"Certainly,״ I replied, though my skepticism could hardly
have gone unnoticed.
"That is good,״ he said. "Because if you will permit my
brothers and me to call on you at your home on Angell
Street, we may be able to convince you that there is life
in space—not in the shape of men, but life, and life pos-
sessing a far greater intelligence than that of your most
intelligent men.״
I was amused at the breadth of his claim and belief, but
I did not betray it by any sign. His confidence made me
reflect again upon the infinite variety of characters to be
found among the nightwalkers of Providence; clearly Mr.
Allan was a man who was obsessed by his extraordinary
beliefs, and, like most of such men, eager to proselytize, to
make converts.
"Whenever you like,״ I said by way of invitation.
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׳THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
“Except that I would prefer it to be late rather than early,
to give my mother time to get to bed. Anything in the way
of an experiment might disturb her.״
“Shall we say next Monday night?״
“Agreed.״
My companion thereafter said no more on this subject. In-
deed, he said scarcely anything on any subject, and it was
left for me to do the talking. I was evidently not very enter-
taining, for in less than three blocks we came to an alley and
there Mr. Allan abruptly bade me good night, after which he
turned into the alley and was soon swallowed in its dark-
ness.
Could his house abut upon it? I wondered. If not, he
must inevitably come out the other end. Impulsively I
hurried around one end of that block and stationed myself
deep in the shadows of the parallel street, where I could
remain well hidden from the alley entrance and yet keep
it in view.
Mr. Allan came leisurely out of the alley before I had quite
recovered my breath. I expected him to pursue his way
through the alley, but he did not; he turned down the street,
and, accelerating his pace a little, he proceeded on his way.
Impelled by curiosity now, I followed, keeping myself as
well hidden as possible. But Mr. Allan never once looked
around; he set his face straight ahead of him and never, as far
as I could determine, even glanced to left or right; he was
clearly bound for a destination that could only be his home,
for the hour was past midnight.
I had little difficulty following my erstwhile companion,
for I knew these streets well, I had known them since my
childhood. Mr. Allan was bound in the direction of the See-
konk, and he held to his course without deviation until he
reached a somewhat run-down section of Providence,
where he made his way up a little knoll to a long-deserted
house at its crest. He let himself into it and I saw him no
more. I waited a while longer, expecting a light to go up in
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
157
the house, but none did, and I could only conclude that he
had gone directly to bed.
Fortunately, I had kept myself in the shadows, for Mr.
Allan had evidently not gone to bed. Apparently he had
gone through the house and around the block, for suddenly
I saw him approach the house from the direction we had
come, and once more he walked on, past my place of con-
cealment, and made his way into the house, again without
turning on a light.
This time, certainly, he had remained there. I waited for
five minutes or a trifle more, then turned and made my way
back toward my own home on Angell Street, satisfied that
I had done no more in following Mr. Allan than he had
evidently done on the night of our initial meeting in follow-
ing me, for I had long since concluded that our meeting to-
night had not been by chance, but by design.
Many blocks from the Allan house, however, I was startled
to see, approaching me from the direction of Benefit Street,
my erstwhile companion! Even as I wondered how he had
managed to leave the house again and make his way well
around me in order to enable him to come toward me, try-
ing in vain to map the route he could have taken to accom-
piish this, he came up and passed me by without so much as
a flicker of recognition.
Yet it was he, undeniably—the same Poe-esque appear-
ance distinguished him from any other nightwalker. Stilling
his name on my tongue, I turned and looked after him. He
never turned his head, but walked steadily on, clearly bound
for the scene I had not long since quitted. I watched him out
of sight, still trying—in vain—to map the route he might have
taken among the lanes and byways and streets so familiar
to me in order to m eet me so once more, face to face.
We had met on Angell Street, walked to Benefit and north,
then turned riverward once more. Only by dint of hard
running could he have cut around me and come back. And
what purpose would he have had to follow such a course?
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׳THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
It left me utterly baffled, particularly since he had given
me not the slightest sign of recognition, his entire mien
suggesting that we were perfect strangers!
But if I was mystified at the occurrences of the night, I was
even more puzzled at my meeting with Rose at the Athe-
naeum the following night. She had clearly been waiting for
me, and hastened to my side as soon as she caught sight
of me.
“Have you seen Mr. Allan?” she asked.
“Only last night,” I answered, and would have gone on to
recount the circumstances had she not spoken again.
“So did I! He walked me out from the library and home.”
I stifled my response and heard her out. Mr. Allan had
been waiting for her to come out of the library. He had
greeted her and asked whether he might walk with her,
after having ascertained that I was not with her. They had
walked for an hour with but little conversation, and this
only of the most superficial—relative to the antiquities of the
city, the architecture of certain houses, and similar matters,
just such as one interested in the older aspects of Providence
would find of interest—and then he had walked her home.
She had, in short, been with Mr. Allan in one part of the city
at the same time that I had been with him in another; and
clearly neither of us had the slightest doubt of the identity of
our companions.
“I saw him after midnight,” I said, which was part of
the truth but not all the truth.
This extraordinary coincidence must have some logical ex-
planation, though I was not disposed to discuss it with Rose,
lest I unduly alarm her. Mr. Allan had spoken of his
“brothers”; it was therefore entirely likely that Mr. Allan
was one of a pair of identical twins. But what explanation
could there be for what was an obvious and designed de-
ception? One of our
companions was not, could not have
been the same Mr. Allan with whom we had previously
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
159
walked. But which? I was satisfied that my companion was
identical with Mr. Allan met but two nights before.
In as casual a manner as I could assume in the circum-
stances, I asked such questions of Rose as were designed to
satisfy me in regard to the identity of her companion, in the
anticipation that somewhere in our dialogue she would re-
veal some doubt of the identity of hers. She betrayed
no such doubt; she was innocently convinced that her com-
panion was the same man who had walked with us two
nights ago, for he had obviously made references to the
earlier nocturnal walk, and Rose was completely convinced
that he was the same man. She had no reason for doubt,
however, for I held my tongue; there was some perplexing
mystery here, for the brothers had some obscure reason for
interesting themselves in us—certainly other than that they
shared our interest in the nightwalkers of the city and the
hidden aspects of urban life that appeared only with the dusk
and vanished once more into their seclusion with the dawn.
My companion, however, had made an assignation with
me, whereas Rose said nothing to indicate that her com-
panion had planned a further meeting with her. And why
had he waited to meet her in the first place? But this line of
inquiry was lost before the insistent cognizance that neither
of the meetings I had had after leaving my companion at his
residence last night could have been Rose's companion, for
Rose lived rather too far from the place of my final meeting
last night to have permitted her companion to meet me at
the point we met. A disquieting sense of uneasiness began
to rise in me. Perhaps there were three Allans—all identical
—triplets? Or four? But no, surely the second Mr. Allan en-
countered on the previous night had been identical with the
first, even if the third encounter could not have been the
same man.
No m atter how much thought I applied to it, the riddle
remained insoluble. I was, therefore, in a challenging frame
1 6 0
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
of mind for my Monday night appointment with Mr. Allan,
now but two days away.
I l l
Even so, I was ill-prepared for the visit of Mr. Allan and
his brothers on the following Monday night. They came at a
quarter past ten o’clock; my mother had just gone upstairs to
bed. I had expected, at most, three of them; there were
seven—and they were as alike as peas in a pod, so much
so that I could not pick from among them the Mr. Allan with
whom I had twice walked the nocturnal streets of Provi-
dence, though I assumed it was he who was the spokesman
for the group.
They filed into the living room, and Mr. Allan immediately
set about arranging chairs in a semicircle with the help of his
brothers, murmuring something about the “nature of the
experiment,” though, to tell the truth, I was still much too
amazed and disquieted at the appearance of seven identical
men, all of whom bore so strong a resemblance to Edgar Allan
Poe as to startle the beholder, to assimilate what was being
said. Moreover, I saw now by the light of my Welsbach gas
lamp that all seven of them were of a pallid, waxen com-
plexion, not of such a nature as to give me any doubt of
their being flesh and bone like myself, but rather such as to
suggest that one and all were afflicted with some kind of
disease—anemia, perhaps, or some kindred illness which
would leave their faces colorless; and their eyes, which were
very dark, seemed to stare fixedly and yet without seeing,
though they suffered no lack of perception and seemed to per-
ceive by means of some extra sense not visible to me. The
sensation that rose in me was not predominantly one of fear,
but one of overwhelming curiosity tinged with a spreading
sense of something utterly alien not only to my experience
but to my existence.
Thus far, little had passed between us, but now that the
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
1 6 1
semicircle had been completed, and my visitors had seated
themselves, their spokesman beckoned me forward and indi-
cated a chair placed within the arc of the semicircle facing
the seated men.
“Will you sit here, Mr. Phillips?״ he asked.
I did as he asked, and found myself the object of all eyes,
but not essentially so much their object as their focal point,
for the seven men seemed to be looking not so much at
me as through me.
“Our intention, Mr. Phillips,״ their spokesman—whom I
took to be the gentleman I had encountered on Benefit
Street—explained, “is to produce for you certain impressions
of extra-terrestrial life, All that is necessary for you to do is to
relax and to be receptive.״
“I am ready,״ I said.
I had expected that they would ask for the light to be
lowered, which seems to be integral to all such seance-like
sessions, but they did not do so. They waited upon silence,
save for the ticking of the hall clock and the distant hum of
the city, and then they began what I can only describe as
singing—a low, not unpleasant, almost lulling humming, in-
creasing in volume, and broken with sounds I assumed were
words though I could not make out any of them. The
song they sang and the way they sang it was indescribably
foreign; the key was minor, and the tonal intervals did not
resemble any terrestrial musical system with which I was
familiar, though it seemed to me more oriental than
occidental.
I had little time to consider the music, however, for I
was rapidly overcome with a feeling of profound malaise,
the faces of the seven men grew dim and coalesced to
merge into one swimming face, and an intolerable conscious-
ness of unrolled aeons of time swept over me. I concluded
that some form of hypnosis was responsible for my condi-
tion, but I did not have any qualms about it; it did not
matter, for the experience I was undergoing was utterly
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THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
novel and not unpleasant, though there was inherent in
it a discordant note, as of some lurking evil looming far
behind the relaxing sensations that crowded upon me and
swept me before them. Gradually, the lamp, the walls, and
the men before me faded and vanished and, though I was
still aware of being in my quarters on Angell Street, I was
also cognizant that somehow I had been transported to new
surroundings, and an element of alarm at the strangeness
of these surroundings, together with one of repulsion and
alienation, began to make themselves manifest. It was as if
I feared losing consciousness in an alien place without the
means of retu
rning to earth—for it was an extra-terrestrial
scene that I witnessed, one of great and magnificent gran-
deur in its proportions, and yet one completely incompre-
hensible to me.
Vast vistas of space whirled before me in an alien dimen-
sion, and central in them was an aggregation of gigantic
cubes, scattered along a gulf of violet and agitated radia-
tion—and other figures moving among them—enormous, iri-
descent, rugose cones, rising from a base almost ten feet
wide to a height of over ten feet, and composed of ridgy,
scaly, semielastic matter, and sporting from their apexes four
flexible, cylindrical members, each at least a foot thick, and
of a similar substance, though more flesh-like, as that of the
cones, which were presumably bodies for the crowning
members, which, as I watched, had an ability to contract
or expand, sometimes to lengthen to a distance equal to the
height of the cone to which they adhered. Two of these
members were terminated with enormous claws, while a
third wore a crest of four red, trumpet-like appendages, and
the fourth ended in a great yellow globe two feet in diam-
eter, in the center of which were three enormous eyes,
darkly opalescent, which, because of their position in the
elastic member, could be turned in any direction whatso-
ever. It was such a scene as exercised the greatest fascina-
tion upon me and yet at the same time spread in me a repel-
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
163
lence inspired by its total alienation and the aura of fearful
disclosures which alone could give it meaning and a lurking
terror. Moreover, as I saw the moving figures, which seemed
to be tending the great cubes, with greater clarity and more
distinctness, I saw that their strange heads were crowned by
four slender gray stalks carrying flower-like appendages, as
well as, from their nether sides, eight sinuous, elastic ten-
tacles, moss green in color, which seemed to be constantly
agitated by serpentine motion, expanding and contracting,
lengthening and shortening and whipping around as if with
fife independent of that which animated, more sluggishly,
the cones themselves. The whole scene was bathed in a wan,
red glow, as from some dying sun which, failing its planet,
now took second place to the violet radiation from the gulf.
The Man Who Called Himself Poe Page 21