After Carr had left, Whitney ran an appraising eye over the shelves. Arranged along them were the ticketed slabs of iron-hard grey clay, of all shapes, and ranging in size from the fifth shard, an oblong piece about four inches by eight, to the fourteenth, a jagged, roughly triangular tablet nearly twenty inches across. Most of them were incomplete and some were mere fragments. Eons of time, geologic disturbances, and unknowable mishaps, had cracked them and split off portions, some of which had not been found in the early Tri- assic stratum of the gravel pit near Eltdown where the discovery had been made. The nineteenth shard, which Whitney presently selected and laid on a scarred oak table by the window, presented an odd exception to the others. Its lower edge had been sheared away as cleanly as if by the stroke of a scimitar; and the unbroken line of cleavage, differing so markedly from the ragged indentures and smooth, roundly worn edges of the other tablets, suggested a deliberate mutilation when the clay had been fresh and comparatively soft. In other respects the shard, which was roughly a foot square, was in rather better condition than the average. Its smoothly rounded edges were broken only occasionally by unimportant chippings, and none of the writing was obliterated.
The writing or carving — it was useless to speculate regarding the means used to produce it — consisted of intricate, delicately proportioned characters confined within a surrounding margin about an inch wide; a style of delineation followed in all twenty-three of the shards. Fine, symmetrical symbols writhed over the entire space within this border. They stood out sharply under a magnifying glass, and Whitney found it expedient to use one during most of his work. Examinations had revealed that the writing surface was sunk slightly below the marginal level — a circumstance which, together with the extreme hardness of the material, probably accounted for the specimens being found in as legible a state as they were.
Whitney sat at the table and began the translation, a task demanding the most specialized skill. The geologic stratum in which the shards had lain indicated an antiquity antedating by millions of years the earliest inscriptions previously known; and translation was made possible only by the suggestive similarity of various symbols to certain primitive Amharic and Arabic word roots, whose prototypes they appeared to be. But to the best equipped student the task was complicated and difficult; for in an attempt to interpret word roots only the nicest judgment and most scholarly background could serve to discover a close approximation of the original meaning.
Whitney worked through the grey November day. Then he induced the reluctant curator to lend him the piece for a few days, using the plea of convenient access to the reference works in his library. Holding it carefully wrapped beneath his arm, he crossed the dusky campus to the high stone house at the edge; the house he had purchased shortly after beginning his duties at the University. He placed the shard on his flat-topped walnut desk in the spacious book-lined study which opened off the modest drawing-room, and resumed his work.
He had made encouraging progress and had no doubt of achieving a reasonably accurate translation. His supposition regarding the root combination tentatively believed “The Warder of Knowledge” seemed correct — at least to the extent that no other interpretation appeared plausible. But further deciphering had proved disquieting. The character of the eon-old entity, or principle, to which the term was applied was apparently of a most disturbing nature. While the references to it were marked by an ambiguity of expression distinct from the natural difficulties of translation, the only possible conclusions were quite as alarming as his former work on the shards could have led him to anticipate.
He repressed a shudder as he reviewed the fine script, covering several sheets, which he had written with his fountain pen: the draft of the shard’s contents. He remembered reading how, some forty- four years before, the first examiners of the Shards, Doctors Dalton and Woodford, had announced them to be untranslatable. He recalled their published statements disparaging the importance of the discovery; and the odd haste with which the specimens had been shunted to this obscure museum and locked away. And, thinking of how completely these fragments had been forgotten by scientific men, he wondered if enough could have been deciphered of the halfobliterated symbols to provide a hint of the appalling nature of the meaning — enough to make the translators guess at the authorship of these elaborately worked tablets found in a geologic stratum deposited long before man’s anthropoid ancestors had evolved from lower orders. He had never seriously suspected that the Shards had been deliberately discarded because of their contents, for he attributed his own success with them to certain recondite documents that had suggested the key. But now he wondered.
When he resumed work in his study, he had deciphered enough to know that the portion of writing enclosed in a sort of cartouche effect near the bottom of the shard was a formula of evocation which, according to the preceding text, would call the “Warder” to the presence of whomever would recite it. While this formula appeared complete, as evidenced by the enclosing oblong, the cloven edge of the tablet was directly beneath; a circumstance which suggested that the complementary formula of dismissal, universally met with in ancient spells, had been on the missing fragment.
The evocation proved very different from its prologue. It was purely phonetic in nature, and there was no slightest clue to its meaning. Associated with the preceding inscription, or indeed with any material familiar to Whitney, it was nothing but characters which, when pronounced, would result in a jumble of meaningless sounds. But unquestionably the correct utterance of these sounds was all that was theoretically necessary to call the “Warder.” Whether or not the person pronouncing them understood their significance had nothing to do with their efficacy. This would depend, according to all he had read in other sources, entirely on the faithfulness with which the evocator was able to reproduce the intended sound waves, to which the written formula occupied the relation of a quasi-musical score.
Whitney devoted the greatest care to these phonetics, checking and rechecking his work. When he was satisfied with this, he again went over the prologue, amplifying and refining his original draft. As he progressed, the sinister nature of the supposed entity and the dubious results attendant on summoning it became more and more disquieting. He gathered — assuming his translation to be fairly accurate — that the “Warder” had been considered the custodian or guardian of all knowledge of every description. But much of the reference was almost meaningless, making a singularly alien impression — and he was impelled, as he had been years before, to the belief that a genuine understanding of the Shards would require a background of culture and tradition profoundly at variance to any he had ever encountered. Yet there seemed no doubt of the malign character of the entity, and the undefined risk involved in summoning it. Even in the heat of enthusiasm which had carried him through fifteen hours of arduous effort, Whitney was shocked at the inferences which his interpretation disclosed. He recalled the dire and incredible tales of the fabled elder gods in the
In the morning he told Mrs. Huessman, his housekeeper, that he was not to be disturbed, and retired to his study. Part of the day was given to an exhaustive checking and revision of the translation. He finally made a copy of this on his antiquated typewriter, much in the spirit of a man who cleans up every possible detail before attacking a distasteful task. For much of the time, especially during the grey, dismal afternoon, was spent in mental preparation for an act from which he recoiled with instinctive dread. At times the incubus of impending disaster weighed so heavily on him that he half resolved to dabble no further in the unholy revelations of the Shards, but to burn the translation and banish forever the purpose of evoking the entity. But at this, a revulsion set in, and the idea of abandoning his dream of omniscience struck so keenly at his heart that any risk seemed preferable to accepting it. The early dusk found him tired from the mental strife, but calm. He had decided.
After his dinner he would read the spell aloud and await the result. After all, it was almost certainly nothing but an impotent superstition, ancient of course, but no more effective because of its age. The likelihood of anything at all responding to the summons seemed utterly remote; yet he felt that he could not resign himself to defeat without being satisfied that his last possibility was definitely hopeless. He passed to the dining room with a calm and confident stride.
It was a wild November night, just such a night as that on which his earlier excursion into occult studies had ended, with a raw wind shrilling, and whipping the tall, cone-shaped poplars that grew about the house. After serving his dinner, Mrs. Huessman had left for the night, and Whitney was alone. He lingered over his coffee longer than usual; then lit a second cigarette and returned to the study. He touched a match to the wood piled ready in the fireplace, and paced slowly back and forth as the room warmed.
Presently he seated himself at the old walnut desk which had been the companion of so many years of study.
