The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

ous 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 fi fty-seven years gone!”

the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its tram­mels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a fl ash 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 fl ashed it before the patient’s eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.

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 false – a be­lief conclusively upheld by the fi nding 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 glanced 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 confi rmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identifi ed 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 offi cials 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 fi gure 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 defi nite 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.

the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar – that deep, hollow voice on the telephone – was 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 offi cials 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? Curwen – Allen – Ward – in what blasphe­mous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons be­come involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles – had 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 people – the 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 mi­nuscules found in Willett’s pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and “salts” and discoveries – whither 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.

Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises – a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clat­tering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr.

ling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and fi nally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cup­board door were being opened. Then there was a muffl ed 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 fi replace 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.