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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
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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 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 search 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
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]