Professor Angell's
instant start on an investigation of the utmost thoroughness was
eminently natural; though privately I suspected young Wilcox of having
heard of the cult in some indirect way, and of having invented a series
of dreams to heighten and continue the mystery at my uncle's expense. The dream-narratives and cuttings collected by the professor were, of
course, strong corroboration; but the rationalism of my mind and the
extravagance of the whole subject led me to adopt what I thought the
most sensible conclusions. So, after thoroughly studying the manuscript
again and correlating the theosophical and anthropological notes with
the cult narrative of Legrasse, I made a trip to Providence to see
the sculptor and give him the rebuke I thought proper for so boldly
imposing upon a learned and aged man. Wilcox still lived alone in the Fleur-de-Lys Building in Thomas
Street, a hideous Victorian imitation of Seventeenth Century Breton
architecture which flaunts its stuccoed front amidst the lovely
Colonial houses on the ancient hill, and under the very shadow of the
finest Georgian steeple in America. I found him at work in his rooms,
and at once conceded from the specimens scattered about that his genius
is indeed profound and authentic. He will, I believe, be heard from
sometime as one of the great decadents; for he has crystallized in clay
and will one day mirror in marble those nightmares and fantasies which
Arthur Machen evokes in prose, and Clark Ashton Smith makes visible in
verse and in painting. Dark, frail, and somewhat unkempt in aspect, he turned languidly at my
knock and asked me my business without rising. When I told him who I
was, he displayed some interest; for my uncle had excited his curiosity
in probing his strange dreams, yet had never explained the reason for
the study. I did not enlarge his knowledge in this regard, but sought
with some subtlety to draw him out. In a short time I became convinced of his absolute sincerity, for he
spoke of the dreams in a manner none could mistake. They and their
subconscious residuum had influenced his art profoundly, and he showed
me a morbid statue whose contours almost made me shake with the potency
of its black suggestion. He could not recall having seen the original
of this thing except in his own dream bas-relief, but the outlines had
formed themselves insensibly under his hands. It was, no doubt, the
giant shape he had raved of in delirium. That he really knew nothing of
the hidden cult, save from what my uncle's relentless catechism had let
fall, he soon made clear; and again I strove to think of some way in
which he could possibly have received the weird impressions. He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me
see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green
stone--whose _geometry_, he oddly said, was _all wrong_--and hear
with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from
underground: "_Cthulhu fhtagn_," "_Cthulhu fhtagn_." These words had formed part of that dread ritual which told of dead
Cthulhu's dream-vigil in his stone vault at R'lyeh, and I felt deeply
moved despite my rational beliefs. Wilcox, I was sure, had heard of
the cult in some casual way, and had soon forgotten it amidst the mass
of his equally weird reading and imagining. Later, by virtue of its
sheer impressiveness, it had found subconscious expression in dreams,
in the bas-relief, and in the terrible statue I now beheld; so that his
imposture upon my uncle had been a very innocent one. The youth was of
a type, at once slightly affected and slightly ill-mannered, which I
could never like; but I was willing enough now to admit both his genius
and his honesty. I took leave of him amicably, and wish him all the
success his talent promises. The matter of the cult still remained to fascinate me, and at times
I had visions of personal fame from researches into its origin and
connections. I visited New Orleans, talked with Legrasse and others
of that old-time raiding-party, saw the frightful image, and even
questioned such of the mongrel prisoners as still survived. Old Castro,
unfortunately, had been dead for some years. What I now heard so
graphically at first hand, though it was really no more than a detailed
confirmation of what my uncle had written, excited me afresh; for I
felt sure that I was on the track of a very real, very secret, and
very ancient religion whose discovery would make me an anthropologist
of note. My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, _as I wish
it still were_, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity
the coincidence of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by
Professor Angell. One thing which I began to suspect, and which I now fear I _know_, is
that my uncle's death was far from natural. He fell on a narrow hill
street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign
mongrels, after a careless push from a negro sailor. I did not forget
the mixed blood and marine pursuits of the cult-members in Louisiana,
and would not be surprized to learn of secret methods and poison
needles as ruthless and as anciently known as the cryptic rites and
beliefs. Legrasse and his men, it is true, have been let alone; but in
Norway a certain seaman who saw things is dead. Might not the deeper
inquiries of my uncle after encountering the sculptor's data have come
to sinister ears? I thing Professor Angell died because he knew too
much, or because he was likely to learn too much. Whether I shall go as
he did remains to be seen, for I have learned much now. _3. The Madness from the Sea._


If heaven ever wishes to grant me a boon, it will be a total effacing
of the results of a mere chance which fixed my eye on a certain stray
piece of shelf-paper. It was nothing on which I would naturally have
stumbled in the course of my daily round, for it was an old number of
an Australian journal, _Sydney Bulletin_ for April 18, 1925. It had
escaped even the cutting bureau which had at the time of its issuance
been avidly collecting material for my uncle's research. I had largely given over my inquiries into what Professor Angell called
the "Cthulhu Cult," and was visiting a learned friend of Paterson,
New Jersey, the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note. Examining one day the reserve specimens roughly set on the storage
shelves in a rear room of the museum, my eye was caught by an odd
picture in one of the old papers spread beneath the stones. It was the
_Sydney Bulletin_ I have mentioned, for my friend has wide affiliations
in all conceivable foreign parts; and the picture was a half-tone cut
of a hideous stone image almost identical with that which Legrasse had
found in the swamp. Eagerly clearing the sheet of its precious contents, I scanned the item
in detail; and was disappointed to find it of only moderate length.