proceeding from the Greek Room!
Springing to the door, I threw it open.
All was in darkness, but, as I entered, a vivid flash of lightning illuminated the place.
I saw a sight which I can never forget. Grimsby lay flat upon the floor by the farther door.
But, dreadful as that spectacle was, it scarce engaged my attention; nor did I waste a second
glance upon the Athenean Harp, which lay close beside its empty case.
For the figure of a woman, draped in flimsy white, was passing across the Greek Room!
Grim fear took me by the throat, since I could not doubt that what I saw was a supernatural
manifestation. Darkness followed. I heard a loud wailing cry and a sound as of a fall.
Then Coram came running through the Greek Room.
Trembling violently, I joined him; and together we stood looking down at Grimsby.
"Good God!" whispered Coram; "this is awful. It cannot be the work of mortal hands! Poor
Grimsby is dead!"
"Did youseethe woman?" I muttered. I will confess it: my courage had completely
deserted me.
He shook his head; but, as Beale came running to join us, glanced fearfully into the shadows
of the Greek Room. The storm seemed to have passed, and, as we three frightened men stood
around Grimsby's recumbent body, we could almost hear the beating of each other's hearts.
Suddenly, giving a great start, Coram clutched my arm. "Listen!" he said. "What's that?"
I held my breath and listened. "It's the thunder in the distance," said Beale.
"You are wrong," I answered. "It is someone knocking at the hall entrance! There goes the
bell, now!
Coram gave a sigh of relief. "Heavens!" he said; "I've no nerves left! Come on and see who it
is."
The three of us, keeping very close together, passed quickly through the Greek Room and
down into the hall. As the ringing continued, Coram unbolted the doorand there, on the
steps, stood Moris Klaw!
Some vague idea of his mission flashed through my mind. "You are too late!" I cried.
"Grimsby has gone!"

30

I saw a look of something like anger pass over his large pale features, and then he had darted
past us and vanished up the stairs.
Having rebolted the door, we rejoined Moris Klaw in the Greek Room. He was kneeling
beside Grimsby in the dim lightand Grimsby, his face ghastly pale, was sitting up and
drinking from a flask!
"I am in time!" said Moris Klaw. "He has only fainted!"
"It was the ghost!" whispered the Scotland Yard man. "My God! I'm prepared for anything
humanbut when the lightning came and I saw that white thingplaying the harp"
Coram turned aside and was about to pick up the harp, which lay upon the floor near, when
"Ah!" cried Moris Klaw, "do not touch it! It is death!"
Coram started back as though he had been stung as Grimsby very unsteadily got upon his feet.
"Turn up lights," directed Moris Klaw, "and I will show you!"
The curator went out to the switchboard and the Greek Room became brightly illuminated.
The ramshackle figure of Moris Klaw seemed to be invested with triumphant majesty. Behind
the pebbles his eyes gleamed.
"Observe," he said, "I raise the harp from the floor." He did so. "And I live. For why? Because
I do not take hold upon it in a natural manner by the top! I take it by the side! Conway and
Macalister took hold upon it at the top; and where are theyConway and Macalister?"
"Mr. Klaw," said Coram, "I cannot doubt that this black business is all clear to your very
unusual intelligence; but to me it is a profound mystery. I have, myself, in the past, taken up
the harp in the way you describe as fatal, and without injury"
"But not immediately after it had been played upon!" interrupted Moris Klaw.
"Played upon! I have never attempted to play upon it!"
"Even had you done so you might yet have escaped, provided you set it down before touching
the top part! Note, please!"
He ran his long white fingers over the golden strings. Instantly there stole upon my ears that
weird, wailing music which had heralded the strange happenings of the night!
"And now," continued our mentor, "whilst I who am cunning hold it where the ladies' gold
feet join, observe the topwhere the hand would in ordinary rest in holding it."
We gathered around him.
"A needle-point," he rumbled, impressively, "protruding! The player touches it not! But who
takes it from the hand of the player dies ! By placing the harp again upon its base the point
again retires! Shall I say what is upon that point, to drive a man mad like a dog with rabies, to
31

stay potent for generations? I cannot. It is a secret buried with the ugly body of Caesar
Borgia!"
"Caesar Borgia!" we cried in chorus.
"Ah!" rumbled Moris Klaw, "your Athenean Harp was indeed made by Paduano Zelloni, the
Florentine' It is a clever forge! I have been in Rome until yesterday. You are surprised? I am
sorry, for the poor Macalister died. Having perfected, with the aid of Isis, my mind
photograph of the lady who plays the harp, I go to Rome to perfect the story of the harp. For
why? At my house I have records, but incomplete, useless. In Rome I have a friend, of so old
a family, and once so wicked, I shall not name it!
"He has recourse to the great Vatican Library to the annals of his race. There he finds me
an account of such a harp. In those priceless parchments it is called 'a Greek lyre of gold.' It is
described. I am convinced. I am sure!
"Once the beautiful Lucrece Borgia play upon this harp. To one who is distasteful to her she
says: 'Replace for me my harp.' He does so. He is a dead man! God! what cleverness!
"Where has it lain for generations before your Sir Menzies find it? No man knows. But it has
still its virtues! How did the poor Menzies die? Throw himself from his room window, I
recently learn. This harp certainly was in his room. Conway, after dashing, mad, about the
place, springs head downward from the' attendant's chair. Mac-alister dies in exhaustion and
convulsions!"
A silence; when
"What caused the harp to play?" asked Coram.
Moris Klaw looked hard at him. Then a thrill of new horror ran through my veins. A low
moan came from somewhere hard by! Coram turned in a flash!
"Why, my private door is open!" he whispered.
"Where do you keep your private keys?" rumbled Klaw.
"In my study." Coram was staring at the open door, but seemed afraid to approach it. "We
have been using the attendant's keys at night. My own are on my study mantelpiece now."
"I think not," continued the thick voice. "Your daughter has them'"
"My daughter!" cried Coram, and sprang to the open door. "Heavens! Hilda! Hilda!"
"She is somnambulistic!" whispered Moris Klaw in my ear. "When certain unusual sounds
such as heavy vehicles at nightreach her in her sleep (ah! how little we know of the
phenomenon of sleep!), she arises, and, in common with many sleepwalkers, always acts the
same. Something, in the case of Miss Hilda, attracts her to the golden harp"
"She is studying music!"

32

"She must rest from it. Her brain is overwrought! She unlocks the case and strikes the cords of
the harp, relocking the door, replacing the keysI before have known such casesthen
retires as she came. Who takes the harp from her hands, or raises it, if she has laid it down
upon its side, dies! These dead attendants were brave fellows both, for, hearing the music,
they came running, saw how the matter was, and did not waken the sleeping player. Conway
was poisoned as he returned the harp to its case; Macalister, as he took it up from where it lay.
Something to-night awoke her ere she could relock the door. The fright of so awaking made
her to swoon."
Coram's kindly voice and the sound of a girl sobbing affrightedly reached us.
"It was my yell of fear, Mr. Klaw!" said Grimsby, shamefacedly. "She looked like a ghost!"
"I understand," rumbled Moris Klaw, soothingly. "As I see her in my sleep she is very
awesome! I will show you the picture Isis has made from my etheric photograph. I saw it,
finished, earlier tonight. It confirmed me that the Miss Hilda with the harp in her hand was
poor Conway's last thought in life!"
"Mr. Klaw," said Grimsby, earnestly, "you are a very remarkable man!"
"Yes?" he rumbled, and gingerly placed in its case the "Greek lyre of gold" which Paduano
Zelloni had wrought for Caesar Borgia.
From the brown hat he took out his scent spray and squirted verbena upon his heated
forehead. "That harp," he explained, "it smells of dead men!"

Sax Rohmer - The Dream Detective

Ten stories featuring perhaps the most fantastic sleuth of
them all: Moris Klaw, the Dream Detective. Accompanied
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lead him to clues and answers concerning occult
occurrances far beyond the ken of ordinary minds. Moris
Klaw is a gifted eccentric in the Holmesian mode. The
proprietor of a ramshackle antique shop in Wapping, Klaw
is a tall, stoop-shouldered man, of indeterminate age and
unidentifiable foreign acccent, with skin the color of "dirty
vellum". He wears gold pince-nez, a flat bowler hat, and
an old black cape, and is not only an expert in the legends
and lore of valuable historical objects, but also a master of
disguise.
Pages: 228
ISBN 9781304999078
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33

THE FAMILIAR
By
J Sheridan Le Fanu

PROLOGUE
Out of about two hundred and thirty cases, more or less nearly akin to that I have entitled
"Green Tea," I select the following, which I call "The Familiar."
To this MS. Doctor Hesselius, has, after his wont, attached some sheets of letter-paper, on
which are written, in his hand nearly as compact as print, his own remarks upon the case. He
says
"In point of conscience, no more unexceptionable narrator, than the venerable Irish
Clergyman who has given me this paper, on Mr. Barton's case, could have been chosen. The
statement is, however, medically imperfect. The report of an intelligent physician, who had
marked its progress, and attended the patient, from its earlier stages to its close, would have
supplied what is wanting to enable me to pronounce with confidence. I should have been
acquainted with Mr. Barton's probable hereditary pre-dispositions; I should have known,
possibly, by very early indications, something of a remoter origin of the disease than can now
be ascertained.
"In a rough way, we may reduce all similar cases to three distinct classes. They are founded
on the primary distinction between the subjective and the objective. Of those whose senses are
alleged to be subject to supernatural impressionssome are simply visionaries, and propagate
the illusions of which they complain, from diseased brain or nerves. Others are,
unquestionably, infested by, as we term them, spiritual agencies, exterior to themselves.
Others, again, owe their sufferings to a mixed condition. The interior sense, it is true, is
opened; but it has been and continues open by the action of disease. This form of disease may,
in one sense, be compared to the loss of the scarf-skin, and a consequent exposure of surfaces
for whose excessive sensitiveness, nature has provided a muffling. The loss of this covering is
attended by an habitual impassability, by influences against which we were intended to be
guarded. But in the case of the brain, and the nerves immediately connected with its functions
and its sensuous impressions, the cerebral circulation undergoes periodically that vibratory
disturbance, which, I believe, I have satisfactorily examined and demonstrated, in my MS.
Essay, A. 17. This vibratory disturbance differs, as I there prove, essentially from the
congestive disturbance, the phenomena of which are examined in A. 19. It is, when excessive,
invariably accompanied by illusions.
"Had I seen Mr. Barton, and examined him upon the points, in his case, which need
elucidation, I should have without difficulty referred those phenomena to their proper disease.
My diagnosis is now, necessarily, conjectural."
Thus writes Doctor Hesselius; and adds a great deal which is of interest only to a scientific
physician.
34

The Narrative of the Rev. Thomas Herbert, which furnishes all that is known of the case, will
be found in the chapters that follow.
CHAPTER I
FOOT-STEPS
I was a young man at the time, and intimately acquainted with some of the actors in this
strange tale; the impression which its incidents made on me, therefore, were deep, and lasting.
I shall now endeavour, with precision, to relate them all, combining, of course, in the
narrative, whatever I have learned from various sources, tending, however imperfectly, to
illuminate the darkness which involves its progress and termination.
Somewhere about the year 1794, the younger brother of a certain baronet, whom I shall call
Sir James Barton, returned to Dublin. He had served in the navy with some distinction, having
commanded one of His Majesty's frigates during the greater part of the American war.
Captain Barton was apparently some two or three-and-forty years of age. He was an
intelligent and agreeable companion when he pleased it, though generally reserved, and
occasionally even moody.
In society, however, he deported himself as a man of the world, and a gentleman. He had not
contracted any of the noisy brusqueness sometimes acquired at sea; on the contrary, his
manners were remarkably easy, quiet, and even polished. He was in person about the middle
size, and somewhat strongly formedhis countenance was marked with the lines of thought,
and on the whole wore an expression of gravity and melancholy; being, however, as I have
said, a man of perfect breeding, as well as of good family, and in affluent circumstances, he
had, of course, ready access to the best society of Dublin, without the necessity of any other
credentials.
In his personal habits Mr. Barton was unexpensive. He occupied lodgings in one of the then
fashionable streets in the south side of the townkept but one horse and one servantand
though a reputed free-thinker, yet lived an orderly and moral lifeindulging neither in
gaming, drinking, nor any other vicious pursuitliving very much to himself, without
forming intimacies, or choosing any companions, and appearing to mix in gay society rather
for the sake of its bustle and distraction, than for any opportunities it offered of interchanging
thought or feeling with its votaries.
Barton was therefore pronounced a saving, prudent, unsocial sort of fellow, who bid fair to
maintain his celibacy alike against stratagem and assault, and was likely to live to a good old
age, die rich, and leave his money to an hospital.
It was now apparent, however, that the nature of Mr. Barton's plans had been totally
misconceived. A young lady, whom I shall call Miss Montague, was at this time introduced
into the gay world, by her aunt, the Dowager Lady L. Miss Montague was decidedly
pretty and accomplished, and having some natural cleverness, and a great deal of gaiety,
became for a while a reigning toast.
Her popularity, however, gained her, for a time, nothing more than that unsubstantial
admiration which, however, pleasant as an incense to vanity, is by no means necessarily
antecedent to matrimonyfor, unhappily for the young lady in question, it was an understood
35

thing, that beyond her personal attractions, she had no kind of earthly provision. Such being
the state of affairs, it will readily be believed that no little surprise was consequent upon the
appearance of Captain Barton as the avowed lover of the penniless Miss Montague.
His suit prospered, as might have been expected, and in a short time it was communicated by
old Lady L to each of her hundred-and-fifty particular friends in succession, that Captain
Barton had actually tendered proposals of marriage, with her approbation, to her niece, Miss
Montague, who had, moreover, accepted the offer of his hand, conditionally upon the consent
of her father, who was then upon his homeward voyage from India, and expected in two or
three weeks at the furthest.
About this consent there could be no doubtthe delay, therefore, was one merely of form
they were looked upon as absolutely engaged, and Lady L, with a rigour of old-fashioned
decorum with which her niece would, no doubt, gladly have dispensed, withdrew her
thenceforward from all further participation in the gaieties of the town.
Captain Barton was a constant visitor, as well as a frequent guest at the house, and was
permitted all the privileges of intimacy which a betrothed suitor is usually accorded. Such was
the relation of parties, when the mysterious circumstances which darken this narrative first
begun to unfold themselves.
Lady L resided in a handsome mansion at the north side of Dublin, and Captain Barton's
lodgings, as we have already said, were situated at the south. The distance intervening was
considerable, and it was Captain Barton's habit generally to walk home without an attendant,
as often as he passed the evening with the old lady and her fair charge.
His shortest way in such nocturnal walks, lay, for a considerable space, through a line of street
which had as yet merely been laid out, and little more than the foundations of the houses
constructed.
One night, shortly after his engagement with Miss Montague had commenced, he happened to
remain unusually late, in company with her and Lady L. The conversation had turned
upon the evidences of revelation, which he had disputed with the callous scepticism of a
confirmed infidel. What were called "French principles," had in those days found their way a
good deal into fashionable society, especially that portion of it which professed allegiance to
Whiggism, and neither the old lady nor her charge were so perfectly free from the taint, as to
look upon Mr. Barton's views as any serious objection to the proposed union.
The discussion had degenerated into one upon the supernatural and the marvellous, in which
he had pursued precisely the same line of argument and ridicule. In all this, it is but truth to
state, Captain Barton, was guilty of no affectationthe doctrines upon which he insisted,
were, in reality, but, too truly the basis of his own fixed belief, if so it might be called; and
perhaps not the least strange of the many strange circumstances connected with my narrative,
was the fact, that the subject of the fearful influences I am about to describe, was himself,
from the deliberate conviction of years, an utter disbeliever in what are usually termed
preternatural agencies.
It was considerably past midnight when Mr. Barton took his leave, and set out upon his
solitary walk homeward. He had now reached the lonely road, with its unfinished dwarf walls
tracing the foundations of the projected row of houses on either sidethe moon was shining
36

mistily, and its imperfect light made the road he trod but additionally drearythat utter
silence which has in it something indefinably exciting, reigned there, and made the sound of
his steps, which alone broke it, unnaturally loud and distinct.
He had proceeded thus some way, when he, on a sudden, heard other footfalls, pattering at a
measured pace, and, as it seemed, about two score steps behind him.
The suspicion of being dogged is at all times unpleasant; it is, however, especially so in a spot
so lonely; and this suspicion became so strong in the mind of Captain Barton, that he abruptly
turned about to confront his pursuer, but, though there was quite sufficient moonlight to
disclose any object upon the road he had traversed, no form of any kind was visible there.
The steps he had heard could not have been the reverberation of his own, for he stamped his
foot upon the ground, and walked briskly up and down, in the vain attempt to awake an echo;
though by no means a fanciful person, therefore he was at last fain to charge the sounds upon
his imagination, and treat them as an illusion. Thus satisfying himself, he resumed his walk,
and before he had proceeded a dozen paces, the mysterious footfall was again audible from
behind, and this time, as if with the special design of showing that the sounds were not the
responses of an echothe steps sometimes slackened nearly to a halt, and sometimes hurried
for six or eight strides to a run, and again abated to a walk.
Captain Barton, as before, turned suddenly round, and with the same resultno object was
visible above the deserted level of the road. He walked back over the same ground,
determined that, whatever might have been the cause of the sounds which had so disconcerted
him, it should not escape his searchthe endeavour, however, was unrewarded.
In spite of all his scepticism, he felt something like a superstitious fear stealing fast upon him,
and with these unwonted and uncomfortable sensations, he once more turned and pursued his
way. There was no repetition of these haunting sounds, until he had reached the point where
he had last stopped to retrace his stepshere they were resumedand with sudden starts of
running, which threatened to bring the unseen pursuer up to the alarmed pedestrian.
Captain Barton arrested his course as formerlythe unaccountable nature of the occurrence
filled him with vague and disagreeable sensationsand yielding to the excitement that was
gaining upon him, he shouted sternly, "Who goes there?" The sound of one's own voice, thus
exerted, in utter solitude, and followed by total silence, has in it something unpleasantly
dismaying, and he felt a degree of nervousness which, perhaps, from no cause had he ever
known before.
To the very end of this solitary street the steps pursued himand it required a strong effort of
stubborn pride on his part, to resist the impulse that prompted him every moment to run for
safety at the top of his speed. It was not until he had reached his lodging, and sate by his own
fire-side, that he felt sufficiently reassured to rearrange and reconsider in his own mind the
occurrences which had so discomposed him. So little a matter, after all, is sufficient to upset
the pride of scepticism and vindicate the old simple laws of nature within us.

37

CHAPTER II
THE WATCHER
Mr. Barton was next morning sitting at a late breakfast, reflecting upon the incidents of the
previous night, with more of inquisitiveness than awe, so speedily do gloomy impressions
upon the fancy disappear under the cheerful influence of day, when a letter just delivered by
the postman was placed upon the table before him.
There was nothing remarkable in the address of this missive, except that it was written in a
hand which he did not knowperhaps it was disguisedfor the tall narrow characters were
sloped backward; and with the self-inflicted suspense which we often see practised in such
cases, he puzzled over the inscription for a full minute before he broke the seal. When he did
so, he read the following words, written in the same hand:
"Mr. Barton, late captain of the 'Dolphin,' is warned of DANGER. He will do wisely to avoid
street[here the locality of his last night's adventure was named]if he walks there as
usual he will meet with something unluckylet him take warning, once for all, for he has
reason to dread
"THE WATCHER."
Captain Barton read and re-read this strange effusion; in every light and in every direction he
turned it over and over; he examined the paper on which it was written, and scrutinized the
hand-writing once more. Defeated here, he turned to the seal; it was nothing but a patch of
wax, upon which the accidental impression of a thumb was imperfectly visible.
There was not the slightest mark, or clue of any kind, to lead him to even a guess as to its
possible origin. The writer's object seemed a friendly one, and yet he subscribed himself as
one whom he had "reason to dread." Altogether the letter, its author, and its real purpose were
to him an inexplicable puzzle, and one, moreover, unpleasantly suggestive, in his mind, of
other associations connected with his last night's adventure.
In obedience to some feelingperhaps of prideMr. Barton did not communicate, even to
his intended bride, the occurrences which I have just detailed. Trifling as they might appear,
they had in reality most disagreeably affected his imagination, and he cared not to disclose,
even to the young lady in question, what she might possibly look upon as evidences of
weakness. The letter might very well be but a hoax, and the mysterious footfall but a delusion
or a trick. But although he affected to treat the whole affair as unworthy of a thought, it yet
haunted him pertinaciously, tormenting him with perplexing doubts, and depressing him with
undefined apprehensions. Certain it is, that for a considerable time afterwards he carefully
avoided the street indicated in the letter as the scene of danger.
It was not until about a week after the receipt of the letter which I have transcribed, that
anything further occurred to remind Captain Barton of its contents, or to counteract the
gradual disappearance from his mind of the disagreeable impressions then received.
He was returning one night, after the interval I have stated, from the theatre, which was then
situated in Crow-street, and having there seen Miss Montague and Lady L into their
carriage, he loitered for some time with two or three acquaintances.
38

With these, however, he parted close to the college, and pursued his way alone. It was now
fully one o'clock, and the streets were quite deserted. During the whole of his walk with the
companions from whom he had just parted, he had been at times painfully aware of the sound
of steps, as it seemed, dogging them on their way.
Once or twice he had looked back, in the uneasy anticipation that he was again about to
experience the same mysterious annoyances which had so disconcerted him a week before,
and earnestly hoping that he might see some form to account naturally for the sounds. But the
street was desertedno one was visible.
Proceeding now quite alone upon his homeward way, he grew really nervous and
uncomfortable, as he became sensible, with increased distinctness, of the well-known and
now absolutely dreaded sounds.
By the side of the dead wall which bounded the college park, the sounds followed,
recommencing almost simultaneously with his own steps. The same unequal pace
sometimes slow, sometimes for a score yards or so, quickened almost to a runwas audible
from behind him. Again and again he turned; quickly and stealthily he glanced over his
shoulderalmost at every half-dozen steps; but no one was visible.
The irritation of this intangible and unseen pursuit became gradually all but intolerable; and
when at last he reached his home, his nerves were strung to such a pitch of excitement that he
could not rest, and did not attempt even to lie down until after the daylight had broken.
He was awakened by a knock at his chamber-door, and his servant entering, handed him
several letters which had just been received by the penny post. One among them instantly
arrested his attentiona single glance at the direction aroused him thoroughly. He at once
recognized its character, and read as follows:
"You may as well think, Captain Barton, to escape from your own shadow as from me; do
what you may, I will see you as often as I please, and you shall see me, for I do not want to
hide myself, as you fancy. Do not let it trouble your rest, Captain Barton; for, with a good
conscience, what need you fear from the eye of
"THE WATCHER."
It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the feelings that accompanied a perusal of this strange
communication. Captain Barton was observed to be unusually absent and out of spirits for
several days afterwards, but no one divined the cause.
Whatever he might think as to the phantom steps which followed him, there could be no
possible illusion about the letters he had received; and, to say the least, their immediate
sequence upon the mysterious sounds which had haunted him, was an odd coincidence.
The whole circumstance was, in his own mind, vaguely and instinctively connected with
certain passages in his past life, which, of all others, he hated to remember.
It happened, however, that in addition to his own approaching nuptials, Captain Barton had
just thenfortunately, perhaps, for himselfsome business of an engrossing kind connected
with the adjustment of a large and long-litigated claim upon certain properties.
39

The hurry and excitement of business had its natural effect in gradually dispelling the gloom
which had for a time occasionally oppressed him, and in a little while his spirits had entirely
recovered their accustomed tone.
During all this time, however, he was, now and then, dismayed by indistinct and half-heard
repetitions of the same annoyance, and that in lonely places, in the day-time as well as after
nightfall. These renewals of the strange impressions from which he had suffered so much,
were, however, desultory and faint, insomuch that often he really could not, to his own
satisfaction, distinguish between them and the mere suggestions of an excited imagination.
One evening he walked down to the House of Commons with a Member, an acquaintance of
his and mine. This was one of the few occasions upon which I have been in company with
Captain Barton. As we walked down together, I observed that he became absent and silent,
and to a degree that seemed to argue the pressure of some urgent and absorbing anxiety.
I afterwards learned that during the whole of our walk, he had heard the well-known footsteps
tracking him as we proceeded.
This, however, was the last time he suffered from this phase of the persecution, of which he
was already the anxious victim. A new and a very different one was about to be presented.
CHAPTER III
AN ADVERTISEMENT
Of the new series of impressions which were afterwards gradually to work out his destiny, I
that evening witnessed the first; and but for its relation to the train of events which followed,
the incident would scarcely have been now remembered by me.
As we were walking in at the passage from College-Green, a man, of whom I remember only
that he was short in stature, looked like a foreigner, and wore a kind of fur travelling-cap,
walked very rapidly, and as if under fierce excitement, directly towards us, muttering to
himself, fast and vehemently the while.
This odd-looking person walked straight toward Barton, who was foremost of the three, and
halted, regarding him for a moment or two with a look of maniacal menace and fury; and then
turning about as abruptly, he walked before us at the same agitated pace, and disappeared at a
side passage. I do distinctly remember being a good deal shocked at the countenance and
bearing of this man, which indeed irresistibly impressed me with an undefined sense of
danger, such as I have never felt before or since from the presence of anything human; but
these sensations were, on my part, far from amounting to anything so disconcerting as to
flurry or excite meI had seen only a singularly evil countenance, agitated, as it seemed,
with the excitement of madness.
I was absolutely astonished, however, at the effect of this apparition upon Captain Barton. I
knew him to be a man of proud courage and coolness in real dangera circumstance which
made his conduct upon this occasion the more conspicuously odd. He recoiled a step or two as
the stranger advanced, and clutched my arm in silence, with what seemed to be a spasm of
agony or terror! and then, as the figure disappeared, shoving me roughly back, he followed it

40

for a few paces, stopped in great disorder, and sat down upon a form. I never beheld a
countenance more ghastly and haggard.
"For God's sake, Barton, what is the matter?" said , our companion, really alarmed at his
appearance. "You're not hurt, are you?or unwell? What is it?"
"What did he say?I did not hear itwhat was it?" asked Barton, wholly disregarding the
question.
"Nonsense," said , greatly surprised; "who cares what the fellow said. You are unwell,
Bartondecidedly unwell; let me call a coach."
"Unwell! Nonot unwell," he said, evidently making an effort to recover his self-possession;
"but, to say the truth, I am fatigueda little over-workedand perhaps over anxious. You
know I have been in chancery, and the winding up of a suit is always a nervous affair. I have
felt uncomfortable all this evening; but I am better now. Come, comeshall we go on?"
"No, no. Take my advice, Barton, and go home; you really do need rest! you are looking quite
ill. I really do insist on your allowing me to see you home," replied his friend.
I seconded 's advice, the more readily as it was obvious that Barton was not himself
disinclined to be persuaded. He left us, declining our offered escort. I was not sufficiently
intimate with to discuss the scene we had both just witnessed. I was, however,
convinced from his manner in the few common-place comments and regrets we exchanged,
that he was just as little satisfied as I with the extempore plea of illness with which he had
accounted for the strange exhibition, and that we were both agreed in suspecting some lurking
mystery in the matter.
I called next day at Barton's lodgings, to enquire for him, and learned from the servant that he
had not left his room since his return the night before; but that he was not seriously
indisposed, and hoped to be out in a few days. That evening he sent for Dr. R, then in
large and fashionable practice in Dublin, and their interview was, it is said, an odd one.
He entered into a detail of his own symptoms in an abstracted and desultory way which
seemed to argue a strange want of interest in his own cure, and, at all events, made it manifest
that there was some topic engaging his mind of more engrossing importance than his present
ailment. He complained of occasional palpitations and headache.
Doctor R, asked him among other questions, whether there was any irritating
circumstance or anxiety then occupying his thoughts. This he denied quickly and almost
peevishly; and the physician thereupon declared his opinion, that there was nothing amiss
except some slight derangement of the digestion, for which he accordingly wrote a
prescription, and was about to withdraw, when Mr. Barton, with the air of a man who
recollects a topic which had nearly escaped him, recalled him.
"I beg your pardon, Doctor, but I really almost forgot; will you permit me to ask you two or
three medical questionsrather odd ones, perhaps, but a wager depends upon their solution,
you will, I hope, excuse my unreasonableness."
The physician readily undertook to satisfy the inquirer.
41

Barton seemed to have some difficulty about opening the proposed interrogatories, for he was
silent for a minute, then walked to his book-case, and returned as he had gone; at last he sat
down and said
"You'll think them very childish questions, but I can't recover my wager without a decision;
so I must put them. I want to know first about lock-jaw. If a man actually has had that
complaint, and appears to have died of itso much so, that a physician of average skill
pronounces him actually deadmay he, after all, recover?"
The physician smiled, and shook his head.
"Butbut a blunder may be made," resumed Barton. "Suppose an ignorant pretender to
medical skill; may he be so deceived by any stage of the complaint, as to mistake what is only
a part of the progress of the disease, for death itself?"
"No one who had ever seen death," answered he, "could mistake it in a case of lock-jaw."
Barton mused for a few minutes. "I am going to ask you a question, perhaps, still more
childish; but first, tell me, are the regulations of foreign hospitals, such as that of, let us say,
Naples, very lax and bungling. May not all kinds of blunders and slips occur in their entries of
names, and soforth?"
Doctor R professed his incompetence to answer that query.
"Well, then, Doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will, probably, laugh at it; but it
must out, nevertheless. Is there any disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would
have the effect of perceptibly contracting the stature, and the whole framecausing the man
to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact resemblance to himself in every
particularwith the one exception, his height and bulk; any disease, markno matter how
rarehow little believed in, generallywhich could possibly result in producing such an
effect?"
The physician replied with a smile, and a very decided negative.
"Tell me, then," said Barton, abruptly, "if a man be in reasonable fear of assault from a lunatic
who is at large, can he not procure a warrant for his arrest and detention?"
"Really that is more a lawyer's question than one in my way," replied Dr. R: "but I
believe, on applying to a magistrate, such a course would be directed."
The physician then took his leave; but, just as he reached the hall-door, remembered that he
had left his cane up stairs, and returned. His reappearance was awkward, for a piece of paper,
which he recognised as his own prescription, was slowly burning upon the fire, and Barton
sitting close by with an expression of settled gloom and dismay.
Doctor R had too much tact to observe what presented itself; but he had seen quite
enough to assure him that the mind, and not the body, of Captain Barton was in reality the
seat of suffering.
A few days afterwards, the following advertisement appeared in the Dublin newspapers.
42

"If Sylvester Yelland, formerly a foremast-man on board his Majesty's frigate Dolphin, or his
nearest of kin, will apply to Mr. Hubert Smith, attorney, at his office, Dame Street, he or they
may hear of something greatly to his or their advantage. Admission may be had at any hour
up to twelve o'clock at night, should parties desire to avoid observation; and the strictest
secrecy, as to all communications intended to be confidential, shall be honourably observed."
The Dolphin, as I have mentioned, was the vessel which Captain Barton had commanded; and
this circumstance, connected with the extraordinary exertions made by the circulation of
hand-bills, &c., as well as by repeated advertisements, to secure for this strange notice the
utmost possible publicity, suggested to Dr. R the idea that Captain Barton's extreme
uneasiness was somehow connected with the individual to whom the advertisement was
addressed, and he himself the author of it.
This, however, it is needless to add, was no more than a conjecture. No information
whatsoever, as to the real purpose of the advertisement was divulged by the agent, nor yet any
hint as to who his employer might be.
CHAPTER IV
HE TALKS WITH A CLERGYMAN
Mr. Barton, although he had latterly begun to earn for himself the character of an
hypochondriac, was yet very far from deserving it. Though by no means lively, he had yet,
naturally, what are termed "even spirits," and was not subject to undue depressions.
He soon, therefore, began to return to his former habits; and one of the earliest symptoms of
this healthier tone of spirits was, his appearing at a grand dinner of the Freemasons, of which
worthy fraternity he was himself a brother. Barton, who had been at first gloomy and
abstracted, drank much more freely than was his wontpossibly with the purpose of
dispelling his own secret anxietiesand under the influence of good wine, and pleasant
company, became gradually (unlike himself) talkative, and even noisy.
It was under this unwonted excitement that he left his company at about half-past ten o'clock;
and, as conviviality is a strong incentive to gallantry, it occurred to him to proceed forthwith
to Lady L's and pass the remainder of the evening with her and his destined bride.
Accordingly, he was soon at street, and chatting gaily with the ladies. It is not to be
supposed that Captain Barton had exceeded the limits which propriety prescribes to good
fellowshiphe had merely taken enough wine to raise his spirits, without, however, in the
least degree unsteadying his mind, or affecting his manners.
With this undue elevation of spirits had supervened an entire oblivion or contempt of those
undefined apprehensions which had for so long weighed upon his mind, and to a certain
extent estranged him from society; but as the night wore away, and his artificial gaiety began
to flag, these painful feelings gradually intruded themselves again, and he grew abstracted and
anxious as heretofore.
He took his leave at length, with an unpleasant foreboding of some coming mischief, and with
a mind haunted with a thousand mysterious apprehensions, such as, even while he acutely felt
their pressure, he, nevertheless, inwardly strove, or affected to contemn.
43

It was this proud defiance of what he regarded as his own weakness, which prompted him
upon the present occasion to that course which brought about the adventure I am now about to
relate.
Mr. Barton might have easily called a coach, but he was conscious that his strong inclination
to do so proceeded from no cause other than what he desperately persisted in representing to
himself to be his own superstitious tremors.
He might also have returned home by a route different from that against which he had been
warned by his mysterious correspondent; but for the same reason he dismissed this idea also,
and with a dogged and half desperate resolution to force matters to a crisis of some kind, if
there were any reality in the causes of his former suffering, and if not, satisfactorily to bring
their delusiveness to the proof, he determined to follow precisely the course which he had
trodden upon the night so painfully memorable in his own mind as that on which his strange
persecution commenced. Though, sooth to say, the pilot who for the first time steers his vessel
under the muzzles of a hostile battery, never felt his resolution more severely tasked than did
Captain Barton as he breathlessly pursued this solitary patha path which, spite of every
effort of scepticism and reason, he felt to be infested by some (as respected him) malignant
being.
He pursued his way steadily and rapidly, scarcely breathing from intensity of suspense; he,
however, was troubled by no renewal of the dreaded footsteps, and was beginning to feel a
return of confidence, as more than three-fourths of the way being accomplished with
impunity, he approached the long line of twinkling oil lamps which indicated the frequented
streets.
This feeling of self-congratulation was, however, but momentary. The report of a musket at
some hundred yards behind him, and the whistle of a bullet close to his head, disagreeably
and startlingly dispelled it. His first impulse was to retrace his steps in pursuit of the assassin;
but the road on either side was, as we have said, embarrassed by the foundations of a street,
beyond which extended waste fields, full of rubbish and neglected lime and brick-kilns, and
all now as utterly silent as though no sound had ever disturbed their dark and unsightly
solitude. The futility of, single-handed, attempting, under such circumstances, a search for the
murderer, was apparent, especially as no sound, either of retreating steps or any other kind,
was audible to direct his pursuit.
With the tumultuous sensations of one whose life has just been exposed to a murderous
attempt, and whose escape has been the narrowest possible, Captain Barton turned again; and
without, however, quickening his pace actually to a run, hurriedly pursued his way.
He had turned, as I have said, after a pause of a few seconds, and had just commenced his
rapid retreat, when on a sudden he met the well-remembered little man in the fur cap. The
encounter was but momentary. The figure was walking at the same exaggerated pace, and
with the same strange air of menace as before; and as it passed him, he thought he heard it
say, in a furious whisper, "Still alivestill alive!"
The state of Mr. Barton's spirits began now to work a corresponding alteration in his health
and looks, and to such a degree that it was impossible that the change should escape general
remark.

44

For some reasons, known but to himself, he took no step whatsoever to bring the attempt upon
his life, which he had so narrowly escaped, under the notice of the authorities; on the contrary,
he kept it jealously to himself; and it was not for many weeks after the occurrence that he
mentioned it, and then in strict confidence, to a gentleman, whom the torments of his mind at
last compelled him to consult.
Spite of his blue devils, however, poor Barton, having no satisfactory reason to render to the
public for any undue remissness in the attentions exacted by the relation subsisting between
him and Miss Montague was obliged to exert himself, and present to the world a confident
and cheerful bearing.
The true source of his sufferings, and every circumstance connected with them, he guarded
with a reserve so jealous, that it seemed dictated by at least a suspicion that the origin of his
strange persecution was known to himself, and that it was of a nature which, upon his own
account, he could not or dared not disclose.
The mind thus turned in upon itself, and constantly occupied with a haunting anxiety which it
dared not reveal or confide to any human breast, became daily more excited, and, of course,
more vividly impressible, by a system of attack which operated through the nervous system;
and in this state he was destined to sustain, with increasing frequency, the stealthy visitations
of that apparition which from the first had seemed to possess so terrible a hold upon his
imagination.

It was about this time that Captain Barton called upon the then celebrated preacher, Dr. ,
with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and an extraordinary conversation ensued.
The divine was seated in his chambers in college, surrounded with works upon his favourite
pursuit, and deep in theology, when Barton was announced.
There was something at once embarrassed and excited in his manner, which, along with his
wan and haggard countenance, impressed the student with the unpleasant consciousness that
his visitor must have recently suffered terribly indeed, to account for an alteration so
strikingalmost shocking.
After the usual interchange of polite greeting, and a few common-place remarks, Captain
Barton, who obviously perceived the surprise which his visit had excited, and which Doctor
was unable wholly to conceal, interrupted a brief pause by remarking
"This is a strange call, Doctor , perhaps scarcely warranted by an acquaintance so slight
as mine with you. I should not under ordinary circumstances have ventured to disturb you; but
my visit is neither an idle nor impertinent intrusion. I am sure you will not so account it, when
I tell you how afflicted I am."
Doctor interrupted him with assurances such as good breeding suggested, and Barton
resumed

45

"I am come to task your patience by asking your advice. When I say your patience, I might,
indeed, say more; I might have said your humanityyour compassion; for I have been and
am a great sufferer."
"My dear sir," replied the churchman, "it will, indeed, afford me infinite gratification if I can
give you comfort in any distress of mind; butyou know"
"I know what you would say," resumed Barton, quickly; "I am an unbeliever, and, therefore,
incapable of deriving help from religion; but don't take that for granted. At least you must not
assume that, however unsettled my convictions may be, I do not feel a deepa very deep
interest in the subject. Circumstances have lately forced it upon my attention, in such a way as
to compel me to review the whole question in a more candid and teachable spirit, I believe,
than I ever studied it in before."
"Your difficulties, I take it for granted, refer to the evidences of revelation," suggested the
clergyman.
"Whynonot altogether; in fact I am ashamed to say I have not considered even my
objections sufficiently to state them connectedly; butbut there is one subject on which I feel
a peculiar interest."
He paused again, and Doctor pressed him to proceed.
"The fact is," said Barton, "whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we
are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly convinced, that there does
exist beyond this a spiritual worlda system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden
from usa system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I
am sureI know," continued Barton, with increasing excitement, "that there is a Goda
dreadful Godand that retribution follows guilt, in ways the most mysterious and
stupendousby agencies the most inexplicable and terrific;there is a spiritual system
great God, how I have been convinced!a system malignant, and implacable, and
omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, suffering the torments of the
damned!yes, siryesthe fires and frenzy of hell!"
As Barton spoke, his agitation became so vehement that the Divine was shocked, and even
alarmed. The wild and excited rapidity with which he spoke, and, above all, the indefinable
horror, that stamped his features, afforded a contrast to his ordinary cool and unimpassioned
self-possession striking and painful in the last degree.
CHAPTER V
MR. BARTON STATES HIS CASE
"My dear sir," said Doctor , after a brief pause, "I fear you have been very unhappy,
indeed; but I venture to predict that the depression under which you labour will be found to
originate in purely physical causes, and that with a change of air, and the aid of a few tonics,
your spirits will return, and the tone of your mind be once more cheerful and tranquil as
heretofore. There was, after all, more truth than we are quite willing to admit in the classic
theories which assigned the undue predominance of any one affection of the mind, to the
undue action or torpidity of one or other of our bodily organs. Believe me, that a little
46

attention to diet, exercise, and the other essentials of health, under competent direction, will
make you as much yourself as you can wish."
"Doctor " said Barton, with something like a shudder, "I cannot delude myself with such
a hope. I have no hope to cling to but one, and that is, that by some other spiritual agency
more potent than that which tortures me, it may be combated, and I delivered. If this may not
be, I am lostnow and for ever lost."
"But, Mr. Barton, you must remember," urged his companion, "that others have suffered as
you have done, and"
"No, no, no," interrupted he, with irritability"no, sir, I am not a credulousfar from a
superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much the reversetoo sceptical, too slow of
belief; but unless I were one whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to
contemn the repeated, the perpetual evidence of my own senses, I am nownow at last
constrained to believeI have no escape from the convictionthe overwhelming certainty
that I am haunted and dogged, go where I may, byby a DEMON!"
There was a preternatural energy of horror in Barton's face, as, with its damp and death-like
lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus delivered himself.
"God help you, my poor friend," said Dr. , much shocked, "God help you; for, indeed,
you are a sufferer, however your sufferings may have been caused."
"Ay, ay, God help me," echoed Barton, sternly; "but will he help mewill he help me?"
"Pray to himpray in an humble and trusting spirit," said he.
"Pray, pray," echoed he again; "I can't prayI could as easily move a mountain by an effort
of my will. I have not belief enough to pray; there is something within me that will not pray.
You prescribe impossibilitiesliteral impossibilities."
"You will not find it so, if you will but try," said Doctor .
"Try! I have tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion; and, sometimes, terror; I have
tried in vain, and more than in vain. The awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity
oppresses and maddens my brain whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the
Creator; I recoil from the effort scared. I tell you, Doctor , if I am to be saved, it must be
by other means. The idea of an eternal Creator is to me intolerablemy mind cannot support
it."
"Say, then, my dear sir," urged he, "say how you would have me serve youwhat you would
learn of mewhat I can do or say to relieve you?"
"Listen to me first," replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an effort to suppress his
excitement, "listen to me while I detail the circumstances of the persecution under which my
life has become all but intolerablea persecution which has made me fear death and the
world beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence."

47

Barton then proceeded to relate the circumstances which I have already detailed, and then
continued:
"This has now become habitualan accustomed thing. I do not mean the actual seeing him in
the fleshthank God, that at least is not permitted daily. Thank God, from the ineffable
horrors of that visitation I have been mercifully allowed intervals of repose, though none of
security; but from the consciousness that a malignant spirit is following and watching me
wherever I go, I have never, for a single instant, a temporary respite. I am pursued with
blasphemies, cries of despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after
me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the night-time, while I sit in my chamber
alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me with hideous crimes, andgreat God!
threatening me with coming vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear that?" he cried
with a horrible smile of triumph; "there, there, will that convince you?"
The clergyman felt a chill of horror steal over him, while, during the wail of a sudden gust of
wind, he heard, or fancied he heard, the half articulate sounds of rage and derision mingling in
the sough.
"Well, what do you think of that?" at length Barton cried, drawing a long breath through his
teeth.
"I heard the wind," said Doctor .
"What should I think of itwhat is there remarkable about it?"
"The prince of the powers of the air," muttered Barton, with a shudder.
"Tut, tut! my dear sir," said the student, with an effort to reassure himself; for though it was
broad daylight, there was nevertheless something disagreeably contagious in the nervous
excitement under which his visitor so miserably suffered. "You must not give way to those
wild fancies; you must resist these impulses of the imagination."
"Ay, ay; 'resist the devil and he will flee from thee,'" said Barton, in the same tone; "but how
resist him? ay, there it isthere is the rub. Whatwhat am I to do? what can I do?"
"My dear sir, this is fancy," said the man of folios; "you are your own tormentor."
"No, no, sirfancy has no part in it," answered Barton, somewhat sternly. "Fancy! was it that
made you, as well as me, hear, but this moment, those accents of hell? Fancy, indeed! No,
no."
"But you have seen this person frequently," said the ecclesiastic; "why have you not accosted
or secured him? Is it not a little precipitate, to say no more, to assume, as you have done, the
existence of preternatural agency, when, after all, everything may be easily accountable, if
only proper means were taken to sift the matter."
"There are circumstances connected with thisthis appearance," said Barton, "which it is
needless to disclose, but which to me are proof of its horrible nature. I know that the being
that follows me is not humanI say I know this; I could prove it to your own conviction." He
paused for a minute, and then added, "And as to accosting it, I dare not, I could not; when I
48

see it I am powerless; I stand in the gaze of death, in the triumphant presence of infernal
power and malignity. My strength, and faculties, and memory, all forsake me. O God, I fear,
sir, you know not what you speak of. Mercy, mercy; heaven have pity on me!"
He leaned his elbow on the table, and passed his hand across his eyes, as if to exclude some
image of horror, muttering the last words of the sentence he had just concluded, again and
again.
"Doctor ," he said, abruptly raising himself, and looking full upon the clergyman with an
imploring eye, "I know you will do for me whatever may be done. You know now fully the
circumstances and the nature of my affliction. I tell you I cannot help myself; I cannot hope to
escape; I am utterly passive. I conjure you, then, to weigh my case well, and if anything may
be done for me by vicarious supplicationby the intercession of the goodor by any aid or
influence whatsoever, I implore of you, I adjure you in the name of the Most High, give me
the benefit of that influencedeliver me from the body of this death. Strive for me, pity me; I
know you will; you cannot refuse this; it is the purpose and object of my visit. Send me away
with some hope, however little, some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve
myself to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence has been
transformed."
Doctor assured him that all he could do was to pray earnestly for him, and that so much
he would not fail to do. They parted with a hurried and melancholy valediction. Barton
hastened to the carriage that awaited him at the door, drew down the blinds, and drove away,
while Doctor returned to his chamber, to ruminate at leisure upon the strange interview
which had just interrupted his studies.
CHAPTER VI
SEEN AGAIN
It was not to be expected that Captain Barton's changed and eccentric habits should long
escape remark and discussion. Various were the theories suggested to account for it. Some
attributed the alteration to the pressure of secret pecuniary embarrassments; others to a
repugnance to fulfil an engagement into which he was presumed to have too precipitately
entered; and others, again, to the supposed incipiency of mental disease, which latter, indeed,
was the most plausible as well as the most generally, received, of the hypotheses circulated in
the gossip of the day.
From the very commencement of this change, at first so gradual in its advances, Miss
Montague had of course been aware of it. The intimacy involved in their peculiar relation, as
well as the near interest which it inspired afforded, in her case, a like opportunity and motive
for the successful exercise of that keen and penetrating observation peculiar to her sex.
His visits became, at length, so interrupted, and his manner, while they lasted, so abstracted,
strange, and agitated, that Lady L, after hinting her anxiety and her suspicions more than
once, at length distinctly stated her anxiety, and pressed for an explanation.
The explanation was given, and although its nature at first relieved the worst solicitudes of the
old lady and her niece, yet the circumstances which attended it, and the really dreadful
consequences which it obviously indicated, as regarded the spirits, and indeed the reason of
49

the now wretched man, who made the strange declaration, were enough, upon little reflection,
to fill their minds with perturbation and alarm.
General Montague, the young lady's father, at length arrived. He had himself slightly known
Barton, some ten or twelve years previously, and being aware of his fortune and connexions,
was disposed to regard him as an unexceptionable and indeed a most desirable match for his
daughter. He laughed at the story of Barton's supernatural visitations, and lost no time in
calling upon his intended son-in-law.
"My dear Barton," he continued, gaily, after a little conversation, "my sister tells me that you
are a victim to blue devils, in quite a new and original shape."
Barton changed countenance, and sighed profoundly.
"Come, come; I protest this will never do," continued the General; "you are more like a man
on his way to the gallows than to the altar. These devils have made quite a saint of you."
Barton made an effort to change the conversation.
"No, no, it won't do," said his visitor laughing; "I am resolved to say what I have to say upon
this magnificent mock mystery of yours. You must not be angry, but really it is too bad to see
you at your time of life, absolutely frightened into good behaviour, like a naughty child by a
bugaboo, and as far as I can learn, a very contemptible one. Seriously, I have been a good deal
annoyed at what they tell me; but at the same time thoroughly convinced that there is nothing
in the matter that may not cleared up, with a little attention and management, within a week at
furthest."
"Ah, General, you do not know" he began.
"Yes, but I do know quite enough to warrant my confidence," interrupted the soldier, "don't I
know that all your annoyance proceeds from the occasional appearance of a certain little man
in a cap and great-coat, with a red vest and a bad face, who follows you about, and pops upon
you at corners of lanes, and throws you into ague fits. Now, my dear fellow, I'll make it my
business to catch this mischievous little mountebank, and either beat him to a jelly with my
own hands, or have him whipped through the town, at the cart's-tail, before a month passes."
"If you knew what I knew," said Barton, with gloomy agitation, "you would speak very
differently. Don't imagine that I am so weak as to assume, without proof the most
overwhelming, the conclusion to which I have been forcedthe proofs are here, locked up
here." As he spoke he tapped upon his breast, and with an anxious sigh continued to walk up
and down the room.
"Well, well, Barton," said his visitor, "I'll wager a rump and a dozen I collar the ghost, and
convince even you before many days are over."
He was running on in the same strain when he was suddenly arrested, and not a little shocked,
by observing Barton, who had approached the window, stagger slowly back, like one who had
received a stunning blow; his arm extended toward the streethis face and his very lips white
as asheswhile he muttered, "Thereby heaven!therethere!"

50

General Montague started mechanically to his feet, and from the window of the drawingroom, saw a figure corresponding as well as his hurry would permit him to discern, with the
description of the person, whose appearance so persistently disturbed the repose of his friend.
The figure was just turning from the rails of the area upon which it had been leaning, and,
without waiting to see more, the old gentleman snatched his cane and hat, and rushed down
the stairs and into the street, in the furious hope of securing the person, and punishing the
audacity of the mysterious stranger.
He looked round him, but in vain, for any trace of the person he had himself distinctly seen.
He ran breathlessly to the nearest corner, expecting to see from thence the retiring figure, but
no such form was visible. Back and forward, from crossing to crossing, he ran, at fault, and it
was not until the curious gaze and laughing countenances of the passers-by reminded him of
the absurdity of his pursuit, that he checked his hurried pace, lowered his walking cane from
the menacing altitude which he had mechanically given it, adjusted his hat, and walked
composedly back again, inwardly vexed and flurried. He found Barton pale and trembling in
every joint; they both remained silent, though under emotions very different. At last Barton
whispered, "You saw it?"
"It!himsome oneyou meanto be sure I did," replied Montague, testily. "But where is
the good or the harm of seeing him? The fellow runs like a lamp-lighter. I wanted to catch
him, but he had stole away before I could reach the hall-door. However, it is no great matter;
next time, I dare say, I'll do better; and egad, if I once come within reach of him, I'll introduce
his shoulders to the weight of my cane."
Notwithstanding General Montague's undertakings and exhortations, however, Barton
continued to suffer from the self-same unexplained cause; go how, when, or where he would,
he was still constantly dogged or confronted by the being who had established over him so
horrible an influence.
Nowhere and at no time was he secure against the odious appearance which haunted him with
such diabolic perseverance.
His depression, misery, and excitement became more settled and alarming every day, and the
mental agonies that ceaselessly preyed upon him, began at last so sensibly to affect his health,
that Lady L and General Montague succeeded, without, indeed, much difficulty, in
persuading him to try a short tour on the Continent, in the hope that an entire change of scene
would, at all events, have the effect of breaking through the influences of local association,
which the more sceptical of his friends assumed to be by no means inoperative in suggesting
and perpetuating what they conceived to be a mere form of nervous illusion.
General Montague indeed was persuaded that the figure which haunted his intended son-inlaw was by no means the creation of his imagination, but, on the contrary, a substantial form
of flesh and blood, animated by a resolution, perhaps with some murderous object in
perspective, to watch and follow the unfortunate gentleman.
Even this hypothesis was not a very pleasant one; yet it was plain that if Barton could ever be
convinced that there was nothing preternatural in the phenomenon which he had hitherto
regarded in that light, the affair would lose all its terrors in his eyes, and wholly cease to
exercise upon his health and spirits the baleful influence which it had hitherto done. He
51

therefore reasoned, that if the annoyance were actually escaped by mere locomotion and
change of scene, it obviously could not have originated in any supernatural agency.
CHAPTER VII
FLIGHT
Yielding to their persuasions, Barton left Dublin for England, accompanied by General
Montague. They posted rapidly to London, and thence to Dover, whence they took the packet
with a fair wind for Calais. The General's confidence in the result of the expedition on
Barton's spirits had risen day by day, since their departure from the shores of Ireland; for to
the inexpressible relief and delight of the latter, he had not since then, so much as even once
fancied a repetition of those impressions which had, when at home, drawn him gradually
down to the very depths of despair.
This exemption from what he had begun to regard as the inevitable condition of his existence,
and the sense of security which began to pervade his mind, were inexpressibly delightful; and
in the exultation of what he considered his deliverance, he indulged in a thousand happy
anticipations for a future into which so lately he had hardly dared to look; and in short, both
he and his companion secretly congratulated themselves upon the termination of that
persecution which had been to its immediate victim a source of such unspeakable agony.
It was a beautiful day, and a crowd of idlers stood upon the jetty to receive the packet, and
enjoy the bustle of the new arrivals. Montague walked a few paces in advance of his friend,
and as he made his way through the crowd, a little man touched his arm, and said to him, in a
broad provincial patois
"Monsieur is walking too fast; he will lose his sick comrade in the throng, for, by my faith,
the poor gentleman seems to be fainting."
Montague turned quickly, and observed that Barton did indeed look deadly pale. He hastened
to his side.
"My dear fellow, are you ill?" he asked anxiously.
The question was unheeded and twice, repeated, ere Barton stammered
"I saw himby, I saw him!"
"Him!the wretchwhowhere now?where is he?" cried Montague, looking around
him.
"I saw himbut he is gone," repeated Barton, faintly.
"But wherewhere? For God's sake speak," urged Montague, vehemently.
"It is but this momenthere," said he.
"But what did he look likewhat had he onwhat did he wearquick, quick," urged his
excited companion, ready to dart among the crowd and collar the delinquent on the spot.
52

"He touched your armhe spoke to youhe pointed to me. God be merciful to me, there is
no escape," said Barton, in the low, subdued tones of despair.
Montague had already bustled away in all the flurry of mingled hope and rage; but though the
singular personnel of the stranger who had accosted him was vividly impressed upon his
recollection, he failed to discover among the crowd even the slightest resemblance to him.
After a fruitless search, in which he enlisted the services of several of the by-standers, who
aided all the more zealously, as they believed he had been robbed, he at length, out of breath
and baffled, gave over the attempt.
"Ah, my friend, it won't do," said Barton, with the faint voice and bewildered, ghastly look of
one who had been stunned by some mortal shock; "there is no use in contending; whatever it
is, the dreadful association between me and it, is now establishedI shall never escape
never!"
"Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Barton; don't talk so," said Montague with something at once
of irritation and dismay; "you must not, I say; we'll jockey the scoundrel yet; never mind, I
saynever mind."
It was, however, but labour lost to endeavour henceforward to inspire Barton with one ray of
hope; he became desponding.
This intangible, and, as it seemed, utterly inadequate influence was fast destroying his
energies of intellect, character, and health. His first object was now to return to Ireland, there,
as he believed, and now almost hoped, speedily to die.
To Ireland accordingly he came and one of the first faces he saw upon the shore, was again
that of his implacable and dreaded attendant. Barton seemed at last to have lost not only all
enjoyment and every hope in existence, but all independence of will besides. He now
submitted himself passively to the management of the friends most nearly interested in his
welfare.
With the apathy of entire despair, he implicitly assented to whatever measures they suggested
and advised; and as a last resource, it was determined to remove him to a house of Lady L
's, in the neighbourhood of Clontarf, where, with the advice of his medical attendant, who
persisted in his opinion that the whole train of consequences resulted merely from some
nervous derangement, it was resolved that he was to confine himself, strictly to the house, and
to make use only of those apartments which commanded a view of an enclosed yard, the gates
of which were to be kept jealously locked.
Those precautions would certainly secure him against the casual appearance of any living
form, that his excited imagination might possibly confound with the spectre which, as it was
contended, his fancy recognised in every figure that bore even a distant or general
resemblance to the peculiarities with which his fancy had at first invested it.
A month or six weeks' absolute seclusion under these conditions, it was hoped might, by
interrupting the series of these terrible impressions, gradually dispel the predisposing
apprehensions, and the associations which had confirmed the supposed disease, and rendered
recovery hopeless.
53

Cheerful society and that of his friends was to be constantly supplied, and on the whole, very
sanguine expectations were indulged in, that under the treatment thus detailed, the obstinate
hypochondria of the patient might at length give way.
Accompanied, therefore, by Lady L, General Montague and his daughterhis own
affianced bridepoor Bartonhimself never daring to cherish a hope of his ultimate
emancipation from the horrors under which his life was literally wasting awaytook
possession of the apartments, whose situation protected him against the intrusions, from
which he shrank with such unutterable terror.
After a little time, a steady persistence in this system began to manifest its results, in a very
marked though gradual improvement, alike in the health and spirits of the invalid. Not,
indeed, that anything at all approaching complete recovery was yet discernible. On the
contrary, to those who had not seen him since the commencement of his strange sufferings,
such an alteration would have been apparent as might well have shocked them.
The improvement, however, such as it was, was welcomed with gratitude and delight,
especially by the young lady, whom her attachment to him, as well as her now singularly
painful position, consequent on his protracted illness, rendered an object scarcely one degree
less to be commiserated than himself.
A week passeda fortnighta monthand yet there had been no recurrence of the hated
visitation. The treatment had, so far forth, been followed by complete success. The chain of
associations was broken. The constant pressure upon the overtasked spirits had been removed,
and, under these comparatively favourable circumstances, the sense of social community with
the world about him, and something of human interest, if not of enjoyment, began to
reanimate him.
It was about this time that Lady L who, like most old ladies of the day, was deep in
family receipts, and a great pretender to medical science, dispatched her own maid to the
kitchen garden, with a list of herbs, which were there to be carefully culled, and brought back
to her housekeeper for the purpose stated. The handmaiden, however, returned with her task
scarce half completed, and a good deal flurried and alarmed. Her mode of accounting for her
precipitate retreat and evident agitation was odd, and, to the old lady, startling.
CHAPTER VIII
SOFTENED
It appeared that she had repaired to the kitchen garden, pursuant to her mistress's directions,
and had there begun to make the specified election among the rank and neglected herbs which
crowded one corner of the enclosure, and while engaged in this pleasant labour, she carelessly
sang a fragment of an old song, as she said, "to keep herself company." She was, however,
interrupted by an ill-natured laugh; and, looking up, she saw through the old thorn hedge,
which surrounded the garden, a singularly ill-looking little man, whose countenance wore the
stamp of menace and malignity, standing close to her, at the other side of the hawthorn screen.
She described herself as utterly unable to move or speak, while he charged her with a message
for Captain Barton; the substance of which she distinctly remembered to have been to the

54

effect, that he, Captain Barton, must come abroad as usual, and show himself to his friends,
out of doors, or else prepare for a visit in his own chamber.
On concluding this brief message, the stranger had, with a threatening air, got down into the
outer ditch, and, seizing the hawthorn stems in his hands, seemed on the point of climbing
through the fencea feat which might have been accomplished without much difficulty.
Without, of course, awaiting this result, the girlthrowing down her treasures of thyme and
rosemaryhad turned and run, with the swiftness of terror, to the house. Lady L
commanded her, on pain of instant dismissal, to observe an absolute silence respecting all that
passed of the incident which related to Captain Barton; and, at the same time, directed instant
search to be made by her men, in the garden and the fields adjacent. This measure, however,
was as usual, unsuccessful, and, filled with undefinable misgivings, Lady L
communicated the incident to her brother. The story, however, until long afterwards, went no
further, and, of course, it was jealously guarded from Barton, who continued to amend,
though slowly.
Barton now began to walk occasionally in the court-yard which I have mentioned, and which
being enclosed by a high wall, commanded no view beyond its own extent. Here he, therefore,
considered himself perfectly secure: and, but for a careless violation of orders by one of the
grooms, he might have enjoyed, at least for some time longer, his much-prized immunity.
Opening upon the public road, this yard was entered by a wooden gate, with a wicket in it,
and was further defended by an iron gate upon the outside. Strict orders had been given to
keep both carefully locked; but, spite of these, it had happened that one day, as Barton was
slowly pacing this narrow enclosure, in his accustomed walk, and reaching the further
extremity, was turning to retrace his steps, he saw the boarded wicket ajar, and the face of his
tormentor immovably looking at him through the iron bars. For a few seconds he stood
rivetted to the earthbreathless and bloodlessin the fascination of that dreaded gaze, and
then fell helplessly insensible, upon the pavement.
There he was found a few minutes afterwards, and conveyed to his roomthe apartment
which he was never afterwards to leave alive. Henceforward a marked and unaccountable
change was observable in the tone of his mind. Captain Barton was now no longer the excited
and despairing man he had been before; a strange alteration had passed upon himan
unearthly tranquillity reigned in his mindit was the anticipated stillness of the grave.
"Montague, my friend, this struggle is nearly ended now," he said, tranquilly, but with a look
of fixed and fearful awe. "I have, at last, some comfort from that world of spirits, from which
my punishment has come. I now know that my sufferings will soon be over."
Montague pressed him to speak on.
"Yes," said he, in a softened voice, "my punishment is nearly ended. From sorrow, perhaps I
shall never, in time or eternity, escape; but my agony is almost over. Comfort has been
revealed to me, and what remains of my allotted struggle I will bear with submissioneven
with hope."
"I am glad to hear you speak so tranquilly, my dear Barton," said Montague; "peace and cheer
of mind are all you need to make you what you were."

55

"No, noI never can be that," said he mournfully. "I am no longer fit for life. I am soon to
die. I am to see him but once again, and then all is ended."
"He said so, then?" suggested Montague.
"He?No, no: good tidings could scarcely come through him; and these were good and
welcome; and they came so solemnly and sweetlywith unutterable love and melancholy,
such as I could notwithout saying more than is needful, or fitting, of other long-past scenes
and personsfully explain to you." As Barton said this he shed tears.
"Come, come," said Montague, mistaking the source of his emotions, "you must not give way.
What is it, after all, but a pack of dreams and nonsense; or, at worst, the practices of a
scheming rascal that enjoys his power of playing upon your nerves, and loves to exert ita
sneaking vagabond that owes you a grudge, and pays it off this way, not daring to try a more
manly one."
"A grudge, indeed, he owes meyou say rightly," said Barton, with a sudden shudder; "a
grudge as you call it. Oh, my God! when the justice of Heaven permits the Evil one to carry
out a scheme of vengeancewhen its execution is committed to the lost and terrible victim of
sin, who owes his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is commissioned to pursue
then, indeed, the torments and terrors of hell are anticipated on earth. But heaven has dealt
mercifully with mehope has opened to me at last; and if death could come without the
dreadful sight I am doomed to see, I would gladly close my eyes this moment upon the world.
But though death is welcome, I shrink with an agony you cannot understandan actual
frenzy of terrorfrom the last encounter with thatthat demon, who has drawn me thus to
the verge of the chasm, and who is himself to plunge me down. I am to see him againonce
morebut under circumstances unutterably more terrific than ever."
As Barton thus spoke, he trembled so violently that Montague was really alarmed at the
extremity of his sudden agitation, and hastened to lead him back to the topic which had before
seemed to exert so tranquillizing an effect upon his mind.
"It was not a dream," he said, after a time; "I was in a different stateI felt differently and
strangely; and yet it was all as real, as clear, and vivid, as what I now see and hearit was a
reality."
"And what did you see and hear?" urged his companion.
"When I wakened from the swoon I fell into on seeing him," said Barton, continuing as if he
had not heard the question, "it was slowly, very slowlyI was lying by the margin of a broad
lake, with misty hills all round, and a soft, melancholy, rose-coloured light illuminated it all.
It was unusually sad and lonely, and yet more beautiful than any earthly scene. My head was
leaning on the lap of a girl, and she was singing a song, that told, I know not howwhether
by words or harmoniesof all my lifeall that is past, and all that is still to come; and with
the song the old feelings that I thought had perished within me came back, and tears flowed
from my eyespartly for the song and its mysterious beauty, and partly for the unearthly
sweetness of her voice; and yet I knew the voiceoh! how well; and I was spell-bound as I
listened and looked at the solitary scene, without stirring, almost without breathingand,
alas! alas! without turning my eyes toward the face that I knew was near me, so sweetly
powerful was the enchantment that held me. And so, slowly, the song and scene grew fainter,
56

and fainter, to my senses, till all was dark and still again. And then I awoke to this world, as
you saw, comforted, for I knew that I was forgiven much." Barton wept again long and
bitterly.
From this time, as we have said, the prevailing tone of his mind was one of profound and
tranquil melancholy. This, however, was not without its interruptions. He was thoroughly
impressed with the conviction that he was to experience another and a final visitation,
transcending in horror all he had before experienced. From this anticipated and unknown
agony, he often shrank in such paroxysms of abject terror and distraction, as filled the whole
household with dismay and superstitious panic. Even those among them who affected to
discredit the theory of preternatural agency, were often in their secret souls visited during the
silence of night with qualms and apprehensions, which they would not have readily
confessed; and none of them attempted to dissuade Barton from the resolution on which he
now systematically acted, of shutting himself up in his own apartment. The window-blinds of
this room were kept jealously down; and his own man was seldom out of his presence, day or
night, his bed being placed in the same chamber.
This man was an attached and respectable servant; and his duties, in addition to those
ordinarily imposed upon valets, but which Barton's independent habits generally dispensed
with, were to attend carefully to the simple precautions by means of which his master hoped
to exclude the dreaded intrusion of the "Watcher." And, in addition to attending to those
arrangements, which amounted merely to guarding against the possibility of his master's
being, through any unscreened window or open door, exposed to the dreaded influence, the
valet was never to suffer him to be alonetotal solitude, even for a minute, had become to
him now almost as intolerable as the idea of going abroad into the public waysit was an
instinctive anticipation of what was coming.
CHAPTER IX
REQUIESCAT
It is needless to say, that under these circumstances, no steps were taken toward the fulfilment
of that engagement into which he had entered. There was quite disparity enough in point of
years, and indeed of habits, between the young lady and Captain Barton, to have precluded
anything like very vehement or romantic attachment on her part. Though grieved and anxious,
therefore, she was very far from being heart-broken.
Miss Montague, however, devoted much of her time to the patient but fruitless attempt to
cheer the unhappy invalid. She read for him, and conversed with him; but it was apparent that
whatever exertions he made, the endeavour to escape from the one ever waking fear that
preyed upon him, was utterly and miserably unavailing.
Young ladies are much given to the cultivation of pets; and among those who shared the
favour of Miss Montague was a fine old owl, which the gardener, who caught him napping
among the ivy of a ruined stable, had dutifully presented to that young lady.
The caprice which regulates such preferences was manifested in the extravagant favour with
which this grim and ill-favoured bird was at once distinguished by his mistress; and, trifling
as this whimsical circumstance may seem, I am forced to mention it, inasmuch as it is
connected, oddly enough, with the concluding scene of the story.
57

Barton, so far from sharing in this liking for the new favourite, regarded it from the first with
an antipathy as violent as it was utterly unaccountable. Its very vicinity was unsupportable to
him. He seemed to hate and dread it with a vehemence absolutely laughable, and which to
those who have never witnessed the exhibition of antipathies of this kind, would seem all but
incredible.
With these few words of preliminary explanation, I shall proceed to state the particulars of the
last scene in this strange series of incidents. It was almost two o'clock one winter's night, and
Barton was, as usual at that hour, in his bed; the servant we have mentioned occupied a
smaller bed in the same room, and a light was burning. The man was on a sudden aroused by
his master, who said
"I can't get it out of my head that that accursed bird has got out somehow, and is lurking in
some corner of the room. I have been dreaming about him. Get up, Smith, and look about;
search for him. Such hateful dreams!"
The servant rose, and examined the chamber, and while engaged in so doing, he heard the
well-known sound, more like a long-drawn gasp than a hiss, with which these birds from their
secret haunts affright the quiet of the night.
This ghostly indication of its proximityfor the sound proceeded from the passage upon
which Barton's chamber-door openeddetermined the search of the servant, who, opening
the door, proceeded a step or two forward for the purpose of driving the bird away. He had
however, hardly entered the lobby, when the door behind him slowly swung to under the
impulse, as it seemed, of some gentle current of air; but as immediately over the door there
was a kind of window, intended in the day time to aid in lighting the passage, and through
which at present the rays of the candle were issuing, the valet could see quite enough for his
purpose.
As he advanced he heard his masterwho, lying in a well-curtained bed, had not, as it
seemed, perceived his exit from the roomcall him by name, and direct him to place the
candle on the table by his bed. The servant, who was now some way in the long passage, and
not liking to raise his voice for the purpose of replying, lest he should startle the sleeping
inmates of the house, began to walk hurriedly and softly back again, when, to his amazement,
he heard a voice in the interior of the chamber answering calmly, and actually saw, through
the window which over-topped the door, that the light was slowly shifting, as if carried across
the room in answer to his master's call. Palsied by a feeling akin to terror, yet not unmingled
with curiosity, he stood breathless and listening at the threshold, unable to summon resolution
to push open the door and enter. Then came a rustling of the curtains, and a sound like that of
one who in a low voice hushes a child to rest, in the midst of which he heard Barton say, in a
tone of stifled horror"Oh, Godoh, my God!" and repeat the same exclamation several
times. Then ensued a silence, which again was broken by the same strange soothing sound;
and at last there burst forth, in one swelling peal, a yell of agony so appalling and hideous,
that, under some impulse of ungovernable horror, the man rushed to the door, and with his
whole strength strove to force it open. Whether it was that, in his agitation, he had himself but
imperfectly turned the handle, or that the door was really secured upon the inside, he failed to
effect an entrance; and as he tugged and pushed, yell after yell rang louder and wilder through
the chamber, accompanied all the while by the same hushed sounds. Actually freezing with
terror, and scarce knowing what he did, the man turned and ran down the passage, wringing

58

his hands in the extremity of horror and irresolution. At the stair-head he was encountered by
General Montague, scared and eager, and just as they met the fearful sounds had ceased.
"What is it? Whowhere is your master?" said Montague with the incoherence of extreme
agitation. "Has anythingfor God's sake is anything wrong?"
"Lord have mercy on us, it's all over," said the man staring wildly towards his master's
chamber. "He's dead, sir, I'm sure he's dead."
Without waiting for inquiry or explanation, Montague, closely followed by the servant,
hurried to the chamber-door, turned the handle, and pushed it open. As the door yielded to his
pressure, the ill-omened bird of which the servant had been in search, uttering its spectral
warning, started suddenly from the far side of the bed, and flying through the doorway close
over their heads, and extinguishing, in his passage, the candle which Montague carried,
crashed through the skylight that overlooked the lobby, and sailed away into the darkness of
the outer space.
"There it is, God bless us," whispered the man, after a breathless pause.
"Curse that bird," muttered the General, startled by the suddenness of the apparition, and
unable to conceal his discomposure.
"The candle is moved," said the man, after another breathless pause, pointing to the candle
that still burned in the room; "see, they put it by the bed."
"Draw the curtains, fellow, and don't stand gaping there," whispered Montague, sternly.
The man hesitated.
"Hold this, then," said Montague, impatiently thrusting the candlestick into the servant's hand,
and himself advancing to the bed-side, he drew the curtains apart. The light of the candle,
which was still burning at the bedside, fell upon a figure huddled together, and half upright, at
the head of the bed. It seemed as though it had slunk back as far as the solid panelling would
allow, and the hands were still clutched in the bed-clothes.
"Barton, Barton, Barton!" cried the General, with a strange mixture of awe and vehemence.
He took the candle, and held it so that it shone full upon the face. The features were fixed,
stern, and white; the jaw was fallen; and the sightless eyes, still open, gazed vacantly forward
toward the front of the bed. "God Almighty! he's dead," muttered the General, as he looked
upon this fearful spectacle. They both continued to gaze upon it in silence for a minute or
more. "And cold, too," whispered Montague, withdrawing his hand from that of the dead man.
"And see, seemay I never have life, sir," added the man, after a another pause, with a
shudder, "but there was something else on the bed with him. Look therelook theresee
that, sir."
As the man thus spoke, he pointed to a deep indenture, as if caused by a heavy pressure, near
the foot of the bed.
Montague was silent.
59

"Come, sir, come away, for God's sake," whispered the man, drawing close up to him, and
holding fast by his arm, while he glanced fearfully round; "what good can be done here
nowcome away, for God's sake!"
At this moment they heard the steps of more than one approaching, and Montague, hastily
desiring the servant to arrest their progress, endeavoured to loose the rigid gripe with which
the fingers of the dead man were clutched in the bed-clothes, and drew, as well as he was
able, the awful figure into a reclining posture; then closing the curtains carefully upon it, he
hastened himself to meet those persons that were approaching.

It is needless to follow the personages so slightly connected with this narrative, into the events
of their after life; it is enough to say, that no clue to the solution of these mysterious
occurrences was ever after discovered; and so long an interval having now passed since the
event which I have just described concluded this strange history, it is scarcely to be expected
that time can throw any new lights upon its dark and inexplicable outline. Until the secrets of
the earth shall be no longer hidden, therefore, these transactions must remain shrouded in their
original obscurity.
The only occurrence in Captain Barton's former life to which reference was ever made, as
having any possible connexion with the sufferings with which his existence closed, and which
he himself seemed to regard as working out a retribution for some grievous sin of his past life,
was a circumstance which not for several years after his death was brought to light. The
nature of this disclosure was painful to his relatives, and discreditable to his memory.
It appeared that some six years before Captain Barton's final return to Dublin, he had formed,
in the town of Plymouth, a guilty attachment, the object of which was the daughter of one of
the ship's crew under his command. The father had visited the frailty of his unhappy child
with extreme harshness, and even brutality, and it was said that she had died heart-broken.
Presuming upon Barton's implication in her guilt, this man had conducted himself toward him
with marked insolence, and Barton retaliated this, and what he resented with still more
exasperated bitternesshis treatment of the unfortunate girlby a systematic exercise of
those terrible and arbitrary severities which the regulations of the navy placed at the command
of those who are responsible for its discipline. The man had at length made his escape, while
the vessel was in port at Naples, but died, as it was said, in an hospital in that town, of the
wounds inflicted in one of his recent and sanguinary punishments.
Whether these circumstances in reality bear, or not, upon the occurrences of Barton's afterlife, it is, of course, impossible to say. It seems, however more than probable that they were at
least, in his own mind, closely associated with them. But however the truth may be, as to the
origin and motives of this mysterious persecution, there can be no doubt that, with respect to
the agencies by which it was accomplished, absolute and impenetrable mystery is like to
prevail until the day of doom.
POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR.
The preceding narrative is given in the ipsissima verba of the good old clergyman, under
whose hand it was delivered to Doctor Hesselius. Notwithstanding the occasional stiffness
and redundancy of his sentences, I thought it better to reserve to myself the power of assuring
60

the reader, that in handing to the printer, the M.S. of a statement so marvellous, the Editor has
not altered one letter of the original text.[Ed. Papers of Dr. Hesselius.]
This remarkable collection of stories, by Sheridan Le
Fanu, includes Green Tea, The Familiar, Mr. Justice
Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla.
The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius,
a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the
ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The
reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist,
and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery
which is the supernatural experience.
Pages: 352
ISBN 9781304997821
Buy it directly from us!

61

THE TOMBS SECRET

By
Robert E Howard
When James Willoughby, millionaire philanthropist, realized that the dark, lightless car was
deliberately crowding him into the curb, he acted with desperate decision. Snapping off his
own lights, he threw open the door on the opposite side from the onrushing stranger, and
leaped out, without stopping his own car. He landed sprawling on all fours, shredding the
knees of his trousers and tearing the skin on his hands. An instant later his auto crashed
cataclysmically into the curb, and the crunch of crumpled fenders and the tinkle of breaking
glass mingled with the deafening reverberation of a sawed-off shotgun as the occupants of the
mysterious car, not yet realizing that their intended victim had deserted his automobile,
blasted the machine he had just left.
Before the echoes died away, Willoughby was up and running through the darkness with an
energy remarkable for his years. He knew that his ruse was already discovered, but it takes
longer to swing a big car around than for a desperately frightened man to burst through a
hedge, and a flitting figure in the darkness is a poor target. So James Willoughby lived where
others had died, and presently came on foot and in disheveled condition to his home, which
adjoined the park beside which the murderous attempt had been made. The police, hastening
to his call, found him in a condition of mingled fear and bewilderment. He had seen none of
his attackers; he could give no reason for the attack. All that he seemed to know was that
death had struck at him from the dark, suddenly, terribly and mysteriously.
It was only reasonable to suppose that death would strike again at its chosen victim, and that
was why Brock Rollins, detective, kept a rendezvous the next evening with one Joey Glick, a
nondescript character of the underworld who served his purpose in the tangled scheme of
things.
Rollins bulked big in the dingy back-room appointed for the meeting. His massive shoulders
and thick body dwarfed his height. His cold blue eyes contrasted with the thick black hair that
crowned his low broad forehead, and his civilized garments could not conceal the almost
savage muscularity of his hard frame.
Opposite him Joey Glick, never an impressive figure, looked even more insignificant than
usual. And Joey's skin was a pasty grey, and Joey's fingers shook as he fumbled with a bit of
paper on which was drawn a peculiar design.
"Somebody planted it on me," he chattered. "Right after I phoned you. In the jamb on the
uptown train. Me, Joey Glick! They plant it on me and I don't even know it. Only one man in
this burg handles dips that slickeven if I didn't know already.
"Look! It's the death-blossom! The symbol of the Sons of Erlik! They're after me! They've
been shadowing metapping wires. They know I know too much"

62

"Come to the point, will you?" grunted Rollins "You said you had a tip about the gorillas who
tried to put the finger on Jim Willoughby. Quit shaking and spill it. And tell me, cold
turkeywho was it?"
"The man behind it is Yarghouz Barolass."
Rollins grunted in some surprise.
"I didn't know murder was his racket."
"Wait!" Joey babbled, so scared he was scarcely coherent. His brain was addled, his speech
disjointed. "He's head of the American branch of the Sons of ErlikI know he is"
"Chinese?"
"He's a Mongol. His racket is blackmailing nutty old dames who fall for his black magic. You
know that. But this is bigger. Listen, you know about Richard Lynch?"
"Sure; got smashed up in an auto wreck by a hit-and-run speed maniac a week ago. Lay
unidentified in a morgue all night before they discovered who he was. Some crazy loon tried
to steal the corpse off the slab. What's that got to do with Willoughby?"
"It wasn't an accident." Joey was fumbling for a cigarette. "They meant to get him
Yarghouz's mob. It was them after the body that night"
"Have you been hitting the pipe?" demanded Rollins harshly.
"No, damn it!" shrilled Joey. "I tell you, Yarghouz was after Richard Lynch's corpse, just like
he's sending his mob after Job Hopkins' body tomorrow night"
_"What?"_ Rollins came erect, glaring incredulously.
"Don't rush me," begged Joey, striking a match. "Gimme time. That death-blossom has got me
jumping sideways. I'm jittery"
"I'll say you are," grunted Rollins. "You've been babbling a lot of stuff that don't mean
anything, except it's Yarghouz Barolass who had Lynch bumped off, and now is after
Willoughby. Why? That's what I want to know. Straighten it out and give me the low-down."
"Alright," promised Joey, sucking avidly at his cigarette. "Lemme have a drag. I been so upset
I haven't even smoked since I reached into my pocket for a fag and found that damned deathflower. This is straight goods. I know why they want the bodies of Richard Lynch, Job
Hopkins and James Willoughby"
With appalling suddenness his hands shot to his throat, crushing the smoldering cigarette in
his fingers. His eyes distended, his face purpled. Without a word he swayed upright, reeled
and crashed to the floor. With a curse Rollins sprang up, bent over him, ran skilled hands over
his body.

63

"Dead as Judas Iscariot," swore the detective. "What an infernal break! I knew his heart would
get him some day, if he kept hitting the pipe"
He halted suddenly. On the floor where it had fallen beside the dead man lay the bit of
ornamented paper Joey had called the blossom of death, and beside it lay a crumpled package
of cigarettes.
"When did he change his brand?" muttered Rollins. "He never smoked any kind but a special
Egyptian make before; never saw him use this brand." He lifted the package, drew out a
cigarette and broke it into his hand, smelling the contents gingerly. There was a faint but
definite odor which was not part of the smell of the cheap tobacco.
"The fellow who slipped that death-blossom into his pocket could have shifted fags on him
just as easy," muttered the detective. "They must have known he was coming here to talk to
me. But the question is, how much do they know now? They can't know how much or how
little he told me. They evidently didn't figure on him reaching me at allthought he'd take a
draw before he got here. Ordinarily he would have; but this time he was too scared even to
remember to smoke. He needed dope, not tobacco, to steady his nerve."
Going to the door, he called softly. A stocky bald-headed man answered his call, wiping his
hands on a dirty apron. At the sight of the crumpled body he recoiled, paling.
"Heart attack, Spike," grunted Rollins. "See that he gets what's needed." And the big dick
thrust a handful of crumpled bills into Spike's fingers as he strode forth. A hard man, Rollins,
but one mindful of his debts to the dead as well as the living.
A few minutes later be was crouched over a telephone.
"This you, Hoolihan?"
A voice booming back over the wires assured him that the chief of police was indeed at the
other end.
"What killed Job Hopkins?" he asked abruptly.
"Why, heart attack, I understand." There was some surprise in the chief's voice. "Passed out
suddenly, day before yesterday, while smoking his after-dinner cigar, according to the papers.
Why?"
"Who's guarding Willoughby?" demanded Rollins without answering.
"Laveaux, Hanson, McFarlane and Harper. But I don't see"
"Not enough," snapped Rollins. "Beat it over there yourself with three or four more men."
"Say, listen here, Rollins!" came back the irate bellow. "Are you telling _me_ how to run my
business?"
"Right now I am." Rollins' cold hard grin was almost tangible in his voice. "This happens to
be in my particular domain. We're not fighting white men; it's a gang of River Street yellow64

bellies who've put Willoughby on the spot. I won't say any more right now. There's been too
damned much wire-tapping in this burg. But you beat it over to Willoughby's as fast as you
can get there. Don't let him out of your sight. Don't let him smoke, eat or drink anything till I
get there. I'll be right on over."
"Okay," came the answer over the wires. "You've been working the River Street quarter long
enough to know what you're doing."
Rollins snapped the receiver back on its hook and strode out into the misty dimness of River
Street, with its furtive hurrying formsstooped alien figures which would have fitted less
incongruously into the scheme of Canton, Bombay or Stamboul.
The big dick walked with a stride even springier than usual, a more aggressive lurch of his
massive shoulders. That betokened unusual wariness, a tension of nerves. He knew that he
was a marked man, since his talk with Joey Glick. He did not try to fool himself; it was
certain that the spies of the man he was fighting knew that Joey had reached him before he
died. The fact that they could not know just how much the fellow had told before he died,
would make them all the more dangerous. He did not underestimate his own position. He
knew that if there was one man in the city capable of dealing with Yarghouz Barolass, it was
himself, with his experience gained from years of puzzling through the devious and often
grisly mysteries of River Street, with its swarms of brown and yellow inhabitants.
"Taxi?" A cab drew purring up beside the curb, anticipating his summoning gesture. The
driver did not lean out into the light of the street. His cap seemed to be drawn low, not
unnaturally so, but, standing on the sidewalk, it was impossible for the detective to tell
whether or not he was a white man.
"Sure," grunted Rollins, swinging open the door and climbing in. "540 Park Place, and step on
it."
The taxi roared through the crawling traffic, down shadowy River Street, wheeled off onto
35th Avenue, crossed over, and sped down a narrow side street.
"Taking a short cut?" asked the detective.
"Yes, sir." The driver did not look back. His voice ended in a sudden hissing intake of breath.
There was no partition between the front and back seats. Rollins was leaning forward, his gun
jammed between the shoulders of the driver.
"Take the next right-hand turn and drive to the address I gave you," he said softly. "Think I
can't tell the back of a yellow neck by the street lamp? You drive, but you drive careful. If you
try to wreck us, I'll fill you full of lead before you can twist that wheel. No monkey business
now; you wouldn't be the first man I've plugged in the course of duty."
The driver twisted his head about to stare briefly into the grim face of his captor; his wide thin
mouth gaped, his coppery features were ashy. Not for nothing had Rollins established his
reputation as a man-hunter among the sinister denizens of the Oriental quarter.
"Joey was right," muttered Rollins between his teeth. "I don't know your name, but I've seen
you hanging around Yarghouz Barolass's joint when he had it over on Levant Street. You
65

won't take me for a ride, not tonight. I know that trick, old copper-face. You'd have a flat, or
run out of gas at some convenient spot. Any excuse for you to get out of the car and out of
range while a hatchet-man hidden somewhere mows me down with a sawed-off. You better
hope none of your friends see us and try anything, because this gat has a hair-trigger, and it's
cocked. I couldn't die quick enough not to pull the trigger."
The rest of that grim ride was made in silence, until the reaches of South Park rose to view
darkened, except for a fringe of lights around the boundaries, because of municipal economy
which sought to reduce the light bill.
"Swing into the park," ordered Rollins, as they drove along the street which passed the park,
and, further on, James Willoughby's house. "Cut off your lights, and drive as I tell you. You
can feel your way between the trees."
The darkened car glided into a dense grove and came to a halt. Rollins fumbled in his pockets
with his left hand and drew out a small flashlight, and a pair of handcuffs. In climbing out, he
was forced to remove his muzzle from close contact with his prisoner's back, but the gun
menaced the Mongol in the small ring of light emanating from the flash.
"Climb out," ordered the detective. "That's rightslow and easy. You're going to have to stay
here awhile. I didn't want to take you to the station right now, for several reasons. One of
them is I didn't want your pals to know I turned the tables on you. I'm hoping they'll still be
patiently waiting for you to bring me into range of their sawed-offsha, would you?"
The Mongol, with a desperate wrench, struck the flashlight from the detective's hand,
plunging them into darkness.
Rollins' clutching fingers locked like a vise on his adversary's coat sleeve, and at the same
instant he instinctively threw out his .45 before his belly, to parry the stroke he knew would
instantly come. A knife clashed venomously against the blue steel cylinder, and Rollins
hooked his foot about an ankle and jerked powerfully. The fighters went down together, and
the knife sliced the detective's coat as they fell. Then his blindingly driven gun barrel
crunched glancingly against a shaven skull, and the straining form went limp.
Panting and swearing beneath his breath, Rollins retrieved the flashlight and cuffs, and set to
work securing his prisoner. The Mongol was completely out; it was no light matter to stop a
full-arm swing from Brock Rollins. Had the blow landed solidly it would have caved in the
skull like an egg-shell.
Handcuffed, gagged with strips torn from his coat, and his feet bound with the same material,
the Mongol was placed in the car, and Rollins turned and strode through the shadows of the
park, toward the eastern hedge beyond which lay James Willoughby's estate. He hoped that
this affair would give him some slight advantage in this blind battle. While the Mongols
waited for him to ride into the trap they had undoubtedly laid for him somewhere in the city,
perhaps he could do a little scouting unmolested.
James Willoughby's estate adjoined South Park on the east. Only a high hedge separated the
park from his grounds. The big three-storied housedisproportionately huge for a bachelor
towered among carefully trimmed trees and shrubbery, amidst a level, shaven lawn. There
were lights in the two lower floors, none in the third. Rollins knew that Willoughby's study
66

was a big room on the second floor, on the west side of the house. From that room no light
issued between the heavy shutters. Evidently curtains and shades were drawn inside. The big
dick grunted in approval as he stood looking through the hedge.
He knew that a plainclothes man was watching the house from each side, and he marked the
bunch of shrubbery amidst which would be crouching the man detailed to guard the west side.
Craning his neck, he saw a car in front of the house, which faced south, and he knew it to be
that of Chief Hoolihan.
With the intention of taking a short cut across the lawn he wormed through the hedge, and,
not wishing to be shot by mistake, he called softly: "Hey, Harper!"
There was no answer. Rollins strode toward the shrubbery.
"Asleep at the post?" he muttered angrily. "Eh, what's this?"
He had stumbled over something in the shadows of the shrubs. His hurriedly directed beam
shone on the white, upturned face of a man. Blood dabbled the features, and a crumpled hat
lay near by, an unfired pistol near the limp hand.
"Knocked stiff from behind!" muttered Rollins. "What"
Parting the shrub he gazed toward the house. On that side an ornamental chimney rose tier by
tier, until it towered above the roof. And his eyes became slits as they centered on a window
on the third floor within easy reach of that chimney. On all other windows the shutters were
closed; but these stood open.
With frantic haste he tore through the shrubbery and ran across the lawn, stooping like a bulky
bear, amazingly fleet for one of his weight. As he rounded the corner of the house and rushed
toward the steps, a man rose swiftly from among the hedges lining the walk, and covered him,
only to lower his gun with an exclamation of recognition.
"Where's Hoolihan?" snapped the detective.
"Upstairs with old man Willoughby. What's up?"
"Harper's been slugged," snarled Rollins. "Beat it out there; you know where he was posted.
Wait there until I call you. If you see anything you don't recognize trying to leave the house,
plug it! I'll send out a man to take your place here."
He entered the front door and saw four men in plain clothes lounging about in the main hall.
"Jackson," he snapped, "take Hanson's place out in front. I sent him around to the west side.
The rest of you stand by for anything."
Mounting the stair in haste, he entered the study on the second floor, breathing a sigh of relief
as he found the occupants apparently undisturbed.

67

The curtains were closely drawn over the windows, and only the door letting into the hall was
open. Willoughby was there, a tall spare man, with a scimitar sweep of nose and a bony
aggressive chin. Chief Hoolihan, big, bear-like, rubicund, boomed a greeting.
"All your men downstairs?" asked Rollins.
"Sure; nothin' can get past 'em and I'm stayin' here with Mr. Willoughby"
"And in a few minutes more you'd both have been scratching gravel in Hell," snapped Rollins.
"Didn't I tell you we were dealing with Orientals? You concentrated all your force below,
never thinking that death might slip in on you from above. But I haven't time to turn out that
light. Mr. Willoughby, get over there in that alcove. Chief, stand in front of him, and watch
that door that leads into the hall. I'm going to leave it open. Locking it would be useless,
against what we're fighting. If anything you don't recognize comes through it, shoot to kill."
"What the devil are you driving at, Rollins?" demanded Hoolihan.
"I mean one of Yarghouz Barolass's killers is in this house!" snapped Rollins. "There may be
more than one; anyway, he's somewhere upstairs. Is this the only stair, Mr. Willoughby? No
back-stair?"
"This is the only one in the house," answered the millionaire. "There are only bedrooms on
the third floor."
"Where's the light button for the hall on that floor?"
"At the head of the stairs, on the left; but you aren't"
"Take your places and do as I say," grunted Rollins, gliding out into the hallway.
He stood glaring at the stair which wound up above him, its upper part masked in shadow.
Somewhere up there lurked a soulless slayera Mongol killer, trained in the art of murder,
who lived only to perform his master's will. Rollins started to call the men below, then
changed his mind. To raise his voice would be to warn the lurking murderer above. Setting his
teeth, he glided up the stair. Aware that he was limned in the light below, he realized the
desperate recklessness of his action; but he had long ago learned that he could not match
subtlety against the Orient. Direct action, however desperate, was always his best bet. He did
not fear a bullet as he charged up; the Mongols preferred to slay in silence; but a thrown knife
could kill as promptly as tearing lead. His one chance lay in the winding of the stair.
He took the last steps with a thundering rush, not daring to use his flash, plunged into the
gloom of the upper hallway, frantically sweeping the wall for the light button. Even as he felt
life and movement in the darkness beside him, his groping fingers found it. The scrape of a
foot on the floor beside him galvanized him, and as he instinctively flinched back, something
whined past his breast and thudded deep into the wall. Then under his frenzied fingers, light
flooded the hall.
Almost touching him, half crouching, a copper-skinned giant with a shaven head wrenched at
a curved knife which was sunk deep in the woodwork. He threw up his head, dazzled by the
light, baring yellow fangs in a bestial snarl.
68

Rollins had just left a lighted area. His eyes accustomed themselves more swiftly to the
sudden radiance. He threw his left like a hammer at the Mongol's jaw. The killer swayed and
fell out cold.
Hoolilhan was bellowing from below.
"Hold everything," answered Rollins. "Send one of the boys up here with the cuffs. I'm going
through these bedrooms."
Which he did, switching on the lights, gun ready, but finding no other lurking slayer.
Evidently Yarghouz Barolass considered one would be enough. And so it might have been,
but for the big detective.
Having latched all the shutters and fastened the windows securely, he returned to the study,
whither the prisoner had been taken. The man had recovered his senses and sat, handcuffed,
on a divan. Only the eyes, black and snaky, seemed alive in the copperish face.
"Mongol alright," muttered Rollins. "No Chinaman."
"What is all this?" complained Hoolihan, still upset by the realization that an invader had
slipped through his cordon.
"Easy enough. This fellow sneaked up on Harper and laid him cold. Some of these fellows
could steal the teeth right out of your mouth. With all those shrubs and trees it was a cinch.
Say, send out a couple of the boys to bring in Harper, will you? Then he climbed that fancy
chimney. That was a cinch, too. I could do it myself. Nobody had thought to fasten the
shutters on that floor, because nobody expected an attack from that direction.
"Mr. Willoughby, do you know anything about Yarghouz Barolass?"
"I never heard of him," declared the philanthropist, and though Rollins scanned him narrowly,
he was impressed by the ring of sincerity in Willoughby's voice.
"Well, he's a mystic fakir," said Rollins. "Hangs around Levant Street and preys on old ladies
with more money than sensefaddists. Gets them interested in Taoism and Lamaism and
then plays on their superstitions and blackmails them. I know his racket, but I've never been
able to put the finger on him, because his victims won't squeal. But he's behind these attacks
on you."
"Then why don't we go grab him?" demanded Hoolihan.
"Because we don't know where he is. He knows that I know he's mixed up in this. Joey Glick
spilled it to me, just before he croaked. Yes, Joey's deadpoison; more of Yarghouz's work.
By this time Yarghouz will have deserted his usual hang-outs, and be hiding somewhere
probably in some secret underground dive that we couldn't find in a hundred years, now that
Joey is dead."
"Let's sweat it out of this yellow-belly," suggested Hoolihan.

69

Rollins grinned coldly. "You'd sweat to death yourself before he'd talk. There's another tied
up in a car out in the park. Send a couple of boys after him, and you can try your hand on both
of them. But you'll get damned little out of them. Come here, Hoolihan."
Drawing him aside, he said: "I'm sure that Job Hopkins was poisoned in the same manner they
got Joey Glick. Do you remember anything unusual about the death of Richard Lynch?"
"Well, not about his death; but that night somebody apparently tried to steal and mutilate his
corpse"
"What do you mean, mutilate?" demanded Rollins.
"Well, a watchman heard a noise and went into the room and found Lynch's body on the floor,
as if somebody had tried to carry it off, and then maybe got scared off. And a lot of the
_teeth_ had been pulled or knocked out!"
"Well, I can't explain the teeth," grunted Rollins. "Maybe they were knocked out in the wreck
that killed Lynch. But this is my hunch: Yarghouz Barolass is stealing the bodies of wealthy
men, figuring on screwing a big price out of their families. When they don't die quick enough,
he bumps them off."
Hoolihan cursed in shocked horror.
"But Willoughby hasn't any family."
"Well, I reckon they figure the executors of his estate will kick in. Now listen: I'm borrowing
your car for a visit to Job Hopkins' vault. I got a tip that they're going to lift his corpse
tomorrow night. I believe they'll spring it tonight, on the chance that I might have gotten the
tip. I believe they'll try to get ahead of me. They may have already, what with all this delay. I
figured on being out there long before now.
"No, I don't want any help. Your flat-feet are more of a hindrance than a help in a job like
this. You stay here with Willoughby. Keep men upstairs as well as down. Don't let
Willoughby open any packages that might come, don't even let him answer a phone call. I'm
going to Hopkins' vault, and I don't know when I'll be back; may roost out there all night. It
just depends on whenor ifthey come for the corpse."
A few minutes later he was speeding down the road on his grim errand. The graveyard which
contained the tomb of Job Hopkins was small, exclusive, where only the bones of rich men
were laid to rest. The wind moaned through the cypress trees which bent shadow-arms above
the gleaming marble.
Rollins approached from the back side, up a narrow, tree-lined side street. He left the car,
climbed the wall, and stole through the gloom, beneath the pallid shafts, under the cypress
shadows. Ahead of him Job Hopkins' tomb glimmered whitely. And he stopped short,
crouching low in the shadows. He saw a glowa spark of lightit was extinguished, and
through the open door of the tomb trooped half a dozen shadowy forms. His hunch had been
right, but they had gotten there ahead of him. Fierce anger sweeping him at the ghoulish
crime, he leaped forward, shouting a savage command.

70

They scattered like rats, and his crashing volley re-echoed futilely among the sepulchers.
Rushing forward recklessly, swearing savagely, he came into the tomb, and turning his light
into the interior, winced at what he saw. The coffin had been burst open, but the tomb itself
was not empty. In a careless heap on the floor lay the embalmed corpse of Job Hopkins
_and the lower jawbone had been sawed away._
"What the Hell!" Rollins stopped short, bewildered at the sudden disruption of his theory.
"They didn't want the body. What did they want? His teeth? And they got Richard Lynch's
teeth"
Lifting the body back into its resting place, he hurried forth, shutting the door of the tomb
behind him. The wind whined through the cypress, and mingled with it was a low moaning
sound. Thinking that one of his shots had gone home, after all, he followed the noise, warily,
pistol and flash ready.
The sound seemed to emanate from a bunch of low cedars near the wall, and among them he
found a man lying. The beam revealed the stocky figure, the square, now convulsed face of a
Mongol. The slant eyes were glazed, the back of the coat soaked with blood. The man was
gasping his last, but Rollins found no trace of a bullet wound on him. In his back, between his
shoulders, stood up the hilt of a curious skewer-like knife. The fingers of his right hand had
been horribly gashed, as if he had sought to retain his grasp on something which his slayers
desired.
"Running from me he bumped into somebody hiding among these cedars," muttered Rollins.
"But who? And why? By God, Willoughby hasn't told me everything."
He stared uneasily at the crowding shadows. No stealthy shuffling footfall disturbed the
sepulchral quiet. Only the wind whimpered through the cypress and the cedars. The detective
was alone with the deadwith the corpses of rich men in their ornate tombs, and with the
staring yellow man whose flesh was not yet rigid.
"You're back in a hurry," said Hoolihan, as Rollins entered the Willoughby study. "Do any
good?"
"Did the yellow boys talk?" countered Rollins.
"They did not," growled the chief. "They sat like pot-bellied idols. I sent 'em to the station,
along with Harper. He was still in a daze."
"Mr. Willoughby," Rollins sank down rather wearily into an arm-chair and fixed his cold gaze
on the philanthropist, "am I right in believing that you and Richard Lynch and Job Hopkins
were at one time connected with each other in some way?"
"Why do you ask?" parried Willoughby.
"Because somehow the three of you are connected in this matter. Lynch's death was not
accidental, and I'm pretty sure that Job Hopkins was poisoned. Now the same gang is after
you. I thought it was a body-snatching racket, but an apparent attempt to steal Richard
Lynch's corpse out of the morgue, now seems to resolve itself into what was in reality a

71

successful attempt to get his teeth. Tonight a gang of Mongols entered the tomb of Job
Hopkins, obviously for the same purpose"
A choking cry interrupted him. Willoughby sank back, his face livid.
"My God, after all these years!"
Rollins stiffened.
"Then you do know Yarghouz Barolass? You know why he's after you?"
Willoughby shook his head. "I never heard of Yarghouz Barolass before. But I know why
they killed Lynch and Hopkins."
"Then you'd better spill the works," advised Rollins. "We're working in the dark as it is."
"I will!" The philanthropist was visibly shaken. He mopped his brow with a shaking hand, and
reposed himself with an effort.
"Twenty years ago," he said, "Lynch, Hopkins and myself, young men just out of college,
were in China, in the employ of the war-lord Yuen Chin. We were chemical engineers. Yuen
Chin was a far-sighted manahead of his time, scientifically speaking. He visioned the day
when men would war with gases and deadly chemicals. He supplied us with a splendid
laboratory, in which to discover or invent some such element of destruction for his use.
"He paid us well; the foundations of all of our fortunes were laid there. We were young, poor,
unscrupulous.
"More by chance than skill we stumbled onto a deadly secretthe formula for a poisonous
gas, a thousand times more deadly than anything yet dreamed of. That was what he was
paying us to invent or discover for him, but the discovery sobered us. We realized that the
man who possessed the secret of that gas, could easily conquer the world. We were willing to
aid Yuen Chin against his Mongolian enemies; we were not willing to elevate a yellow
mandarin to world empire, to see our hellish discovery directed against the lives of our own
people.
"Yet we were not willing to destroy the formula, because we foresaw a time when America,
with her back to the wall, might have a desperate need for such a weapon. So we wrote out the
formula in code, but left out three symbols, without any of which the formula is meaningless
and undecipherable. Each of us then, had a lower jaw tooth pulled out, and on the gold tooth
put in its place, was carved one of the three symbols. Thus we took precautions against our
own greed, as well as against the avarice of outsiders. One of us might conceivably fall so low
as to sell the secret, but it would be useless without the other two symbols.
"Yuen Chin fell and was beheaded on the great execution ground at Peking. We escaped,
Lynch, Hopkins and I, not only with our lives but with most of the money which had been
paid us. But the formula, scrawled on parchment, we were obliged to leave, secreted among
musty archives in an ancient temple.

72

"Only one man knew our secret: an old Chinese tooth-puller, who aided us in the matter of the
teeth. He owed his life to Richard Lynch, and when he swore the oath of eternal silence, we
knew we could trust him."
"Yet you think somebody is after the secret symbols?"
"What else could it be? I cannot understand it. The old tooth-puller must have died long ago.
Who could have learned of it? Torture would not have dragged the secret from him. Yet it can
be for no other reason that this fellow you call Yarghouz Barolass murdered and mutilated the
bodies of my former companions, and now is after me.
"Why, I love life as well as any man, but my own peril shrinks into insignificance compared
to the world-wide menace contained in those little carven symbolstwo of which are now,
according to what you say, in the hands of some ruthless foe of the western world.
"Somebody has found the formula we left hidden in the temple, and has learned somehow of
its secret. Anything can come out of China. Just now the bandit war-lord Yah Lai is
threatening to overthrow the National governmentwho knows what devilish concoction that
Chinese caldron is brewing?
"The thought of the secret of that gas in the hands of some Oriental conqueror is appalling.
My God, gentlemen, I fear you do not realize the full significance of the matter!"
"I've got a faint idea," grunted Rollins. "Ever see a dagger like this?" He presented the
weapon that had killed the Mongol.
"Many of them, in China," answered Willoughby promptly.
"Then it isn't a Mongol weapon?"
"No; it's distinctly Chinese; there is a conventional Manchu inscription on the hilt."
"Ummmmmm!" Rollins sat scowling, chin on fist, idly tapping the blade against his shoe, lost
in meditation. Admittedly, he was all at sea, lost in a bewildering tangle. To his companions
he looked like a grim figure of retribution, brooding over the fate of the wicked. In reality he
was cursing his luck.
"What are you going to do now?" demanded Hoolihan.
"Only one thing to do," responded Rollins. "I'm going to try to run down Yarghouz Barolass.
I'm going to start with River StreetGod knows, it'll be like looking for a rat in a swamp. I
want you to contrive to let one of those Mongols escape, Hoolihan. I'll try to trail him back to
Yarghouz's hangout"
The phone tingled loudly.
Rollins reached it with a long stride.
"Who speaks, please?" Over the wire came a voice with a subtle but definite accent.

73

"Brock Rollins," grunted the big dick.

"A friend speaks, Detective," came the bland voice. "Before we progress further, let me warn
you that it will be impossible to trace this call, and would do you no good to do so."
"Well?" Rollins was bristling like a big truculent dog.
"Mr. Willoughby," the suave voice continued, "is a doomed man. He is as good as dead
already. Guards and guns will not save him, when the Sons of Erlik are ready to strike. But
_you_ can save him, without firing a shot!"
"Yeah?" It was a scarcely articulate snarl humming bloodthirstily from Rollins' bull-throat.
"If you were to come alone to the House of Dreams on Levant street, Yarghouz Barolass
would speak to you, and a compromise might be arranged whereby Mr. Willoughby's life
would be spared."
"Compromise, Hell!" roared the big dick, the skin over his knuckles showing white. "Who do
you think you're talking to? Think I'd fall into a trap like that?"
"You have a hostage," came back the voice. "One of the men you hold is Yarghouz Barolass's
brother. Let him suffer if there is treachery. I swear by the bones of my ancestors, no harm
shall come to you!"
The voice ceased with a click at the other end of the wire.
Rollins wheeled.
"Yarghouz Barolass must be getting desperate to try such a child's trick as that!" he swore.
Then he considered, and muttered, half to himself: "By the bones of his ancestors! Never
heard of a Mongolian breaking _that_ oath. All that stuff about Yarghouz's brother may be the
bunk. Yetwell, maybe he's trying to outsmart medraw me away from Willoughbyon
the other hand, maybe he thinks that I'd never fall for a trick like thataw, to Hell with
thinking! I'm going to start acting!"
"What do you mean?" demanded Hoolihan.
"I mean I'm going to the House of Dreams, alone."
"You're crazy!" exclaimed Hoolihan. "Take a squad, surround the house, and raid it!"
"And find an empty rat-den," grunted Rollins, his peculiar obsession for working alone again
asserting itself.
Dawn was not far away when Rollins entered the smoky den near the waterfront which was
known to the Chinese as the House of Dreams, and whose dingy exterior masked a
subterranean opium joint. Only a pudgy Chinaboy nodded behind the counter; he looked up
with no apparent surprise. Without a word he led Rollins to a curtain in the back of the shop,
pulled it aside, and revealed a door. The detective gripped his gun under his coat, nerves taut
with excitement that must come to any man who has deliberately walked into what might
74

prove to be a death-trap. The boy knocked, lifting a sing-song monotone, and a voice
answered from within. Rollins started. He recognized that voice. The boy opened the door,
bobbed his head and was gone. Rollins entered, pulling the door to behind him.
He was in a room heaped and strewn with divans and silk cushions. If there were other doors,
they were masked by the black velvet hangings, which, worked with gilt dragons, covered the
walls. On a divan near the further wall squatted a stocky, pot-bellied shape, in black silk, a
close-fitting velvet cap on his shaven head.
"So you came, after all!" breathed the detective. "Don't move, Yarghouz Barolass. I've got
you covered through my coat. Your gang can't get me quick enough to keep me from getting
you first."
"Why do you threaten me, Detective?" Yarghouz Barolass's face was expressionless, the
square, parchment-skinned face of a Mongol from the Gobi, with wide thin lips and glittering
black eyes. His English was perfect.
"See, I trust you. I am here, alone. The boy who let you in said that you are alone. Good. You
kept your word, I keep my promise. For the time there is truce between us, and I am ready to
bargain, as you suggested."
"As _I_ suggested?" demanded Rollins.
"I have no desire to harm Mr. Willoughby, any more than I wished to harm either of the other
gentlemen," said Yarghouz Barolass. "But knowing them all as I didfrom report and
discreet observationit never occurred to me that I could obtain what I wished while they
lived. So I did not enter into negotiations with them."
"So you want Willoughby's tooth, too?"
"Not I," disclaimed Yarghouz Barolass. "It is an honorable person in China, the grandson of
an old man who babbled in his dotage, as old men often do, drooling secrets torture could not
have wrung from him in his soundness of mind. The grandson, Yah Lai, has risen from a
mean position to that of war-lord. He listened to the mumblings of his grandfather, a toothpuller. He found a formula, written in code, and learned of symbols on the teeth of old men.
He sent a request to me, with promise of much reward. I have one tooth, procured from the
unfortunate person, Richard Lynch. Now if you will hand over the otherthat of Job
Hopkinsas you promised, perhaps we may reach a compromise by which Mr. Willoughby
will be allowed to keep his life, in return for a tooth, as you hinted."
"As I hinted?" exclaimed Rollins. "What are you driving at? I made no promise; and I
certainly haven't Job Hopkins' tooth. You've got it, yourself."
"All this is unnecessary," objected Yarghouz, an edge to his tone. "You have a reputation for
veracity, in spite of your violent nature. I was relying upon your reputation for honesty when I
accepted this appointment. Of course, I already knew that you had Hopkins' tooth. When my
blundering servants, having been frightened by you as they left the vaults, gathered at the
appointed rendezvous, they discovered that he to whom was entrusted the jaw-bone
containing the precious tooth, was not among them. They returned to the graveyard and found
his body, but not the tooth. It was obvious that you had killed him and taken it from him."
75

Rollins was so thunderstruck by this new twist, that he remained speechless, his mind a
tangled whirl of bewilderment.
Yarghouz Barolass continued tranquilly: "I was about to send my servants out in another
attempt to secure you, when your agent phoned methough how he located me on the
telephone is still a mystery into which I must inquireand announced that you were ready to
meet me at the House of Dreams, and give me Job Hopkins' tooth, in return for an opportunity
to bargain personally for Mr. Willoughby's life. Knowing you to be a man of honor, I agreed,
trusting you"
"This is madness!" exclaimed Rollins "I didn't call you, or have anybody call you. _You,_ or
rather, one of your men, called _me."_
"I did not!" Yarghouz was on his feet, his stocky body under the rippling black silk quivering
with rage and suspicion. His eyes narrowed to slits, his wide mouth knotted viciously.
"You deny that you promised to give me Job Hopkins' tooth?"
"Sure I do!" snapped Rollins. "I haven't got it, and what's more, I'm not 'compromising' as you
call it"
"Liar!" Yarghouz spat the epithet like a snake hissing. "You have trickedbetrayed me
used my trust in your blackened honor to dupe me"
"Keep cool," advised Rollins. "Remember, I've got a Colt .45 trained on you."
"Shoot and die!" retorted Yarghouz. "I do not know what your game is, but I know that if you
shoot me, we will fall together. Fool, do you think I would keep my promise to a barbarian
dog? Behind this hanging is the entrance to a tunnel through which I can escape before any of
your stupid police, if you have brought any with you, can enter this room. You have been
covered since you came through that door, by a man hiding behind the tapestry. Try to stop
me, and you die!"
"I believe you're telling the truth about not calling me," said Rollins slowly. "I believe
somebody tricked us both, for some reason. You were called, in my name, and I was called, in
yours."
Yarghouz halted short in some hissing tirade. His eyes were like black evil jewels in the
lamplight.
"More lies?" he demanded uncertainly.
"No; I think somebody in your gang is double-crossing you. Now easy, I'm not pulling a gun.
I'm just going to show you the knife that I found sticking in the back of the fellow you seem
to think I killed."
He drew it from his coat-pocket with his left handhis right still gripped his gun beneath the
garmentand tossed it on the divan.

76

Yarghouz pounced on it. His slit eyes flared wide with a terrible light; his yellow skin went
ashen. He cried out something in his own tongue, which Rollins did not understand.
In a torrent of hissing sibilances, he lapsed briefly into English: "I see it all now! This was too
subtle for a barbarian! Death to them all!" Wheeling toward the tapestry behind the divan he
shrieked: "Gutchluk!"
There was no answer, but Rollins thought he saw the black velvety expanse billow slightly.
With his skin the color of old ashes, Yarghouz Barolass ran at the hanging, ignoring Rollins'
order to halt, seized the tapestries, tore them asidesomething flashed between them like a
beam of white hot light. Yarghouz's scream broke in a ghastly gurgle. His head pitched
forward, then his whole body swayed backward, and he fell heavily among the cushions,
clutching at the hilt of a skewer-like dagger that quivered upright in his breast. The Mongol's
yellow claw-like hands fell away from the crimsoned hilt, spread wide, clutching at the thick
carpet; a convulsive spasm ran through his frame, and those taloned yellow fingers went limp.
Gun in hand, Rollins took a single stride toward the tapestriesthen halted short, staring at
the figure which moved imperturbably through them: a tall yellow man in the robes of a
mandarin, who smiled and bowed, his hands hidden in his wide sleeves.
"You killed Yarghous Barolass!" accused the detective.
"The evil one indeed has been dispatched to join his ancestors by my hand," agreed the
mandarin. "Be not afraid. The Mongol who covered you through a peep-hole with an
abbreviated shotgun has likewise departed this uncertain life, suddenly and silently. My own
people hold supreme in the House of Dreams this night. All that we ask is that you make no
attempt to stay our departure."
"Who are you?" demanded Rollins.
"But a humble servant of Fang Yin, lord of Peking. When it was learned that these unworthy
ones sought a formula in America that might enable the upstart Yah Lai to overthrow the
government of China, word was sent in haste to me. It was almost too late. Two men had
already died. The third was menaced."
"I sent my servants instantly to intercept the evil Sons of Erlik at the vaults they desecrated.
But for your appearance, frightening the Mongols to scattering in flight, before the trap could
be sprang, my servants would have caught them all in ambush. As it was, they did manage to
slay he who carried the relic Yarghouz sought, and this they brought to me."
"I took the liberty of impersonating a servant of the Mongol in my speech with you, and of
pretending to be a Chinese agent of yours, while speaking with Yarghouz. All worked out as I
wished. Lured by the thought of the tooth, at the loss of which he was maddened, Yarghouz
came from his secret, well-guarded lair, and fell into my hands. I brought you here to witness
his execution, so that you might realize that Mr. Willoughby is no longer in danger. Fang Yin
has no ambitions for world empire; he wishes but to hold what is his. That he is well able to
do, now that the threat of the devil-gas is lifted. And now I must be gone. Yarghouz had laid
careful plans for his flight out of the country. I will take advantage of his preparations."
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Rollins. "I've got to arrest you for the murder of this rat."
77

"I am sorry," murmured the mandarin. "I am in much haste. No need to lift your revolver. I
swore that you would not be injured and I keep my word."
As he spoke, the light went suddenly out. Rollins sprang forward, cursing, fumbling at the
tapestries which had swished in the darkness as if from the passing of a large body between
them. His fingers met only solid walls, and when at last the light came on again, he was alone
in the room, and behind the hangings a heavy door had been slid shut. On the divan lay
something that glinted in the lamplight, and Rollins looked down on a curiously carven gold
tooth.
Robert E Howard is well known for his stories about
Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the
sword and sorcery subgenre. But he also wrote horror-,
fantasy- and mystery- stories. This nice collection contains
his supernatural detective stories about Steve Harrison and
others like him, men investigating crimes of supernatural
character.
Pages: 388
ISBN: 9781312184954
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78

BLOOD LUST
By
Dion Fortune
I
I have never been able to make up my mind whether Dr. Taverner should be the hero or the
villain of these histories. That he was a man of the most selfless ideals could not be
questioned, but in his methods of putting these ideals into practice he was absolutely
unscrupulous. He did not evade the law, he merely ignored it, and though the exquisite
tenderness with which he handled his cases was an education in itself, yet he would use that
wonderful psychological method of his to break a soul to pieces, going to work as quietly and
methodically and benevolently as if bent upon the cure of his patient.
The manner of my meeting with this strange man was quite simple. After being gazetted out
of the R.A.M.C. I went to a medical agency and inquired what posts were available.
I said: I have come out of the Army with my nerves shattered. I want some quiet place till I
can pull myself together.
So does everybody else, said the clerk.
He looked at me thoughtfully. I wonder whether you would care to try a place we have had
on our books for some time. We have sent several men down to it but none of them would
stop.
He sent me round to one of the tributaries of Harley Street, and there I made the acquaintance
of the man who, whether he was good or bad, I have always regarded as the greatest mind I
ever met.
Tall and thin, with a parchment-like countenance, he might have been any age from thirty-five
to sixty-five. I have seen him look both ages within the hour. He lost no time in coming to the
point.
I want a medical superintendent for my nursing home, he told me. I understand that you
have specialized, as far as the Army permitted you to, in mental cases. I am afraid you will
find my methods very different from the orthodox ones. However, as I sometimes succeed
where others fail, I consider I am justified in continuing to experiment, which I think, Dr.
Rhodes, is all any of my colleagues can claim to do.
The mans cynical manner annoyed me, though I could not deny that mental treatment is not
an exact science at the present moment. As if in answer to my thought he continued:
My chief interest lies in those regions of psychology which orthodox science has not as yet
ventured to explore. If you will work with me you will see some queer things, but all I ask of
you is, that you should keep an open mind and a shut mouth.
This I undertook to do, for, although I shrank instinctively from the man, yet there was about
him such a curious attraction, such a sense of power and adventurous research, that I
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determined at least to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what it might lead to. His
extraordinarily stimulating personality, which seemed to key my brain to concert pitch, made
me feel that he might be a good tonic for a man who had lost his grip on life for the I time
being.
Unless you have elaborate packing to do, he said, I can motor you down to my place. If
you will walk over with me to the garage I will drive you round to your lodgings, pick up
your things, and we shall get in before dark.
We drove at a pretty high speed down the Portsmouth road till we came to Thursley, and,
then, to my surprise, my companion turned off to the right and took the big car by a cart track
over the heather.
This is Thors Ley or field, he said, as the blighted country unrolled before us. The old
worship is still kept up about here.
The Catholic faith? I inquired.
The Catholic faith, my dear sir, is an innovation. I was referring to the pagan worship. The
peasants about here still retain bits of the old ritual; they think that it brings them luck, or
some such superstition. They have no knowledge of its inner meaning. He paused a moment,
and then turned to me and said with extraordinary emphasis: Have you ever thought what it
would mean if a man who had the Knowledge could piece that ritual together?
I admitted I had not. I was frankly out of my depth, but he had certainly brought me to the
most unchristian spot I had ever been in my life.
His nursing home, however, was in delightful contrast to the wild and barren country that
surrounded it. The garden was a mass of colour, and the house, old and rambling and covered
with creepers, as charming within as without; it reminded me of the East, it reminded me of
the Renaissance, and yet it had no style save that of warm rich colouring and comfort.
I soon settled down to my job, which I found exceedingly interesting. As I have already said,
Taverners work began where ordinary medicine ended, and I have under my care cases such
as the ordinary doctor would have referred to the safe keeping of an asylum, as being nothing
else but mad. Yet Taverner, by his peculiar methods of work, laid bare causes operating both
within the soul and in the shadowy realm where the soul has its dwelling, that threw an
entirely new light upon the problem, and often enabled him to rescue a man from the dark
influences that were closing in upon him. The affair of the sheep-killing was an interesting
example of his methods.
II
One showery afternoon at the nursing home we had a call from a neighbornot a very
common occurrence, for Taverner and his ways were regarded somewhat askance. Our visitor
shed her dripping mackintosh, but declined to loosen the scarf which, warm as the day was,
she had twisted tightly round her neck.
I believe you specialize in mental cases, she said to my colleague. I should very much like
to talk over with you a matter that is troubling me.

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Taverner nodded, his keen eyes watching her for symptoms. It concerns a friend of minein
fact, I think I may call him my fianc, for, although he has asked me to release him from his
engagement, I have refused to do SO; not because I should wish to hold a man who no longer
loved me, but because I am convinced that he still cares for me, and there is something which
has come between us that he will not tell me of.
I have begged him to be frank with me and let us share the trouble together, for the thing that
seems an insuperable obstacle to him may not appear in that light to me; but you know what
men are when they consider their honour is in question. She looked from one to the other of
us smiling. No woman ever believes that her men folk are grown up; perhaps she is right.
Then she leant forward and clasped her hands eagerly. I believe I have found the key to the
mystery. I want you to tell me whether it is possible or not.
Will you give me particulars? said Taverner.
We got engaged while Donald was stationed here for his training (that would be nearly five
years ago now), and there was always the most perfect harmony between us until he came out
of the Army, when we all began to notice a change in him. He came to the house as often as
ever, but he always seemed to want to avoid being alone with me.
We used to take long walks over the moors together, but he has absolutely refused to do this
recently. Then, without any warning, he wrote and told me he could not marry me and did not
wish to see me again, and he put a curious thing in his letter. He said: Even if I should come
to you and ask you to see me, I beg you not to do it.
My people thought he had got entangled with some other girl, and were furious with him for
jilting me, but I believe there is something more in it than that. I wrote to him, but could get
no answer, and I had come to the conclusion that I must try and put the whole thing out of my
life, when he suddenly turned up again. Now, this is where the queer part comes in.
We heard the fowls shrieking one night, and thought a fox was after them. My brothers
turned out armed with golf clubs, and I went too. When we got to the hen-house we found
several fowl with their throats torn as if a rat had been at them; but the boys discovered that
the hen-house door had been forced open, a thing no rat could do. They said a gypsy must
have been trying to steal the birds, and told me to go back to the house. I was returning by
way of the shrubberies when someone suddenly stepped out in front of me. It was quite light,
for the moon was nearly full, and I recognized Donald. He held out his arms and I went to
him, but, instead of kissing me, he suddenly bent his head andlook!
She drew her scarf from her neck and showed us a semicircle of little blue marks on the skin
just under the ear, the unmistakable print of human teeth.
He was after the jugular, said Taverner; lucky for you he did not break the skin.
I said to him: Donald, what are you doing? My voice seemed to bring him to himself, and
he let me go and tore off through the bushes. The boys chased him but did not catch him, and
we have never seen him since.

81

You have informed the police, I suppose? said Taverner. Father told them someone had
tried to rob the hen-roost, but they do not know who it was. You see, I did not tell them I had
seen Donald.
And you walk about the moors by yourself, knowing that he may be lurking in the
neighbourhood?
She nodded.
I should advise you not to, Miss Wynter; the man is probably exceedingly dangerous,
especially to you. We will send you back in the car.
You think he has gone mad? That is exactly what I think. I believe he knew he was going
mad, and that was why he broke off our engagement. Dr. Taverner, is there nothing that car.
be done for him? It seems to me that Donald is not mad in the ordinary way. We had a
housemaid once who went off her head, and the whole of her seemed to be insane, if you can
understand; but with Donald it seems as if only a little bit of him were crazy, as if his insanity
were outside himself. Can you grasp what I mean?
It seems to me you have given a very clear description of a case of psychic interference
what was known in scriptural days as being possessed by a devil, said Taverner.
Can you do anything for him? the girl inquired eagerly.
I may be able to do a good deal if you can get him to come to me.
On our next day at the Harley Street consulting-room we found that the butler had booked an
appointment for a Captain Donald Craigie. We discovered him to be a personality of singular
charmone of those highly-strung, imaginative men who have the makings of an artist in
them. In his normal state he must have been a delightful companion, but as he faced us across
the consulting-room desk he was a man under a cloud.
I may as well make a clean breast of this matter, he said. I suppose Beryl told you about
their chickens? She told us that you tried to bite her. Did she tell you I bit the chickens?
No.
Well, I did.
Silence fell for a moment. Then Taverner broke it. When did this trouble first start?
After I got shell shock. I was blown right out of a trench, and it shook me up pretty badly. I
thought I had got off lightly, for I was only in hospital about ten days, but I suppose this is the
aftermath.
Are you one of those people who have a horror of blood? Not especially so. I didnt like it,
but I could put up with it. We had to get used to it in the trenches; someone was always
getting wounded, even in the quietest times. And killed, put in Taverner.
Yes, and killed, said our patient. So you developed a blood hunger? Thats about it.
Underdone meat and all the rest of it, I suppose?

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No, that is no use to me. It seems a horrible thing to say, but it is fresh blood that attracts me,
blood as it comes from the
veins of my victim.
Ah! said Taverner. That puts a different complexion on the case.
I shouldnt have thought it could have been much blacker. On the contrary, what you have
just told me renders the outlook much more hopeful. You have not so much a blood lust,
which might well be an effect of the subconscious mind, as a vitality hunger which is quite a
different matter.
Craigie looked up quickly. Thats exactly it. I have never been able to put it into words
before, but you have hit the nail on the head.
I saw that my colleagues perspicuity had given him great confidence.
I should like you to come down to my nursing home for a time and be under my personal
observation, said Taverner.
I should like to very much, but I think there is something further you ought to know before I
do so. This thing has begun to affect my character. At first it seemed something outside
myself, but now I am responding to it, almost helping, and trying to find out ways of
gratifying it without getting myself into trouble. That is why I went for the hens when I came
down to the Wynters house. I was afraid I should lose my self-control and go for Beryl. I did
in the end, as it happened, so it was not much use. In fact I think it did more harm than good,
for I seemed to get into I much closer touch with It after I had yielded to the impulse. I know
that the best thing I could do would be to do away with myself, but I darent. I feel that after I
am dead I should have to meetwhatever it isface to face.
You need not be afraid to come down to the nursing home,
said Taverner. We will look after you.
After he had gone Taverner said to me: Have you ever heard of vampires, Rhodes?
Yes, rather, I said. I used to read myself to sleep with. Dracula once when I had a spell of
insomnia.
That, nodding his head in the direction of the departing man, is a singularly good
specimen.
Do you mean to say you are going to take a revolting case like that down to Hindhead?
Not revolting, Rhodes, a soul in a dungeon. The soul may not be very savoury, but it is a
fellow creature. Let it out and it will soon clean itself.
I often used to marvel at the wonderful tolerance and compassion Taverner had for erring
humanity.

83

The more you see of human nature, he said to me once, the less you feel inclined to
condemn it, for you realize how hard it has struggled. No one does wrong because he likes it,
but because it is the lesser of the two evils.
III
A couple of days later I was called out of the nursing home office to receive a new patient. It
was Craigie. He had got as far as the doormat, and there he had stuck. He seemed so
thoroughly ashamed of himself that I had not the heart to administer the judicious bullying
which is usual under such circumstances.
I feel as if I were driving a baulking horse, he said. I want to come in, but I cant.
I called Taverner and the sight of him seemed to relieve our patient.
Ah, he said, you give me confidence. I feel that I can defy It, and he squared his
shoulders and crossed the threshold. Once inside, a weight seemed lifted from his mind, and
he settled down quite happily to the routine of the place. Beryl Wynter used to walk over
almost every afternoon, unknown to her family, and cheer him up; in fact he seemed on the
high road to recovery.
One morning I was strolling round the grounds with the head gardener, planning certain small
improvements, when he made a remark to me which I had reason to remember later.
You would think all the German prisoners should have been returned by now, wouldnt you,
sir? But they havent. I passed one the other night in the lane outside the back door. I never
thought that I should see their filthy field-grey again.
I sympathized with his antipathy; he had been a prisoner in their hands, and the memory was
not one to fade.
I thought no more of his remark, but a few days later I was reminded of it when one of our
patients came to me and said:
Dr. Rhodes, I think you are exceedingly unpatriotic to employ German prisoners in the
garden when so many discharged soldiers cannot get work.
I assured her that we did not do so, no German being likely to survive a days work under the
superintendence of our
ex-prisoner head gardener.
But I distinctly saw the man going round the greenhouses at shutting-up time last night, she
declared. I recognized him by his flat cap and grey uniform.
I mentioned this to Taverner.
Tell Craigie he is on no account to go out after sundown, he said, and tell Miss Wynter she
had better keep away for the present.

84

A night or two later, as I was strolling round the grounds smoking an after-dinner cigarette, I
met Craigie hurrying through the shrubbery.
You will have Dr. Taverner on your trail, I called after him.
I missed the post-bag, he replied, and I am going down to the pillar-box.
Next evening I again found Craigie in the grounds after dark. I bore down on him.
Look here, Craigie, I said, if you come to this place you must keep the rules, and Dr.
Taverner wants you to stay indoors after sundown.
Craigie bared his teeth and snarled at me like a dog. I took him by the arm and marched him
into the house and reported the incident to Taverner.
The creature has re-established its influence over him, he said. We cannot evidently starve
it out of existence by keeping it away from him; we shall have to use other methods. Where is
Craigie at the present moment?
Playing the piano in the drawing-room, I replied. Then we will go up to his room and
unseal it. As I followed Taverner upstairs he said to me: Did it ever occur to you to wonder
why Craigie jibbed on the doorstep?
I paid no attention, I said. Such a thing is common enough with mental cases.
There is a sphere of influence, a kind of psychic bell jar, over this house to keep out evil
entities, what might in popular language be called a spell. Craigies familiar could not come
inside, and did not like being left behind. I thought we might be able to tire it out by keeping
Craigie away from its influences, but it has got too strong a hold over him, and he deliberately
co-operates with it. Evil communications corrupt good manners, and you cant keep company
with a thing like that and not be tainted, especially if you are a sensitive Celt like Craigie.
When we reached the room Taverner went over to the window and passed his hand across the
sill, as if sweeping something aside.
There, he said. It can come in now and fetch him out, and we will see what it does.
At the doorway he paused again and made a sign on the lintel.
I dont think it will pass that, he said.
When I returned to the office I found the village policeman waiting to see me.
I should be glad if you would keep an eye on your dog, sir, he said. We have been having
complaints of sheepkilling lately, and whatever animal is doing it is working in a three-mile
radius with this as the centre.
Our dog is an Airedale, I said. I should not think he is likely to be guilty. It is usually
collies that take to sheepkilling.

85

At eleven oclock we turned out the lights and herded our patients off to bed. At Taverners
request I changed into an old suit and rubber-soled tennis shoes and joined him in the
smoking-room, which was under Craigies bedroom. We sat in the darkness awaiting events.
I dont want you to do anything, said Taverner, but just to follow and see what happens.
We had not long to wait.
In about a quarter-of-an-hour we heard a rustling in the creepers, and down came Craigie
hand over fist, swinging himself along by the great ropes of wisteria that clothed the wall. As
he disappeared into the shrubbery I slipped after him, keeping in the shadow of the house.
He moved at a stealthy dog-trot over the heather paths towards Frensham.
At first I ran and ducked, taking advantage of every patch of shadow, but presently I saw that
this caution was unnecessary. Craigie was absorbed in his own affairs, and thereupon I drew
closer to him, following at a distance of some sixty yards.
He moved at a swinging pace, a kind of loping trot that put me in mind of a bloodhound. The
wide, empty levels of that forsaken country stretched out on either side of us, belts of mist
filled the hollows, and the heights of Hindhead stood out against the stars. I felt no
nervousness; man for man, I reckoned I was a match for Craigie, and, in addition, I was armed
with what is technically known as a soothertwo feet of lead gas-piping inserted in a
length of rubber hose-pipe. It is not included in the official equipment of the best asylums, but
can frequently be found in a keepers trouser-leg.
If I had known what I had to deal with I should not have put so much reliance on my
soother. Ignorance is sometimes an excellent substitute for courage.
Suddenly out of the heather ahead of us a sheep got up, and then the chase began. Away went
Craigie in pursuit, and away went the terrified wether. A sheep can move remarkably fast for
a short distance, but the poor wool-encumbered beast could not keep pace, and Craigie ran it
down, working in gradually lessening circles. It stumbled, went to its knees, and he was on it.
He pulled its head back, and whether he used a knife or not I could not see, for a cloud passed
over the moon, but dimly luminous in the shadow, I saw something that was semitransparent
pass between me and the dark, struggling mass among the heather. As the moon cleared the
clouds I made out the flat-topped cap and field-grey uniform of the German Army.
I cannot possibly convey the sickening horror of that sightthe creature that was not a man
assisting the man who, for the moment, was not human.
Gradually the sheeps struggles weakened and ceased. Craigie straightened his back and stood
up; then he set off at his steady lope towards the east, his grey familiar at his heels.
How I made the homeward journey I do not know. I dared not look behind lest I should find a
Presence at my elbow; every breath of wind that blew across the heather seemed to be cold
fingers on my throat; fir trees reached out long arms to clutch me as I passed under them, and
heather bushes rose up and assumed human shapes. I moved like a runner in a nightmare,
making prodigious efforts after a receding goal.

86

At last I tore across the moonlit lawns of the house, regardless who might be looking from the
windows, burst into the smoking-room and flung myself face downwards on the sofa.
IV
Tut, tut! said Taverner. Has it been as bad as all that?
I could not tell him what I had seen, but he seemed to know. Which way did Craigie go after
he left you? he asked. Towards the moonrise, I told him.
And you were on the way to Frensham? He is heading for the Wynters house. This is very
serious, Rhodes. We must go after him; it may be too late as it is. Do you feel equal to coming
with me?
He gave me a stiff glass of brandy, and we went to get the car out of the garage. In Taverners
company I felt secure. I could understand the confidence he inspired in his patients. Whatever
that grey shadow might be, I felt he could deal with it and that I would be safe in his hands.
We were not long in approaching our destination.
I think we will leave the car here, said Taverner, turning into a grass-grown lane. We do
not want to rouse them if we can help it.
We moved cautiously over the dew-soaked grass into the paddock that bounded one side of
the Wynters garden. It was separated from the lawn by a sunk fence, and we could command
the whole front of the house and easily gain the terrace if we so desired. In the shadow of a
rose pergola we paused. The great trusses of bloom, colourless in the moonlight, seemed a
ghastly mockery of our business.
For some time we waited, and then a movement caught my eye.
Out in the meadow behind us something was moving at a slow lope; it followed a wide arc, of
which the house formed the focus, and disappeared into a little coppice on the left. It might
have been imagination, but I thought I saw a wisp of mist at its heels.
We remained where we were, and presently he came round once more, this time moving in a
smaller circle evidently closing in upon the house. The third time he reappeared more
quickly, and this time he was between us and the terrace.
Quick! Head him off, whispered Taverner. He will be up the creepers next round.
We scrambled up the sunk fence and dashed across the lawn. As we did so a girls figure
appeared at one of the windows; it was Beryl Wynter. Taverner, plainly visible in the
moonlight, laid his finger on his lips and beckoned her to come down.
I am going to do a very risky thing, he whispered, but she is a girl of courage, and if her
nerve does not fail we shall be able to pull it off.
In a few seconds she slipped out of a side door and joined us, a cloak over her night-dress.

87

Are you prepared to undertake an exceedingly unpleasant task? Taverner asked her. I can
guarantee you will be perfectly safe so long as you keep your head, but if you lose your nerve
you will be in grave danger.
Is it to do with Donald? she inquired.
It is, said Taverner. I hope to be able to rid him of the thing that is overshadowing him and
trying to obsess him.
I have seen it, she said; it is like a wisp of grey vapour that floats just behind him. It has
the most awful face you ever saw. It came up to the window last night, just the face only,
while Donald was going round and round the house.
What did you do? asked Taverner.
I didnt do anything. I was afraid that if someone found him he might be put in an asylum,
and then we should have no chance of getting him well.
Taverner nodded.
Perfect love casteth out fear, he said. You can do the thing that is required of you.
He placed Miss Wynter on the terrace in full moonlight. As soon as Craigie sees you, he
said, retreat round the corner of the house into the yard. Rhodes and I will wait for you
there.
A narrow doorway led from the terrace to the back premises, and just inside its arch Taverner
bade me take my stand.
Pinion him as he comes past you and hang on for your life, he said. Only mind he doesnt
get his teeth into you; these things are infectious.
We had hardly taken up our positions when we heard the loping trot come round once more,
this time on the terrace itself. Evidently he caught sight of Miss Wynter, for the stealthy
padding changed to a wild scurry over the gravel, and the girl slipped quickly through the
archway and sought refuge behind Taverner. Right on her heels came Craigie. Another yard
and he would have had her, but I caught him by the elbows and
pinioned him securely. For a moment we swayed and struggled across the dew-drenched
flagstones, but I locked him in an old wrestling grip and held him.
Now, said Taverner, if you will keep hold of Craigie I will deal with the other. But first of
all we must get it away from him, otherwise it will retreat on to him, and he may die of shock.
Now, Miss Wynter, are you prepared to play your part?
I am prepared to do whatever is necessary, she replied. Taverner took a scalpel out of a
pocket case and made a small incision in the skin of her neck, just under the ear. A drop of
blood slowly gathered, showing black in the moonlight.
That is the bait, he said. Now go close up to Craigie and entice the creature away; get it to
follow you and draw it out into the open.
88

As she approached us Craigie plunged and struggled in my arms like a wild beast, and then
something grey and shadowy drew out of the gloom of the wall and hovered for a moment at
my elbow. Miss Wynter came nearer, walking almost into it.
Dont go too close, cried Taverner, and she paused. Then the grey shape seemed to make up
its mind; it drew clear of Craigie and advanced towards her. She retreated towards Taverner,
and the Thing came out into the moonlight. We could see it quite clearly from its flat-topped
cap to its knee-boots; its high cheekbones and slit eyes pointed its origin to the south-eastern
corner of Europe where strange tribes still defy civilization and keep up their still stranger
beliefs.
The shadowy form drifted onwards, following the girl across the yard, and when it was some
twenty feet from Craigie, Taverner stepped out quickly behind it, cutting off its retreat. Round
it came in a moment, instantly conscious of his presence, and then began a game of puss-inthe-corner. Taverner was trying to drive it into a kind of psychic killing-pen he had made for
its reception. Invisible to me, the lines of psychic force which bounded it were evidently
plainly perceptible to the creature we were hunting. This way and that way it slid in its efforts
to escape, but Taverner all the time herded it towards the apex of the invisible triangle, where
he could give it its coup de grace.
Then the end came. Taverner leapt forward. There was a Sign then a Sound. The grey form
commenced to spin like a top.
Faster and faster it went, its outlines merging into a whirling spiral of mist; then it broke. Out
into space went the particles that had composed its form, and with the almost soundless shriek
of supreme speed the soul went to its appointed place.
Then something seemed to lift. From a cold hell of limitless horror the flagged space became
a normal back yard, the trees ceased to be tentacled menaces, the gloom of the wall was no
longer an ambuscade, and I knew that never again would a grey shadow drift out of the
darkness upon its horrible hunting.
I released Craigie, who collapsed in a heap at my feet: Miss Wynter went to rouse her father,
while Taverner and I got the insensible man into the house.

What masterly lies Taverner told to the family I have never known, but a couple of months
later we received, instead of the conventional fragment of wedding cake, a really substantial
chunk, with a note from the bride to say it was to go in the office cupboard, where she knew
we kept provisions for those nocturnal meals that Taverners peculiar habits imposed upon us.
It was during one of these midnight repasts that I questioned Taverner about the strange
matter of Craigie and his familiar. For a long time I had not been able to refer to it; the
memory of that horrible sheep-killing was a thing that would not bear recalling.
You have heard of vampires, said Taverner. That was a typical case. For close on a
hundred years they have been practically unknown in EuropeWestern Europe that isbut
the War has caused a renewed outbreak, and quite a number of cases have been reported.

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When they were first observedthat is to say, when some wretched lad was caught attacking
the wounded, they took him behind the lines and shot him, which is not a satisfactory way of
dealing with a vampire, unless you also go to the trouble of burning his body, according to the
good old-fashioned way of dealing with practitioners of black magic. Then our enlightened
generation came to the conclusion that they were not dealing with a crime, but with a disease,
and put the unfortunate individual afflicted with this horrible obsession into an asylum, where
he did not usually live very long, the supply of his peculiar nourishment being cut off. But it
never struck anybody that they might be dealing with more than one factor that what they
were really contending with was a gruesome partnership between the dead and the living.
What in the world do you mean? I asked.
We have two physical bodies, you know, said Taverner, the dense material one, with
which we are all familiar, and the subtle etheric one, which inhabits it, and acts as the medium
of the life forces, whose functioning would explain a very great deal if science would only
condescend to investigate it. When a man dies, the etheric body, with his soul in it, draws out
of the physical form and drifts about in its neighbourhood for about three days, or until
decomposition sets in, and then the soul draws out of the etheric body also, which in turn dies,
and the man enters upon the first phase of his post mortem existence, the purgatorial one.
Now, it is possible to keep the etheric body together almost indefinitely if a supply of vitality
is available, but, having no stomach which can digest food and turn it into energy, the thing
has to batten on someone who has, and develops into a spirit parasite which we call a
vampire.
There is a pretty good working knowledge of black magic in Eastern Europe. Now,
supposing some man who has this knowledge gets shot, he knows that in three days time, at
the death of the etheric body, he will have to face his reckoning, and with his record he
naturally does not want to do it, so he establishes a connection with the subconscious mind of
some other soul that still has a body, provided he can find one suitable for his purposes. A
very positive type of character is useless; he has to find one of a negative type, such as the
lower class of medium affords. Hence one of the many dangers of mediumship to the
untrained. Such a negative condition may be temporarily induced by, say, shell-shock, and it
is possible then for such a soul as we are considering to obtain an influence over a being of
much higher typeCraigie, for instanceand use him as a means of obtaining its
gratification.
But why did not the creature confine its attentions to Craigie, instead of causing him to
attack others?
Because Craigie would have been dead in a week if it had done so, and then it would have
found itself minus its human feeding bottle. Instead of that it worked through Craigie, getting
him to draw extra vitality from others and pass it on to itself; hence it was that Craigie had a
vitality hunger rather than a blood hunger, though the fresh blood of a victim was the means
of absorbing the vitality.
Then that German we all saw?
Was merely a corpse who was insufficiently dead.

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Dr Taverner is an occult Sherlock Holmes, an esoteric

Master who uses his powers to aid 'untreatable' patients
for whom orthodox medical science can do nothing.
Utilizing his knowledge of White Magic, he fights an
unrelenting battle against vampires, death-hounds, bodysnatchers and members of the nefarious Black Lodge.
Well-written and briskly paced, these twelve stories stand
on their own merits - but there is more to these tales than
meets the eye. Dion Fortune was herself a mage, a high
initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and
founder of the Society of the Inner Light. The tales she
tells are based on real events, and she uses 'The Secrets of
Dr Taverner' as a vehicle to introduce the reader to
magical practices and many arcane principles of occult
law. Each story in this collection is a complete case, as
gripping and as entertaining as the stories of Sherlock
Holmes. They take you into the inner worlds of the human mind a world full of strange
twists and unexpected happenings!
Pages: 248
ISBN 9781304999542
Buy it directly from us!

91

ANCIENT SORCERIES
By
Algernon Blackwood
I
There are, it would appear, certain wholly unremarkable persons, with none of the
characteristics that invite adventure, who yet once or twice in the course of their smooth lives
undergo an experience so strange that the world catches its breathand looks the other way!
And it was cases of this kind, perhaps, more than any other, that fell into the wide-spread net
of John Silence, the psychic doctor, and, appealing to his deep humanity, to his patience, and
to his great qualities of spiritual sympathy, led often to the revelation of problems of the
strangest complexity, and of the profoundest possible human interest.
Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their
hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of thingsand to release a suffering
human soul in the processwas with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were,
indeed, after passing strange.
The world, of course, asks for some plausible basis to which it can attach credence
something it can, at least, pretend to explain. The adventurous type it can understand: such
people carry about with them an adequate explanation of their exciting lives, and their
characters obviously drive them into the circumstances which produce the adventures. It
expects nothing else from them, and is satisfied. But dull, ordinary folk have no right to outof-the-way experiences, and the world having been led to expect otherwise, is disappointed
with them, not to say shocked. Its complacent judgment has been rudely disturbed.
"Such a thing happened to that man!" it cries"a commonplace person like that! It is too
absurd! There must be something wrong!"
Yet there could be no question that something did actually happen to little Arthur Vezin,
something of the curious nature he described to Dr. Silence. Outwardly or inwardly, it
happened beyond a doubt, and in spite of the jeers of his few friends who heard the tale, and
observed wisely that "such a thing might perhaps have come to Iszard, that crack-brained
Iszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never have happened to commonplace little
Vezin, who was fore-ordained to live and die according to scale."
But, whatever his method of death was, Vezin certainly did not "live according to scale" so
far as this particular event in his otherwise uneventful life was concerned; and to hear him
recount it, and watch his pale delicate features change, and hear his voice grow softer and
more hushed as he proceeded, was to know the conviction that his halting words perhaps
failed sometimes to convey. He lived the thing over again each time he told it. His whole
personality became muffled in the recital. It subdued him more than ever, so that the tale
became a lengthy apology for an experience that he deprecated. He appeared to excuse
himself and ask your pardon for having dared to take part in so fantastic an episode. For little
Vezin was a timid, gentle, sensitive soul, rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and
beast, and almost constitutionally unable to say No, or to claim many things that should
rightly have been his. His whole scheme of life seemed utterly remote from anything more
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exciting than missing a train or losing an umbrella on an omnibus. And when this curious
event came upon him he was already more years beyond forty than his friends suspected or he
cared to admit.
John Silence, who heard him speak of his experience more than once, said that he sometimes
left out certain details and put in others; yet they were all obviously true. The whole scene
was unforgettably cinematographed on to his mind. None of the details were imagined or
invented. And when he told the story with them all complete, the effect was undeniable. His
appealing brown eyes shone, and much of the charming personality, usually so carefully
repressed, came forward and revealed itself. His modesty was always there, of course, but in
the telling he forgot the present and allowed himself to appear almost vividly as he lived again
in the past of his adventure.
He was on the way home when it happened, crossing northern France from some mountain
trip or other where he buried himself solitary-wise every summer. He had nothing but an
unregistered bag in the rack, and the train was jammed to suffocation, most of the passengers
being unredeemed holiday English. He disliked them, not because they were his fellowcountrymen, but because they were noisy and obtrusive, obliterating with their big limbs and
tweed clothing all the quieter tints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled him to
melt into insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These English clashed about him like
a brass band, making him feel vaguely that he ought to be more self-assertive and
obstreperous, and that he did not claim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn't
want and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, windows up or down, and so forth.
So that he felt uncomfortable in the train, and wished the journey were over and he was back
again living with his unmarried sister in Surbiton.
And when the train stopped for ten panting minutes at the little station in northern France, and
he got out to stretch his legs on the platform, and saw to his dismay a further batch of the
British Isles debouching from another train, it suddenly seemed impossible to him to continue
the journey. Even his flabby soul revolted, and the idea of staying a night in the little town
and going on next day by a slower, emptier train, flashed into his mind. The guard was
already shouting "en voiture" and the corridor of his compartment was already packed when
the thought came to him. And, for once, he acted with decision and rushed to snatch his bag.
Finding the corridor and steps impassable, he tapped at the window (for he had a corner seat)
and begged the Frenchman who sat opposite to hand his luggage out to him, explaining in his
wretched French that he intended to break the journey there. And this elderly Frenchman, he
declared, gave him a look, half of warning, half of reproach, that to his dying day he could
never forget; handed the bag through the window of the moving train; and at the same time
poured into his ears a long sentence, spoken rapidly and low, of which he was able to
comprehend only the last few words: " cause du sommeil et cause des chats."
In reply to Dr. Silence, whose singular psychic acuteness at once seized upon this Frenchman
as a vital point in the adventure, Vezin admitted that the man had impressed him favourably
from the beginning, though without being able to explain why. They had sat facing one
another during the four hours of the journey, and though no conversation had passed between
themVezin was timid about his stuttering Frenchhe confessed that his eyes were being
continually drawn to his face, almost, he felt, to rudeness, and that each, by a dozen nameless
little politenesses and attentions, had evinced the desire to be kind. The men liked each other
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and their personalities did not clash, or would not have clashed had they chanced to come to
terms of acquaintance. The Frenchman, indeed, seemed to have exercised a silent protective
influence over the insignificant little Englishman, and without words or gestures betrayed that
he wished him well and would gladly have been of service to him.
"And this sentence that he hurled at you after the bag?" asked John Silence, smiling that
peculiarly sympathetic smile that always melted the prejudices of his patient, "were you
unable to follow it exactly?"
"It was so quick and low and vehement," explained Vezin, in his small voice, "that I missed
practically the whole of it. I only caught the few words at the very end, because he spoke
them so clearly, and his face was bent down out of the carriage window so near to mine."
"' cause du sommeil et cause des chats'?" repeated Dr. Silence, as though half speaking to
himself.
"That's it exactly," said Vezin; "which, I take it, means something like 'because of sleep and
because of the cats,' doesn't it?"
"Certainly, that's how I should translate it," the doctor observed shortly, evidently not wishing
to interrupt more than necessary.
"And the rest of the sentenceall the first part I couldn't understand, I meanwas a warning
not to do somethingnot to stop in the town, or at some particular place in the town, perhaps.
That was the impression it made on me."
Then, of course, the train rushed off, and left Vezin standing on the platform alone and rather
forlorn.
The little town climbed in straggling fashion up a sharp hill rising out of the plain at the back
of the station, and was crowned by the twin towers of the ruined cathedral peeping over the
summit. From the station itself it looked uninteresting and modern, but the fact was that the
mediaeval position lay out of sight just beyond the crest. And once he reached the top and
entered the old streets, he stepped clean out of modern life into a bygone century. The noise
and bustle of the crowded train seemed days away. The spirit of this silent hill-town, remote
from tourists and motor-cars, dreaming its own quiet life under the autumn sun, rose up and
cast its spell upon him. Long before he recognised this spell he acted under it. He walked
softly, almost on tiptoe, down the winding narrow streets where the gables all but met over his
head, and he entered the doorway of the solitary inn with a deprecating and modest
demeanour that was in itself an apology for intruding upon the place and disturbing its dream.
At first, however, Vezin said, he noticed very little of all this. The attempt at analysis came
much later. What struck him then was only the delightful contrast of the silence and peace
after the dust and noisy rattle of the train. He felt soothed and stroked like a cat.
"Like a cat, you said?" interrupted John Silence, quickly catching him up.
"Yes. At the very start I felt that." He laughed apologetically. "I felt as though the warmth and
the stillness and the comfort made me purr. It seemed to be the general mood of the whole
placethen."
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The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere of the old coaching days still about it,
apparently did not welcome him too warmly. He felt he was only tolerated, he said. But it was
cheap and comfortable, and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at once made him
feel really very pleased with himself for leaving the train in this bold, original way. For to him
it had seemed bold and original. He felt something of a dog. His room, too, soothed him with
its dark panelling and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that led to it seemed
the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleepa little dim cubby hole out of the world
where noise could not enter. It looked upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very
charming, and made him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and the
floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds of the streets could not
penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of absolute rest that surrounded him.
On engaging the two-franc room he had interviewed the only person who seemed to be about
that sleepy afternoon, an elderly waiter with Dundreary whiskers and a drowsy courtesy, who
had ambled lazily towards him across the stone yard; but on coming downstairs again for a
little promenade in the town before dinner he encountered the proprietress herself. She was a
large woman whose hands, feet, and features seemed to swim towards him out of a sea of
person. They emerged, so to speak. But she had great dark, vivacious eyes that counteracted
the bulk of her body, and betrayed the fact that in reality she was both vigorous and alert.
When he first caught sight of her she was knitting in a low chair against the sunlight of the
wall, and something at once made him see her as a great tabby cat, dozing, yet awake, heavily
sleepy, and yet at the same time prepared for instantaneous action. A great mouser on the
watch occurred to him.
She took him in with a single comprehensive glance that was polite without being cordial. Her
neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily
to follow him, and the head it carried bowed so very flexibly.
"But when she looked at me, you know," said Vezin, with that little apologetic smile in his
brown eyes, and that faintly deprecating gesture of the shoulders that was characteristic of
him, "the odd notion came to me that really she had intended to make quite a different
movement, and that with a single bound she could have leaped at me across the width of that
stone yard and pounced upon me like some huge cat upon a mouse."
He laughed a little soft laugh, and Dr. Silence made a note in his book without interrupting,
while Vezin proceeded in a tone as though he feared he had already told too much and more
than we could believe.
"Very soft, yet very active she was, for all her size and mass, and I felt she knew what I was
doing even after I had passed and was behind her back. She spoke to me, and her voice was
smooth and running. She asked if I had my luggage, and was comfortable in my room, and
then added that dinner was at seven o'clock, and that they were very early people in this little
country town. Clearly, she intended to convey that late hours were not encouraged."
Evidently, she contrived by voice and manner to give him the impression that here he would
be "managed," that everything would be arranged and planned for him, and that he had
nothing to do but fall into the groove and obey. No decided action or sharp personal effort
would be looked for from him. It was the very reverse of the train. He walked quietly out into
the street feeling soothed and peaceful. He realised that he was in a milieu that suited him and

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stroked him the right way. It was so much easier to be obedient. He began to purr again, and
to feel that all the town purred with him.
About the streets of that little town he meandered gently, falling deeper and deeper into the
spirit of repose that characterised it. With no special aim he wandered up and down, and to
and fro. The September sunshine fell slantingly over the roofs. Down winding alleyways,
fringed with tumbling gables and open casements, he caught fairylike glimpses of the great
plain below, and of the meadows and yellow copses lying like a dream-map in the haze. The
spell of the past held very potently here, he felt.
The streets were full of picturesquely garbed men and women, all busy enough, going their
respective ways; but no one took any notice of him or turned to stare at his obviously English
appearance. He was even able to forget that with his tourist appearance he was a false note in
a charming picture, and he melted more and more into the scene, feeling delightfully
insignificant and unimportant and unselfconscious. It was like becoming part of a softly
coloured dream which he did not even realise to be a dream.
On the eastern side the hill fell away more sharply, and the plain below ran off rather
suddenly into a sea of gathering shadows in which the little patches of woodland looked like
islands and the stubble fields like deep water. Here he strolled along the old ramparts of
ancient fortifications that once had been formidable, but now were only vision-like with their
charming mingling of broken grey walls and wayward vine and ivy. From the broad coping
on which he sat for a moment, level with the rounded tops of clipped plane trees, he saw the
esplanade far below lying in shadow. Here and there a yellow sunbeam crept in and lay upon
the fallen yellow leaves, and from the height he looked down and saw that the townsfolk were
walking to and fro in the cool of the evening. He could just hear the sound of their slow
footfalls, and the murmur of their voices floated up to him through the gaps between the trees.
The figures looked like shadows as he caught glimpses of their quiet movements far below.
He sat there for some time pondering, bathed in the waves of murmurs and half-lost echoes
that rose to his ears, muffled by the leaves of the plane trees. The whole town, and the little
hill out of which it grew as naturally as an ancient wood, seemed to him like a being lying
there half asleep on the plain and crooning to itself as it dozed.
And, presently, as he sat lazily melting into its dream, a sound of horns and strings and wood
instruments rose to his ears, and the town band began to play at the far end of the crowded
terrace below to the accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum. Vezin was very
sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends,
upon the composition of quiet melodies with low-running chords which he played to himself
with the soft pedal when no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from
an invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople wholly charmed him. He
recognised nothing that they played, and it sounded as though they were simply improvising
without a conductor. No definitely marked time ran through the pieces, which ended and
began oddly after the fashion of wind through an Aeolian harp. It was part of the place and
scene, just as the dying sunlight and faintly breathing wind were part of the scene and hour,
and the mellow notes of old-fashioned plaintive horns, pierced here and there by the sharper
strings, all half smothered by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched his soul with
a curiously potent spell that was almost too engrossing to be quite pleasant.

96

There was a certain queer sense of bewitchment in it all. The music seemed to him oddly
unartificial. It made him think of trees swept by the wind, of night breezes singing among
wires and chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; orand the simile leaped up in
his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of suggestiona chorus of animals, of wild creatures,
somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to the moon.
He could fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats upon the tiles at night, rising
and falling with weird intervals of sound, and this music, muffled by distance and the trees,
made him think of a queer company of these creatures on some roof far away in the sky,
uttering their solemn music to one another and the moon in chorus.
It was, he felt at the time, a singular image to occur to him, yet it expressed his sensation
pictorially better than anything else. The instruments played such impossibly odd intervals,
and the crescendos and diminuendos were so very suggestive of cat-land on the tiles at night,
rising swiftly, dropping without warning to deep notes again, and all in such strange
confusion of discords and accords. But, at the same time a plaintive sweetness resulted on the
whole, and the discords of these half-broken instruments were so singular that they did not
distress his musical soul like fiddles out of tune.
He listened a long time, wholly surrendering himself as his character was, and then strolled
homewards in the dusk as the air grew chilly.
"There was nothing to alarm?" put in Dr. Silence briefly.
"Absolutely nothing," said Vezin; "but you know it was all so fantastical and charming that
my imagination was profoundly impressed. Perhaps, too," he continued, gently explanatory,
"it was this stirring of my imagination that caused other impressions; for, as I walked back,
the spell of the place began to steal over me in a dozen ways, though all intelligible ways. But
there were other things I could not account for in the least, even then."
"Incidents, you mean?"
"Hardly incidents, I think. A lot of vivid sensations crowded themselves upon my mind and I
could trace them to no causes. It was just after sunset and the tumbled old buildings traced
magical outlines against an opalescent sky of gold and red. The dusk was running down the
twisted streets. All round the hill the plain pressed in like a dim sea, its level rising with the
darkness. The spell of this kind of scene, you know, can be very moving, and it was so that
night. Yet I felt that what came to me had nothing directly to do with the mystery and wonder
of the scene."
"Not merely the subtle transformations of the spirit that come with beauty," put in the doctor,
noticing his hesitation.
"Exactly," Vezin went on, duly encouraged and no longer so fearful of our smiles at his
expense. "The impressions came from somewhere else. For instance, down the busy main
street where men and women were bustling home from work, shopping at stalls and barrows,
idly gossiping in groups, and all the rest of it, I saw that I aroused no interest and that no one
turned to stare at me as a foreigner and stranger. I was utterly ignored, and my presence
among them excited no special interest or attention.

97

"And then, quite suddenly, it dawned upon me with conviction that all the time this
indifference and inattention were merely feigned. Everybody as a matter of fact was watching
me closely. Every movement I made was known and observed. Ignoring me was all a
pretencean elaborate pretence."
He paused a moment and looked at us to see if we were smiling, and then continued,
reassured
"It is useless to ask me how I noticed this, because I simply cannot explain it. But the
discovery gave me something of a shock. Before I got back to the inn, however, another
curious thing rose up strongly in my mind and forced my recognition of it as true. And this,
too, I may as well say at once, was equally inexplicable to me. I mean I can only give you the
fact, as fact it was to me."
The little man left his chair and stood on the mat before the fire. His diffidence lessened from
now onwards, as he lost himself again in the magic of the old adventure. His eyes shone a
little already as he talked.
"Well," he went on, his soft voice rising somewhat with his excitement, "I was in a shop when
it came to me firstthough the idea must have been at work for a long time subconsciously to
appear in so complete a form all at once. I was buying socks, I think," he laughed, "and
struggling with my dreadful French, when it struck me that the woman in the shop did not
care two pins whether I bought anything or not. She was indifferent whether she made a sale
or did not make a sale. She was only pretending to sell.
"This sounds a very small and fanciful incident to build upon what follows. But really it was
not small. I mean it was the spark that lit the line of powder and ran along to the big blaze in
my mind.
"For the whole town, I suddenly realised, was something other than I so far saw it. The real
activities and interests of the people were elsewhere and otherwise than appeared. Their true
lives lay somewhere out of sight behind the scenes. Their busy-ness was but the outward
semblance that masked their actual purposes. They bought and sold, and ate and drank, and
walked about the streets, yet all the while the main stream of their existence lay somewhere
beyond my ken, underground, in secret places. In the shops and at the stalls they did not care
whether I purchased their articles or not; at the inn, they were indifferent to my staying or
going; their life lay remote from my own, springing from hidden, mysterious sources,
coursing out of sight, unknown. It was all a great elaborate pretence, assumed possibly for my
benefit, or possibly for purposes of their own. But the main current of their energies ran
elsewhere. I almost felt as an unwelcome foreign substance might be expected to feel when it
has found its way into the human system and the whole body organises itself to eject it or to
absorb it. The town was doing this very thing to me.
"This bizarre notion presented itself forcibly to my mind as I walked home to the inn, and I
began busily to wonder wherein the true life of this town could lie and what were the actual
interests and activities of its hidden life.
"And, now that my eyes were partly opened, I noticed other things too that puzzled me, first
of which, I think, was the extraordinary silence of the whole place. Positively, the town was
muffled. Although the streets were paved with cobbles the people moved about silently,
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softly, with padded feet, like cats. Nothing made noise. All was hushed, subdued, muted. The
very voices were quiet, low-pitched like purring. Nothing clamorous, vehement or emphatic
seemed able to live in the drowsy atmosphere of soft dreaming that soothed this little hilltown into its sleep. It was like the woman at the innan outward repose screening intense
inner activity and purpose.
"Yet there was no sign of lethargy or sluggishness anywhere about it. The people were active
and alert. Only a magical and uncanny softness lay over them all like a spell."
Vezin passed his hand across his eyes for a moment as though the memory had become very
vivid. His voice had run off into a whisper so that we heard the last part with difficulty. He
was telling a true thing obviously, yet something that he both liked and hated telling.
"I went back to the inn," he continued presently in a louder voice, "and dined. I felt a new
strange world about me. My old world of reality receded. Here, whether I liked it or no, was
something new and incomprehensible. I regretted having left the train so impulsively. An
adventure was upon me, and I loathed adventures as foreign to my nature. Moreover, this was
the beginning apparently of an adventure somewhere deep within me, in a region I could not
check or measure, and a feeling of alarm mingled itself with my wonderalarm for the
stability of what I had for forty years recognised as my 'personality.'
"I went upstairs to bed, my mind teeming with thoughts that were unusual to me, and of rather
a haunting description. By way of relief I kept thinking of that nice, prosaic noisy train and all
those wholesome, blustering passengers. I almost wished I were with them again. But my
dreams took me elsewhere. I dreamed of cats, and soft-moving creatures, and the silence of
life in a dim muffled world beyond the senses."
II
Vezin stayed on from day to day, indefinitely, much longer than he had intended. He felt in a
kind of dazed, somnolent condition. He did nothing in particular, but the place fascinated him
and he could not decide to leave. Decisions were always very difficult for him and he
sometimes wondered how he had ever brought himself to the point of leaving the train. It
seemed as though some one else must have arranged it for him, and once or twice his thoughts
ran to the swarthy Frenchman who had sat opposite. If only he could have understood that
long sentence ending so strangely with " cause du sommeil et cause des chats." He
wondered what it all meant.
Meanwhile the hushed softness of the town held him prisoner and he sought in his muddling,
gentle way to find out where the mystery lay, and what it was all about. But his limited
French and his constitutional hatred of active investigation made it hard for him to buttonhole
anybody and ask questions. He was content to observe, and watch, and remain negative.
The weather held on calm and hazy, and this just suited him. He wandered about the town till
he knew every street and alley. The people suffered him to come and go without let or
hindrance, though it became clearer to him every day that he was never free himself from
observation. The town watched him as a cat watches a mouse. And he got no nearer to finding
out what they were all so busy with or where the main stream of their activities lay. This
remained hidden. The people were as soft and mysterious as cats.

99

But that he was continually under observation became more evident from day to day.
For instance, when he strolled to the end of the town and entered a little green public garden
beneath the ramparts and seated himself upon one of the empty benches in the sun, he was
quite aloneat first. Not another seat was occupied; the little park was empty, the paths
deserted. Yet, within ten minutes of his coming, there must have been fully twenty persons
scattered about him, some strolling aimlessly along the gravel walks, staring at the flowers,
and others seated on the wooden benches enjoying the sun like himself. None of them
appeared to take any notice of him; yet he understood quite well they had all come there to
watch. They kept him under close observation. In the street they had seemed busy enough,
hurrying upon various errands; yet these were suddenly all forgotten and they had nothing to
do but loll and laze in the sun, their duties unremembered. Five minutes after he left, the
garden was again deserted, the seats vacant. But in the crowded street it was the same thing
again; he was never alone. He was ever in their thoughts.
By degrees, too, he began to see how it was he was so cleverly watched, yet without the
appearance of it. The people did nothing directly. They behaved obliquely. He laughed in his
mind as the thought thus clothed itself in words, but the phrase exactly described it. They
looked at him from angles which naturally should have led their sight in another direction
altogether. Their movements were oblique, too, so far as these concerned himself. The
straight, direct thing was not their way evidently. They did nothing obviously. If he entered a
shop to buy, the woman walked instantly away and busied herself with something at the
farther end of the counter, though answering at once when he spoke, showing that she knew
he was there and that this was only her way of attending to him. It was the fashion of the cat
she followed. Even in the dining-room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous waiter, lithe
and silent in all his movements, never seemed able to come straight to his table for an order or
a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly, vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another
table altogether, and only turned suddenly at the last moment, and was there beside him.
Vezin smiled curiously to himself as he described how he began to realize these things. Other
tourists there were none in the hostel, but he recalled the figures of one or two old men,
inhabitants, who took their djeuner and dinner there, and remembered how fantastically they
entered the room in similar fashion. First, they paused in the doorway, peering about the
room, and then, after a temporary inspection, they came in, as it were, sideways, keeping
close to the walls so that he wondered which table they were making for, and at the last
minute making almost a little quick run to their particular seats. And again he thought of the
ways and methods of cats.
Other small incidents, too, impressed him as all part of this queer, soft town with its muffled,
indirect life, for the way some of the people appeared and disappeared with extraordinary
swiftness puzzled him exceedingly. It may have been all perfectly natural, he knew, yet he
could not make it out how the alleys swallowed them up and shot them forth in a second of
time when there were no visible doorways or openings near enough to explain the
phenomenon. Once he followed two elderly women who, he felt, had been particularly
examining him from across the streetquite near the inn this wasand saw them turn the
corner a few feet only in front of him. Yet when he sharply followed on their heels he saw
nothing but an utterly deserted alley stretching in front of him with no sign of a living thing.
And the only opening through which they could have escaped was a porch some fifty yards
away, which not the swiftest human runner could have reached in time.

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And in just such sudden fashion people appeared, when he never expected them. Once when
he heard a great noise of fighting going on behind a low wall, and hurried up to see what was
going on, what should he see but a group of girls and women engaged in vociferous
conversation which instantly hushed itself to the normal whispering note of the town when his
head appeared over the wall. And even then none of them turned to look at him directly, but
slunk off with the most unaccountable rapidity into doors and sheds across the yard. And their
voices, he thought, had sounded so like, so strangely like, the angry snarling of fighting
animals, almost of cats.
The whole spirit of the town, however, continued to evade him as something elusive, protean,
screened from the outer world, and at the same time intensely, genuinely vital; and, since he
now formed part of its life, this concealment puzzled and irritated him; moreit began rather
to frighten him.
Out of the mists that slowly gathered about his ordinary surface thoughts, there rose again the
idea that the inhabitants were waiting for him to declare himself, to take an attitude, to do this,
or to do that; and that when he had done so they in their turn would at length make some
direct response, accepting or rejecting him. Yet the vital matter concerning which his decision
was awaited came no nearer to him.
Once or twice he purposely followed little processions or groups of the citizens in order to
find out, if possible, on what purpose they were bent; but they always discovered him in time
and dwindled away, each individual going his or her own way. It was always the same: he
never could learn what their main interest was. The cathedral was ever empty, the old church
of St. Martin, at the other end of the town, deserted. They shopped because they had to, and
not because they wished to. The booths stood neglected, the stalls unvisited, the little cafs
desolate. Yet the streets were always full, the townsfolk ever on the bustle.
"Can it be," he thought to himself, yet with a deprecating laugh that he should have dared to
think anything so odd, "can it be that these people are people of the twilight, that they live
only at night their real life, and come out honestly only with the dusk? That during the day
they make a sham though brave pretence, and after the sun is down their true life begins?
Have they the souls of night-things, and is the whole blessed town in the hands of the cats?"
The fancy somehow electrified him with little shocks of shrinking and dismay. Yet, though he
affected to laugh, he knew that he was beginning to feel more than uneasy, and that strange
forces were tugging with a thousand invisible cords at the very centre of his being. Something
utterly remote from his ordinary life, something that had not waked for years, began faintly to
stir in his soul, sending feelers abroad into his brain and heart, shaping queer thoughts and
penetrating even into certain of his minor actions. Something exceedingly vital to himself, to
his soul, hung in the balance.
And, always when he returned to the inn about the hour of sunset, he saw the figures of the
townsfolk stealing through the dusk from their shop doors, moving sentry-wise to and fro at
the corners of the streets, yet always vanishing silently like shadows at his near approach. And
as the inn invariably closed its doors at ten o'clock he had never yet found the opportunity he
rather half-heartedly sought to see for himself what account the town could give of itself at
night.

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" cause du sommeil et cause des chats"the words now rang in his ears more and more
often, though still as yet without any definite meaning.
Moreover, something made him sleep like the dead.
III
It was, I think, on the fifth daythough in this detail his story sometimes variedthat he
made a definite discovery which increased his alarm and brought him up to a rather sharp
climax. Before that he had already noticed that a change was going forward and certain subtle
transformations being brought about in his character which modified several of his minor
habits. And he had affected to ignore them. Here, however, was something he could no longer
ignore; and it startled him.
At the best of times he was never very positive, always negative rather, compliant and
acquiescent; yet, when necessity arose he was capable of reasonably vigorous action and
could take a strongish decision. The discovery he now made that brought him up with such a
sharp turn was that this power had positively dwindled to nothing. He found it impossible to
make up his mind. For, on this fifth day, he realised that he had stayed long enough in the
town and that for reasons he could only vaguely define to himself it was wiser and safer that
he should leave.
And he found that he could not leave!
This is difficult to describe in words, and it was more by gesture and the expression of his
face that he conveyed to Dr. Silence the state of impotence he had reached. All this spying
and watching, he said, had as it were spun a net about his feet so that he was trapped and
powerless to escape; he felt like a fly that had blundered into the intricacies of a great web; he
was caught, imprisoned, and could not get away. It was a distressing sensation. A numbness
had crept over his will till it had become almost incapable of decision. The mere thought of
vigorous actionaction towards escapebegan to terrify him. All the currents of his life had
turned inwards upon himself, striving to bring to the surface something that lay buried almost
beyond reach, determined to force his recognition of something he had long forgotten
forgotten years upon years, centuries almost ago. It seemed as though a window deep within
his being would presently open and reveal an entirely new world, yet somehow a world that
was not unfamiliar. Beyond that, again, he fancied a great curtain hung; and when that too
rolled up he would see still farther into this region and at last understand something of the
secret life of these extraordinary people.
"Is this why they wait and watch?" he asked himself with rather a shaking heart, "for the time
when I shall join themor refuse to join them? Does the decision rest with me after all, and
not with them?"
And it was at this point that the sinister character of the adventure first really declared itself,
and he became genuinely alarmed. The stability of his rather fluid little personality was at
stake, he felt, and something in his heart turned coward.
Why otherwise should he have suddenly taken to walking stealthily, silently, making as little
sound as possible, for ever looking behind him? Why else should he have moved almost on
tiptoe about the passages of the practically deserted inn, and when he was abroad have found
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himself deliberately taking advantage of what cover presented itself? And why, if he was not
afraid, should the wisdom of staying indoors after sundown have suddenly occurred to him as
eminently desirable? Why, indeed?
And, when John Silence gently pressed him for an explanation of these things, he admitted
apologetically that he had none to give.
"It was simply that I feared something might happen to me unless I kept a sharp look-out. I
felt afraid. It was instinctive," was all he could say. "I got the impression that the whole town
was after mewanted me for something; and that if it got me I should lose myself, or at least
the Self I knew, in some unfamiliar state of consciousness. But I am not a psychologist, you
know," he added meekly, "and I cannot define it better than that."
It was while lounging in the courtyard half an hour before the evening meal that Vezin made
this discovery, and he at once went upstairs to his quiet room at the end of the winding
passage to think it over alone. In the yard it was empty enough, true, but there was always the
possibility that the big woman whom he dreaded would come out of some door, with her
pretence of knitting, to sit and watch him. This had happened several times, and he could not
endure the sight of her. He still remembered his original fancy, bizarre though it was, that she
would spring upon him the moment his back was turned and land with one single crushing
leap upon his neck. Of course it was nonsense, but then it haunted him, and once an idea
begins to do that it ceases to be nonsense. It has clothed itself in reality.
He went upstairs accordingly. It was dusk, and the oil lamps had not yet been lit in the
passages. He stumbled over the uneven surface of the ancient flooring, passing the dim
outlines of doors along the corridordoors that he had never once seen openedrooms that
seemed never occupied. He moved, as his habit now was, stealthily and on tiptoe.
Half-way down the last passage to his own chamber there was a sharp turn, and it was just
here, while groping round the walls with outstretched hands, that his fingers touched
something that was not wallsomething that moved. It was soft and warm in texture,
indescribably fragrant, and about the height of his shoulder; and he immediately thought of a
furry, sweet-smelling kitten. The next minute he knew it was something quite different.
Instead of investigating, however,his nerves must have been too overwrought for that, he
said,he shrank back as closely as possible against the wall on the other side. The thing,
whatever it was, slipped past him with a sound of rustling and, retreating with light footsteps
down the passage behind him, was gone. A breath of warm, scented air was wafted to his
nostrils.
Vezin caught his breath for an instant and paused, stockstill, half leaning against the wall
and then almost ran down the remaining distance and entered his room with a rush, locking
the door hurriedly behind him. Yet it was not fear that made him run: it was excitement,
pleasurable excitement. His nerves were tingling, and a delicious glow made itself felt all over
his body. In a flash it came to him that this was just what he had felt twenty-five years ago as
a boy when he was in love for the first time. Warm currents of life ran all over him and
mounted to his brain in a whirl of soft delight. His mood was suddenly become tender,
melting, loving.

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The room was quite dark, and he collapsed upon the sofa by the window, wondering what had
happened to him and what it all meant. But the only thing he understood clearly in that instant
was that something in him had swiftly, magically changed: he no longer wished to leave, or to
argue with himself about leaving. The encounter in the passage-way had changed all that. The
strange perfume of it still hung about him, bemusing his heart and mind. For he knew that it
was a girl who had passed him, a girl's face that his fingers had brushed in the darkness, and
he felt in some extraordinary way as though he had been actually kissed by her, kissed full
upon the lips.
Trembling, he sat upon the sofa by the window and struggled to collect his thoughts. He was
utterly unable to understand how the mere passing of a girl in the darkness of a narrow
passage-way could communicate so electric a thrill to his whole being that he still shook with
the sweetness of it. Yet, there it was! And he found it as useless to deny as to attempt analysis.
Some ancient fire had entered his veins, and now ran coursing through his blood; and that he
was forty-five instead of twenty did not matter one little jot. Out of all the inner turmoil and
confusion emerged the one salient fact that the mere atmosphere, the merest casual touch, of
this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness, had been sufficient to stir dormant fires in the
centre of his heart, and rouse his whole being from a state of feeble sluggishness to one of
tearing and tumultuous excitement.
After a time, however, the number of Vezin's years began to assert their cumulative power; he
grew calmer, and when a knock came at length upon his door and he heard the waiter's voice
suggesting that dinner was nearly over, he pulled himself together and slowly made his way
downstairs into the dining-room.
Every one looked up as he entered, for he was very late, but he took his customary seat in the
far corner and began to eat. The trepidation was still in his nerves, but the fact that he had
passed through the courtyard and hall without catching sight of a petticoat served to calm him
a little. He ate so fast that he had almost caught up with the current stage of the table d'hte,
when a slight commotion in the room drew his attention.
His chair was so placed that the door and the greater portion of the long salle manger were
behind him, yet it was not necessary to turn round to know that the same person he had passed
in the dark passage had now come into the room. He felt the presence long before he heard or
saw any one. Then he became aware that the old men, the only other guests, were rising one
by one in their places, and exchanging greetings with some one who passed among them from
table to table. And when at length he turned with his heart beating furiously to ascertain for
himself, he saw the form of a young girl, lithe and slim, moving down the centre of the room
and making straight for his own table in the corner. She moved wonderfully, with sinuous
grace, like a young panther, and her approach filled him with such delicious bewilderment
that he was utterly unable to tell at first what her face was like, or discover what it was about
the whole presentment of the creature that filled him anew with trepidation and delight.
"Ah, Ma'mselle est de retour!" he heard the old waiter murmur at his side, and he was just
able to take in that she was the daughter of the proprietress, when she was upon him, and he
heard her voice. She was addressing him. Something of red lips he saw and laughing white
teeth, and stray wisps of fine dark hair about the temples; but all the rest was a dream in
which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before his eyes and prevented his seeing
accurately, or knowing exactly what he did. He was aware that she greeted him with a
charming little bow; that her beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own; that the
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perfume he had noticed in the dark passage again assailed his nostrils, and that she was
bending a little towards him and leaning with one hand on the table at this side. She was quite
close to himthat was the chief thing he knewexplaining that she had been asking after the
comfort of her mother's guests, and now was introducing herself to the latest arrivalhimself.
"M'sieur has already been here a few days," he heard the waiter say; and then her own voice,
sweet as singing, replied
"Ah, but M'sieur is not going to leave us just yet, I hope. My mother is too old to look after
the comfort of our guests properly, but now I am here I will remedy all that." She laughed
deliciously. "M'sieur shall be well looked after."
Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty
speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so his hand by chance touched her
own that was resting upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of
electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and shook deep within him.
He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a look of most curious intentness, and the next
moment he knew that he had sat down wordless again on his chair, that the girl was already
half-way across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with a dessert-spoon and a
knife.
Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the remainder of his dinner, and
then went at once to his bedroom to be alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were
lighted, and he suffered no exciting contretemps; yet the winding corridor was dim with
shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards, seemed longer than he had
ever known it. It ran downhill like the pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly
down it he felt that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into the heart of a
great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange fancies filled his brain, and once in the
room, with the door securely locked, he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window
thinking long, long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind.
IV
This part of the story he told to Dr. Silence, without special coaxing, it is true, yet with much
stammering embarrassment. He could not in the least understand, he said, how the girl had
managed to affect him so profoundly, and even before he had set eyes upon her. For her mere
proximity in the darkness had been sufficient to set him on fire. He knew nothing of
enchantments, and for years had been a stranger to anything approaching tender relations with
any member of the opposite sex, for he was encased in shyness, and realised his
overwhelming defects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to him
deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out on every possible
occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yet frankly inviting; and she won him
utterly with the first glance of her shining eyes, even if she had not already done so in the dark
merely by the magic of her invisible presence.
"You felt she was altogether wholesome and good!" queried the doctor. "You had no reaction
of any sortfor instance, of alarm?"

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Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable little apologetic smiles. It was some time
before he replied. The mere memory of the adventure had suffused his shy face with blushes,
and his brown eyes sought the floor again before he answered.
"I don't think I can quite say that," he explained presently. "I acknowledged certain qualms,
sitting up in my room afterwards. A conviction grew upon me that there was something about
herhow shall I express it?well, something unholy. It is not impurity in any sense,
physical or mental, that I mean, but something quite indefinable that gave me a vague
sensation of the creeps. She drew me, and at the same time repelled me, more thanthan"
He hesitated, blushing furiously, and unable to finish the sentence.
"Nothing like it has ever come to me before or since," he concluded, with lame confusion. "I
suppose it was, as you suggested just now, something of an enchantment. At any rate, it was
strong enough to make me feel that I would stay in that awful little haunted town for years if
only I could see her every day, hear her voice, watch her wonderful movements, and
sometimes, perhaps, touch her hand."
"Can you explain to me what you felt was the source of her power?" John Silence asked,
looking purposely anywhere but at the narrator.
"I am surprised that you should ask me such a question," answered Vezin, with the nearest
approach to dignity he could manage. "I think no man can describe to another convincingly
wherein lies the magic of the woman who ensnares him. I certainly cannot. I can only say this
slip of a girl bewitched me, and the mere knowledge that she was living and sleeping in the
same house filled me with an extraordinary sense of delight.
"But there's one thing I can tell you," he went on earnestly, his eyes aglow, "namely, that she
seemed to sum up and synthesise in herself all the strange hidden forces that operated so
mysteriously in the town and its inhabitants. She had the silken movements of the panther,
going smoothly, silently to and fro, and the same indirect, oblique methods as the townsfolk,
screening, like them, secret purposes of her ownpurposes that I was sure had me for their
objective. She kept me, to my terror and delight, ceaselessly under observation, yet so
carelessly, so consummately, that another man less sensitive, if I may say so"he made a
deprecating gesture"or less prepared by what had gone before, would never have noticed it
at all. She was always still, always reposeful, yet she seemed to be everywhere at once, so that
I never could escape from her. I was continually meeting the stare and laughter of her great
eyes, in the corners of the rooms, in the passages, calmly looking at me through the windows,
or in the busiest parts of the public streets."
Their intimacy, it seems, grew very rapidly after this first encounter which had so violently
disturbed the little man's equilibrium. He was naturally very prim, and prim folk live mostly
in so small a world that anything violently unusual may shake them clean out of it, and they
therefore instinctively distrust originality. But Vezin began to forget his primness after
awhile. The girl was always modestly behaved, and as her mother's representative she
naturally had to do with the guests in the hotel. It was not out of the way that a spirit of
camaraderie should spring up. Besides, she was young, she was charmingly pretty, she was
French, andshe obviously liked him.

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At the same time, there was something indescribablea certain indefinable atmosphere of
other places, other timesthat made him try hard to remain on his guard, and sometimes
made him catch his breath with a sudden start. It was all rather like a delirious dream, half
delight, half dread, he confided in a whisper to Dr. Silence; and more than once he hardly
knew quite what he was doing or saying, as though he were driven forward by impulses he
scarcely recognised as his own.
And though the thought of leaving presented itself again and again to his mind, it was each
time with less insistence, so that he stayed on from day to day, becoming more and more a
part of the sleepy life of this dreamy mediaeval town, losing more and more of his
recognisable personality. Soon, he felt, the Curtain within would roll up with an awful rush,
and he would find himself suddenly admitted into the secret purposes of the hidden life that
lay behind it all. Only, by that time, he would have become transformed into an entirely
different being.
And, meanwhile, he noticed various little signs of the intention to make his stay attractive to
him: flowers in his bedroom, a more comfortable arm-chair in the corner, and even special
little extra dishes on his private table in the dining-room. Conversations, too, with
"Mademoiselle Ils" became more and more frequent and pleasant, and although they seldom
travelled beyond the weather, or the details of the town, the girl, he noticed, was never in a
hurry to bring them to an end, and often contrived to interject little odd sentences that he
never properly understood, yet felt to be significant.
And it was these stray remarks, full of a meaning that evaded him, that pointed to some
hidden purpose of her own and made him feel uneasy. They all had to do, he felt sure, with
reasons for his staying on in the town indefinitely.
"And has M'sieur not even yet come to a decision?" she said softly in his ear, sitting beside
him in the sunny yard before djeuner, the acquaintance having progressed with significant
rapidity. "Because, if it's so difficult, we must all try together to help him!"
The question startled him, following upon his own thoughts. It was spoken with a pretty
laugh, and a stray bit of hair across one eye, as she turned and peered at him half roguishly.
Possibly he did not quite understand the French of it, for her near presence always confused
his small knowledge of the language distressingly. Yet the words, and her manner, and
something else that lay behind it all in her mind, frightened him. It gave such point to his
feeling that the town was waiting for him to make his mind up on some important matter.
At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she was there so close beside him in her soft
dark dress, thrilled him inexpressibly.
"It is true I find it difficult to leave," he stammered, losing his way deliciously in the depths of
her eyes, "and especially now that Mademoiselle Ils has come."
He was surprised at the success of his sentence, and quite delighted with the little gallantry of
it. But at the same time he could have bitten his tongue off for having said it.
"Then after all you like our little town, or you would not be pleased to stay on," she said,
ignoring the compliment.

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"I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you," he cried, feeling that his tongue was
somehow slipping beyond the control of his brain. And he was on the verge of saying all
manner of other things of the wildest description, when the girl sprang lightly up from her
chair beside him, and made to go.
"It is soupe l'onion to-day!" she cried, laughing back at him through the sunlight, "and I
must go and see about it. Otherwise, you know, M'sieur will not enjoy his dinner, and then,
perhaps, he will leave us!"
He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with all the grace and lightness of the feline race,
and her simple black dress clothed her, he thought, exactly like the fur of the same supple
species. She turned once to laugh at him from the porch with the glass door, and then stopped
a moment to speak to her mother, who sat knitting as usual in her corner seat just inside the
hall-way.
But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell upon this ungainly woman, the pair of them
appeared suddenly as other than they were? Whence came that transforming dignity and sense
of power that enveloped them both as by magic? What was it about that massive woman that
made her appear instantly regal, and set her on a throne in some dark and dreadful scenery,
wielding a sceptre over the red glare of some tempestuous orgy? And why did this slender
stripling of a girl, graceful as a willow, lithe as a young leopard, assume suddenly an air of
sinister majesty, and move with flame and smoke about her head, and the darkness of night
beneath her feet?
Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed. Then, almost simultaneously with its
appearance, the queer notion vanished again, and the sunlight of day caught them both, and he
heard her laughing to her mother about the soupe l'onion, and saw her glancing back at him
over her dear little shoulder with a smile that made him think of a dew-kissed rose bending
lightly before summer airs.
And, indeed, the onion soup was particularly excellent that day, because he saw another cover
laid at his small table, and, with fluttering heart, heard the waiter murmur by way of
explanation that "Ma'mselle Ils would honour M'sieur to-day at djeuner, as her custom
sometimes is with her mother's guests."
So actually she sat by him all through that delirious meal, talking quietly to him in easy
French, seeing that he was well looked after, mixing the salad-dressing, and even helping him
with her own hand. And, later in the afternoon, while he was smoking in the courtyard,
longing for a sight of her as soon as her duties were done, she came again to his side, and
when he rose to meet her, she stood facing him a moment, full of a perplexing sweet shyness
before she spoke
"My mother thinks you ought to know more of the beauties of our little town, and I think so
too! Would M'sieur like me to be his guide, perhaps? I can show him everything, for our
family has lived here for many generations."
She had him by the hand, indeed, before he could find a single word to express his pleasure,
and led him, all unresisting, out into the street, yet in such a way that it seemed perfectly
natural she should do so, and without the faintest suggestion of boldness or immodesty. Her
face glowed with the pleasure and interest of it, and with her short dress and tumbled hair she
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looked every bit the charming child of seventeen that she was, innocent and playful, proud of
her native town, and alive beyond her years to the sense of its ancient beauty.
So they went over the town together, and she showed him what she considered its chief
interest: the tumble-down old house where her forebears had lived; the sombre, aristocraticlooking mansion where her mother's family dwelt for centuries, and the ancient market-place
where several hundred years before the witches had been burnt by the score. She kept up a
lively running stream of talk about it all, of which he understood not a fiftieth part as he
trudged along by her side, cursing his forty-five years and feeling all the yearnings of his early
manhood revive and jeer at him. And, as she talked, England and Surbiton seemed very far
away indeed, almost in another age of the world's history. Her voice touched something
immeasurably old in him, something that slept deep. It lulled the surface parts of his
consciousness to sleep, allowing what was far more ancient to awaken. Like the town, with its
elaborate pretence of modern active life, the upper layers of his being became dulled, soothed,
muffled, and what lay underneath began to stir in its sleep. That big Curtain swayed a little to
and fro. Presently it might lift altogether....
He began to understand a little better at last. The mood of the town was reproducing itself in
him. In proportion as his ordinary external self became muffled, that inner secret life, that was
far more real and vital, asserted itself. And this girl was surely the high-priestess of it all, the
chief instrument of its accomplishment. New thoughts, with new interpretations, flooded his
mind as she walked beside him through the winding streets, while the picturesque old gabled
town, softly coloured in the sunset, had never appeared to him so wholly wonderful and
seductive.
And only one curious incident came to disturb and puzzle him, slight in itself, but utterly
inexplicable, bringing white terror into the child's face and a scream to her laughing lips. He
had merely pointed to a column of blue smoke that rose from the burning autumn leaves and
made a picture against the red roofs, and had then run to the wall and called her to his side to
watch the flames shooting here and there through the heap of rubbish. Yet, at the sight of it, as
though taken by surprise, her face had altered dreadfully, and she had turned and run like the
wind, calling out wild sentences to him as she ran, of which he had not understood a single
word, except that the fire apparently frightened her, and she wanted to get quickly away from
it, and to get him away too.
Yet five minutes later she was as calm and happy again as though nothing had happened to
alarm or waken troubled thoughts in her, and they had both forgotten the incident.
They were leaning over the ruined ramparts together listening to the weird music of the band
as he had heard it the first day of his arrival. It moved him again profoundly as it had done
before, and somehow he managed to find his tongue and his best French. The girl leaned
across the stones close beside him. No one was about. Driven by some remorseless engine
within he began to stammer somethinghe hardly knew whatof his strange admiration for
her. Almost at the first word she sprang lightly off the wall and came up smiling in front of
him, just touching his knees as he sat there. She was hatless as usual, and the sun caught her
hair and one side of her cheek and throat.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried, clapping her little hands softly in his face, "so very glad, because
that means that if you like me you must also like what I do, and what I belong to."

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Already he regretted bitterly having lost control of himself. Something in the phrasing of her
sentence chilled him. He knew the fear of embarking upon an unknown and dangerous sea.
"You will take part in our real life, I mean," she added softly, with an indescribable coaxing
of manner, as though she noticed his shrinking. "You will come back to us."
Already this slip of a child seemed to dominate him; he felt her power coming over him more
and more; something emanated from her that stole over his senses and made him aware that
her personality, for all its simple grace, held forces that were stately, imposing, august. He
saw her again moving through smoke and flame amid broken and tempestuous scenery,
alarmingly strong, her terrible mother by her side. Dimly this shone through her smile and
appearance of charming innocence.
"You will, I know," she repeated, holding him with her eyes.
They were quite alone up there on the ramparts, and the sensation that she was overmastering
him stirred a wild sensuousness in his blood. The mingled abandon and reserve in her
attracted him furiously, and all of him that was man rose up and resisted the creeping
influence, at the same time acclaiming it with the full delight of his forgotten youth. An
irresistible desire came to him to question her, to summon what still remained to him of his
own little personality in an effort to retain the right to his normal self.
The girl had grown quiet again, and was now leaning on the broad wall close beside him,
gazing out across the darkening plain, her elbows on the coping, motionless as a figure carved
in stone. He took his courage in both hands.
"Tell me, Ils," he said, unconsciously imitating her own purring softness of voice, yet aware
that he was utterly in earnest, "what is the meaning of this town, and what is this real life you
speak of? And why is it that the people watch me from morning to night? Tell me what it all
means? And, tell me," he added more quickly with passion in his voice, "what you really
areyourself?"
She turned her head and looked at him through half-closed eyelids, her growing inner
excitement betraying itself by the faint colour that ran like a shadow across her face.
"It seems to me,"he faltered oddly under her gaze"that I have some right to know"
Suddenly she opened her eyes to the full. "You love me, then?" she asked softly.
"I swear," he cried impetuously, moved as by the force of a rising tide, "I never felt beforeI
have never known any other girl who"
"Then you have the right to know," she calmly interrupted his confused confession, "for love
shares all secrets."
She paused, and a thrill like fire ran swiftly through him. Her words lifted him off the earth,
and he felt a radiant happiness, followed almost the same instant in horrible contrast by the
thought of death. He became aware that she had turned her eyes upon his own and was
speaking again.

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"The real life I speak of," she whispered, "is the old, old life within, the life of long ago, the
life to which you, too, once belonged, and to which you still belong."
A faint wave of memory troubled the deeps of his soul as her low voice sank into him. What
she was saying he knew instinctively to be true, even though he could not as yet understand
its full purport. His present life seemed slipping from him as he listened, merging his
personality in one that was far older and greater. It was this loss of his present self that
brought to him the thought of death.
"You came here," she went on, "with the purpose of seeking it, and the people felt your
presence and are waiting to know what you decide, whether you will leave them without
having found it, or whether"
Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her face began to change, growing larger and
darker with an expression of age.
"It is their thoughts constantly playing about your soul that makes you feel they watch you.
They do not watch you with their eyes. The purposes of their inner life are calling to you,
seeking to claim you. You were all part of the same life long, long ago, and now they want
you back again among them."
Vezin's timid heart sank with dread as he listened; but the girl's eyes held him with a net of
joy so that he had no wish to escape. She fascinated him, as it were, clean out of his normal
self.
"Alone, however, the people could never have caught and held you," she resumed. "The
motive force was not strong enough; it has faded through all these years. But I"she paused a
moment and looked at him with complete confidence in her splendid eyes"I possess the
spell to conquer you and hold you: the spell of old love. I can win you back again and make
you live the old life with me, for the force of the ancient tie between us, if I choose to use it, is
irresistible. And I do choose to use it. I still want you. And you, dear soul of my dim past"
she pressed closer to him so that her breath passed across his eyes, and her voice positively
sang"I mean to have you, for you love me and are utterly at my mercy."
Vezin heard, and yet did not hear; understood, yet did not understand. He had passed into a
condition of exaltation. The world was beneath his feet, made of music and flowers, and he
was flying somewhere far above it through the sunshine of pure delight. He was breathless
and giddy with the wonder of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, the terror of it all,
the dreadful thought of death, pressed ever behind her sentences. For flames shot through her
voice out of black smoke and licked at his soul.
And they communicated with one another, it seemed to him, by a process of swift telepathy,
for his French could never have compassed all he said to her. Yet she understood perfectly,
and what she said to him was like the recital of verses long since known. And the mingled
pain and sweetness of it as he listened were almost more than his little soul could hold.
"Yet I came here wholly by chance" he heard himself saying.

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"No," she cried with passion, "you came here because I called to you. I have called to you for
years, and you came with the whole force of the past behind you. You had to come, for I own
you, and I claim you."
She rose again and moved closer, looking at him with a certain insolence in the facethe
insolence of power.
The sun had set behind the towers of the old cathedral and the darkness rose up from the plain
and enveloped them. The music of the band had ceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung
motionless, but the chill of the autumn evening rose about them and made Vezin shiver. There
was no sound but the sound of their voices and the occasional soft rustle of the girl's dress. He
could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He scarcely realised where he was or what he was
doing. Some terrible magic of the imagination drew him deeply down into the tombs of his
own being, telling him in no unfaltering voice that her words shadowed forth the truth. And
this simple little French maid, speaking beside him with so strange authority, he saw curiously
alter into quite another being. As he stared into her eyes, the picture in his mind grew and
lived, dressing itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree of reality he was compelled to
acknowledge. As once before, he saw her tall and stately, moving through wild and broken
scenery of forests and mountain caverns, the glare of flames behind her head and clouds of
shifting smoke about her feet. Dark leaves encircled her hair, flying loosely in the wind, and
her limbs shone through the merest rags of clothing. Others were about her, too, and ardent
eyes on all sides cast delirious glances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only,
one whom she held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some tempestuous orgy to
the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led circled about a great and awful Figure on
a throne, brooding over the scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces
and forms crowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one she held by the hand he
knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape upon the throne he knew to be her mother.
The vision rose within him, rushing to him down the long years of buried time, crying aloud
to him with the voice of memory reawakened.... And then the scene faded away and he saw
the clear circle of the girl's eyes gazing steadfastly into his own, and she became once more
the pretty little daughter of the innkeeper, and he found his voice again.
"And you," he whispered tremblingly"you child of visions and enchantment, how is it that
you so bewitch me that I loved you even before I saw?"
She drew herself up beside him with an air of rare dignity.
"The call of the Past," she said; "and besides," she added proudly, "in the real life I am a
princess"
"A princess!" he cried.
"and my mother is a queen!"
At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight tore at his heart and swept him into sheer
ecstasy. To hear that sweet singing voice, and to see those adorable little lips utter such things,
upset his balance beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms and covered her
unresisting face with kisses.

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But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he felt that she was soft and
loathsome, and that her answering kisses stained his very soul.... And when, presently, she
had freed herself and vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the wall in a
state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her yielding body, and inwardly
raging at the weakness that he already dimly realised must prove his undoing.
And from the shadows of the old buildings into which she disappeared there rose in the
stillness of the night a singular, long-drawn cry, which at first he took for laughter, but which
later he was sure he recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat.
V
For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, alone with his surging thoughts and
emotions. He understood at length that he had done the one thing necessary to call down upon
him the whole force of this ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had acknowledged
the tie of olden days, and had revived it. And the memory of that soft impalpable caress in the
darkness of the inn corridor came back to him with a shudder. The girl had first mastered him,
and then led him to the one act that was necessary for her purpose. He had been waylaid, after
the lapse of centuriescaught, and conquered.
Dimly he realised this, and sought to make plans for his escape. But, for the moment at any
rate, he was powerless to manage his thoughts or will, for the sweet, fantastic madness of the
whole adventure mounted to his brain like a spell, and he gloried in the feeling that he was
utterly enchanted and moving in a world so much larger and wilder than the one he had ever
been accustomed to.
The moon, pale and enormous, was just rising over the sea-like plain, when at last he rose to
go. Her slanting rays drew all the houses into new perspective, so that their roofs, already
glistening with dew, seemed to stretch much higher into the sky than usual, and their gables
and quaint old towers lay far away in its purple reaches.
The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He moved softly, keeping to the shadows; but
the streets were all deserted and very silent; the doors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a
soul was astir. The hush of night lay over everything; it was like a town of the dead, a
churchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.
Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly disappeared to, he made his way
to a back door that entered the inn by means of the stables, thinking thus to reach his room
unobserved. He reached the courtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the shadow of
the wall. He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as the old men did when they
entered the salle manger. He was horrified to find himself doing this instinctively. A strange
impulse came to him, catching him somehow in the centre of his bodyan impulse to drop
upon all fours and run swiftly and silently. He glanced upwards and the idea came to him to
leap up upon his window-sill overhead instead of going round by the stairs. This occurred to
him as the easiest, and most natural way. It was like the beginning of some horrible
transformation of himself into something else. He was fearfully strung up.
The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark along the side of the street where he
moved. He kept among the deepest of them, and reached the porch with the glass doors.

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But here there was light; the inmates, unfortunately, were still about. Hoping to slip across the
hall unobserved and reach the stairs, he opened the door carefully and stole in. Then he saw
that the hall was not empty. A large dark thing lay against the wall on his left. At first he
thought it must be household articles. Then it moved, and he thought it was an immense cat,
distorted in some way by the play of light and shadow. Then it rose straight up before him and
he saw that it was the proprietress.
What she had been doing in this position he could only venture a dreadful guess, but the
moment she stood up and faced him he was aware of some terrible dignity clothing her about
that instantly recalled the girl's strange saying that she was a queen. Huge and sinister she
stood there under the little oil lamp; alone with him in the empty hall. Awe stirred in his heart,
and the roots of some ancient fear. He felt that he must bow to her and make some kind of
obeisance. The impulse was fierce and irresistible, as of long habit. He glanced quickly about
him. There was no one there. Then he deliberately inclined his head toward her. He bowed.
"Enfin! M'sieur s'est donc dcid. C'est bien alors. J'en suis contente."
Her words came to him sonorously as through a great open space.
Then the great figure came suddenly across the flagged hall at him and seized his trembling
hands. Some overpowering force moved with her and caught him.
"On pourrait faire un p'tit tour ensemble, n'est-ce pas? Nous y allons cette nuit et il faut
s'exercer un peu d'avance pour cela. Ils, Ils, viens donc ici. Viens vite!"
And she whirled him round in the opening steps of some dance that seemed oddly and
horribly familiar. They made no sound on the stones, this strangely assorted couple. It was all
soft and stealthy. And presently, when the air seemed to thicken like smoke, and a red glare as
of flame shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined them and that his hand
the mother had released was now tightly held by the daughter. Ils had come in answer to the
call, and he saw her with leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, clothed in tattered vestiges
of some curious garment, beautiful as the night, and horribly, odiously, loathsomely
seductive.
"To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!" they cried. "On to the Witches' Sabbath!"
Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest
measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on
the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his
heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.
Suddenly they released his hands and he heard the voice of the mother cry that it was time,
and they must go. Which way they went he did not pause to see. He only realised that he was
free, and he blundered through the darkness till he found the stairs and then tore up them to
his room as though all hell was at his heels.
He flung himself on the sofa, with his face in his hands, and groaned. Swiftly reviewing a
dozen ways of immediate escape, all equally impossible, he finally decided that the only thing
to do for the moment was to sit quiet and wait. He must see what was going to happen. At
least in the privacy of his own bedroom he would be fairly safe. The door was locked. He
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crossed over and softly opened the window which gave upon the courtyard and also permitted
a partial view of the hall through the glass doors.
As he did so the hum and murmur of a great activity reached his ears from the streets
beyondthe sound of footsteps and voices muffled by distance. He leaned out cautiously and
listened. The moonlight was clear and strong now, but his own window was in shadow, the
silver disc being still behind the house. It came to him irresistibly that the inhabitants of the
town, who a little while before had all been invisible behind closed doors, were now issuing
forth, busy upon some secret and unholy errand. He listened intently.
At first everything about him was silent, but soon he became aware of movements going on in
the house itself. Rustlings and cheepings came to him across that still, moonlit yard. A
concourse of living beings sent the hum of their activity into the night. Things were on the
move everywhere. A biting, pungent odour rose through the air, coming he knew not whence.
Presently his eyes became glued to the windows of the opposite wall where the moonshine
fell in a soft blaze. The roof overhead, and behind him, was reflected clearly in the panes of
glass, and he saw the outlines of dark bodies moving with long footsteps over the tiles and
along the coping. They passed swiftly and silently, shaped like immense cats, in an endless
procession across the pictured glass, and then appeared to leap down to a lower level where he
lost sight of them. He just caught the soft thudding of their leaps. Sometimes their shadows
fell upon the white wall opposite, and then he could not make out whether they were the
shadows of human beings or of cats. They seemed to change swiftly from one to the other.
The transformation looked horribly real, for they leaped like human beings, yet changed
swiftly in the air immediately afterwards, and dropped like animals.
The yard, too, beneath him, was now alive with the creeping movements of dark forms all
stealthily drawing towards the porch with the glass doors. They kept so closely to the wall that
he could not determine their actual shape, but when he saw that they passed on to the great
congregation that was gathering in the hall, he understood that these were the creatures whose
leaping shadows he had first seen reflected in the windowpanes opposite. They were coming
from all parts of the town, reaching the appointed meeting-place across the roofs and tiles, and
springing from level to level till they came to the yard.
Then a new sound caught his ear, and he saw that the windows all about him were being
softly opened, and that to each window came a face. A moment later figures began dropping
hurriedly down into the yard. And these figures, as they lowered themselves down from the
windows, were human, he saw; but once safely in the yard they fell upon all fours and
changed in the swiftest possible second intocatshuge, silent cats. They ran in streams to
join the main body in the hall beyond.
So, after all, the rooms in the house had not been empty and unoccupied.
Moreover, what he saw no longer filled him with amazement. For he remembered it all. It was
familiar. It had all happened before just so, hundreds of times, and he himself had taken part
in it and known the wild madness of it all. The outline of the old building changed, the yard
grew larger, and he seemed to be staring down upon it from a much greater height through
smoky vapours. And, as he looked, half remembering, the old pains of long ago, fierce and
sweet, furiously assailed him, and the blood stirred horribly as he heard the Call of the Dance
again in his heart and tasted the ancient magic of Ils whirling by his side.

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Suddenly he started back. A great lithe cat had leaped softly up from the shadows below on to
the sill close to his face, and was staring fixedly at him with the eyes of a human. "Come," it
seemed to say, "come with us to the Dance! Change as of old! Transform yourself swiftly and
come!" Only too well he understood the creature's soundless call.
It was gone again in a flash with scarcely a sound of its padded feet on the stones, and then
others dropped by the score down the side of the house, past his very eyes, all changing as
they fell and darting away rapidly, softly, towards the gathering point. And again he felt the
dreadful desire to do likewise; to murmur the old incantation, and then drop upon hands and
knees and run swiftly for the great flying leap into the air. Oh, how the passion of it rose
within him like a flood, twisting his very entrails, sending his heart's desire flaming forth into
the night for the old, old Dance of the Sorcerers at the Witches' Sabbath! The whirl of the
stars was about him; once more he met the magic of the moon. The power of the wind,
rushing from precipice and forest, leaping from cliff to cliff across the valleys, tore him
away.... He heard the cries of the dancers and their wild laughter, and with this savage girl in
his embrace he danced furiously about the dim Throne where sat the Figure with the sceptre
of majesty....
Then, suddenly, all became hushed and still, and the fever died down a little in his heart. The
calm moonlight flooded a courtyard empty and deserted. They had started. The procession
was off into the sky. And he was left behindalone.
Vezin tiptoed softly across the room and unlocked the door. The murmur from the streets,
growing momentarily as he advanced, met his ears. He made his way with the utmost caution
down the corridor. At the head of the stairs he paused and listened. Below him, the hall where
they had gathered was dark and still, but through opened doors and windows on the far side of
the building came the sound of a great throng moving farther and farther into the distance.
He made his way down the creaking wooden stairs, dreading yet longing to meet some
straggler who should point the way, but finding no one; across the dark hall, so lately
thronged with living, moving things, and out through the opened front doors into the street.
He could not believe that he was really left behind, really forgotten, that he had been
purposely permitted to escape. It perplexed him.
Nervously he peered about him, and up and down the street; then, seeing nothing, advanced
slowly down the pavement.
The whole town, as he went, showed itself empty and deserted, as though a great wind had
blown everything alive out of it. The doors and windows of the houses stood open to the
night; nothing stirred; moonlight and silence lay over all. The night lay about him like a cloak.
The air, soft and cool, caressed his cheek like the touch of a great furry paw. He gained
confidence and began to walk quickly, though still keeping to the shadowed side. Nowhere
could he discover the faintest sign of the great unholy exodus he knew had just taken place.
The moon sailed high over all in a sky cloudless and serene.
Hardly realising where he was going, he crossed the open market-place and so came to the
ramparts, whence he knew a pathway descended to the high road and along which he could
make good his escape to one of the other little towns that lay to the northward, and so to the
railway.

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But first he paused and gazed out over the scene at his feet where the great plain lay like a
silver map of some dream country. The still beauty of it entered his heart, increasing his sense
of bewilderment and unreality. No air stirred, the leaves of the plane trees stood motionless,
the near details were defined with the sharpness of day against dark shadows, and in the
distance the fields and woods melted away into haze and shimmering mistiness.
But the breath caught in his throat and he stood stockstill as though transfixed when his gaze
passed from the horizon and fell upon the near prospect in the depth of the valley at his feet.
The whole lower slopes of the hill, that lay hid from the brightness of the moon, were aglow,
and through the glare he saw countless moving forms, shifting thick and fast between the
openings of the trees; while overhead, like leaves driven by the wind, he discerned flying
shapes that hovered darkly one moment against the sky and then settled down with cries and
weird singing through the branches into the region that was aflame.
Spellbound, he stood and stared for a time that he could not measure. And then, moved by one
of the terrible impulses that seemed to control the whole adventure, he climbed swiftly upon
the top of the broad coping, and balanced a moment where the valley gaped at his feet. But in
that very instant, as he stood hovering, a sudden movement among the shadows of the houses
caught his eye, and he turned to see the outline of a large animal dart swiftly across the open
space behind him, and land with a flying leap upon the top of the wall a little lower down. It
ran like the wind to his feet and then rose up beside him upon the ramparts. A shiver seemed
to run through the moonlight, and his sight trembled for a second. His heart pulsed fearfully.
Ils stood beside him, peering into his face.
Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl's face and skin, shining in the moonlight as she
stretched her hands towards him; she was dressed in wretched tattered garments that yet
became her mightily; rue and vervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy
light. He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms and leap with her from
their giddy perch into the valley below.
"See!" she cried, pointing with an arm on which the rags fluttered in the rising wind towards
the forest aglow in the distance. "See where they await us! The woods are alive! Already the
Great Ones are there, and the dance will soon begin! The salve is here! Anoint yourself and
come!"
Though a moment before the sky was clear and cloudless, yet even while she spoke the face
of the moon grew dark and the wind began to toss in the crests of the plane trees at his feet.
Stray gusts brought the sounds of hoarse singing and crying from the lower slopes of the hill,
and the pungent odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of the inn rose about him in
the air.
"Transform, transform!" she cried again, her voice rising like a song. "Rub well your skin
before you fly. Come! Come with me to the Sabbath, to the madness of its furious delight, to
the sweet abandonment of its evil worship! See! the Great Ones are there, and the terrible
Sacraments prepared. The Throne is occupied. Anoint and come! Anoint and come!"
She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping upon the wall with flaming eyes and hair
strewn upon the night. He too began to change swiftly. Her hands touched the skin of his face
and neck, streaking him with the burning salve that sent the old magic into his blood with the
power before which fades all that is good.
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A wild roar came up to his ears from the heart of the wood, and the girl, when she heard it,
leaped upon the wall in the frenzy of her wicked joy.
"Satan is there!" she screamed, rushing upon him and striving to draw him with her to the
edge of the wall. "Satan has come. The Sacraments call us! Come, with your dear apostate
soul, and we will worship and dance till the moon dies and the world is forgotten!"
Just saving himself from the dreadful plunge, Vezin struggled to release himself from her
grasp, while the passion tore at his reins and all but mastered him. He shrieked aloud, not
knowing what he said, and then he shrieked again. It was the old impulses, the old awful
habits instinctively finding voice; for though it seemed to him that he merely shrieked
nonsense, the words he uttered really had meaning in them, and were intelligible. It was the
ancient call. And it was heard below. It was answered.
The wind whistled at the skirts of his coat as the air round him darkened with many flying
forms crowding upwards out of the valley. The crying of hoarse voices smote upon his ears,
coming closer. Strokes of wind buffeted him, tearing him this way and that along the
crumbling top of the stone wall; and Ils clung to him with her long shining arms, smooth and
bare, holding him fast about the neck. But not Ils alone, for a dozen of them surrounded him,
dropping out of the air. The pungent odour of the anointed bodies stifled him, exciting him to
the old madness of the Sabbath, the dance of the witches and sorcerers doing honour to the
personified Evil of the world.
"Anoint and away! Anoint and away!" they cried in wild chorus about him. "To the Dance
that never dies! To the sweet and fearful fantasy of evil!"
Another moment and he would have yielded and gone, for his will turned soft and the flood of
passionate memory all but overwhelmed him, whenso can a small thing after the whole
course of an adventurehe caught his foot upon a loose stone in the edge of the wall, and
then fell with a sudden crash on to the ground below. But he fell towards the houses, in the
open space of dust and cobblestones, and fortunately not into the gaping depth of the valley
on the farther side.
And they, too, came in a tumbling heap about him, like flies upon a piece of food, but as they
fell he was released for a moment from the power of their touch, and in that brief instant of
freedom there flashed into his mind the sudden intuition that saved him. Before he could
regain his feet he saw them scrabbling awkwardly back upon the wall, as though bat-like they
could only fly by dropping from a height, and had no hold upon him in the open. Then, seeing
them perched there in a row like cats upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless, their eyes
like lamps, the sudden memory came back to him of Ils's terror at the sight of fire.
Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the dead leaves that lay under the wall.
Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, and the wind carried the flame in a long line down
the length of the wall, licking upwards as it ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded
row of forms upon the top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with a
great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the haunted valley, leaving
Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of the deserted ground.

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"Ils!" he called feebly; "Ils!" for his heart ached to think that she was really gone to the
great Dance without him, and that he had lost the opportunity of its fearful joy. Yet at the
same time his relief was so great, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind with the whole
thing, that he hardly knew what he was saying, and only cried aloud in the fierce storm of his
emotion....
The fire under the wall ran its course, and the moonlight came out again, soft and clear, from
its temporary eclipse. With one last shuddering look at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of
horrid wonder for the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still crowded and flew, he
turned his face towards the town and slowly made his way in the direction of the hotel.
And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a sound of howling, followed him from the
gleaming forest below, growing fainter and fainter with the bursts of wind as he disappeared
between the houses.
VI
"It may seem rather abrupt to you, this sudden tame ending," said Arthur Vezin, glancing with
flushed face and timid eyes at Dr. Silence sitting there with his notebook, "but the fact is
erfrom that moment my memory seems to have failed rather. I have no distinct recollection
of how I got home or what precisely I did.
"It appears I never went back to the inn at all. I only dimly recollect racing down a long white
road in the moonlight, past woods and villages, still and deserted, and then the dawn came up,
and I saw the towers of a biggish town and so came to a station.
"But, long before that, I remember pausing somewhere on the road and looking back to where
the hill-town of my adventure stood up in the moonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great
monstrous cat it lay there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two main streets,
and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking its torn ears against the sky. That
picture stays in my mind with the utmost vividness to this day.
"Another thing remains in my mind from that escapenamely, the sudden sharp reminder
that I had not paid my bill, and the decision I made, standing there on the dusty highroad, that
the small baggage I had left behind would more than settle for my indebtedness.
"For the rest, I can only tell you that I got coffee and bread at a caf on the outskirts of this
town I had come to, and soon after found my way to the station and caught a train later in the
day. That same evening I reached London."
"And how long altogether," asked John Silence quietly, "do you think you stayed in the town
of the adventure?"
Vezin looked up sheepishly.
"I was coming to that," he resumed, with apologetic wrigglings of his body. "In London I
found that I was a whole week out in my reckoning of time. I had stayed over a week in the
town, and it ought to have been September 15th,instead of which it was only September
10th!"

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"So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night or two in the inn?" queried the doctor.
Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat.
"I must have gained time somewhere," he said at length"somewhere or somehow. I
certainly had a week to my credit. I can't explain it. I can only give you the fact."
"And this happened to you last year, since when you have never been back to the place?"
"Last autumn, yes," murmured Vezin; "and I have never dared to go back. I think I never want
to."
"And, tell me," asked Dr. Silence at length, when he saw that the little man had evidently
come to the end of his words and had nothing more to say, "had you ever read up the subject
of the old witchcraft practices during the Middle Ages, or been at all interested in the
subject?"
"Never!" declared Vezin emphatically. "I had never given a thought to such matters so far as I
know"
"Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps?"
"Neverbefore my adventure; but I have since," he replied significantly.
There was, however, something still on the man's mind that he wished to relieve himself of by
confession, yet could only with difficulty bring himself to mention; and it was only after the
sympathetic tactfulness of the doctor had provided numerous openings that he at length
availed himself of one of them, and stammered that he would like to show him the marks he
still had on his neck where, he said, the girl had touched him with her anointed hands.
He took off his collar after infinite fumbling hesitation, and lowered his shirt a little for the
doctor to see. And there, on the surface of the skin, lay a faint reddish line across the shoulder
and extending a little way down the back towards the spine. It certainly indicated exactly the
position an arm might have taken in the act of embracing. And on the other side of the neck,
slightly higher up, was a similar mark, though not quite so clearly defined.
"That was where she held me that night on the ramparts," he whispered, a strange light
coming and going in his eyes.

It was some weeks later when I again found occasion to consult John Silence concerning
another extraordinary case that had come under my notice, and we fell to discussing Vezin's
story. Since hearing it, the doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his
secretaries had discovered that Vezin's ancestors had actually lived for generations in the very
town where the adventure came to him. Two of them, both women, had been tried and
convicted as witches, and had been burned alive at the stake. Moreover, it had not been
difficult to prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was built about 1700 upon the spot
where the funeral pyres stood and the executions took place. The town was a sort of

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headquarters for all the sorcerers and witches of the entire region, and after conviction they
were burnt there literally by scores.
"It seems strange," continued the doctor, "that Vezin should have remained ignorant of all
this; but, on the other hand, it was not the kind of history that successive generations would
have been anxious to keep alive, or to repeat to their children. Therefore I am inclined to think
he still knows nothing about it.
"The whole adventure seems to have been a very vivid revival of the memories of an earlier
life, caused by coming directly into contact with the living forces still intense enough to hang
about the place, and, by a most singular chance, too, with the very souls who had taken part
with him in the events of that particular life. For the mother and daughter who impressed him
so strangely must have been leading actors, with himself, in the scenes and practices of
witchcraft which at that period dominated the imaginations of the whole country.
"One has only to read the histories of the times to know that these witches claimed the power
of transforming themselves into various animals, both for the purposes of disguise and also to
convey themselves swiftly to the scenes of their imaginary orgies. Lycanthropy, or the power
to change themselves into wolves, was everywhere believed in, and the ability to transform
themselves into cats by rubbing their bodies with a special salve or ointment provided by
Satan himself, found equal credence. The witchcraft trials abound in evidences of such
universal beliefs."
Dr. Silence quoted chapter and verse from many writers on the subject, and showed how
every detail of Vezin's adventure had a basis in the practices of those dark days.
"But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man's own consciousness, I have no
doubt," he went on, in reply to my questions; "for my secretary who has been to the town to
investigate, discovered his signature in the visitors' book, and proved by it that he had arrived
on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill. He left two days later, and they
still were in possession of his dirty brown bag and some tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in
settlement of his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The daughter was absent from
home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he described her, told my secretary
that he had seemed a very strange, absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his
disappearance she had feared for a long time that he had met with a violent end in the
neighbouring forest where he used to roam about alone.
"I should like to have obtained a personal interview with the daughter so as to ascertain how
much was subjective and how much actually took place with her as Vezin told it. For her
dread of fire and the sight of burning must, of course, have been the intuitive memory of her
former painful death at the stake, and have thus explained why he fancied more than once that
he saw her through smoke and flame."
"And that mark on his skin, for instance?" I inquired.
"Merely the marks produced by hysterical brooding," he replied, "like the stigmata of the
religieuses, and the bruises which appear on the bodies of hypnotised subjects who have been
told to expect them. This is very common and easily explained. Only it seems curious that
these marks should have remained so long in Vezin's case. Usually they disappear quickly."

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"Obviously he is still thinking about it all, brooding, and living it all over again," I ventured.
"Probably. And this makes me fear that the end of his trouble is not yet. We shall hear of him
again. It is a case, alas! I can do little to alleviate."
Dr. Silence spoke gravely and with sadness in his voice.
"And what do you make of the Frenchman in the train?" I asked further"the man who
warned him against the place, cause du sommeil et cause des chats? Surely a very singular
incident?"
"A very singular incident indeed," he made answer slowly, "and one I can only explain on the
basis of a highly improbable coincidence"
"Namely?"
"That the man was one who had himself stayed in the town and undergone there a similar
experience. I should like to find this man and ask him. But the crystal is useless here, for I
have no slightest clue to go upon, and I can only conclude that some singular psychic affinity,
some force still active in his being out of the same past life, drew him thus to the personality
of Vezin, and enabled him to fear what might happen to him, and thus to warn him as he did.
"Yes," he presently continued, half talking to himself, "I suspect in this case that Vezin was
swept into the vortex of forces arising out of the intense activities of a past life, and that he
lived over again a scene in which he had often played a leading part centuries before. For
strong actions set up forces that are so slow to exhaust themselves, they may be said in a sense
never to die. In this case they were not vital enough to render the illusion complete, so that the
little man found himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the present and the past; yet
he was sufficiently sensitive to recognise that it was true, and to fight against the degradation
of returning, even in memory, to a former and lower state of development.
"Ah yes!" he continued, crossing the floor to gaze at the darkening sky, and seemingly quite
oblivious of my presence, "subliminal up-rushes of memory like this can be exceedingly
painful, and sometimes exceedingly dangerous. I only trust that this gentle soul may soon
escape from this obsession of a passionate and tempestuous past. But I doubt it, I doubt it."
His voice was hushed with sadness as he spoke, and when he turned back into the room again
there was an expression of profound yearning upon his face, the yearning of a soul whose
desire to help is sometimes greater than his power.

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Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English writer of

tales of the supernatural. The character of John Silence
pioneered the "psychic detective" genre. This volume
contains all six stories of John Silence and his
investinations into the paranormal.
254 pages
ISBN 9781409239994
Buy it directly from us!

123

THE MYSTERY OF THE CIRCULAR CHAMBER

By
L T Meade & Robert Eustace
One day in late September I received the following letter from my lawyer:
"My Dear Bell,
"I shall esteem it a favour if you can make it convenient to call upon me at ten o'clock tomorrow morning on a matter of extreme privacy."
At the appointed hour I was shown into Mr. Edgcombe's private room. I had known him for
yearswe were, in fact, old friendsand I was startled now by the look of worry, not to say
anxiety, on his usually serene features.
"You are the very man I want, Bell," he cried. "Sit down; I have a great deal to say to you.
There is a mystery of a very grave nature which I hope you may solve for me. It is in
connection with a house said to be haunted."
He fixed his bright eyes on my face as he spoke. I sat perfectly silent, waiting for him to
continue.
"In the first place," he resumed, "I must ask you to regard the matter as confidential."
"Certainly," I answered.
"You know," he went on, "that I have often laughed at your special hobby, but it occurred to
me yesterday that the experiences you have lived through may enable you to give me valuable
assistance in this difficulty."
"I will do my best for you, Edgcombe," I replied.
He lay back in his chair, folding his hands.
"The case is briefly as follows," he began. "It is connected with the family of the Wentworths.
The only son, Archibald, the artist, has just died under most extraordinary circumstances. He
was, as you probably know, one of the most promising water-colour painters of the younger
school, and his pictures in this year's Academy met with universal praise. He was the heir to
the Wentworth estates, and his death has caused a complication of claims from a member of a
collateral branch of the family, who, when the present squire dies, is entitled to the money.
This man has spent the greater part of his life in Australia, is badly off, and evidently belongs
to a rowdy set. He has been to see me two or three times, and I must say frankly that I am not
taken with his appearance."
"Had he anything to do with the death?" I interrupted.
"Nothing whatever, as you will quickly perceive. Wentworth has been accustomed from time
to time to go alone on sketching tours to different parts of the country. He has tramped about
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on foot, and visited odd, out-of-the-way nooks searching for subjects. He never took much
money with him, and always travelled as an apparently poor man. A month ago he started off
alone on one of these tours. He had a handsome commission from Barlow & Co., picturedealers in the Strand. He was to paint certain parts of the river Merran; and although he
certainly did not need money, he seemed glad of an object for a good ramble. He parted with
his family in the best of health and spirits, and wrote to them from time to time; but a week
ago they heard the news that he had died suddenly at an inn on the Merran. There was, of
course, an inquest and an autopsy. Dr. Miles Gordon, the Wentworths' consulting physician,
was telegraphed for, and was present at the post-mortem examination. He is absolutely
puzzled to account for the death. The medical examination showed Wentworth to be in
apparently perfect health at the time. There was no lesion to be discovered upon which to base
a different opinion, all the organs being healthy. Neither was there any trace of poison, nor
marks of violence. The coroner's verdict was that Wentworth died of syncope, which, as you
know perhaps, is a synonym for an unknown cause. The inn where he died is a very lonely
one, and has the reputation of being haunted. The landlord seems to bear a bad character,
although nothing has ever been proved against him. But a young girl who lives at the inn gave
evidence which at first startled every one. She said at the inquest that she had earnestly
warned Wentworth not to sleep in the haunted room. She had scarcely told the coroner so
before she fell to the floor in an epileptic fit. When she came to herself she was sullen and
silent, and nothing more could be extracted from her. The old man, the innkeeper, explained
that the girl was half-witted, but he did not attempt to deny that the house had the reputation
of being haunted, and said that he had himself begged Wentworth not to put up there. Well,
that is about the whole of the story. The coroner's inquest seems to deny the evidence of foul
play, but I have my very strong suspicions. What I want you to do is to ascertain if they are
correct. Will you undertake the case?"
"I will certainly do so," I replied. "Please let me have any further particulars, and a written
document to show, in case of need, that I am acting under your directions."
Edgcombe agreed to this, and I soon afterwards took my leave. The case had the features of
an interesting problem, and I hoped that I should prove successful in solving it.
That evening I made my plans carefully. I would go into shire early on the following
morning, assuming for my purpose the character of an amateur photographer. Having got all
necessary particulars from Edgcombe, I made a careful mental map of my operations. First of
all I would visit a little village of the name of Harkhurst, and put up at the inn, the Crown and
Thistle. Here Wentworth had spent a fortnight when he first started on his commission to
make drawings of the river Merran. I thought it likely that I should obtain some information
there. Circumstances must guide me as to my further steps, but my intention was to proceed
from Harkhurst to the Castle Inn, which was situated about six miles further up the river. This
was the inn where the tragedy had occurred.
Towards evening on the following day I arrived at Harkhurst. When my carriage drew up at
the Crown and Thistle, the landlady was standing in the doorway. She was a buxom-looking
dame, with a kindly face. I asked for a bed.
"Certainly, sir," she answered. She turned with me into the little inn, and taking me upstairs,
showed me a small room, quite clean and comfortable, looking out on the yard. I said it would
do capitally, and she hurried downstairs to prepare my supper. After this meal, which proved

125

to be excellent, I determined to visit the landlord in the bar. I found him chatty and
communicative.
"This is a lonely place," he said; "we don't often have a soul staying with us for a month at a
time." As he spoke he walked to the door, and I followed him. The shades of night were
beginning to fall, but the picturesqueness of the little hamlet could not but commend itself to
me.
"And yet it is a lovely spot," I said. "I should have thought tourists would have thronged to it.
It is at least an ideal place for photographers."
"You are right there, sir," replied the man; "and although we don't often have company to stay
in the inn, now and then we have a stray artist. It's not three weeks back," he continued, "that
we had a gentleman like you, sir, only a bit younger, to stay with us for a week or two. He
was an artist, and drew from morning till nightah, poor fellow!"
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"I have good cause, sir. Here, wife," continued the landlord, looking over his shoulder at Mrs.
Johnson, the landlady, who now appeared on the scene, "this gentleman has been asking me
questions about our visitor, Mr. Wentworth, but perhaps we ought not to inflict such a dismal
story upon him to-night."
"Pray do," I said; "what you have already hinted at arouses my curiosity. Why should you pity
Mr. Wentworth?"
"He is dead, sir," said the landlady, in a solemn voice. I gave a pretended start, and she
continued,
"And it was all his own fault. Ah, dear! it makes me almost cry to think of it. He was as nice a
gentleman as I ever set eyes on, and so strong, hearty, and pleasant. Well, sir, everything went
well until one day he said to me, 'I am about to leave you, Mrs. Johnson. I am going to a little
place called the Castle Inn, further up the Merran.'
"'The Castle Inn!' I cried. 'No, Mr. Wentworth, that you won't, not if you value your life.'
"'And why not?' he said, looking at me with as merry blue eyes as you ever saw in anybody's
head. 'Why should I not visit the Castle Inn? I have a commission to make some drawings of
that special bend of the river.'
"'Well, then, sir,' I answered, 'if that is the case, you'll just have a horse and trap from here and
drive over as often as you want to. For the Castle Inn ain't a fit place for a Christian to put up
at.'
"'What do you mean?' he asked of me.
"'It is said to be haunted, sir, and what does happen in that house the Lord only knows, but
there's not been a visitor at the inn for some years, not since Bailiff Holt came by his death.'
"'Came by his death?' he asked. 'And how was that?'
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"'God knows, but I don't,' I answered. 'At the coroner's inquest it was said that he died from
syncope, whatever that means, but the folks round here said it was fright.' Mr. Wentworth just
laughed at me. He didn't mind a word I said, and the next day, sir, he was off, carrying his
belongings with him."
"Well, and what happened?" I asked, seeing that she paused.
"What happened, sir? Just what I expected. Two days afterwards came the news of his death.
Poor young gentleman! He died in the very room where Holt had breathed his last; and, oh, if
there wasn't a fuss and to-do, for it turned out that, although he seemed quite poor to us, with
little or no money, he was no end of a swell, and had rich relations, and big estates coming to
him; and, of course, there was a coroner's inquest and all the rest, and great doctors came
down from London, and our Dr. Stanmore, who lives down the street, was sent for, and
though they did all they could, and examined him, as it were, with a microscope, they could
find no cause for death, and so they give it out that it was syncope, just as they did in the case
of poor Holt. But, sir, it wasn't; it was fright, sheer fright. The place is haunted. It's a
mysterious, dreadful house, and I only hope you won't have nothing to do with it."
She added a few more words and presently left us.
"That's a strange story," I said, turning to Johnson; "your wife has excited my curiosity. I
should much like to get further particulars."
"There don't seem to be anything more to tell, sir," replied Johnson. "It's true what the wife
says, that the Castle Inn has a bad name. It's not the first, no, nor the second, death that has
occurred there."
"You mentioned your village doctor; do you think he could enlighten me on the subject?"
"I am sure he would do his best, sir. He lives only six doors away, in a red house. Maybe you
wouldn't mind stepping down the street and speaking to him?"
"You are sure he would not think it a liberty?"
"Not he, sir; he'll be only too pleased to exchange a word with some one outside this sleepy
little place."
"Then I'll call on him," I answered, and taking up my hat I strolled down the street. I was
lucky in finding Dr. Stanmore at home, and the moment I saw his face I determined to take
him into my confidence.
"The fact is this," I said, when he had shaken hands with me, "I should not dream of taking
this liberty did I not feel certain that you could help me."
"And in what way?" he asked, not stiffly, but with a keen, inquiring, interested glance.
"I have been sent down from London to inquire into the Wentworth mystery," I said.
"Is that so?" he said, with a start. Then he continued gravely: "I fear you have come on a wildgoose chase. There was nothing discovered at the autopsy to account for the death. There
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were no marks on the body, and all the organs were healthy. I met Wentworth often while he
was staying here, and he was as hearty and strong-looking a young man as I have ever come
across."
"But the Castle Inn has a bad reputation," I said.
"That is true; the people here are afraid of it. It is said to be haunted. But really, sir, you and I
need not trouble ourselves about stupid reports of that sort. Old Bindloss, the landlord, has
lived there for years, and there has never been anything proved against him."
"Is he alone?"
"No; his wife and a grandchild live there also."
"A grandchild?" I said. "Did not this girl give some startling evidence at the inquest?"
"Nothing of any consequence," replied Dr. Stanmore; "she only repeated what Bindloss had
already said himselfthat the house was haunted, and that she had asked Wentworth not to
sleep in the room."
"Has anything ever been done to explain the reason why this room is said to be haunted?" I
continued.
"Not that I know of. Rats are probably at the bottom of it."
"But have not there been other deaths in the house?"
"That is true."
"How many?"
"Well, I have myself attended no less than three similar inquests."
"And what was the verdict of the jury?"
"In each case the verdict was death from syncope."
"Which means, cause unknown," I said, jumping impatiently to my feet. "I wonder, Dr.
Stanmore, that you are satisfied to leave the matter in such a state."
"And, pray, what can I do?" he inquired. "I am asked to examine a body. I find all the organs
in perfect health; I cannot trace the least appearance of violence, nor can I detect poison. What
other evidence can I honestly give?"
"I can only say that I should not be satisfied," I replied. "I now wish to add that I have come
down from London determined to solve this mystery. I shall myself put up at the Castle Inn."
"Well?" said Dr. Stanmore.
"And sleep in the haunted room."
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"Of course you don't believe in the ghost."

"No; but I believe in foul play. Now, Dr. Stanmore, will you help me?"
"Most certainly, if I can. What do you wish me to do?"
"ThisI shall go to the Castle Inn to-morrow. If at the end of three days I do not return here,
will you go in search of me, and at the same time post this letter to Mr. Edgcombe, my
London lawyer?"
"If you do not appear in three days I'll kick up no end of a row," said Dr. Stanmore, "and, of
course, post your letter."
Soon afterwards I shook hands with the doctor and left him.
After an early dinner on the following day, I parted with my good-natured landlord and his
wife, and with my knapsack and kodak strapped over my shoulders, started on my way. I took
care to tell no one that I was going to the Castle Inn, and for this purpose doubled back
through a wood, and so found the right road. The sun was nearly setting when at last I
approached a broken-down signpost, on which, in half-obliterated characters, I could read the
words, "To the Castle Inn." I found myself now at the entrance of a small lane, which was
evidently little frequented, as it was considerably grass-grown. From where I stood I could
catch no sight of any habitation, but just at that moment a low, somewhat inconsequent laugh
fell upon my ears. I turned quickly and saw a pretty girl, with bright eyes and a childish face,
gazing at me with interest. I had little doubt that she was old Bindloss's grand-daughter.
"Will you kindly tell me," I asked, "if this is the way to the Castle Inn?"
My remark evidently startled her. She made a bound forward, seized me by my hand, and
tried to push me away from the entrance to the lane into the high road.
"Go away!" she cried; "we have no beds fit for gentlemen at the Castle Inn. Go! go!" she
continued, and she pointed up the winding road. Her eyes were now blazing in her head, but I
noticed that her lips trembled, and that very little would cause her to burst into tears.
"But I am tired and footsore," I answered. "I should like to put up at the inn for the night."
"Don't!" she repeated; "they'll put you into a room with a ghost. Don't go; 'tain't a place for
gentlemen." Here she burst not into tears, but into a fit of high, shrill, almost idiotic laughter.
She suddenly clapped one of her hands to her forehead, and, turning, flew almost as fast as the
wind down the narrow lane and out of sight.
I followed her quickly. I did not believe that the girl was quite as mad as she seemed, but I
had little doubt that she had something extraordinary weighing on her mind.
At the next turn I came in view of the inn. It was a queer-looking old place, and I stopped for
a moment to look at it.
The house was entirely built of stone. There were two storeys to the centre part, which was
square, and at the four corners stood four round towers. The house was built right on the river,
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just below a large mill-pond. I walked up to the door and pounded on it with my stick. It was
shut, and looked as inhospitable as the rest of the place. After a moment's delay it was opened
two or three inches, and the surly face of an old woman peeped out.
"And what may you be wanting?" she asked.
"A bed for the night," I replied; "can you accommodate me?"
She glanced suspiciously first at me and then at my camera.
"You are an artist, I make no doubt," she said, "and we don't want no more of them here."
She was about to slam the door in my face, but I pushed my foot between it and the lintel.
"I am easily pleased," I said; "can you not give me some sort of bed for the night?"
"You had best have nothing to do with us," she answered. "You go off to Harkhurst; they can
put you up at the Crown and Thistle."
"I have just come from there," I answered. "As a matter of fact, I could not walk another
mile."
"We don't want visitors at the Castle Inn," she continued. Here she peered forward and looked
into my face. "You had best be off," she repeated; "they say the place is haunted."
I uttered a laugh.
"You don't expect me to believe that?" I said. She glanced at me from head to foot. Her face
was ominously grave.
"You had best know all, sir," she said, after a pause. "Something happens in this house, and
no living soul knows what it is, for they who have seen it have never yet survived to tell the
tale. It's not more than a week back that a young gentleman came here. He was like you, bold
as brass, and he too wanted a bed, and would take no denial. I told him plain, and so did my
man, that the place was haunted. He didn't mind no more than you mind. Well, he slept in the
only room we have got for guests, and hehe died there."
"What did he die of?" I asked.
"Fright," was the answer, brief and laconic. "Now do you want to come or not?"
"Yes; I don't believe in ghosts. I want the bed, and I am determined to have it."
The woman flung the door wide open.
"Don't say as I ain't warned you," she cried. "Come in, if you must." She led me into the
kitchen, where a fire burned sullenly on the hearth.
"Sit you down, and I'll send for Bindloss," she said. "I can only promise to give you a bed if
Bindloss agrees. Liz, come along here this minute."
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A quick young step was heard in the passage, and the pretty girl whom I had seen at the top of
the lane entered. Her eyes sought my face, her lips moved as if to say something, but no sound
issued from them.
"Go and find your grandad," said the old woman. "Tell him there is a gentleman here that
wants a bed. Ask him what's to be done."
The girl favoured me with a long and peculiar glance, then turning on her heel she left the
room. As soon as she did so the old woman peered forward and looked curiously at me.
"I'm sorry you are staying," she said; "don't forget as I warned you. Remember, this ain't a
proper inn at all. Once it was a mill, but that was afore Bindloss's day and mine. Gents would
come in the summer and put up for the fishing, but then the story of the ghost got abroad, and
lately we have no visitors to speak of, only an odd one now and then who ain't wantedno,
he ain't wanted. You see, there was three deaths here. Yes"she held up one of her skinny
hands and began to count on her fingers"yes, three up to the present; three, that's it. Ah,
here comes Bindloss."
A shuffling step was heard in the passage, and an old man, bent with age, and wearing a long
white beard, entered the room.
"We has no beds for strangers," he said, speaking in an aggressive and loud tone. "Hasn't the
wife said so? We don't let out beds here."
"As that is the case, you have no right to have that signpost at the end of the lane," I retorted.
"I am not in a mood to walk eight miles for a shelter in a country I know nothing about.
Cannot you put me up somehow?"
"I have told the gentleman everything, Sam," said the wife. "He is just for all the world like
young Mr. Wentworth, and not a bit frightened."
The old landlord came up and faced me.
"Look you here," he said, "you stay on at your peril. I don't want you, nor do the wife. Now is
it 'yes' or 'no'?"
"It is 'yes,'" I said.
"There's only one room you can sleep in."
"One room is sufficient."
"It's the one Mr. Wentworth died in. Hadn't you best take up your traps and be off?"
"No, I shall stay."
"Then there's no more to be said."
"Run, Liz," said the woman, "and light the fire in the parlour."

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The girl left the room, and the woman, taking up a candle, said she would take me to the
chamber where I was to sleep. She led me down a long and narrow passage, and then, opening
a door, down two steps into the most extraordinary-looking room I had ever seen. The walls
were completely circular, covered with a paper of a staring grotesque pattern. A small iron
bedstead projected into the middle of the floor, which was uncarpeted except for a slip of
matting beside it. A cheap deal wash-hand-stand, a couple of chairs, and a small table with a
blurred looking-glass stood against the wall beneath a deep embrasure, in which there was a
window. This was evidently a room in one of the circular towers. I had never seen less
inviting quarters.
"Your supper will be ready directly, sir," said the woman, and placing the candle on the little
table, she left me.
The place felt damp and draughty, and the flame of the candle flickered about, causing the
tallow to gutter to one side. There was no fireplace in the room, and above, the walls
converged to a point, giving the whole place the appearance of an enormous extinguisher. I
made a hurried and necessarily limited toilet, and went into the parlour. I was standing by the
fire, which was burning badly, when the door opened, and the girl Liz came in, bearing a tray
in her hand. She laid the tray on the table and came up softly to me.
"Fools come to this house," she said, "and you are one."
"Pray let me have my supper, and don't talk," I replied. "I am tired and hungry, and want to go
to bed."
Liz stood perfectly still for a moment.
"'Tain't worth it," she said; then, in a meditative voice, "no, 'tain't worth it. But I'll say no
more. Folks will never be warned!"
Her grandmother's voice calling her caused her to bound from the room.
My supper proved better than I had expected, and, having finished it, I strolled into the
kitchen, anxious to have a further talk with the old man. He was seated alone by the fire, a
great mastiff lying at his feet.
"Can you tell me why the house is supposed to be haunted?" I asked suddenly, stooping down
to speak to him.
"How should I know?" he cried hoarsely. "The wife and me have been here twenty years, and
never seen nor heard anything, but for certain folks do die in the house. It's mortal unpleasant
for me, for the doctors come along, and the coroner, and there's an inquest and no end of fuss.
The folks die, although no one has ever laid a finger on 'em; the doctors can't prove why they
are dead, but dead they be. Well, there ain't no use saying more. You are here, and maybe
you'll pass the one night all right."
"I shall go to bed at once," I said, "but I should like some candles. Can you supply me?"

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The man turned and looked at his wife, who at that moment entered the kitchen. She went to
the dresser, opened a wooden box, and taking out three or four tallow candles, put them into
my hand.
I rose, simulating a yawn.
"Good-night, sir," said the old man; "good-night; I wish you well."
A moment later I had entered my bedroom, and having shut the door, proceeded to give it a
careful examination. As far as I could make out, there was no entrance to the room except by
the door, which was shaped to fit the circular walls. I noticed, however, that there was an
unaccountable draught, and this I at last discovered came from below the oak wainscoting of
the wall. I could not in any way account for the draught, but it existed to an unpleasant extent.
The bed, I further saw, was somewhat peculiar; it had no castors on the four legs, which were
let down about half an inch into sockets provided for them in the wooden floor. This
discovery excited my suspicions still further. It was evident that the bed was intended to
remain in a particular position. I saw that it directly faced the little window sunk deep into the
thick wall, so that any one in bed would look directly at the window. I examined my watch,
found that it was past eleven, and placing both the candles on a tiny table near the bed, I lay
down without undressing. I was on the alert to catch the slightest noise, but the hours dragged
on and nothing occurred. In the house all was silence, and outside the splashing and churning
of the water falling over the wheel came distinctly to my ears.
I lay awake all night, but as morning dawned fell into an uneasy sleep. I awoke to see the
broad daylight streaming in at the small window.
Making a hasty toilet, I went out for a walk, and presently came in to breakfast. It had been
laid for me in the big kitchen, and the old man was seated by the hearth.
"Well," said the woman, "I hope you slept comfortable, sir."
I answered in the affirmative, and now perceived that old Bindloss and his wife were in the
humour to be agreeable. They said that if I was satisfied with the room I might spend another
night at the inn. I told them that I had a great many photographs to take, and would be much
obliged for the permission. As I spoke I looked round for the girl, Liz. She was nowhere to be
seen.
"Where is your grand-daughter?" I asked of the old woman.
"She has gone away for the day," was the reply. "It's too much for Liz to see strangers. She
gets excited, and then the fits come on."
"What sort of fits?"
"I can't tell what they are called, but they're bad, and weaken her, poor thing! Liz ought never
to be excited." Here Bindloss gave his wife a warning glance; she lowered her eyes, and going
across to the range, began to stir the contents of something in a saucepan.

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That afternoon I borrowed some lines from Bindloss, and, taking an old boat which was
moored to the bank of the mill-pond, set off under the pretence of fishing for pike. The
weather was perfect for the time of year.
Waiting my opportunity, I brought the boat up to land on the bank that dammed up the stream,
and getting out walked along it in the direction of the mill-wheel, over which the water was
now rushing.
As I observed it from this side of the bank, I saw that the tower in which my room was placed
must at one time have been part of the mill itself, and I further noticed that the masonry was
comparatively new, showing that alterations must have taken place when the house was
abandoned as a mill and was turned into an inn. I clambered down the side of the wheel,
holding on to the beams, which were green and slippery, and peered through the paddles.
As I was making my examination, a voice suddenly startled me.
"What are you doing down there?"
I looked up; old Bindloss was standing on the bank looking down at me. He was alone, and
his face was contorted with a queer mixture of fear and passion. I hastily hoisted myself up,
and stood beside him.
"What are you poking about down there for?" he said, pushing his ugly old face into mine as
he spoke. "You fool! if you had fallen you would have been drowned. No one could swim a
stroke in that mill-race. And then there would have been another death, and all the old fuss
over again! Look here, sir, will you have the goodness to get out of the place? I don't want
you here any more."
"I intend to leave to-morrow morning," I answered in a pacifying voice, "and I am really very
much obliged to you for warning me about the mill."
"You had best not go near it again," he said in a menacing voice, and then he turned hastily
away. I watched him as he climbed up a steep bank and disappeared from view. He was going
in the opposite direction from the house. Seizing the opportunity of his absence, I once more
approached the mill. Was it possible that Wentworth had been hurled into it? But had this
been the case there would have been signs and marks on the body. Having reached the wheel,
I clambered boldly down. It was now getting dusk, but I could see that a prolongation of the
axle entered the wall of the tower. The fittings were also in wonderfully good order, and the
bolt that held the great wheel only required to be drawn out to set it in motion.
That evening during supper I thought very hard. I perceived that Bindloss was angry, also that
he was suspicious and alarmed. I saw plainly that the only way to really discover what had
been done to Wentworth was to cause the old ruffian to try similar means to get rid of me.
This was a dangerous expedient, but I felt desperate, and my curiosity as well as interest were
keenly aroused. Having finished my supper, I went into the passage preparatory to going into
the kitchen. I had on felt slippers, and my footfall made no noise. As I approached the door I
heard Bindloss saying to his wife,
"He's been poking about the mill-wheel; I wish he would make himself scarce."

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"Oh, he can't find out anything," was the reply. "You keep quiet, Bindloss; he'll be off in the
morning."
"That's as maybe," was the answer, and then there came a harsh and very disagreeable laugh. I
waited for a moment, and then entered the kitchen. Bindloss was alone now; he was bending
over the fire, smoking.
"I shall leave early in the morning," I said, "so please have my bill ready for me." I then
seated myself near him, drawing up my chair close to the blaze. He looked as if he resented
this, but said nothing.
"I am very curious about the deaths which occur in this house," I said, after a pause. "How
many did you say there were?"
"That is nothing to you," he answered. "We never wanted you here; you can go when you
please."
"I shall go to-morrow morning, but I wish to say something now."
"And what may that be?"
"I don't believe in that story about the place being haunted."
"Oh, you don't, don't you?" He dropped his pipe, and his glittering eyes gazed at me with a
mixture of anger and ill-concealed alarm.
"No," I paused, then I said slowly and emphatically, "I went back to the mill even after your
warning, and"
"What?" he cried, starting to his feet.
"Nothing," I answered; "only I don't believe in the ghost."
His face turned not only white but livid. I left him without another word. I saw that his
suspicions had been much strengthened by my words. This I intended. To induce the ruffian
to do his worst was the only way to wring his secret from him.
My hideous room looked exactly as it had done on the previous evening. The grotesque
pattern on the walls seemed to start out in bold relief. Some of the ugly lines seemed at that
moment, to my imagination, almost to take human shape, to convert themselves into ogre-like
faces, and to grin at me. Was I too daring? Was it wrong of me to risk my life in this manner?
I was terribly tired, and, curious as it may seem, my greatest fear at that crucial moment was
the dread that I might fall asleep. I had spent two nights with scarcely any repose, and felt that
at any moment, notwithstanding all my efforts, slumber might visit me. In order to give
Bindloss full opportunity for carrying out his scheme, it was necessary for me to get into bed,
and even to feign sleep. In my present exhausted condition the pretence of slumber would
easily lapse into the reality. This risk, however, which really was a very grave one, must be
run. Without undressing I got into bed, pulling the bed-clothes well over me. In my hand I
held my revolver. I deliberately put out the candles, and then lay motionless, waiting for
events. The house was quiet as the gravethere was not a stir, and gradually my nerves,
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excited as they were, began to calm down. As I had fully expected, overpowering sleepiness
seized me, and, notwithstanding every effort, I found myself drifting away into the land of
dreams. I began to wish that whatever apparition was to appear would do so at once and get it
over. Gradually but surely I seemed to pass from all memory of my present world, and to live
in a strange and terrible phantasmagoria. In that state I slept, in that state also I dreamt, and
dreamt horribly.
I thought that I was dancing a waltz with an enormously tall woman. She towered above me,
clasping me in her arms, and began to whirl me round and round at a giddy speed. I could
hear the crashing music of a distant band. Faster and faster, round and round some great
empty hall was I whirled. I knew that I was losing my senses, and screamed to her to stop and
let me go. Suddenly there was a terrible crash close to me. Good God! I found myself awake,
butI was still moving. Where was I? Where was I going? I leapt up on the bed, only to reel
and fall heavily backwards upon the floor. What was the matter? Why was I sliding, sliding?
Had I suddenly gone mad, or was I still suffering from some hideous nightmare? I tried to
move, to stagger to my feet. Then by slow degrees my senses began to return, and I knew
where I was. I was in the circular room, the room where Wentworth had died; but what was
happening to me I could not divine. I only knew that I was being whirled round and round at a
velocity that was every moment increasing. By the moonlight that struggled in through the
window I saw that the floor and the bed upon it was revolving, but the table was lying on its
side, and its fall must have awakened me.
I could not see any other furniture in the room. By what mysterious manner had it been
removed? Making a great effort, I crawled to the centre of this awful chamber, and, seizing
the foot of the bed, struggled to my feet. Here I knew there would be less motion, and I could
just manage to see the outline of the door. I had taken the precaution to slip the revolver into
my pocket, and I still felt that if human agency appeared, I had a chance of selling my life
dearly; but surely the horror I was passing through was invented by no living man! As the
floor of the room revolved in the direction of the door I made a dash for it, but was carried
swiftly past, and again fell heavily. When I came round again I made a frantic effort to cling
to one of the steps, but in vain; the head of the bedstead caught me as it flew round, and tore
my arms away. In another moment I believe I should have gone raving mad with terror. My
head felt as if it would burst; I found it impossible to think consecutively. The only idea
which really possessed me was a mad wish to escape from this hideous place. I struggled to
the bedstead, and dragging the legs from their sockets, pulled it into the middle of the room
away from the wall. With this out of the way, I managed at last to reach the door in safety.
The moment my hand grasped the handle I leapt upon the little step and tried to wrench the
door open. It was locked, locked from without; it defied my every effort. I had only just
standing room for my feet. Below me the floor of the room was still racing round with terrible
speed. I dared scarcely look at it, for the giddiness in my head increased each moment. The
next instant a soft footstep was distinctly audible, and I saw a gleam of light through a chink
of the door. I heard a hand fumbling at the lock, the door was slowly opened outwards, and I
saw the face of Bindloss.
For a moment he did not perceive me, for I was crouching down on the step, and the next
instant with all my force I flung myself upon him. He uttered a yell of terror. The lantern he
carried dropped and went out, but I had gripped him round the neck with my fingers, driving
them deep down into his lean, sinewy throat. With frantic speed I pulled him along the

136

passage up to a window, through which the moonlight was shining. Here I released my hold
of his throat, but immediately covered him with my revolver.
"Down on your knees, or you are a dead man!" I cried. "Confess everything, or I shoot you
through the heart."
His courage had evidently forsaken him; he began to whimper and cry bitterly.
"Spare my life," he screamed. "I will tell everything, only spare my life."
"Be quick about it," I said; "I am in no humour to be merciful. Out with the truth."
I was listening anxiously for the wife's step, but except for the low hum of machinery and the
splashing of the water I heard nothing.
"Speak," I said, giving the old man a shake. His lips trembled, his words came out falteringly.
"It was Wentworth's doing," he panted.
"Wentworth? Not the murdered man?" I cried.
"No, no, his cousin. The ruffian who has been the curse of my life. Owing to that last death he
inherits the property. He is the real owner of the mill, and he invented the revolving floor.
There were deathsoh yes, oh yes. It was so easy, and I wanted the money. The police never
suspected, nor did the doctors. Wentworth was bitter hard on me, and I got into his power."
Here he choked and sobbed. "I am a miserable old man, sir," he gasped.
"So you killed your victims for the sake of money?" I said, grasping him by the shoulder.
"Yes," he said, "yes. The bailiff had twenty pounds all in gold; no one ever knew. I took it and
was able to satisfy Wentworth for a bit."
"And what about Archibald Wentworth?"
"That was his doing, and I was to be paid."
"And now finally you wanted to get rid of me?"
"Yes; for you suspected."
As I spoke I perceived by the ghastly light of the moon another door near. I opened it and saw
that it was the entrance to a small dark lumber room. I pushed the old man in, turned the key
in the lock, and ran downstairs. The wife was still unaccountably absent. I opened the front
door, and trembling, exhausted, drenched in perspiration, found myself in the open air. Every
nerve was shaken. At that terrible moment I was not in the least master of myself. My one
desire was to fly from the hideous place. I had just reached the little gate when a hand, light as
a feather, touched my arm. I looked up; the girl Liz stood before me.

137

"You are saved," she said; "thank God! I tried all I could to stop the wheel. See, I am
drenched to the skin; I could not manage it. But at least I locked Grannie up. She's in the
kitchen, sound asleep. She drank a lot of gin."
"Where were you all day yesterday?" I asked.
"Locked up in a room in the further tower, but I managed to squeeze through the window,
although it half killed me. I knew if you stayed that they would try it on to-night. Thank God
you are saved."
"Well, don't keep me now," I said; "I have been saved as by a miracle. You are a good girl; I
am much obliged to you. You must tell me another time how you manage to live through all
these horrors."
"Ain't I all but mad?" was her pathetic reply. "Oh, my God, what I suffer!" She pressed her
hand to her face; the look in her eyes was terrible. But I could not wait now to talk to her
further. I hastily left the place.
How I reached Harkhurst I can never tell, but early in the morning I found myself there. I
went straight to Dr. Stanmore's house, and having got him up, I communicated my story. He
and I together immediately visited the superintendent of police. Having told my exciting tale,
we took a trap and all three returned to the Castle Inn. We were back there before eight
o'clock on the following morning. But as the police officer expected, the place was empty.
Bindloss had been rescued from the dark closet, and he and his wife and the girl Liz had all
flown. The doctor, the police officer, and I, all went up to the circular room. We then
descended to the basement, and after a careful examination we discovered a low door, through
which we crept; we then found ourselves in a dark vault, which was full of machinery. By the
light of a lantern we examined it. Here we saw an explanation of the whole trick. The shaft of
the mill-wheel which was let through the wall of the tower was continuous as the axle of a
vertical cogged wheel, and by a multiplication action turned a large horizontal wheel into
which a vertical shaft descended. This shaft was let into the centre of four crossbeams,
supporting the floor of the room in which I had slept. All round the circular edge of the floor
was a steel rim which turned in a circular socket. It needed but a touch to set this hideous
apparatus in motion.
The police immediately started in pursuit of Bindloss, and I returned to London. That evening
Edgcombe and I visited Dr. Miles Gordon. Hard-headed old physician that he was, he was
literally aghast when I told him my story. He explained to me that a man placed in the
position in which I was when the floor began to move would by means of centrifugal force
suffer from enormous congestion of the brain. In fact, the revolving floor would induce an
artificial condition of apoplexy. If the victim were drugged or even only sleeping heavily, and
the floor began to move slowly, insensibility would almost immediately be induced, which
would soon pass into coma and death, and a post-mortem examination some hours afterwards
would show no cause for death, as the brain would appear perfectly healthy, the blood having
again left it.
From the presence of Dr. Miles Gordon, Edgcombe and I went to Scotland Yard, and the
whole affair was put into the hands of the London detective force. With the clue which I had
almost sacrificed my life to furnish, they quickly did the rest. Wentworth was arrested, and
under pressure was induced to make a full confession, but old Bindloss had already told me
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the gist of the story. Wentworth's father had owned the mill, had got into trouble with the law,
and changed his name. In fact, he had spent five years in penal servitude. He then went to
Australia and made money. He died when his son was a young man. This youth inherited all
the father's vices. He came home, visited the mill, and, being of a mechanical turn of mind,
invented the revolving floor. He changed the mill into an inn, put Bindloss, one of his "pals,"
into possession with the full intention of murdering unwary travellers from time to time for
their money.
The police, however, wanted him for a forged bill, and he thought it best to fly. Bindloss was
left in full possession. Worried by Wentworth, who had him in his power for a grave crime
committed years ago, he himself on two occasions murdered a victim in the circular room.
Meanwhile several unexpected deaths had taken place in the older branch of the Wentworth
family, and Archibald Wentworth alone stood between his cousin and the great estates.
Wentworth came home, and with the aid of Bindloss got Archibald into his power. The young
artist slept in the fatal room, and his death was the result. At this moment Wentworth and
Bindloss are committed for trial at the Old Bailey, and there is no doubt what the result will
be.
The ghost mystery in connection with the Castle Inn has, of course, been explained away for
ever.

A Master of Mysteries, first published in 1898, concerning

John Bell, a 'professional exposer of ghosts' who solves
the mysteries of haunted houses. "It so happened that the
circumstances of fate allowed me to follow my own bent
in the choice of a profession. From my earliest youth the
weird, the mysterious had an irresistible fascination for
me. Having private means, I resolved to follow my unique
inclinations, and I am now well known to all my friends as
a professional exposer of ghosts, and one who can clear
away the mysteries of most haunted houses....I propose in
these pages to relate the histories of certain queer events,
enveloped at first in mystery, and apparently dark with
portent, but, nevertheless, when grappled with in the true
spirit of science, capable of explanation." - from the
Introduction to "A Master of Mysteries".
Pages: 168
ISBN: 9781304838513
Buy it directly from us!

139

THE STORY OF YAND MANOR HOUSE

By
E & H Hernon
By Looking through the notes of Mr. Flaxman Low, one sometimes catches through the steelblue hardness of facts, the pink flush of romance, or more often the black corner of a horror
unnameable. The following story may serve as an instance of the latter. Mr. Low not only
unravelled the mystery at Yand, but at the same time justified his life-work to M. Thierry, the
well-known French critic and philosopher.
At the end of a long conversation, M. Thierry, arguing from his own standpoint as a
materialist, had said:
"The factor in the human economy which you call 'soul' cannot be placed."
"I admit that," replied Low. "Yet, when a man dies, is there not one factor unaccounted for in
the change that comes upon him? Yes! For though his body still exists, it rapidly falls to
pieces, which proves that that has gone which held it together."
The Frenchman laughed, and shifted his ground.
"Well, for my part, I don't believe in ghosts! Spirit manifestations, occult phenomenais not
this the ashbin into which a certain clique shoot everything they cannot understand, or for
which they fail to account?"
"Then what should you say to me, Monsieur, if I told you that I have passed a good portion of
my life in investigating this particular ashbin, and have been lucky enough to sort a small part
of its contents with tolerable success?" replied Flaxman Low.
"The subject is doubtless interestingbut I should like to have some personal experience in
the matter," said Thierry dubiously.
"I am at present investigating a most singular case," said Low. "Have you a day or two to
spare?"
Thierry thought for a minute or more.
"I am grateful," he replied. "But, forgive me, is it a convincing ghost?"
"Come with me to Yand and see. I have been there once already, and came away for the
purpose of procuring information from MSS. to which I have the privilege of access, for I
confess that the phenomena at Yand lie altogether outside any former experience of mine."
Low sank back into his chair with his hands clasped behind his heada favourite position of
hisand the smoke of his long pipe curled up lazily into the golden face of an Isis, which
stood behind him on a bracket. Thierry, glancing across, was struck by the strange likeness
between the faces of the Egyptian goddess and this scientist of the nineteenth century. On
140

both rested the calm, mysterious abstraction of some unfathomable thought. As he looked, he
decided.
"I have three days to place at your disposal."
"I thank you heartily," replied Low. "To be associated with so brilliant a logician as yourself
in an inquiry of this nature is more than I could have hoped for! The material with which I
have to deal is so elusive, the whole subject is wrapped in such obscurity and hampered by so
much prejudice, that I can find few really qualified persons who care to approach these
investigations seriously. I go down to Yand this evening, and hope not to leave without
clearing up the mystery."
"You will accompany me?"
"Most certainly. Meanwhile pray tell me something of the affair."
"Briefly the story is as follows. Some weeks ago I went to Yand Manor House at the request
of the owner, Sir George Blackburton, to see what I could make of the events which took
place there. All they complain of is the impossibility of remaining in one roomthe diningroom."
"What then is he like, this M. le Spook?" asked the Frenchman, laughing.
"No one has ever seen him, or for that matter heard him."
"Then how"
"You can't see him, nor hear him, nor smell him," went on Low, "but you can feel him andtaste him!"
"Mon Dieu! But this is singular! Is he then of so bad a. flavour?"
"You shall taste for yourself," answered Flaxman Low smiling. "After a certain hour no one
can remain in the room, they are simply crowded out."
"But who crowds them out?" asked Thierry.
"That is just what I hope we may discover to-night or tomorrow."
The last train that night dropped Mr. Flaxman Low and his companion at a little station near
Yand. It was late, but a trap in waiting soon carried them to the Manor House. The big bulk of
the building stood up in absolute blackness before them.
"Blackburton was to have met us, but I suppose he has not yet arrived," said Low. "Hullo! the
door is open," he added as he stepped into the hall.
Beyond a dividing curtain they now perceived a light. Passing behind this curtain they found
themselves at the end of the long hall, the wide staircase opening up in front of them.
"But who is this?" exclaimed Thierry.
141

Swaying and stumbling at every step, there tottered slowly down the stairs the figure of a
man.
He looked as if he had been drinking, his face was livid, and his eyes sunk into his head.
"Thank Heaven you've come! I heard you outside," he said in a weak voice.
"It's Sir George Blackburton," said Low, as the man lurched forward and pitched into his
arms.
They laid him down on the rugs and tried to restore consciousness.
"He has the air of being drunk, but it is not so," remarked Thierry. "Monsieur has had a bad
shock of the nerves. See the pulses drumming in his throat."
In a few minutes Blackburton opened his eyes and staggered to his feet.
"Come. I could not remain there alone. Come quickly."
They went rapidly across the hall, Blackburton leading the way down a wide passage to a
double-leaved door, which, after a perceptible pause, he threw open, and they all entered
together.
On the great table in the centre stood an extinguished lamp, some scattered food, and a big,
lighted candle. But the eyes of all three men passed at once to a dark recess beside the heavy,
carved chimneypiece, where a rigid shape sat perched on the back of a huge, oak chair.
Flaxman Low snatched up the candle and crossed the room towards it.
On the top of the chair, with his feet upon the arms, sat a powerfully-built young man huddled
up. His mouth was open, and his eyes twisted upwards. Nothing further could be seen from
below but the ghastly pallor of cheek and throat.
"Who is this?" cried Low. Then he laid his hand gently on the man's knee.
At the touch the figure collapsed in a heap upon the floor, the gaping, set, terrified face turned
up to theirs.
"He's dead!" said Low after a hasty examination. "I should say he's been dead some hours."
"Oh, Lord! Poor Batty!" groaned Sir George, who was entirely unnerved. "I'm glad you've
come."
"Who is he?" said Thierry, "and what was he doing here?"
"He's a gamekeeper of mine. He was always anxious to try conclusions with the ghost, and
last night he begged me to lock him in here with food for twenty-four hours. I refused at first,
but then I thought if anything happened while he was in here alone, it would interest you.
Who could imagine it would end like this?"

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"When did you find him?" asked Low.

"I only got here from my mother's half an hour ago. I turned on the light in the hall and came
in here with a candle. As I entered the room, the candle went out, andandI think I must
be going mad."
"Tell us everything you saw," urged Low.
"You will think I am beside myself; but as the light went out and I sank almost paralysed into
an armchair, I saw two barred eyes looking at me!"
"Barred eyes? What do you mean?"
"Eyes that looked at me through thin vertical bars, like the bars of a cage. What's that?"
With a smothered yell Sir George sprang back. He had approached the dead man and declared
something had brushed his face.
"You were standing on this spot under the overmantel. I will remain here. Meantime, my dear
Thierry, I feel sure you will help Sir George to carry this poor fellow to some more suitable
place," said Flaxman Low.
When the dead body of the young gamekeeper had been carried out, Low passed slowly round
and about the room. At length he stood under the old carved overmantel, which reached to the
ceiling and projected bodily forward in quaint heads of satyrs and animals. One of these on
the side nearest the recess represented a griffin with a flanged mouth. Sir George had been
standing directly below this at the moment when he felt the touch on his face. Now alone in
the dim, wide room, Flaxman Low stood on the same spot and waited. The candle threw its
dull yellow rays on the shadows which seemed to gather closer and wait also. Presently a
distant door banged, and Low, leaning forward to listen, distinctly felt something on the back
of his neck!
He swung round. There was nothing! He searched carefully on all sides, then put his hand up
to the griffin's head. Again came the same soft touch, this time upon his hand, as if something
had floated past on the air.
This was definite. The griffin's head located it. Taking the candle to examine more closely,
Low found four long black hairs depending from the jagged fangs. He was detaching them
when Thierry reappeared.
"We must get Sir George away as soon as possible," he said.
"Yes, we must take him away, I fear," agreed Low. "Our investigation must be put off till tomorrow."
On the following day they returned to Yand. It was a large country-house, pretty and oldfashioned, with lattice windows and deep gables, that looked out between tall shrubs and
across lawns set with beaupots, where peacocks sunned themselves on the velvet turf. The
church spire peered over the trees on one side; and an old wall covered with ivy and creeping
plants, and pierced at intervals with arches, alone separated the gardens from the churchyard.
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The haunted room lay at the back of the house. It was square and handsome, and furnished in
the style of the last century. The oak overmantel reached to the ceiling, and a wide window,
which almost filled one side of the room, gave a view of the west door of the church.
Low stood for a moment at the open window looking out at the level sunlight which flooded
the lawns and parterres.
"See that door sunk in the church wall to the left?" said Sir George's voice at his elbow. "That
is the door of the family vault. Cheerful outlook, isn't it?"
"I should like to walk across there presently," remarked Low.
"What! Into the vault?" asked Sir George, with a harsh laugh. "I'll take you if you like.
Anything else I can show you or tell you?"
"Yes. Last night I found this hanging from the griffin's head," said Low, producing the thin
wisp of black hair. "It must have touched your cheek as you stood below. Do you know to
whom it can belong?"
"It's a woman's hair! No, the only woman who has been in this room to my knowledge for
months is an old servant with grey hair, who cleans it," returned Blackburton. "I'm sure it was
not here when I locked Batty in."
"It is human hair, exceedingly coarse and long uncut," said Low; "but it is not necessarily a
woman's."
"It is not mine at any rate, for I'm sandy; and poor Batty was fair. Good-night; I'll come round
for you in the morning."
Presently, when the night closed in, Thierry and Low settled down in the haunted room to
await developments. They smoked and talked deep into the night. A big lamp burned brightly
on the table, and the surroundings looked homely and desirable.
Thierry made a remark to that effect, adding that perhaps the ghost might see fit to omit his
usual visit.
"Experience goes to prove that ghosts have a cunning habit of choosing persons either
credulous or excitable to experiment upon," he added.
To M. Thierry's surprise, Flaxman Low agreed with him.
"They certainly choose suitable persons," he said, "that is, not credulous persons, but those
whose senses are sufficiently keen to detect the presence of a spirit. In my own investigations,
I try to eliminate what you would call the supernatural element. I deal with these mysterious
affairs as far as possible on material lines."
"Then what do you say of Batty's death? He died of fright-simply."
"I hardly think so. The manner of his death agrees in a peculiar manner with what we know of
the terrible history of this room. He died of fright and pressure combined. Did you hear the
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doctor's remark? It was significant. He said: 'The indications are precisely those I have
observed in persons who have been crushed and killed in a crowd!'"
"That is sufficiently curious, I allow. I see that it is already past two o'clock. I am thirsty; I
will have a little seltzer." Thierry rose from his chair, and, going to the side-board, drew a
tumblerful from the syphon. "Pah! What an abominable taste!"
"What? The seltzer?"
"Not at all?" returned the Frenchman irritably. "I have not touched it yet. Some horrible fly
has flown into my mouth, I suppose. Pah! Disgusting!"
"What is it like?" asked Flaxman Low, who was at the moment wiping his own mouth with
his handkerchief.
"Like? As if some repulsive fungus had burst in the mouth."
"Exactly. I perceive it also. I hope you are about to be convinced."
"What?" exclaimed Thierry, turning his big figure round and staring at Low. "You don't mean
As he spoke the lamp suddenly went out.
"Why, then, have you put the lamp out at such a moment?" cried Thierry, "I have not put it
out. Light the candle beside you on the table.".Low heard the Frenchman's grunt of
satisfaction as he found the candle, then the scratch of a match. It sputtered and went out.
Another match and another behaved in the same manner, while Thierry swore freely under his
breath.
"Let me have your matches, Monsieur Flaxman; mine are, no doubt damp," he said at last.
Low rose to feel his way across the room. The darkness was dense.
"It is the darkness of Egyptit may be felt. Where then are you, my dear friend?" he heard
Thierry saying, but the voice seemed a long way off.
"I am coming," he answered, "but it's so hard to get along." After Low had spoken the words,
their meaning struck him.
He paused and tried to realise in what part of the room he was. The silence was profound, and
the growing sense of oppression seemed like a nightmare. Thierry's voice sounded again, faint
and receding.
"I am suffocating, Monsieur Flaxman, where are you? I am near the door. Ach!"
A strangling bellow of pain and fear followed, that scarcely reached Low through the
thickening atmosphere.
"Thierry, what is the matter with you?" he shouted. "Open the door."

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But there was no answer. What had become of Thierry in that hideous, clogging gloom! Was
he also dead, crushed in some ghastly fashion against the wall? What was this? The air had
become palpable to the touch, heavy, repulsive, with the sensation of cold humid flesh!
Low pushed out his hands with a mad longing to touch a table, a chair, anything but this
clammy, swelling softness that thrust itself upon him from every side, baffling him and filling
his grasp.
He knew now that he was absolutely alonestruggling against what? His feet were slipping
in his wild efforts to feel the floorthe dank flesh was creeping upon his neck, his cheek
his breath came short and labouring as the pressure swung him gently to and fro, helpless,
nauseated!
The clammy flesh crowded upon him like the bulk of some fat, horrible creature; then came a
stinging pain on the cheek. Low clutched at somethingthere was a crash and a rush of airThe next sensation of which Mr. Flaxman Low was conscious was one of deathly sickness.
He was lying on wet grass, the wind blowing over him, and all the clean, wholesome smells
of the open air in his nostrils.
He sat up and looked about him. Dawn was breaking windily in the east, and by its light he
saw that he was on the lawn of Yand Manor House. The latticed window of the haunted room
above him was open. He tried to remember what had happened. He took stock of himself, in
fact, and slowly felt that he still held something clutched in his right handsomething darkcoloured, slender, and twisted. It might have been a long shred of bark or the cast skin of an
adderit was impossible to see in the dim light.
After an interval the recollection of Thierry recurred to him. Scrambling to his feet, he raised
himself to the window-sill and looked in. Contrary to his expectation, there was no upsetting
of furniture; everything remained in position as when the lamp went out. His own chair and
the one Thierry had occupied were just as when they had arisen from them. But there was no
sign of Thierry.
Low jumped in by the window. There was the tumbler full of seltzer, and the litter of matches
about it. He took up Thierry's box of matches and struck a light. It flared, and he lit the candle
with ease. In fact, everything about the room was perfectly normal; all the horrible conditions
prevailing but a couple of hours ago had disappeared.
But where was Thierry? Carrying the lighted candle, he passed out of the door, and searched
in the adjoining rooms. In one of them, to his relief, he found the Frenchman sleeping
profoundly in an armchair.
Low touched his arm. Thierry leapt to his feet, fending off an imaginary blow with his arm.
Then he turned his scared face on Low.
"What! You, Monsieur Flaxman! How have you escaped?"
"I should rather ask you how you escaped," said Low, smiling at the havoc the night's
experiences had worked on his friend's looks and spirits.

146

"I was crowded out of the room against the door. That infernal thingwhat was it?with its
damp, swelling flesh, inclosed me!" A shudder of disgust stopped him. "I was a fly in an
aspic. I could not move. I sank into the stifling pulp. The air grew thick. I called to you, but
your answers became inaudible. Then I was suddenly thrust against the door by a huge
handit felt like one, at least. I had a struggle for my life, I was all but crushed, and then, I
do not know how, I found myself outside the door. I shouted to you in vain. Therefore, as I
could not help you, I came here, andI will confess it, my dear friendI locked and bolted
the door. After some time I went again into the hall and listened; but, as I heard nothing, I
resolved to wait until daylight and the return of Sir George."
"That's all right," said Low. "It was an experience worth having."
"But, no! Not for me! I do not envy you your researches into mysteries of this abominable
description. I now comprehend perfectly that Sir George has lost his nerve if he has had to do
with this horror. Besides, it is entirely impossible to explain these things."
At this moment they heard Sir George's arrival, and went out to meet him.
"I could not sleep all night for thinking of you!" exclaimed Blackburton on seeing them; "and
I came along as soon as it was light. Something has happened."
"But certainly something has happened," cried M. Thierry shaking his head solemnly;
"something of the most bizarre, of the most horrible! Monsieur Flaxman, you shall tell Sir
George this story. You have been in that accursed room all night, and remain alive to tell the
tale!"
As Low came to the conclusion of the story Sir George suddenly exclaimed:
"You have met with some injury to your face, Mr. Low."
Low turned to the mirror. In the now strong light three parallel weals from eye to mouth could
be seen.
"I remember a stinging pain like a lash on my cheek. What would you say these marks were
caused by, Thierry?" asked Low.
Thierry looked at them and shook his head.
"No one in their senses would venture to offer any explanation of the occurrences of last
night," he replied.
"Something of this sort, do you think?" asked Low again, putting down the object he held in
his hand on the table.
Thierry took it up and described it aloud.
"A long and thin object of a brown and yellow colour and twisted like a sabre-bladed
corkscrew," then he started slightly and glanced at Low.
"It's a human nail, I imagine," suggested Low.
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"But no human being has talons of this kindexcept, perhaps, a Chinaman of high rank."
"There are no Chinamen about here, nor ever have been, to my knowledge," said Blackburton
shortly. "I'm very much afraid that, in spite of all you have so bravely faced, we are no nearer
to any rational explanation."
"On the contrary, I fancy I begin to see my way. I believe, after all, that I may be able to
convert you, Thierry," said Flaxman Low.
"Convert me?"
"To a belief in the definite aim of my work. But you shall judge for yourself. What do you
make of it so far? I claim that you know as much of the matter as I do."
"My dear good friend, I make nothing of it," returned Thierry, shrugging his shoulders and
spreading out his hands. "Here we have a tissue of unprecedented incidents that can be
explained on no theory whatever."
"But this is definite," and Flaxman Low held up the blackened nail.
"And how do you propose to connect that nail with the black hairswith the eyes that looked
through the bars of a cagethe fate of Batty, with its symptoms of death by pressure and
suffocationour experience of swelling flesh, that something which filled and filled the room
to the exclusion of all else? How are you going to account for these things by any kind of
connected hypothesis?" asked Thierry, with a shade of irony.
"I mean to try," replied Low.
At lunch time Thierry inquired how the theory was getting on.
"It progresses," answered Low. "By the way, Sir George, who lived in this house for some
time prior to, say, 1840? He was a manit may have been a woman, but, from the nature of
his studies, I am inclined to think it was a manwho was deeply read in ancient necromancy,
Eastern magic, mesmerism, and subjects of a kindred nature. And was he not buried in the
vault you pointed out?"
"Do you know anything more about him?" asked Sir George in surprise.
"He was I imagine," went on Flaxman Low reflectively, "hirsute and swarthy, probably a
recluse, and suffered from a morbid and extravagant fear of death."
"How do you know all this?"
"I only asked about it. Am I right?"
"You have described my cousin, Sir Gilbert Blackburton, in every particular. I can show you
his portrait in another room."
As they stood looking at the painting of Sir Gilbert Blackburton, with his long, melancholy,
olive face and thick, black beard, Sir George went on. "My grandfather succeeded him at
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Yand. I have often heard my father speak of Sir Gilbert, and his strange studies and
extraordinary fear of death. Oddly enough, in the end he died rather suddenly, while he was
still hale and strong. He predicted his own approaching death, and had a doctor in attendance
for a week or two before he died. He was placed in a coffin he had had made on some plan of
his own and buried in the vault. His death occurred in 1842 or 1843. If you care to see them I
can show you some of his papers, which may interest you."
Mr. Flaxman Low spent the afternoon over the papers. When evening came, he rose from his
work with a sigh of content, stretched himself, and joined Thierry and Sir George in the
garden.
They dined at Lady Blackburton's, and it was late before Sir George found himself alone with
Mr. Flaxman Low and his friend.
"Have you formed any opinion about the thing which haunts the Manor House?" he asked
anxiously.
Thierry elaborated a cigarette, crossed his legs, and added: "If you have in truth come to any
definite conclusion, pray let us hear it, my dear Monsieur Flaxman."
"I have reached a very definite and satisfactory conclusion," replied Low. "The Manor House
is haunted by Sir Gilbert Blackburton, who died, or, rather, who seemed to die, on the 15th of
August, 1842."
"Nonsense! The nail fifteen inches long at the leasthow do you connect it with Sir Gilbert?"
asked Blackburton testily.
"I am convinced that it belonged to Sir Gilbert," Low answered.
"But the long black hair like a woman's?"
"Dissolution in the case of Sir Gilbert was not completenot consummated, so to speakas I
hope to show you later. Even in the case of dead persons the hair and nails have been known
to grow. By a rough calculation as to the growth of nails in such cases, I was enabled to
indicate approximately the date of Sir Gilbert's death. The hair too grew on his head."
"But the barred eyes? I saw them myself!" exclaimed the young man.
"The eyelashes grow also. You follow me?"
"You have, I presume, some theory in connection with this?" observed Thierry. "It must be a
very curious one."
"Sir Gilbert in his fear of death appears to have mastered and elaborated a strange and ancient
formula by which the grosser factors of the body being eliminated, the more ethereal portions
continue to retain the spirit, and the body is thus preserved from absolute disintegration. In
this manner true death may be indefinitely deferred. Secure from the ordinary chances and
changes of existence, this spiritualised body could retain a modified life practically for ever."
"This is a most extraordinary idea, my dear fellow," remarked Thierry.
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"But why should Sir Gilbert haunt the Manor House, and one special room?"
"The tendency of spirits to return to the old haunts of bodily life is almost universal. We
cannot yet explain the reason of this attraction of environment."
"But the expansionthe crowding substance which we ourselves felt? You cannot meet that
difficulty," said Thierry persistently.
"Not as fully as I could wish, perhaps. But the power of expanding and contracting to a degree
far beyond our comprehension is a well-known attribute of spiritualised matter."
"Wait one little moment, my dear Monsieur Flaxman," broke in Thierry's voice after an
interval; "this is very clever and ingenious indeed. As a theory I give it my sincere admiration.
But proofproof is what we now demand."
Flaxman Low looked steadily at the two incredulous faces.
"This," he said slowly, "is the hair of Sir Gilbert Blackburton, and this nail is from the little
finger of his left hand. You can prove my assertion by opening the coffin."
Sir George, who was pacing up and down the room impatiently, drew up.
"I don't like it at all, Mr. Low, I tell you frankly. I don't like it at all. I see no object in
violating the coffin. I am not concerned to verify this unpleasant theory of yours. I have only
one desire; I want to get rid of this haunting presence, whatever it is."
"If I am right," replied Low, "the opening of the coffin and exposure of the remains to strong
sunshine for a short time will free you for ever from this presence."
In the early morning, when the summer sun struck warmly on the lawns of Yand, the three
men carried the coffin from the vault to a quiet spot among the shrubs where, secure from
observation, they raised the lid.
Within the coffin lay the semblance of Gilbert Blackburton, maned to the ears with long and
coarse black hair. Matted eyelashes swept the fallen cheeks, and beside the body stretched the
bony hands, each with its dependent sheaf of switch-like nails. Low bent over and raised the
left hand gingerly.
The little finger was without a nail!
Two hours later they came back and looked again. The sun had in the meantime done its
work; nothing remained but a fleshless skeleton and a few half-rotten shreds of clothing.
The ghost of Yand Manor House has never since been heard of.
When Thiery bade Flaxman Low good-bye, he said:
"In time, my dear Monsieur Flaxman, you will add another to our sciences. You establish
your facts too well for my peace of mind."

150

Flaxman Low is a psychic detective of a pure Sherlock

Holmes-ian style. He investigates and solves psychic
mysteries with no tools other than his immense knowledge
of supernatural phenomena and his keen powers of
observation. Flaxman Low is the last hope for those
unfortunate people who are faced with a mystery that
seems beyond all natural laws, and which imperils not
only their bodies, but in some cases their very souls.
Flaxman Low was one of the original detectives. His
adventures were published in 1898-99. He's basically
Sherlock Holmes, called in for his unassailable calm in the
face of ghosts or elementals or other evil creatures. This
volume contains all the twelve stories.
Pages 184
ISBN: 9781304838452
Buy it directly from us!

151

THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD

By
H P Lovecraft

Chapter I
1
From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently
disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and
was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his
aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of
murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his
mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a
general physiological as well as psychological character.
In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant.
Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken
on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic
processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can
parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so
that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and
minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything
heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness,
and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a
large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a
very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians
agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond
precedent.
Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort
recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental
force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange
and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's
gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity,
had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an
antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and
insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult
matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's
mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in
his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in
confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as
great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee
his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.

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Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth
of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had
had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his
sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion
with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final
conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape
became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr.
Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet
after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public
explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many,
indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would
believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants
knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was
the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that
almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was
still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father
was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time
Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any
knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of
Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly
fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no
trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the
venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his
parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to
ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture,
furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests.
These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not
form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of
information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were
invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of
bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the
patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The
odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He
had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were
obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so
totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred,
he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of
reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his
own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as
ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our
own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the
escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion
being that he is "lying low" in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern
information can be brought up to the normal.
The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the
eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses
Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult,
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and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much
greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time,
especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a
certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose
papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on
Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking,
undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly
stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult
subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his
forefather's grave.
From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his
close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and
discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left
their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles
when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily
appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and
uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction
must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and
prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he
refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness;
crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something
whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness,
he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had
been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible
invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these
invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and
inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and
after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his physical
aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare
qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that
enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In
the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found.
Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and
each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to
have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of
them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then
there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the
problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr.
Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's
pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained
from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved
the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those
papers were borne forever from human knowledge.
2
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One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the
past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable
show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses
Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had
always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is
set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were
spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of
antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the
Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown
University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet
as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight droop, dressed
somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than
attractiveness.
His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture
from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries
before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises
just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily
out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to
the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic
porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past
the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken,
and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick
mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed
solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep
hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a
greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides
he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop
and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first
memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills
which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, and violet and mystic
against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The
vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue
haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and
then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he
would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would
hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the
shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered
pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard
remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It
was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and
the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great
central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements
with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they
were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose
signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
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Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old "Town Street" that
the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with
leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long
before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a
gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit
Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony
House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At
Meeting Streetthe successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periodshe would look
upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in
climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse
that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespeare's Head where the Providence
Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First
Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs
and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better,
flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led
off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a
riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old water-front recalls its proud East India days
amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such
surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder,
Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down
into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades,
swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out
the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this
lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge,
where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would
pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff,
decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as
London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon,
when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries
with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used
to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the
sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and
up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned
windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron
railings.
At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk
in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower
eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where
the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious
southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope
holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so
many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which
accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last
crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon
which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible
fruition.

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Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's
antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular
attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage
instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious
sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among
his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come
from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and
disquieting stories clustered.
Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain 'Ann
Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast,' of whose paternity
the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town
records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change
of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along
with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that
her Husband's name was become a public Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his
Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall
Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting.'
This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been
carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown
great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard
vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained
so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times,
that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did
appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to
imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and
forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain
in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently "hushed-up"
character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find
concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest
expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed
Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had
not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as
remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the
Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr, Willett's
opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919
behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt,
which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.
Chapter II
1
Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and
unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled
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from Salem to Providencethat universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissentingat
the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary
ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of
about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter
buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house
was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in
1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much
older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage
near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the
founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain his nondescript
aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular
quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of
hardy forefathers, and practised a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such
simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive
merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very
clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth
and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of
chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he
brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New
York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop
across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the
drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him.
Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many
sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their
belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to
their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At
length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing
more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper
more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always
shewn.
Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why
Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for
graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours, and under all conditions, was notorious;
though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish.
On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to
which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his
only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians;
the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance,
probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lead-to of this house was the laboratory
where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who
delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small red door would exchange accounts of the
fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and
prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed "chymist"by which they meant alchemist
would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm
the Fenners, a quarter of a mile awayhad still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which
they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and
sustained howlings; and they did not like the large numbers of livestock which thronged the
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pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in
meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new
droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very
obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not
so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old,
but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose
timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less
mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two
swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of
the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within
which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled
conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the
Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the
newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally
made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by
education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem
needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much
in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient;
and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman.
But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing
a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to
him which would not sound inane.
There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to
find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities.
When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church,
he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short
while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward
told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to
learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree
concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had
been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the
gay urbanity for which he was famed.
More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided
the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and
scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in
standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best
residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and
liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his wellchosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library
in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most
other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides
the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of
philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van
Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a
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visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two
drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but
maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and
theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him
with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting
them contributed much of the prejudice. This bizarre collection, besides a host of standard
works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists,
daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the
doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the
Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius's Key of Wisdom all were
there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's
Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetsner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis
Alchimiae, and Trithemius's De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews
and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking
down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth
the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such
monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the
strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the province of the Massachussetts-Bay.
But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a
mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downwards a badly worn copy
of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The
book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous
pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it
through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of
the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that
combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days,
writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr.
Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:

'The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man
may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out
of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust,
a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead
Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.'

It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst
things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned
salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the
great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of
protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and
slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and
supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks
and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique,
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St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors
were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old
man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members
perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to
lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm of Pawtuxet Road,
and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so
that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands.
Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence
wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to
the merchant.
By 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and
daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named,
understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the
missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their
way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far
beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was
wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be
missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have
happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of
the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one
shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton,
woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as
James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden
Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near New
Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with
the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candlemakers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony
House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one
still standing at the head of its parade in the old main streetwas built in 1761. In that same
year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the
books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the
lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of
great round stones with a brick footwalk or "causey" in the middle. About this time, also, he
built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving.
When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded
Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and
attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the
shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business
fortunes if not sharply checked.
2
The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a
full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to
pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the
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power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement
in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his
sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy
in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the
rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion.
His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until
modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley
Library, did it occur to any personsave one embittered youth, perhapsto make dark
comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the
disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slavedealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the
cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity
for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen
continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at
a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes
would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have
been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of
environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have
profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgement demanded that he patch
up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a
signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses or errands elsewhere, and a general
atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and
impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he
held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy
over thema mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their
welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the
power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five
years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have
furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing
in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an
advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would
make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for
wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a
century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain
can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any
ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate
upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at
all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty,
accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household
of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing
named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable
advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the
domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on
Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.

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Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as
the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school
opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the
latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler
of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island
Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old
black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must
have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to
young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken
off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the
Baptist church, in the presence of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could
boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned
the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or
torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private
collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:

'Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss
Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit,
added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.'

The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first
reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and
covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to
public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however,
was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons
whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by
no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at
all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat torn down. In his treatment of his wife the
strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme
graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from
disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which
his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long
years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the
youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken.
Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild
disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the
usurping husband.
On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by
the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become
communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective
Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage
two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought
to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discover of the
widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the
feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very
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curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken
with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the
Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann
Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour
greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he
had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport,
and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been
executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old
diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar
shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm
on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, as was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or
suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery.
Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to
the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping
such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise
the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its
patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and
was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that
appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespeare's Head. In politics he ardently
supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport,
and his really eloquent speech at Hacher's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North
Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than
any other thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him
closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a
mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth
began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours
at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen
warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down
the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once
severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.
3
In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice
amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old
cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to
have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned
or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his
rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which
appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his
possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to
impart.
But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the
contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was
handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of
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bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were
constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; although there
were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near
graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just
how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his
periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging,
had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and
subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted
on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the
provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion
were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous
commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he
saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it
was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid.
Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who
were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of
Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where
they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only five high narrow slits for
windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of
slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about
the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from
the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as
far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of
considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this
cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the
same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted
almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and
disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for
long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a
footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled
road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding
his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar
Smith to continue the survey during his absence; and between them the two could have set in
motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the
effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible.
Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn
must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his
regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is
what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a non too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letterwriters have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally madeand according to
which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and
depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels
and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his
wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century
165

with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a
lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear
of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been
accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings
and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations.
After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut
betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of
conversations and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They
appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were
frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several
persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives.
There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their
wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or
that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if
Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English,
French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived.
He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of
Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand
were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for
example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black
Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to
know. Curwen asked the prisonerif prisoner he werewhether the order to slay was given
because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the
Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne had spoken the Three Words.
Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there
was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
None of these colloquies was ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always
heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen
on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a
show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacher's Hall, when a man from Germantown,
Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as

'A View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of
Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Suffering of Our
Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece
of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious.'

It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room
whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused
them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house,
and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions
below.

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That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and
groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places
far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the
high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched
oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within
the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to
say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of
unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses
indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep
river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the
sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been
worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a
stock farm, and a locality where old Indian bury-grounds were common, but Weeden and
Smith drew their own inferences.
It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if
anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the
Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport
during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an
increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed
schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning
the scow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its
log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship
revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies,
consigned to "Sailor A. B. C.", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off
Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal.
The Vice-Admiralty at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of
the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand,
compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a
port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston
Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not
many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the
sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being
common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take
much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have
been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took
care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in
mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping
just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt
whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning
Curwen and his monstrous labours.
The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept
careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away,
and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual
subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of
Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the
placed landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic
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bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of
things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over
the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet in a long river which winds through many settled regions
abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the
fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot
down to the still waters below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition
had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cried out. That rumour sent Smith
for Weeden was just then at seain haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely
enough there remained the evidence of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of
a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of
mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging,
but was deterred by lack of successor perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to
speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore
at the time.
4
By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries;
for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the
possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant
he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well
enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town
to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern
near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be
seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the
town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this
confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the
conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He
would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and
prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice
they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no
matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable
crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a
repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought
Curwen hither.
The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on
the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning,
President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed
in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above
Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the
Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter,
publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses,
who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of
parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand
knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of
phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures
needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective
deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform
the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
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The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he
found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of
Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and
cordinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of
the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of
eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures.
Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and
Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the
whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim
determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would
not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden
powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely
be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature
complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another
place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years
were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at
his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive
chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and
imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something
graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with
him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told
how it came about.
While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so
terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the
middle of a moon-light January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the
river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window;
and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the
badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance,
but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of
men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded
their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on
the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched
out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless
speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered,
for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of
memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in
those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identityand
that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before,
set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come.
He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled
district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious
tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the
returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the
chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail
traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he
well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly
trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom
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Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and
discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man
seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture
impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to
the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a
supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green
was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite
Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's
mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one
Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the coperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied
and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as
follows.

I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better
was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g but ye liveliest
Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you
sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not
Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to
followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that
you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was told to us aboute tak'g Care whom
to calle upp, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of , and can
judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any
that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up Somewhat
against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the
Greater shal not wish to Answer, and shal commande more than you. I was frighted when I
read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious
who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not
Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I
came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Black Man learnt
from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye lend'g
of ye MS. you speak of.
Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the
following passage:
I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can
not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more
thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be
missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure.
It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's,
St. Paul's, St. Mary's or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what
Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you
were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided
by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.

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A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the
Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is
clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic
or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever
delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded
shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania
Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the
presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the
air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old
privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of
Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which
would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he
was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the
town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with
which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his
farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some
aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow
windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr.
Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and
had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful
because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course
by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against
whom the hand of every Providence skipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or
clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so
many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil
with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the
Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.
5
The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the
odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious
citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday,
April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on
Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the
leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments,
President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was
noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring
brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John
Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These
chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great
room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with
the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty
was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a
coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order
to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A
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moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden
appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the
firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith
were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt.
Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson,
and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though
absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors
began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy
Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just
beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence
lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and
salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the
great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished
College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the
old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a
blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner
farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm
over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once more into the sky,
but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this
news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they
had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now
ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to
strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for
Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under
Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish
with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the
house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt.
Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow
Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle
around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast,
then wait and capture anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of
two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest
of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals
in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending
whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal
warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts
would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing
equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt.
Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into
consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and
shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at
the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special
messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the
river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone
building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to
storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt.
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Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader
would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence
their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the
Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside
door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an
uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be
the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and
crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man
thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic
and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard
messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told
the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's
doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the
messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though
he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained
in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old
companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained
something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which
was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip,
for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that
single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own
lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary
is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from
the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner
correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family
had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible,
had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of
the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had
been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another
moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had
come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the
correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters 'WaaaahrrrrrR'waaahrrr.'
This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the
correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated
less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud
explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs
began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the
candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke
Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others
failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing
but even more horrible than the those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic
cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and
psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.

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Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and
the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked,
and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of
human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words
belched in frenzy: Almighty, protect thy lamb! Then there were more shots, and the second
flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of
which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw "a red fog" going up to
the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but
Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright
which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within
the room.
Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with an intolerable
stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the
shore party or by any wakeful souls in the Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which
any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous
fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which
no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and
windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ,
but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an
unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac
intonations: 'DEESMEES JESHET BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA ENITEMOSS.' Not till the
year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but
Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the
ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
An unmistakable human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign
wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added
odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and
was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate,
though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward
the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark
madness wrenched from scores of human throatsa yell which came strong and clear despite
the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things.
Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no
buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours
saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which
they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was
over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order
seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome
authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut
relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that
relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful
oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet
residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was
known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the
fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was
the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither
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thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read
about.
6
Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word
concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside
the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual
raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been
killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the
statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered
the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by
Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour
clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt.
Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the
bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced.
Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were
all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle
introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning
was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in
prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps
fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob
who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting
out of unwholesome images.
There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious
design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's
body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not
politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and
Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest
threada shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as
partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's
descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end,
as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith
had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from
his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely
this:
I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane,
Any that can in Turne call up Somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may
not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shal not wish to Answer, and shal commande
more than you.

In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man
might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether
any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.

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The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and
annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to
be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of
the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough
rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that the daughter and granddaughter
change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from
the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably
extracted more hints from that bluff mariner and anyone else ever gained repecting the end of
the accursed sorcerer.
From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid,
extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can
be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his
disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale,
whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court
and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet,
shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay
with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by
1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery
on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a
definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had
wrought.
Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to
himself, "Pox on that , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as
though the damn'd had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his
home.'
Chapter III
1
Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That
he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be
wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something
vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist
could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen
data.
In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman
hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked
freely with his familythough his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor
like Curwenand with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In
applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no
concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the
accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen
wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at the Pawtuxet
farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
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When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from
Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions
there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well
known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables
and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable
amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers,
seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away
to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the
speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time
he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had
brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England,
France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local
inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at
night.
Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one
Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common,
and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward
the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard
there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows
were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead
persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he
disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that
time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of.
Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite
attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and selfstyled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of
documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till
1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others
brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
Certain documents by and about all of the strange characters were available at the Essex
Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless
commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more
provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft
trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and
Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that: 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete
in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of
August 8th before Judge Gedney that:'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt
ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C.,
Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.'
Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his
disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none
could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually
on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the
cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and
conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though,
whether or not he had succeeded.

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But of greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to
prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text
of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same
person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem,
hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except
as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of
his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters
and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and
other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely
mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of
Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to
which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it
not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style
of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as "Simon", but a
line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Providence, 1. May
Brother:My honour'd Antient Friende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serue for yr
eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of
the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g
Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute
uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not
doe as you did, besides the Whiche my Farme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, and
wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
But I am unreadie for harde Fortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye
Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up
YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye first Time that Face spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye
. And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne
in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice.
This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye
Outside Spheres.
And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what
he seekes.
Yett will this auaile Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the
Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I haue not taken needed Stepps nor
founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it used up such a Store of
Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I haue from ye
Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse
that the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more belieu'd in what they
tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt haue talk'd Some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is
Dangerous. Ye Chymical Substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in
Towne, Dr, Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in
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Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whateuer I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while,
do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you
Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of that I am putt'g in this Packet.
Saye ye Uerses euery Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if ye Line runn out not, one shal bee in
yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue
him. Job XIV. XIV.
I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I haue a goode
Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already,
tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Trauel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take
ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Tauerns be'g at all these
Townes. Stop at Mr. Balcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but
eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket Falls, and ye Rd.
past Mr. Sayles's Tauern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tauern off ye Towne Street,
Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
Sir, I am ye olde and true Friend and Serut. in Almonsin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's
Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific.
The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house, built in
1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well
known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a
few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a
negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending
services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar
rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to
explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which
he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with
a thrill of curiousity that the Biblical passage referred toJob 14,14was the familiar verse,
'If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, until my
change come.'
2
Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday
in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with
age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of
the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and
artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters.
It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very
close to the sinister matters of his quest.

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The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn
about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the
outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn
overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst most of the fine
wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up
altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had
somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had
housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had
been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of
the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved
unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere,
that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters
whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him
the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the
Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen
library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given
much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search
of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features
beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every
room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid
especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly
excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious groundfloor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of
paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to
have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an
oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage
which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have been, but
just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with
an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College
Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and
chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and
were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
As day by the day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with
growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight
had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did
not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped
man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk
stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and
ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to
possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and
the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to grasp with
astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the
dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke
of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to

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confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living
features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once
determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The
resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather great age, was marvellous; and it
could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had
found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor
was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial
characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery,
and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There
was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very
resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairsa
cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valleyand not one
to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son,
and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles
most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the housea
small rodent-featured person with a guttural accentand obtained the whole mantel and
overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed price which cut short the impending torrent of
unctuous haggling.
It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where
provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mockfireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of
superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert
workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel
and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation
in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the
chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square,
which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space
might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep
coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few
mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together.
Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold
inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex
Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the 'Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent. of
Prouidence-Plantations, Late of Salem.'
Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious
workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the
finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad
when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's
handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: 'To
Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & Ye Spheres.'
Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had
hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher;
whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to:'Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger' and
Jedediah Orne, esq.', 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them.' The sixth and last

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was inscribed: 'Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of
Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.'
3
We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date
Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of
the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which
impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen, he appeared to
guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the
antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning
home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of
its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew
the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph
Curwen's handwriting, 'mostly in cipher', which would have to be studied very carefully
before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to
the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiousity. As it was he doubtless wished
to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and
when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to
see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when
the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he
slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the
cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy
of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her
query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his
work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with
its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel
a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling
to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow
cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat
down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at
him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent
the policy of concealment which he practised. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which
he might by studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic
chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more
circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic
symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled 'To Him Who Shal Come After, etc.'
seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At
night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed
them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that
his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he
now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his
determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations
to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities
than any university which the world could boast.

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Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary
could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was
constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at
the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother
thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected
account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish
to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without
further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of
constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian
matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he
sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for
Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at
Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical
subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves
in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas
holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain
records at the Essex Institute.
About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph
which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher.
Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for
the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources
of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later
questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and
instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various
libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and
feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so
wisely blotted the name.
Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong.
Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and
absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence;
and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the older application had all vanished.
He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete
alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to
his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlinglyone almost fancied
increasinglysimilar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great
overmantel on the North wall.
Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the
various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from
City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted
from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained
when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a
fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which
stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred '10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali
Field's grave in y-.' The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly
complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but
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here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble
on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the ramblesfrom which St. John's
(the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst
of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only
Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.
4
It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all
the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked
with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at
every moment that Charles was thorough master of himself and in touch with matters of real
importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his
recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward
seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the
papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge,
for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar
Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when
correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation
to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and
dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first
be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task
of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible
those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and
hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind
and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly
revolutionise the current conception of things.
As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose
progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated
headstone bore certain mystic symbolscarved from directions in his will and ignorantly
spared by those who had effaced the namewhich were absolutely essential to the final
solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wish to guard his secret with care;
and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett
asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off
with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and
diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen findsthe
'Journall and Notes', the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message 'To Him
Who Shal Come After'and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave
Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very
closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century
which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth
century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was
relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
'Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe
Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye
Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will
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see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. For Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Bay and Book 120 Pieces
Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50
Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. For Mr. Green at ye Elephant
50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. For Mr.
Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles. For Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye
SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in
Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of
What he hath so well us'd these hundred Yeares. Simon hath not writ these V. Weekes, but I
expecte soon hear'g from Him.'

When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward,
who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the
newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered
tenacious in his memory. They ran: 'Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V
Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It
will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal Bee, and he shal think on Past
Thinges and look back thro' all ye Yeares, against ye Which I must have ready ye Saltes or
That to make 'em with.'
Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the
painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Even
after that he entertained the odd fancywhich his medical skill of course assured him was
only a fancythat the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to
follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study
the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute
detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow
above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that
produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other
hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were
more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth
made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital
importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail
himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying
this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so
that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for
Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became
recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's
friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips
to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk to a strange mulatto who
dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought
a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had
come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from
his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied
him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would
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carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they
saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so
that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and
mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier
in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in
Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he
had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he
wrote by little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and
he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing
of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and
steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas
alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to
which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one
or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he
sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special
search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided
acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence,
and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that
Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man
supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave
an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he
dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward
a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult
had invited him.
The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward
his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains
east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card
from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving
the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did
reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his
mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards
were planning to travel to Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave
his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was
on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk
that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person
likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners
had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles
said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far
distant.
That return did not, however, take place until May 1926, when after a few heralding cards
the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long
miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, and fragrant,
blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of
ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered
Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with
quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood Avenues was a
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breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved.
At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and
below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of
the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down to the terminal behind
the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient
hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the
magic evening against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history
which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets
whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case
may be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab
whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House,
and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where
the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church
beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known,
and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little
white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately facade
of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had
come home.
5
A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip
the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe
that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett
refuses to concede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queerness of the youth at
this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroadodd enough things, to be
sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself,
though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several
talks with Dr. Willett displayed a balance which no madmaneven an incipient onecould
feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds
heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time.
There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and
although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality
of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not by chill the
blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the
household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange.
Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting,
elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who
smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange
hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward
did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he
had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that
European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great
revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his
resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the
latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above
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the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living
youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious
affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the
young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of
grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles,
and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And
always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to
keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was
chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there
came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth
which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal
traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a
sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr.
and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage
had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous,
with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them
that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused,
and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther
and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The
thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and
the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his
laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquires about the
date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after
midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a
rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and
Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box
from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured
breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after
which the footfalls descended again, and the four reappeared outside and drove off in their
truck.
The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of
his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would
open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching
sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door
her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and
indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary.
Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon,
after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal,
he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the
laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy;
for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret
workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to
his inviolable private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up
from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all
his scientific effects.
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In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of
it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by
various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found
that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in North Burial Ground
Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of
several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened
them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the
sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive
several rods away; but could not reach it before the noise of his feet on the gravel had
revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward
the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart
believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an
enormous hold dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa
Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and
deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the
cemetery records.
Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was
dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a
place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he though the escaping truck
had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.

During the next few days Charles Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added
sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to
the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of
monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other
times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running
water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any
before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young
recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation.
Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a
messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written
portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed
themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.
6
Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to
grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett
somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance
of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant
189

coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a
singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes
escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the
locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened
anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows,
and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic
writings of "Eliphas Levi", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door
and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
'Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli God, Almonsin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.'
This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the
neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be
judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward
household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, allpervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the
midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which
would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the
voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible
depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was
clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had
been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its
hellish imports; for Charles had told of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in
which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letter, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse
on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase,
for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his
Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten
language: 'DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS.'
Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though
sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but
equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear
syllables that sounded like 'Yi nash Yog Sothoth he lgeb throdag'ending in a 'Yah!' whose
maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories
were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually
changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled
fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing
panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a
second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding
concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted,
although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes
makes merciful deletions.

190

Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his
wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at
Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the
stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched out at full length on the floor of the corridor
outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water
from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened
to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of
her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from
which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had
appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for
comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely
different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration
of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was
undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best
powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something
hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife
which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore
Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never
fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she
could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not
quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously
with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there
had come in response to it from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which
that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in
Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who
overheard them. The phrase was just this: 'Sshh!-write!'
Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have
a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such
conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit
of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household.
The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright
madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed
voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would
be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the
third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now
disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled,
and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast
armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and
haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the
elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so
long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was
right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed
inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of great quiet, though insisting on a prolongation
of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book
research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be
191

necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest
contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism
designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat
bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise
despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite
inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew
what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose
stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and feardistorted mouth.
Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at
the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was
plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of
books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that
nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was
missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises,
geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers
and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the
father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The
strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see
just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as
spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss,
and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court,
but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had
come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the
room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and
tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent
suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the
youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine
blue-grey dust.
Chapter IV
1
In the week following that memorable Good Friday Charles Ward was seen more often than
usual, and was continually carrying books between his library and the attic laboratory. His
actions were quiet and rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not
like, and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands upon the cook.
Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings, and on the following
Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in the library where the picture stared no
more. The interview was, as always, inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the
youth was sane and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and
spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the portrait he grieved
singularly little considering his first enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find something of
positive humour in its sudden crumbling.

192

About the second week Charles began to be absent from the house for long periods, and
one day when good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned
his frequent visits to the old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise
and perform curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to old Asa,
but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her very much, since she had
watched him grow up from birth. Another report of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where
some friends of the family saw him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to
haunt the resort and canoe-house of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries by Dr.
Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was always to secure access to the
rather hedged-in river-bank, along which he would walk toward the north, usually not
reappearing for a very long while.
Late in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds in the attic laboratory which
brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and a somewhat distracted promise of amendment
from Charles. It occurred one morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary
conversation noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating
hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable series of clashing
shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands and denials which caused Mrs. Ward to
run upstairs and listen at the door. She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain
words were 'must have it red for three months', and upon her knocking all sounds ceased at
once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there were certain conflicts
of spheres of consciousness which only great skill could avoid, but which he would try to
transfer to other realms.
About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening there
had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point
of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired,
the butler was nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared
somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made
signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught
one sight of his fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward
went out, but in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he said,
something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no way for a young
gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not possibly stay another night. Mrs.
Ward allowed the man to depart, but she did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles
in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake she
had heard faint sounds from the laboratory above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a
sighing which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used to
listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast driving all else from her
mind.
The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three months before, Charles Ward
seized the newspaper very early and accidentally lost the main section. This matter was not
recalled till later, when Dr. Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing
links here and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had lost, and
marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving

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It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground,
that ghouls were again at work in the ancient portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra
Weeden, who was born in 1740 and died in 1824 according to his uprooted and savagely
splintered slate headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done
with a spade stolen from an adjacent tool-shed.
Whatever the contents may have been after more than a century of burial, all was gone
except a few slivers of decayed wood. There were no wheel tracks, but the police have
measured a single set of footprints which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the
boots of a man of refinement.
Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging discovered last March, when a party
in a motor truck were frightened away after making a deep excavation; but Sergt. Riley of the
Second Station discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases. In March
the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this time a well-marked and
cared-for grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate purpose, and with a
conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of the slab which had been intact up to the
day before.
Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening, expressed their astonishment
and regret; and were wholly unable to think of any enemy who would care to violate the grave
of their ancestor. Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to
which Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar circumstances, not dishonourable to
himself, shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud or mystery he is frankly
ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned to the case, and hopes to uncover some
valuable clues in the near future.

Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet

Residents of Pawtuxet were aroused about 3 a.m. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs
which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. The volume and
quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to most who heard it; and Fred Lemdin,
night watchman at Rhodes, declares it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a
man in mortal terror and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike
somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange and unpleasant
odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly linked with this incident; and
may have had their share in exciting the dogs.

The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted, and all agreed in retrospect that
he may have wished at this period to make some statement or confession from which sheer
terror withheld him. The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that
he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the more academic
alienists unite at present in charging him with the revolting cases of vampirism which the
press so sensationally reported about this time, but which have not yet been definitely traced
to any known perpetrator. These cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention,
involved victims of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities;
194

the residential hill and the North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts across
the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers with open windows were
attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke unanimously of a lean, lithe, leaping
monster with burning eyes which fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted
ravenously.
Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles Ward as far back as even this, is
cautious in attempting to explain these horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his
own; and limits his positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation: 'I will not,' he says,
'state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but I will declare that
Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to be sure he was ignorant of the taste of
blood, as indeed his continued anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any
verbal argument. Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never a
monster or a villain. As for nowI don't like to think. A change came, and I'm content to
believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that
vanished from Waite's hospital had another.'
Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the Ward home attending Mrs. Ward,
whose nerves had begun to snap under the strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some
morbid hallucinations which she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed
in talking to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions always
concerning the faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic laboratory and bedroom,
and emphasised the occurrence of muffled sighs and sobbings at the most impossible times.
Early in July Willett ordered Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative
sojourn, and cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her only
cheering letters. It is probably to this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her life and
continued sanity.
2
Not long after his mother's departure, Charles Ward began negotiating for the Pawtuxet
bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice with a concrete garage, perched high on the
sparsely settled bank of the river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth
would have nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them secured it
for him at an exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and as soon as it was vacant
he took possession under cover of darkness, transporting in a great closed van the entire
contents of his attic laboratory, including the books both weird and modern which he had
borrowed from his study. He had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father
recalls only a drowsy realisation of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods
were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters on the third floor,
and never haunted the attic again.
To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy with which he had
surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared to have two sharers of his mysteries; a
villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main St. waterfront who acted as a
servant, and a thin, scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed
aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague. Neighbours vainly tried to engage these
odd persons in conversation. The mulatto Gomes spoke very little English, and the bearded
man, who gave his name as Dr. Allen, voluntarily followed his example. Ward himself tried
to be more affable, but succeeded only in provoking curiousity with his rambling accounts of
195

chemical research. Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning
of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased, there rose still queerer
tales of disproportionate orders of meat from the butcher's and of the muffled shouting,
declamation, rhythmic chanting, and screaming supposed to come from some very cellar
below the place. Most distinctly the new and strange household was bitterly disliked by the
honest bourgeoisie of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced
connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic attacks and
murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed now confined wholly to Pawtuxet
and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept occasionally at home and was still
reckoned a dweller beneath his father's roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long
trips, whose destinations have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more
emaciated even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating to Dr.
Willett his old, old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett often waylaid him at
his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply worried and perplexed, and wished his son
to get as much sound oversight as could be managed in the case of so secretive and
independent an adult. The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this, and
adduces many a conversation to prove his point.
About September the vampirism declined, but in the following January almost became
involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal arrival and departure of motor trucks
at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch
exposed the nature of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley had
occurred one of the frequent sordid waylaying of trucks by "hi-jackers" in quest of liquor
shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined to receive the greater shock. For the
long cases they seized proved upon opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so
gruesome, in fact, that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the
underworld. The thieves had hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State Police
got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrived vagrant, under promise
of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge, at last consented to guide a party of
troopers to the spot; and there was found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful
thing. It would not be well for the nationalor even the internationalsense of decorum if
the public were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was no
mistaking it, even by those far from studious officers; and telegrams to Washington ensued
with feverish rapidity.
The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet bungalow, and State and
Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful and serious call. They found him pallid and
worried with his two odd companions, and received from him what seemed to be a valid
explanation and evidence of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part
of a programme of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the
last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from agencies which
he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can be. Of the identity of the
specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and was properly shocked when the inspectors
hinted at the monstrous effect on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of
the matter would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded colleague
Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction than his own nervous
tones; so that in the end the officials took no action, but carefully set down the New York
name and address which Ward gave them a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is
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only fair to add that the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places,
and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from Charles Ward which he considers
of extraordinary importance, and about which he has frequently quarrelled with Dr. Lyman.
Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia
praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the
hapless youth. He calls especial attention to the normal character of the penmanship; which
though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless distinctly Ward's own. The text in
full is as follows:
100 Prospect St.
Providence, R.I.,
February 8, 1928.
Dear Dr. Willett:I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the disclosures which I have so long
promised you, and for which you have pressed me so often. The patience you have shewn in
waiting, and the confidence you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never
cease to appreciate.
And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation that no triumph such as I
dreamed of can ever by mine. Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you
will not be a boast of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the
world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those
Fenner letters said of the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done again, and
quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into wordsall civilisation, all natural law,
perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous
abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature
you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate everything existing there,
alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am
there. I will tell you why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you
would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six hours continuously to
hear what I have to say. It will take that longand believe me when I tell you that you never
had a more genuine professional duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things
which hang in the balance.
I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the whole thing. But I have told him of my
danger, and he has four men from a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how
much good they can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely
envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may
help to save the cosmos from stark hell.
Any time will doI shall not be out of the house. Don't telephone ahead, for there is no
telling who or what may try to intercept you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that
nothing may prevent this meeting.

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In utmost gravity and desperation,

Charles Dexter Ward.
P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don't burn it.

Dr. Willett received this note about 10:30 a.m., and immediately arranged to spare the whole
late afternoon and evening for the momentous talk, letting it extend on into the night as long
as might be necessary. He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening
hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his tasks were very
mechanically performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded to a stranger, Willett had
seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very
subtle, ancient, and horrible was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr.
Allen could almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's
enigmatical colleague. Willett had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect and
bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed dark glasses might
conceal.
Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the Ward residence, but found to his
annoyance that Charles had not adhered to his determination to remain indoors. The guards
were there, but said that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that
morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the telephone, one of
the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with phrases such as 'I am very tired and
must rest a while', 'I can't receive anyone for some time', 'you'll have to excuse me', 'Please
postpone decisive action till we can arrange some sort of compromise', or 'I am very sorry, but
I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you later.' Then, apparently
gaining boldness through meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one had seen him
depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one o'clock and entered the house
without a word. He had gone upstairs, where a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he
was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing
off into a kind of choking gasp. When, however, the butler had gone to inquire what the
trouble was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently
gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably. Then he had evidently
done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great clattering and thumping and creaking
ensued; after which he had reappeared and left at once. Willett inquired whether or not any
message had been left, but was told that there was no none. The butler seemed queerly
disturbed about something in Charles's appearance and manner, and asked solicitously if there
was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles Ward's library, watching the
dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books had been removed, and smiling grimly at the
panelled overmantel on the north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph
Curwen had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the sunset
cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Mr.
Ward finally arrived, and shewed much surprise and anger at his son's absence after all the
pains which had been taken to guard him. He had not known of Charles's appointment, and
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promised to notify Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor goodnight he
expressed his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do all he could to
restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape from that library, for something
frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it; as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of
evil. He had never liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there
lurked a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get out into the
pure air as soon as possible.
3
The next morning Willett received a message from the senior Ward, saying that Charles was
still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr. Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would
remain at Pawtuxet for some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary
because Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving the
researches in need of Charles's constant oversight. Charles sent his best wishes, and regretted
any bother his abrupt change of plans might have caused. In listening to this message Mr.
Ward heard Dr. Allen's voice for the first time, and it seemed to excite some vague and
elusive memory which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point of
fearfulness.
Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr. Willett was frankly at a loss what to
do. The frantic earnestness of Charles's note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of
its writer's immediate violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his
delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded colleague must be
extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never return to their final scene; yet
according to latest advices he had forgotten all this and was back in the thick of the mystery.
Common sense bade one leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct
would not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read it over again,
and could not make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its bombastic verbiage and
its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its terror was too profound and real, and in
conjunction with what the doctor already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from
beyond time and space to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors
abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared
for any sort of action at any time.
For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which seemed thrust upon him, and
became more and more inclined to pay Charles a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of
the youth had ever ventured to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its
interior only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that some direct
conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been receiving brief and noncommittal typed notes from his son, and said that Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement
had had no better word. So at length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation
inspired by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings from
Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the river.
Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiousity, though of course never
entering the house or proclaiming his presence; hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving
out Broad Street one early afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he
thought oddly of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven
years before on a terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
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The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short, and trim Edgewood and sleepy
Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett turned to the right down Lockwood Street and
drove his car as far along that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where
the bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty downlands
beyond. Houses were still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated bungalow with its
concrete garage on a high point of land at his left. Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel
walk he rapped at the door with a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil
Portuguese mulatto who opened it to the width of a crack.
He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally important business. No excuse
would be accepted, and a repulse would mean only a full report of the matter to the elder
Ward. The mulatto still hesitated, and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open
it; but the doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came from the
dark interior a husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through and through though
he did not know why he feared it. 'Let him in, Tony,' it said, 'we may as well talk now as
ever.' But disturbing as was the whisper, the greater fear was that which immediately
followed. The floor creaked and the speaker hove in sightand the owner of those strange
and resonant tones was seen to be no other than Charles Dexter Ward.
The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded his conversation of that
afternoon is due to the importance he assigns to this particular period. For at last he concedes
a vital change in Charles Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke
from a brain hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty
years. Controversy with Dr. Lyman has compelled him to be very specific, and he definitely
dates the madness of Charles Ward from the time the typewritten notes began to reach his
parents. Those notes are not in Ward's normal style; not even in the style of that last frantic
letter to Willett. Instead, they are strange and archaic, as if the snapping of the writer's mind
had released a flood of tendencies and impressions picked up unconsciously through boyhood
antiquarianism. There is an obvious effort to be modern, but the spirit and occasionally the
language are those of the past.
The past, too, was evident in Ward's every tone and gesture as he received the doctor in
that shadowy bungalow. He bowed, motioned Willett to a seat, and began to speak abruptly in
that strange whisper which he sought to explain at the very outset.
'I am grown phthisical,' he began, 'from this cursed river air. You must excuse my speech.
I suppose you are come from my father to see what ails me, and I hope you will say nothing to
alarm him.'
Willett was studying these scraping tones with extreme care, but studying even more
closely the face of the speaker. Something, he felt, was wrong; and he thought of what the
family had told him about the fright of that Yorkshire butler one night. He wished it were not
so dark, but did not request that the blind be opened. Instead, he merely asked Ward why he
had so belied the frantic note of little more than a week before.
'I was coming to that,' the host replied. 'You must know, I am in a very bad state of nerves,
and do and say queer things I cannot account for. As I have told you often, I am on the edge
of great matters; and the bigness of them has a way of making me light-headed. Any man
might well be frighted of what I have found, but I am not to be put off for long. I was a dunce
to have that guard and stick at home; for having gone this far, my place is here. I am not well
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spoke of my prying neighbours, and perhaps I was led by weakness to believe myself what
they say of me. There is no evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly. Have the
goodness to wait six months, and I'll shew you what will pay your patience well.'
'You may as well know I have a way of learning old matters from things surer than books,
and I'll leave you to judge the importance of what I can give to history, philosophy, and the
arts by reason of the doors I have access to. My ancestor had all this when those witless
peeping Toms came and murdered him. I now have it again, or am coming very imperfectly to
have a part of it. This time nothing must happen, and least of all though any idiot fears of my
own. Pray forget all I writ you, Sir, and have no fear of this place or any in it. Dr. Allen is a
man of fine parts, and I own him an apology for anything ill I have said of him. I wish I had
no need to spare him, but there were things he had to do elsewhere. His zeal is equal to mine
in all those matters, and I suppose that when I feared the work I feared him too as my greatest
helper in it.'
Ward paused, and the doctor hardly knew what to say or think. He felt almost foolish in
the face of this calm repudiation of the letter; and yet there clung to him the fact that while the
present discourse was strange and alien and indubitably mad, the note itself had been tragic in
its naturalness and likeness to the Charles Ward he knew. Willett now tried to turn the talk on
early matters, and recall to the youth some past events which would restore a familiar mood;
but in this process he obtained only the most grotesque results. It was the same with all the
alienists later on. Important sections of Charles Ward's store of mental images, mainly those
touching modern times and his own personal life, had been unaccountably expunged; whilst
all the massed antiquarianism of his youth had welled up from some profound
subconsciousness to engulf the contemporary and the individual. The youth's intimate
knowledge of elder things was abnormal and unholy, and he tried his best to hide it. When
Willett would mention some favourite object of his boyhood archaistic studies he often shed
by pure accident such a light as no normal mortal could conceivably be expected to possess,
and the doctor shuddered as the glib allusion glided by.
It was not wholesome to know so much about the way the fat sheriff's wig fell off as he
leaned over at the play in Mr. Douglass's Histrionick Academy in King Street on the eleventh
of February, 1762, which fell on a Thursday; or about how the actors cut the text of Steele's
Conscious Lover so badly that one was almost glad the Baptist-ridden legislature closed the
theatre a fortnight later. That Thomas Sabin's Boston coach was "damn'd uncomfortable" old
letters may well have told; but what healthy antiquarian could recall how the creaking of
Epenetus Olney's new signboard (the gaudy crown he set up after he took to calling his tavern
the Crown Coffee House) was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece all the
radios in Pawtuxet were playing?
Ward, however, would not be quizzed long in this vein. Modern and personal topics he
waved aside quite summarily, whilst regarding antique affairs he soon shewed the plainest
boredom. What he wished clearly enough was only to satisfy his visitor enough to make him
depart without the intention of returning. To this end he offered to shew Willett the entire
house, and at once proceeded to lead the doctor through every room from cellar to attic.
Willett looked sharply, but noted that the visible books were far too few and trivial to have
ever filled the wide gaps on Ward's shelves at home, and that the meagre so-called
"laboratory" was the flimsiest sort of a blind. Clearly, there were a library and a laboratory
elsewhere; but just where, it was impossible to say. Essentially defeated in his quest for
something he could not name, Willett returned to town before evening and told the senior
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Ward everything which had occurred. They agreed that the youth must be definitely out of his
mind, but decided that nothing drastic need be done just then. Above all, Mrs. Ward must be
kept in as complete an ignorance as her son's own strange typed notes would permit.
Mr. Ward now determined to call in person upon his son, making it wholly a surprise visit.
Dr. Willett took him in his car one evening, guiding him to within sight of the bungalow and
waiting patiently for his return. The session was a long one, and the father emerged in a very
saddened and perplexed state. His reception had developed much like Willett's, save that
Charles had been an excessively long time in appearing after the visitor had forced his way
into the hall and sent the Portuguese away with an imperative demand; and in the bearing of
the altered son there was no trace of filial affection. The lights had been dim, yet even so the
youth had complained that they dazzled him outrageously. He had not spoken out loud at all,
averring that his throat was in very poor condition; but in his hoarse whisper there was a
quality so vaguely disturbing that Mr. Ward could not banish it from his mind.
Now definitely leagued together to do all they could toward the youth's mental salvation,
Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett set about collecting every scrap of data which the case might afford.
Pawtuxet gossip was the first item they studied, and this was relatively easy to glean since
both had friends in that region. Dr. Willett obtained the most rumours because people talked
more frankly to him than to a parent of the central figure, and from all he heard he could tell
that young Ward's life had become indeed a strange one. Common tongues would not
dissociate his household from the vampirism of the previous summer, while the nocturnal
comings and goings of the motor trucks provided their share of dark speculations. Local
tradesmen spoke of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto, and
in particular of the inordinate amounts of mean and fresh blood secured from the two butcher
shops in the immediate neighbourhood. For a household of only three, these quantities were
quite absurd.
Then there was the matter of the sounds beneath the earth. Reports of these things were
harder to point down, but all the vague hints tallied in certain basic essentials. Noises of a
ritual nature positively existed, and at times when the bungalow was dark. They might, of
course, have come from the known cellar; but rumour insisted that there were deeper and
more spreading crypts. Recalling the ancient tales of Joseph Curwen's catacombs, and
assuming for granted that the present bungalow had been selected because of its situation on
the old Curwen site as revealed in one of another of the documents found behind the picture,
Willett and Mr. Ward gave this phase of the gossip much attention; and searched many times
without success for the door in the river-bank which old manuscripts mentioned. As to
popular opinions of the bungalow's various inhabitants, it was soon plain that the Brava
Portuguese was loathed, the bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen feared, and the pallid young
scholar disliked to a profound degree. During the last week or two Ward had obviously
changed much, abandoning his attempts at affability and speaking only in hoarse but oddly
repellent whispers on the few occasions that he ventured forth.
Such were the shreds and fragments gathered here and there; and over these Mr. Ward and
Dr. Willett held many long and serious conferences. They strove to exercise deduction,
induction, and constructive imagination to their utmost extent; and to correlate every known
fact of Charles's later life, including the frantic letter which the doctor now shewed the father,
with the meagre documentary evidence available concerning old Joseph Curwen. They would
have given much for a glimpse of the papers Charles had found, for very clearly the key to the
youth's madness lay in what he had learned of the ancient wizard and his doings.
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4
And yet, after all, it was from no step of Mr. Ward's or Dr. Willett's that the next move in this
singular case proceeded. The father and the physician, rebuffed and confused by a shadow too
shapeless and intangible to combat, had rested uneasily on their oars while the typed notes of
young Ward to his parents grew fewer and fewer. Then came the first of the month with its
customary financial adjustments, and the clerks at certain banks began a peculiar shaking of
heads and telephoning from one to the other. Officials who knew Charles Ward by sight went
down to the bungalow to ask why every cheque of his appearing at this juncture was a clumsy
forgery, and were reassured less than they ought to have been when the youth hoarsely
explained that he had had lately been so much affected by a nervous shock as to make normal
writing impossible. He could, he said, form no written characters at all except with great
difficulty; and could prove it by the fact that he had been forced to type all his recent letters,
even those to his father and mother, who would bear out the assertion.
What made the investigators pause in confusion was not this circumstance alone, for that
was nothing unprecedented or fundamentally suspicious, nor even the Pawtuxet gossip, of
which one or two of them had caught echoes. It was the muddled discourse of the young man
which nonplussed them, implying as it did a virtually total loss of memory concerning
important monetary matters which he had had at his fingertips only a month or two before.
Something was wrong; for despite the apparent coherence and rationality of his speech, there
could be no normal reason for this ill-concealed blankness on vital points. Moreover, although
none of these men knew Ward well, they could not help observing the change in his language
and manner. They had heard he was an antiquarian, but even the most hopeless antiquarians
do not make daily use of obsolete phraseology and gestures. Altogether, this combination of
hoarseness, palsied hands, bad memory, and altered speech and bearing must represent some
disturbance or malady of genuine gravity, which no doubt formed the basis of the prevailing
odd rumours; and after their departure the party of officials decided that a talk with the senior
Ward was imperative.
So on the sixth of March, 1928, there was a long and serious conference in Mr. Ward's
office, after which the utterly bewildered father summoned Dr. Willett in a kind of helpless
resignation. Willett looked over the strained and awkward signatures of the cheque, and
compared them in his mind with the penmanship of that last frantic note. Certainly, the
change was radical and profound, and yet there was something damnably familiar about the
new writing. It had crabbed and archaic tendencies of a very curious sort, and seemed to result
from a type of stroke utterly different from that which the youth had always used. It was
strangebut where had he seen it before? On the whole, it was obvious that Charles was
insane. Of that there could be no doubt. And since it appeared unlikely that he could handle
his property or continue to deal with the outside world much longer, something must quickly
be done toward his oversight and possible cure. It was then that the alienists were called in,
Drs. Peck and Waite of Providence and Dr. Lyman of Boston, to whom Mr. Ward and Dr.
Willett gave the most exhaustive possible history of the case, and who conferred at length in
the now unused library of their young patient, examining what books and papers of his were
left in order to gain some further notion of his habitual mental cast. After scanning this
material and examining the ominous note to Willett they all agreed that Charles Ward's
studies had been enough to unseat or at least to warp any ordinary intellect, and wished most
heartily that they could see his more intimate volumes and documents; but this latter they
knew they could do, if at all, only after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett now reviewed
the whole case with febrile energy; it being at this time that he obtained the statements of the
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workmen who had seen Charles find the Curwen documents, and that he collated the incidents
of the destroyed newspaper items, looking up the latter at the Journal office.
On Thursday, the eighth of March, Drs. Willett, Peck, Lyman, and Waite, accompanied by
Mr. Ward, paid the youth their momentous call; making no concealment of their object and
questioning the now acknowledged patient with extreme minuteness. Charles, although he
was inordinately long in answering the summons and was still redolent of strange and noxious
laboratory odours when he did finally make his agitated appearance, proved a far from
recalcitrant subject; and admitted freely that his memory and balance had suffered somewhat
from close application to abstruse studies. He offered no resistance when his removal to other
quarters was insisted upon; and seemed, indeed, to display a high degree of intelligence as
apart from mere memory. His conduct would have sent his interviewers away in bafflement
had not the persistently archaic trend of his speech and unmistakable replacement of modern
by ancient ideas in his consciousness marked him out as one definitely removed from the
normal. Of his work he would say no more to the group of doctors than he had formerly said
to his family and to Dr. Willett, and his frantic note of the previous month he dismissed as
mere nerves and hysteria. He insisted that this shadowy bungalow possessed no library or
laboratory beyond the visible ones, and waxed abstruse in explaining the absence from the
house of such odours as now saturated all his clothing. Neighbourhood gossip he attributed to
nothing more than the cheap inventiveness of baffled curiousity. Of the whereabouts of Dr.
Allen he said he did not feel at liberty to speak definitely, but assured his inquisitors that the
bearded and spectacled man would return when needed. In paying off the stolid Brava who
resisted all questioning by the visitors, and in closing the bungalow which still seemed to hold
such nighted secrets, Ward shewed no signs of nervousness save a barely noticed tendency to
pause as though listening for something very faint. He was apparently animated by a calmly
philosophic resignation, as if the removal were the merest transient incident which would
cause the least trouble if facilitated and disposed of once and for all. It was clear that he
trusted to his obviously unimpaired keenness of absolute mentality to overcome all the
embarrassments into which his twisted memory, his lost voice and handwriting, and his
secretive and eccentric behaviour had led him. His mother, it was agreed, was not to be told of
the change; his father supplying typed notes in his name. Ward was taken to the restfully and
picturesquely situated private hospital maintained by Dr. Waite on Conanicut Island in the
bay, and subjected to the closest scrutiny and questioning by all the physicians connected with
the case. It was then that the physical oddities were noticed; the slackened metabolism, the
altered skin, and the disproportionate neural reactions. Dr. Willett was the most perturbed of
the various examiners, for he had attended Ward all his life and could appreciate with terrible
keenness the extent of his physical disorganisation. Even the familiar olive mark on his hip
was gone, while on his chest was a great black mole or cicatrice which had never been there
before, and which made Willett wonder whether the youth had ever submitted to any of the
witch markings reputed to be inflicted at certain unwholesome nocturnal meetings in wild and
lonely places. The doctor could not keep his mind off a certain transcribed witch-trial record
from Salem which Charles had shewn him in the old non-secretive days, and which read: 'Mr.
G. B. on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O.,
Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Ward's face, too,
troubled him horribly, till at length he suddenly discovered why he was horrified. For above
the young man's right eye was something which he had never previously noticeda small
scar or pit precisely like that in the crumbled painting of old Joseph Curwen, and perhaps
attesting some hideous ritualistic inoculation to which both had submitted at a certain stage of
their occult careers.

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While Ward himself was puzzling all the doctors at the hospital a very strict watch was
kept on all mail addressed either to him or to Dr. Allen, which Mr. Ward had ordered
delivered at the family home. Willett had predicted that very little would be found, since any
communications of a vital nature would probably have been exchanged by messenger; but in
the latter part of March there did come a letter from Prague for Dr. Allen which gave both the
doctor and the father deep thought. It was in a very crabbed and archaic hand; and though
clearly not the effort of a foreigner, shewed almost as singular a departure from modern
English as the speech of young Ward himself. It read:
Kleinstrasse 11,
Altstadt, Prague,
11th Feby. 1928.
Brother in Almonsin-Metraton:I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Saltes I sent you. It was wrong, and
meanes clearly that ye Headstones had been chang'd when Barnabas gott me the Specimen. It
is often so, as you must be sensible of from the Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground
in 1769 and what H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like to ende him. I gott
such a Thing in Aegypt 75 yeares gone, from the which came that Scar ye Boy saw on me
here in 1924. As I told you longe ago, do not calle up That which you can not put downe;
either from dead Saltes or out of ye Spheres beyond. Have ye Wordes for laying at all times
readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. Stones are all
chang'd now in Nine groundes out of 10. You are never sure till you question. I this day heard
from H., who has had Trouble with the Soldiers. He is like to be sorry Transylvania is pass't
from Hungary to Roumania, and wou'd change his Seat if the Castel weren't so fulle of What
we Knowe. But of this he hath doubtless writ you. In my next Send'g there will be Somewhat
from a Hill tomb from ye East that will delight you greatly. Meanwhile forget not I am
desirous of B. F. if you can possibly get him for me. You know G. in Philada. better than I.
Have him upp firste if you will, but doe not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must
speake to him in ye End.
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.

To Mr. J. C. in
Providence.
Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett paused in utter chaos before this apparent bit of unrelieved insanity.
Only by degrees did they absorb what it seemed to imply. So the absent Dr. Allen, and not
Charles Ward, had come to be the leading spirit at Pawtuxet? That must explain the wild
reference and denunciation in the youth's last frantic letter. And what of this addressing of the
bearded and spectacled stranger as "Mr. J. C."? There was no escaping the inference, but there
are limits to possible monstrosity. Who was "Simon O."; the old man Ward had visited in
Prague four years previously? Perhaps, but in the centuries behind there had been another
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Simon O.Simon Orne, alias Jedediah, of Salem, who vanished in 1771, and whose peculiar
handwriting Dr. Willett now unmistakably recognised from the photostatic copies of the Orne
formulae which Charles had once shown him. What horrors and mysteries, what
contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a century and a half to
harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and domes?
The father and the old physician, virtually at a loss what to do or think, went to see
Charles at the hospital and questioned him as delicately as they could about Dr. Allen, about
the Prague visit, and about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all
these enquiries the youth was politely non-committal, merely barking in his hoarse whisper
that he had found Dr. Allen to have a remarkable spiritual rapport with certain souls from the
past, and that any correspondent the bearded man might have in Prague would probably be
similarly gifted. When they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realised to their chagrin that they
had really been the ones under catechism; and that without imparting anything vital himself,
the confined youth had adroitly pumped them of everything the Prague letter had contained.
Drs. Peck, Waite, and Lyman were not inclined to attach much importance to the strange
correspondence of young Ward's companion; for they knew the tendency of kindred
eccentrics and monomaniacs to band together, and believed that Charles or Allen had merely
unearthed an expatriated counterpartperhaps one who had seen Orne's handwriting and
copied it in an attempt to pose as the bygone character's reincarnation. Allen himself was
perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of
the long-dead Curwen. Such things had been known before, and on the same basis the hardheaded doctors disposed of Willett's growing disquiet about Charles Ward's present
handwriting, as studied from unpremeditated specimens obtained by various ruses. Willett
thought he had placed its odd familiarity at last, and that what it vaguely resembled was the
bygone penmanship of old Joseph Curwen himself; but this the other physicians regarded as a
phase of imitativeness only to be expected in a mania of this sort, and refused to grant it any
importance either favourable or unfavourable. Recognising this prosaic attitude in his
colleagues, Willett advised Mr. Ward to keep to himself the letter which arrived for Dr. Allen
on the second of April from Rakus, Transylvania, in a handwriting so intensely and
fundamentally like that of the Hutchinson cipher that both father and physician paused in awe
before breaking the seal. This read as follows:

Castle Ferenczy
7 March 1928.
Dear C.:Hadd a Squad of 20 Militia up to talk about what the Country Folk say. Must digg deeper and
have less Hearde. These Roumanians plague me damnably, being officious and particular
where you cou'd buy a Magyar off with a Drinke and Food.
Last monthe M. got me ye Sarcophagus of ye Five Sphinxes from ye Acropolis where He
whome I call'd up say'd it wou'd be, and I have hadde 3 Talkes with What was therein
inhum'd. It will go to S. O. in Prague directly, and thence to you. It is stubborn but you know
ye Way with Such.
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You shew Wisdom in having lesse about than Before; for there was no Neede to keep the
Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble,
as you too welle knowe. You can now move and worke elsewhere with no Kill'g Trouble if
needful, tho' I hope no Thing will soon force you to so Bothersome a Course.
I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside; for there was ever a Mortall
Peril in it, and you are sensible what it did when you ask'd Protection of One not dispos'd to
give it.
You excel me in gett'g ye Formulae so another may saye them with Success, but Borellus
fancy'd it wou'd be so if just ye right Wordes were hadd. Does ye Boy use 'em often? I regret
that he growes squeamish, as I fear'd he wou'd when I hadde him here nigh 15 Monthes, but
am sensible you knowe how to deal with him. You can't saye him down with ye Formula, for
that will Worke only upon such as ye other Formula hath call'd up from Saltes; but you still
have strong Handes and Knife and Pistol, and Graves are not harde to digg, nor Acids loth to
burne.
O. sayes you have promis'd him B. F. I must have him after. B. goes to you soone, and
may he give you what you wishe of that Darke Thing belowe Memphis. Imploy care in what
you calle up, and beware of ye Boy.
It will be ripe in a yeare's time to have up ye Legions from Underneath, and then there are
no Boundes to what shal be oures. Have Confidence in what I saye, for you knowe O. and I
have hadd these 150 yeares more than you to consulte these Matters in.

NephreuKa nai Hadoth

Edw. H.
For J Curwen, Esq.
Providence.
But if Willett and Mr. Ward refrained from shewing this letter to the alienists, they did not
refrain from acting upon it themselves. No amount of learned sophistry could controvert the
fact that the strangely bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen, of whom Charles's frantic letter had
spoken as such a monstrous menace, was in close and sinister correspondence with two
inexplicable creatures whom Ward had visited in his travels and who plainly claimed to be
survivals or avatars of Curwen's old Salem colleagues; that he was regarding himself as the
reincarnation of Joseph Curwen, and that he entertainedor was at least advised to
entertainmurderous designs against a "boy" who could scarcely be other than Charles
Ward. There was organised horror afoot; and no matter who had started it, the missing Allen
was by this time at the bottom of it. Therefore, thanking heaven that Charles was now safe in
the hospital, Mr. Ward lost no time in engaging detectives to learn all they could of the
cryptic, bearded doctor; finding whence he had come and what Pawtuxet knew of him, and if
possible discovering his present whereabouts. Supplying the men with one of the bungalow
keys which Charles yielded up, he urged them to explore Allen's vacant room which had been
identified when the patient's belongings had been packed; obtaining what clues they could
from any effects he might have left about. Mr. Ward talked with the detectives in his son's old
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library, and they felt a marked relief when they left it at last; for there seemed to hover about
the place a vague aura of evil. Perhaps it was what they had heard of the infamous old wizard
whose picture had once stared from the panelled overmantel, and perhaps it was something
different and irrelevant; but in any case they all half sensed an intangible miasma which
centred in that carven vestige of an older dwelling and which at times almost rose to the
intensity of a material emanation.
Chapter V
1
And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on
the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose
youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had
come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule.
There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion
with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least
two living menand one other of whom they dared not thinkwere in absolute possession of
minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost
unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible
creaturesand Charles Ward as wellwere doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from
their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case.
They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest
men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and
lore which had once animated and informed them.
A hideous traffic was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones
were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what
was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond
anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentred in one man or group. They had found
unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had
evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered
together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of
preparing from even the most antique remains certain "Essential Saltes" from which the shade
of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade,
and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught
successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not
always accurate.
Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things
presences or voices of some sortcould be drawn down from unknown places as well as
from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably
evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charleswhat might one think of him? What
forces "outside the spheres" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind
on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had
talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of
Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper
item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had
summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and
those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and
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hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen
with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single
talk with the manif man it wereover the telephone!
What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer
Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument"must
have it red for three months"Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out?
The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxetwhose mind had
planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the
bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles
neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of
Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was
daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the
detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the
meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually
beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the
sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint
secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the
following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural
search and underground exploration.
The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten
o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the
disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there
before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of
value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much
delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad
young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone
walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yearning aperture was
scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without
knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the
strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the
ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to
start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination
as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and
horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed
down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he tried
once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double
strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot.
Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once
rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it
when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in
the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised
ample cause.
In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving
him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast
from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett
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hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite
his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a
band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul
air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian
hold. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an
iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must
originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.
2
Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from
climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Like
Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the
plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme
importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the
slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls
he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in
three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with
difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that
he did not feel disposed to count any more.
It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are
not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused
anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its quintessential loathsomeness
and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he
was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued
from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight
around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless
black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high in the middle of
the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstone, and its
walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead
indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled
colonial type, whilst others had none.
Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore
these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of
medium size and apparently of bizarre used. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of
whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or
since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every
hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently
shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by
modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph
Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of
recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a
desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and
oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such
as were ready for use.
In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or
library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the
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furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well
known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the
noisomness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of
the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might
seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long
ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the
final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and
bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough
deciphering and editing. Once he found three large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus
postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he
took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the
batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted
him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had
been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present
except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett
placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young
Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done
among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript
one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal
writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other
hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical
comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph
Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had
been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to
a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was
not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as
his amanuensis.
In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that
Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel
columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called "Dragon's Head" and
used in almanacs to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a
corresponding sign of "Dragon's Tail" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was
something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no
more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables
and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings
from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as
followsexactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testifyand the first one struck an odd
note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing
the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.
Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE-L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH

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OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L-EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO
So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the
doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had
secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine
no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic
raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he
emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaseless with that dull
and hideous whine.
The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and
ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph
Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of
the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding
party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great
stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the
Curwen outbuildingsperhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows
provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the
walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw
that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it;
and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with
a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on
that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they
were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which
discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead,
he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by
occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and
wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells
were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent
now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.
3
From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be
diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else,
and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of
subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down,
the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and
at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite
arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this
ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour
which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett
that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they
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might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by
one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it.
At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did
he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnameable now rose up from below,
and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the
exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was
destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the
brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any
ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a
series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile
scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what
noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer
over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's
length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy,
moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and
foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and
frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty
to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he
looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of
that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors
had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells
whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever
the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and
whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had
abandoned them unheeded.
But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of
the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just
how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change
a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of
symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and
whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the
protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or
entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark raving mad as any inmate
of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular
power or nervous cordination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate
at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto
panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his
feet he crawled and rolled desperately away from the damp pavement where dozens of
Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane
cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against
the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter
blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of
yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a
light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory
he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of those
shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the
slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
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What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish
altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably
unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of
proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must
have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for
servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have
been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stonebut
Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an
idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used
by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer:
'Certainely, there was Noth'g but ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What
he cou'd gather onlie a part of.'
Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of
those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week
after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that
object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet
folk had ever seen or read about.
These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the
nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself;
eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr.
T. S. Eliot, and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's
underground library: 'Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth' and so on till the final underlined Zhro.
It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his
fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of
the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint
glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought
he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised
caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he
collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to
the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the
pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come
upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him.
What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen
electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he
trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it
would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his
progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and
lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness
without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise
to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew
that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief
party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he
emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as
coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more
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in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last
lamp which had brought him to safety.
4
In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had
previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might
find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim
purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his
search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern,
he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches,
and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever
hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and
nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but
he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near
the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious
archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning
down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with
the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers,
some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some
very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped
bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the
clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of
modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But
what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these,
and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured
leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent
odours perceptible above even the general noisomness of the crypt. When he had completed
about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had
come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after
entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large
oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments,
occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought
laboratory of Charles Wardand no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the
place and all the appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of
various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with
some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific
ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting-table; so that the room was really
rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter,
and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose
marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt in Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and
half before. That old copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's
occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor
proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small
storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages
of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher.
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There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes
which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits
which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had
suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical
paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in
the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow
studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly
vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general
types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a
single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered
with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that
these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room
with a large wooden sign reading 'Custodes' above them, and all the Phalerons on the other,
correspondingly labelled with a sign reading 'Materia'.
Each of the jars of jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant,
bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved
to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature
of the array as a whole, and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at
random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar
contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light
weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point
of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what
occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be
by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart
in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness.
Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no
residue whatever remained on his palm.
The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of
chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory
proper. "Custodes", "Materia"; that was the Latin for "Guards" and "Materials",
respectivelyand then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word
"Guards" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter
to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edwin Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: 'There was
no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be
founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe.' What did this signify? But waitwas
there not still another reference to "guards" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall
when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of
the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and
in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old
wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted,
terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those
captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had "eaten their heads off", so
that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the "salts" to
which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or
skeletons as they could?

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So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and
deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some
hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those
who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and
out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous
shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the "Materia"in
the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts tooand if not the salts of
"guards", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of
half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the
world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain
their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor
Charles had hinted in his frantic note, "all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of
the solar system and the universe"? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust
through his hands!
Then he noticed a small door at the further end of the room, and calmed himself enough to
approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him
with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper
and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth,
that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in
twilightand Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But
a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air.
This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the
door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing
on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted
by the final summons? He was wiser that old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett,
boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain,
seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet
him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to
harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his
patient.
The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single
chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised
after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of
savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled
cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful
Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set
down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked
carefully at the pad, to see what notes Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted;
but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed
Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
'B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.'
'Sawe olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt yee Way.'
'Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.'
'F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.'

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As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the
door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs
from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far
more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic
symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also
bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in
the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In
one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there
stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside
the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag
numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the
explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from
scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry,
dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost
reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the
several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the
dust or salts from the jug of "Materia", the two lekythoi from the "Custodes" shelf, the robes,
the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the
thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and
parents of Charles Wardall these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked
at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae
chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were
carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who
had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the
doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good
Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation
addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs.
Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the
forbidden pages of "Eliphas Levi"; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as
Sabaoth, Metraton, Almonsin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the search
who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less
thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition when he came up the pair of formulae
so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the
same; with the ancient symbols of "Dragon's Head" and "Dragon's Tail" heading them as in
Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as
if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved
more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to
reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found
it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began "Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth", this
epigraph started out as "Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha"; which to his mind would seriously
interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he
found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he
conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique
blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of
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the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the
pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and
the darkness.
Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE-L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!
But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The
lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall
nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out
the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely
stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre
contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had
lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and
opacity. That powderGreat God! it had come from the shelf of "Materia"what was it
doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chantingthe first of the pair
Dragon's Head, ascending nodeBlessed Saviour, could it be ...
The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had
seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. "I say
to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe ... Have ye Wordes for laying
at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have ... 3
Talkes with What was therein inhum'd ..." Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the
parting smoke?
5
Marinus Bicknell Willett has not hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by
certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate
circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and
remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to
shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran
physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the
bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that
portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next
day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend
unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing
stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from
the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, 'That beard... those eyes... God, who are
you?' A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had
known from the latter's boyhood.
In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning.
Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the
knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that
day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely
219

there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and
obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the
fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet
unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn
planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or
perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified
father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the
planksno noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen
papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled
formulae, no... Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. 'Yesterday,' he asked
softly, 'did you see it here ... and smell it?' And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread
and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and
half a gasp, and nodded in turn. 'Then I will tell you', he said.
So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his
frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of
that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to
ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both
men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, 'Do you suppose it would be of any
use to dig?' The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer
when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss.
Again Mr. Ward asked, 'But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up
the hole somehow.' And Willett again let silence answer for him.
But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief
before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which
had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had
seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that
fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an
ordinary lead pencildoubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very
carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of
any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script
of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the
laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely
familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken
pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a
quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.
At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two
men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they
found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script
of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century
A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian
veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked
sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers
along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might
remember'Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d
retinendum. Tace ut potes.'which may roughly be translated, "Curwen must be killed. The
body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you
are able."
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Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that
they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett,
especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and
both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they
drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the
night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday
noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up
Dr. Allen.
Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in
person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost
ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for
whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain the "Curwen" who
must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had
feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid.
Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the
name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And
now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that "Curwen" must be
killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides,
was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called
Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but
from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if
he grew too "squeamish". Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most
drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon
Charles Ward.
That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the
inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor
went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett
told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain
the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and
watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits
and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew
indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking
inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having
dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in
this affair; and chucked hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in
accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, 'Damn 'em, they do eat, but they
don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest!
D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything
off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with noise from Outside and never saw or
heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those
cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and
fifty-seven years gone!'
But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced
against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his
auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could
not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy
had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the
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greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look
overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild
statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply
initiated in the history of magic. But, he added, 'had you but known the words to bring up that
which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I
conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never
raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.'
Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which
had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. 'It
came, and you be here alive?' As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst
free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with
a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a
letter he remembered. 'No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in
nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!' And then, without warning, he
drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have
wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the
resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his
delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed
him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must
get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor
told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr.
Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it
was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After
that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a
caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was
very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with
an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications
Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital
authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outr-looking
missive.
There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed
the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that
period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable
current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months
believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he
received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest
quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had
dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the
Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the illregarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery
alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not
this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett
maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as
well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal
with Orne and Hutchinson itself. If what their fate may have been the doctor strives
sedulously not to think.
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6
The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the
detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonmentor Curwen's if one might regard the
tacit claim to reincarnation as validhe felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he
communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They
were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned
because of a particular nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the
older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all
that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they
had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts;
but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts
concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural
being, and there was a universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or falsea
belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark
glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his
one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his
glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in
the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very
queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his
room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the
preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the
actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the
bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the
sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy
cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know
him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight
scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it
yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed
writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen
manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished
catacombs of horror.
Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic
fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the
vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and
glassesthe crabbed Curwen penmanshipthe old portrait and its tiny scarand the altered
youth in the hospital with such a scarthat deep, hollow voice on the telephonewas it not
of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which
he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the
officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his
growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? CurwenAllenWardin what
blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That
damnable resemblance of the picture to Charleshad it not used to stare and stare, and follow
the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph
Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those
peoplethe lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starving monsters in
the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in
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minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and
"salts" and discoverieswhither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most
sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives
an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen.
That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the
pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's
room.
For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma
were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered.
Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr.
Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his
handkerchief. AllenWardCurwenit was becoming too hideous for coherent thought.
What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had
happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too
"squeamish", and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that
he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose
origin no one dared think, said that "Curwen" must be likewise obliterated? What was the
change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was
receivedhe had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped
out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when
he was out. But nohad he not cried out in terror as he entered his studythis very room?
What had he found there? Or waitwhat had found him? That simulacrum which brushed
boldly in without having been seen to gowas that an alien shadow and a horror forcing
itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of
queer noises?
Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough,
been a bad business. There had been noisesa cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering
or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked
out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew
down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only
the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for
this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett
was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would
almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly
conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the
doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the
phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he
leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain
obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he
must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in
the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura
of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly
down from the painted panel.
Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening
suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour
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later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The
father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments
passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then
there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been
opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly,
and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not
enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask
questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs,
shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett
meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends
not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward
never saw what they were.
Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke
which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the
fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard
again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two
suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of
indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew
very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and
venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered
together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the
vapours seemed to lighted, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor
operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some
cupboard within, Willett made his appearancesad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the clothdraped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and
into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a
queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed
of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne
the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent
fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To
Mr. Ward he said, 'I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of
magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.'
7
That Dr. Willett's "purgation" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his
hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave
out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly
in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight
on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness.
Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an
item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls Again Active
After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial
Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert
Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m.,
Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening
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the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby
electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main
entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture
was possible.
Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real
damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial
digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous
grave had been disturbed.
Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard,
inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police
from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second
incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was
frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a
cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the
Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for
these repeated outrages.

All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself
for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the
next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward
had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports
and its sinister "purgation", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite
of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
10 Barnes St.,
Providence, R. I.
April 12, 1928.
Dear Theodore:I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will
conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever
likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest
unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me
when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you
attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his
mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will
have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped.
You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the
typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself.

226

God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to
calm down and brace up.
So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll
tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles
will be very, very safe. He is nowsafer than you dream. You need hold no fears about
Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture,
and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what
wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must
tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been
afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental
changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolationthat he
was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose
love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever
to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something
came out of those years to engulf him.
And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will
be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish
devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in
your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same
way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark
any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered
bone and sinewof the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy
the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest
or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with
his life for his "squeamishness".
That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do
not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains
untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am
ever
Sincerely your friend,
Marinus B. Willett.
So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of
Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though
making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open
the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his
monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that
both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new
element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a
terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since

227

the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place
to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. 'More,' he said, 'has been
found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.'
'Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?' was the ironic reply. It was
evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
'No,' Willett slowly rejoined, 'this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up
Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.'
'Excellent,' commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, 'and I trust
they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!'
'They would become you very well,' came the even and studied response, 'as indeed they
seem to have done.'
As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there
was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
'And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then
useful to be twofold?'
'No', said Willett gravely, 'again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks
duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called
him out of space.'
Ward now started violently. 'Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want of me?'
The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective
answer.
'I have found', he finally intoned, 'something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel
where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of
Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.'
The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
'Damn ye, who did ye telland who'll believe it was he after these two full months, with
me alive? What d'ye mean to do?'
Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the
patient with a gesture.
'I have told no one. This is no common caseit is a madness out of time and a horror
from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom
or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I
might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I
know that your accursed magic is true!'
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'I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your
double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up
from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you
studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed
yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I
know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs,
and at what you planned afterward , and I know how you did it.'
'You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought
it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and
hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool,
Joseph Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of
the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know
better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not
written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I
believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those
creatures wrote you once, "do not call up any that you can not put down". You were undone
once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you
all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you
have woven will rise up to wipe you out.'
But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him.
Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring
a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient
ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice,
now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible
formula.
'PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON ...'
But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and
even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and
measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eyemagic
for magiclet the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a
clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had
raised the writer of those minusculesthe cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's
Tail, sign of the descending node OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L-EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!
At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient
stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too
were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began.
It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut
his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.

229

But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled
the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward
was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw
that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted,
been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay
scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.

Carter is a quiet and melancholy dreamer with a sensitive

disposition, prone to fainting during times of emotional
stress. But he can also be courageous, with enough
strength of mind and character to face and foil the horrific
creatures of the Dreamlands. Randolph Carter is an
antiquarian and one-time student of the Miskatonic
University. Based on clues from various stories, he was
probably born around 1874 and grew up in and around
Boston. At the age of nine, he underwent a mysterious
experience at his great-uncle Christopher's farm and
thereafter exhibited a gift of prophecy. He is the
descendant of Sir Randolph Carter, who had studied magic
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Sir
Randolph had then emigrated to America and his son
Edmund Carter later had to flee the Salem witch-trials.
Carter also had an ancestor involved in one of the
Crusades, who was captured by the Muslims and learned "wild secrets" from them.
This volume contains all of H P Lovecrafts stories about Randolph Carter.
Pages: 348
ISBN: 9781312184930
Buy it directly from us!

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