I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Salts 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 King's
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'd
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 Philadelphia better than I. Have him up firste if you
will, but doe not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must
speake to him in ye Ende.
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 Simon O.--Simon Orne, alias Jedediah, of Salem,
who vanished in 1771, _and whose peculiar handwriting Dr. Willett
now unmistakably recognized from the photostatic copies of the Orne
formulae which Charles had once shewn 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, and the Prague visit, and
about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all
these inquiries 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 that the bearded man might have in Prague would probably
be similarly gifted. When they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realized
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 counterpart--perhaps 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
hard-headed 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 favorable or unfavorable. Recognizing 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.