by Robert Bloch
For somehow, always, a black undercurrent of suspicion existed. The coroner’s physician had been glib, Lovecraft had been tactful, the press and the general public had accepted matters completely—yet Blake was dead, and there had been an entity abroad in the night.
Fiske felt that if he could visit the accursed church himself, talk to Dr. Dexter and find out what had drawn him into the affair, interrogate the reporters, and pursue any relevant leads or clues, he might eventually hope to uncover the truth and at least clear his dead friend’s name of the ugly shadow of mental unbalance.
Accordingly, Fiske’s first step after arriving in Providence and registering at a hotel was to set out for Federal Hill and the ruined church.
The search was doomed to immediate, irremediable disappointment. For the church was no more. It had been razed the previous fall and the property taken over by the city authorities. The black and baleful spire no longer cast its spell over the Hill.
Fiske immediately took pains to see Father Merluzzo, at Spirito Santo, a few squares away. He learned from a courteous housekeeper that Father Merluzzo had died in 1936, within a year of young Blake.
Discouraged but persistent, Fiske next attempted to reach Dr. Dexter, but the old house on Benefit Street was boarded up. A call to the Physicians’ Service Bureau produced only the cryptic information that Ambrose Dexter, M.D., had left the city for an indeterminate stay.
Nor did a visit with the city editor of the Bulletin yield any better result. Fiske was permitted to go into the newspaper’s morgue and read the aggravatingly short and matter-of-fact story on Blake’s death, but the two reporters who had covered the assignment and subsequently visited the Federal Hill church had left the paper for berths in other cities.
There were, of course, other leads to follow, and during the ensuing week Fiske ran them all to the ground. A copy of WHO’s WHO added nothing significant to his mental picture of Dr. Ambrose Dexter. The physician was Providence-born, a lifelong resident, forty years of age, unmarried, a general practitioner, member of several medical societies—but there was no indication of any unusual “hobbies” or “other interests” which might provide a clue as to his participation in the affair.
Sergeant William J. Monahan of Central Station was sought out, and for the first time Fiske actually managed to speak to someone who admitted an actual connection with the events leading to Blake’s death. Monahan was polite, but cautiously noncommittal.
Despite Fiske’s complete unburdening, the police officer remained discreetly reticent.
“There’s really nothing I can tell you,” he said. “It’s true, like Mr. Lovecraft said, that I was at the church that night, for there was a rough crowd out and there’s no telling what some of them ones in the neighborhood will do when riled up. Like the story said, the old church had a bad name, and I guess Sheeley could have given you many’s the story.”
“Sheeley?” interjected Fiske.
“Bert Sheeley—it was his beat, you know, not mine. He was ill of pneumonia at the time, and I substituted for two weeks. Then, when he died—”
Fiske shook his head. Another possible source of information gone. Blake dead, Lovecraft dead, Father Merluzzo dead, and now Sheeley. Reporters scattered, and Dr. Dexter mysteriously missing. He sighed and persevered.
“That last night, when you saw the blur,” he asked, “can you add anything by way of details? Were there any noises? Did anyone in the crowd say anything? Try to remember—whatever you can add may be of great help to me.”
Monahan shook his head. “There were noises aplenty,” he said. “But what with the thunder and all, I couldn’t rightly make out if anything came from inside the church, like the story has it. And as for the crowd, with the women wailing and the men muttering, all mixed up with thunderclaps and wind, it was as much as I could do to hear myself yelling to keep in place, let alone make out what was being said.”
“And the blur?” Fiske persisted.
“It was a blur, and that’s all. Smoke, or a cloud, or just a shadow before the lightning struck again. But I’ll not be saying I saw any devils, or monsters, or whatchamacallits as Mr. Lovecraft would write about in those wild tales of his.”
Sergeant Monahan shrugged self-righteously and picked up the desk-phone to answer a call. The interview was obviously at an end.
And so, for the nonce, was Fiske’s quest. He didn’t abandon hope, however. For a day he sat by his own hotel phone and called up every “Dexter” listed in the book in an effort to locate a relative of the missing doctor; but to no avail. Another day was spent in a small boat on Narragansett Bay, as Fiske assiduously and painstakingly familiarized himself with the location of the “deepest channel” alluded to in Lovecraft’s story.
But at the end of a futile week in Providence, Fiske had to confess himself beaten. He returned to Chicago, his work, and his normal pursuits. Gradually the affair dropped out of the foreground of his consciousness, but he by no means forgot it completely or gave up the notion of eventually unraveling the mystery—if mystery there was.
In 1941, during a three-day furlough from Basic Training, Pvt. First Class Edmund Fiske passed through Providence on his way to New York City and again attempted to locate Dr. Ambrose Dexter, without success.
During 1942 and 1943 Sgt. Edmund Fiske wrote, from his stations overseas, to Dr. Ambrose Dexter c/o General Delivery, Providence, R.I. His letters were never acknowledged, if indeed they were received.
In 1945, in a U.S.O. library lounge in Honolulu, Fiske read a report in—of all things—a journal on astrophysics which mentioned a recent gathering at Princeton University, at which the guest speaker, Dr. Ambrose Dexter, had delivered an address on “ Practical Applications in Military Technology.”
Fiske did not return to the States until the end of 1946. Domestic affairs, naturally, were the subject of his paramount consideration during the following year. It wasn’t until 1948 that he accidentally came upon Dr. Dexter’s name again—this time in a listing of “investigators in the field of nuclear physics” in a national weekly newsmagazine. He wrote the editors for further information, but received no reply. And another letter, dispatched to Providence, remained unanswered.
But in 1949, late in autumn, Dexter’s name again came to his attention through the news columns; this time in relation to a discussion of work on the secret H-bomb.
Whatever he guessed, whatever he feared, whatever he wildly imagined, Fiske was impelled to action. It was then that he wrote to a certain Ogden Purvis, a private investigator in the city of Providence, and commissioned him to locate Dr. Ambrose Dexter. All that he required was that he be placed in communication with Dexter, and he paid a substantial retainer fee. Purvis took the case.
The private detective sent several reports to Fiske in Chicago, and they were, at first, disheartening. The Dexter residence was still untenanted. Dexter himself, according to the information elicited from governmental sources, was on a special mission. The private investigator seemed to assume from this that he was a person above reproach, engaged in confidential defense work.
Fiske’s own reaction was panic.
He raised his offer of a fee and insisted that Ogden Purvis continue his efforts to find the elusive doctor.
Winter of 1950 came and, with it, another report. The private investigator had tracked down every lead Fiske suggested, and one of them led, eventually, to Tom Jonas.
Tom Jonas was the owner of the small boat which had been chartered by Dr. Dexter one evening in the late summer of 1935—the small boat which had been rowed to the “deepest channel of Narragansett Bay.”
Tom Jonas had rested his oars as Dexter threw overboard the dully gleaming, asymmetrical metal box with the hinged lid open to disclose the Shining Trapezohedron.
The old fisherman had spoken freely to the private detective; his words were reported in detail to Fiske via confidential report.
“Mighty peculiar” was Jonas’s own reaction to the incident. Dexter had of
fered him “twenty smackers to take the boat out in the middle o’ midnight and heave this funny-lookin’ contraption overboard. Said there was no harm in it; said it was just an old keepsake he wanted to git rid of. But all the way out he kep’ starin’ at the sort of jewel-thing set in some iron bands inside the box, and mumblin’ in some foreign language, I guess. No, ’tweren’t French or German or Italian talk, either. Polish, mebbe. I don’t remember any words, either. But he acted sort of drunk. Not that I’d say anything against Dr. Dexter, understand; comes of a fine old family, even if he ain’t been around these parts since, to my knowing. But I figgered he was a bit under the influence, you might say. Else why would he pay me twenty smackers to do a crazy stunt like that?”
There was more to the verbatim transcript of the old fisherman’s monologue, but it did not explain anything.
“He sure seemed glad to git rid of it, as I recollect. On the way back he told me to keep mum about it, but I can’t see no harm in telling at this late date; I wouldn’t hold anythin’ back from the law.”
Evidently the private investigator had made use of a rather unethical stratagem—posing as an actual detective in order to get Jonas to talk.
This did not bother Fiske, in Chicago. It was enough to get his grasp on something tangible at last; enough to make him send Purvis another payment, with instructions to keep up the search for Ambrose Dexter. Several months passed in waiting.
Then, in late spring, came the news Fiske had waited for. Dr. Dexter was back; he had returned to his house on Benefit Street. The boards had been removed, furniture vans arrived to discharge their contents, and a manservant appeared to answer the door and to take telephone messages.
Dr. Dexter was not at home to the investigator, or to anyone. He was, it appeared, recuperating from a severe illness contracted while in government service. He took a card from Purvis and promised to deliver a message, but repeated calls brought no indication of a reply.
Nor did Purvis, who conscientiously “cased” the house and neighborhood, ever succeed in laying eyes upon the doctor himself or in finding anyone who claimed to have seen the convalescent physician on the street.
Groceries were delivered regularly; mail appeared in the box; lights glowed in the Benefit Street house nightly until all hours.
As a matter of fact, this was the only concrete statement Purvis could make regarding any possible irregularity in Dr. Dexter’s mode of life—he seemed to keep electricity burning twenty-four hours a day.
Fiske promptly dispatched another letter to Dr. Dexter, and then another. Still no acknowledgment or reply was forthcoming. And after several more unenlightening reports from Purvis, Fiske made up his mind. He would go to Providence and see Dexter, somehow, come what may.
He might be completely wrong in his suspicions; he might be completely wrong in his assumption that Dr. Dexter could clear the name of his dead friend; he might be completely wrong in even surmising any connection between the two—but for fifteen years he had brooded and wondered, and it was time to put an end to his own inner conflict.
Accordingly, late that summer, Fiske wired Purvis of his intentions and instructed him to meet him at the hotel upon his arrival.
Thus it was that Edmund Fiske came to Providence for the last time; on the day that the Giants lost, on the day that the Langer Brothers lost their two black panthers, on the day that cabdriver William Hurley was in a garrulous mood.
Purvis was not at the hotel to meet him, but such was Fiske’s own frenzy of impatience that he decided to act without him and drove, as we have seen, to Benefit Street in the early evening.
As the cab departed, Fiske stared up at the paneled doorway; stared at the lights blazing from the upper windows of the Georgian structure. A brass nameplate gleamed on the door itself, and the light from the windows played upon the legend AMBROSE DEXTER, M.D.
Slight as it was, this seemed a reassuring touch to Edmund Fiske. The doctor was not concealing his presence in the house from the world, however much he might conceal his actual person. Surely the blazing lights and the appearance of the nameplate augured well.
Fiske shrugged, rang the bell.
The door opened quickly. A small, dark-skinned man with a slight stoop appeared and made a question of the word, “Yes?”
“Dr. Dexter, please.”
“The doctor is not in to callers. He is ill.”
“Would you take a message, please?”
“Certainly.” The dark-skinned servant smiled.
“Tell him that Edmund Fiske of Chicago wishes to see him at his convenience for a few moments. I have come all the way from the Middle West for this purpose, and what I have to speak to him about would take only a moment or two of his time.”
“Wait, please.”
The door closed. Fiske stood in the gathering darkness and transferred his briefcase from one hand to the other.
Abruptly, the door opened again. The servant peered out at him.
“Mr. Fiske—are you the gentleman who wrote the letters?”
“Letters—oh, yes, I am. I did not know the doctor ever received them.”
The servant nodded. “I could not say. But Dr. Dexter said that if you were the man who had written him, you were to come right in.”
Fiske permitted himself an audible sigh of relief as he stepped over the threshold. It had taken fifteen years to come this far, and now—
“Just go upstairs, if you please. You will find Dr. Dexter waiting in the study, right at the head of the hall.”
Edmund Fiske climbed the stairs, turned at the top to a doorway, and entered a room in which the light was an almost palpable presence, so intense was its glare.
And there, rising from a chair beside the fireplace, was Dr. Ambrose Dexter.
Fiske found himself facing a tall, thin, immaculately dressed man who may have been fifty but who scarcely looked thirty-five; a man whose wholly natural grace and elegance of movement concealed the sole incongruity of his aspect—a very deep suntan.
“So you are Edmund Fiske.”
The voice was soft, well-modulated, and unmistakably New England—and the accompanying handclasp warm and firm. Dr. Dexter’s smile was natural and friendly. White teeth gleamed against the brown background of his features.
“Won’t you sit down?” invited the doctor. He indicated a chair and bowed slightly. Fiske couldn’t help but stare; there was certainly no indication of any present or recent illness in his host’s demeanor or behavior. As Dr. Dexter resumed his own seat near the fire and Fiske moved around the chair to join him, he noted the bookshelves on either side of the room. The size and shape of several volumes immediately engaged his rapt attention—so much that he hesitated before taking a seat, and instead inspected the titles of the tomes.
For the first time in his life, Edmund Fiske found himself confronting the half-legendary De Vermis Mysteriis, the Liber Ivonis, and the almost mythical Latin version of the Necronomicon. Without seeking his host’s permission, he lifted the bulk of the latter volume from the shelf and riffled through the yellowed pages of the Spanish translation of 1622.
Then he turned to Dr. Dexter, and all traces of his carefully contrived composure dropped away. “Then it must have been you who found these books in the church,” he said. “In the rear vestry room beside the apse. Lovecraft mentioned them in his story, and I’ve always wondered what became of them.”
Dr. Dexter nodded gravely. “Yes, I took them. I did not think it wise for such books to fall into the hands of the authorities. You know what they contain, and what might happen if such knowledge were wrongfully employed.”
Fiske reluctantly replaced the great book on the shelf and took a chair facing the doctor before the fire. He held his briefcase on his lap and fumbled uneasily with the clasp.
“Don’t be uneasy,” said Dr. Dexter, with a kindly smile. “Let us proceed without fencing. You are here to discover what part I played in the affair of your friend’s death.”
“Yes, t
here are some questions I wanted to ask.”
“Please.” The doctor raised a slim brown hand. “I am not in the best of health and can give you only a few minutes. Allow me to anticipate your queries and tell you what little I know.”
“As you wish.” Fiske stared at the bronzed man, wondering what lay behind the perfection of his poise.
“I met your friend Robert Harrison Blake only once,” said Dr. Dexter. “It was on an evening during the latter part of July, 1935. He called upon me here, as a patient.”
Fiske leaned forward eagerly. “I never knew that!” he exclaimed.
“There was no reason for anyone to know it,” the doctor answered. “He was merely a patient. He claimed to be suffering from insomnia. I examined him, prescribed a sedative, and acting on the merest surmise, asked if he had recently been subjected to any unusual strain or trauma. It was then that he told me the story of his visit to the church on Federal Hill and of what he had found there. I must say that I had the acumen not to dismiss his tale as the product of a hysterical imagination. As a member of one of the older families here, I was already acquainted with the legends surrounding the Starry Wisdom sect and the so-called Haunter of the Dark.
“Young Blake confessed to me certain of his fears concerning the Shining Trapezohedron—intimating that it was a focal point of primal evil. He further admitted his own dread of being somehow linked to the monstrosity in the church.
“Naturally, I was not prepared to accept this last premise as a rational one. I attempted to reassure the young man, advised him to leave Providence and forget it. And at the time I acted in all good faith. And then, in August, came news of Blake’s death.”