handed.
“This,” said one of those assembled in a certain house in New Orleans, “is plausible to a degree, despite the terrifically incomprehensible be-scramblement of time and space and personality, and the blasphemous reduction of God to a mathematical formula, and time to a fanciful expression, and change to a delusion, and all reality to the nothingness of a geometrical plane utterly lacking in substance. But it still does not settle the matter of Randolph Carter’s estate, which his heirs are clamoring to divide.”
The old man who sat cross-legged on the Bokhara rug muttered, and poked absently at the almost dead bed of charcoal that had glowed in the bowl of the wrought-iron tripods.
And then he spoke: “Randolph Carter succeeded in groping into the riddle of time and space, to a degree, yet his success would have been greater had he taken with him not only the silver key, but also the parchment. For had he but pronounced its phrases, the earth- plane would have shifted with the Carter-plane, and he would have achieved the unattained desire of the Geoffrey Carter that he became, instead of returning to the world-section 550 years after the time he wished.”
Then said another: “It is all plausible, though fantastic. Yet unless Randolph Carter returns from his hexagonal throne, his estate must be partitioned among his heirs.”
The old man who sat cross-legged glanced up; his eyes glittered, and he smiled strangely.
“I could very readily settle the dispute,” he said, “but no one would believe me.” He paused, stroked his chin for a moment, and then resumed, “While I am Randolph Carter, come back from the ruins of Alamut, I am also so much Geoffrey Carter that I would be mistaken for an imposter. And thus while my due is the estate of two Carters, my portion unhappily is neither.”
We stared, regarding him intently; and then the learned chronicler, who stared the longest, said half aloud, half to himself, “And I thought that a new king reigned, in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, on the opal throne of Ilek- Vad.”
The Warder of Knowledge
RICHARD F. SEARIGHT
The following record has been compiled from various sources, of which the most important are Doctor Whitney’s elaborate journal and the remarkable psychic impressions received in Whitney’s bedroom by Professor Turkoff of the university psychology department. The contents of the neatly typed manuscript, found in a drawer of Whitney’s library desk, may be dismissed as the ravings of an unbalanced intellect, or the fantastic flights of a gruesome imagination. In spite of the nature of Turkoff’s clairvoyant impressions, the shocking allusions and appalling inferences with which its pages are filled can hardly receive the credence of an impartial reader. Indeed, those members of the university faculty who saw it were unanimous in their opinion that it was the work of a madman familiar with peculiarly repellent variants of primitive folklore and certain ancient legends; and while these members did not have access to Whitney’s journal, which I appropriated at the time for fear its disclosures might indeed reflect positively on the sanity of my friend, I shall not attempt to refute their conclusions.
It seems that even as a young child Gordon Whitney had been oddly different from his associates. From the age when reason assumed control, an insatiable desire for knowledge had obsessed him. Of course, this was partly the normal, questioning curiosity of childhood — but it went further. He was not satisfied by sketchy outlines of facts; his craving was for the most complete and detailed information available on every subject that his busy mind encountered. Even at this early age he was harassed by a restless, driving urge, without motive or practical goal, to crowd into one mind all the vast aggregation of discovered scientific fact as well as the limitless secrets still undisclosed to research. And as he grew older, and absorbed what seemed to him the superficial teachings of orthodox education, the urge within him clamored more and more loudly.
There was no especial reason behind his selection of chemistry as a life work. He might have chosen any one of half a dozen sciences, particularly paleography, into which he probed as deeply as his diffused energies would permit. But organic chemistry, with its incredibly huge store of proven fact and the staggering array of half-guessed and wholly unsuspected truths which he felt must still be unrevealed, offered an inexhaustible outlet for his ambitions. The tireless enthusiasm with which he threw himself into these studies impressed his instructors; and when he received his doctor’s degree, he was offered an instructorship at Beloin University, the small mid-western seat of his education. This he accepted gladly, since it provided an atmosphere in harmony with his longings as well as the material means of pursuing them.
It was during the period immediately ensuing that he began his delving into the occult. The strange quirk in his nature that would not let him rest was responsible for this series of studies, also; and it had been suggested and stimulated by ambiguous references and obscure quotations in the more standard writings. Thus it was that he spent shuddering, horror-ridden hours perusing the Latin version of the dreaded
While Whitney was not entirely a recluse, the bulk of the time he could spare from routine lectures and paleographic studies — which continued to be an extensive avocation — was still devoted to chemical experiments. He achieved a certain reputation and in time was promoted to the chair of chemistry at Beloin; and thereafter his new facilities were used wholeheartedly for research — for a great dream had taken shape in his mind.
It was an absurd dream whose possibility of fulfillment was so fantastic that he would never have dared to confide it to another; yet so poignantly appealing that he finally embraced it with a passionate, blind acceptance, directing all his thoughts and actions to its realization. Before the dream had crystallized as a potential reality, he had half unconsciously selected and catalogued various data relating to it; and perhaps this segregated information itself suggested the use to which it might be put. And so, at the age of forty-five, Gordon Whitney entered unreservedly upon his great quest for omniscience in fact.
His plan was daring enough but not, he fondly insisted, impossible. Yet after five years of intensive research he had not realized his objective, although he had achieved a number of radical developments in the field of mental stimulants. Profound familiarity with cellular structure and characteristics, coupled with a minute knowledge of pertinent drugs and compounds, had given him a great advantage; but a series of cautious experiments convinced him that the ultimate refinement of his formulae could offer no more than a temporary and perhaps dangerous stimulus. And he finally accepted, regretfully enough, the fact that he had been evading from the first — that no drug by itself could endow his brain with the extraordinary clarity and capacity and superhuman retentiveness that he wished.
It was in the reaction of disappointment after his long-sustained efforts had definitely failed, that he turned to the past for aid. Certainly, he had never given a calculated, unbiased belief to the incredible inferences and revoltingly plausible assumptions which had fascinated him during his early studies. But the bitterness of seeing the fulfillment of his cherished dream beyond his reach made him ready to investigate anything that offered even the remotest likelihood of help, no matter how fantastic — or terrible — it might be.
It was in this connection that the nineteenth of the carefully catalogued Eltdown Shards returned insistently to his mind. He had not made a complete translation of this shard during his study of the series; but he had begun one and had never forgotten the all but unintelligible opening with its ambiguous reference to what, freely translated, he believed meant “the Warder of Knowledge.” Now he welcomed the possibility of some long-forgotten material bearing on his problem, entombed in this shard.
That night he assigned his lectures for the next few days to assistants. In the morning he hurried across the undulating campus, drab and grey and swept by the winds of late autumn, to the small redbrick museum, whose ivy-clad walls sat back among ancient, towering oaks in an obscure corner of the grounds. Here, in the musty, half- lit depths of the building, he found the old curator, Doctor Carr, and induced him to unlock the high cabinet of black walnut which held the collection of the Shards. Carr did this with his usual reluctance. For him the contents of the cabinet had always held a peculiar repugnance; and he had occasionally hinted that they were better left alone.
