Darrow bent forward.
“They do look as though someone has been dragging sacks across the floor,” he said dubiously. “But I fail to see...”
He broke off as his companion interrupted him.
“You don’t understand. There were a few disturbances of the dust as I said earlier.”
Here he glanced swiftly at his wristwatch.
“But these further marks have been made only within the last hour.”
There was an uneasy silence between the two men.
“Perhaps the workmen have been down here to have a look around,” Darrow said unconvincingly.
Bellows shook his head.
“They had their instructions. Besides, there are only my own footprints coming and going in the spillage leading down here. Something has come from one of these tunnels.” The pale gleam of the lantern glanced over the great black entrances ahead.
“See! These tracks in the dust go back into the central one. We’d better have a look at this.”
The Dean gave a dry cough.
“Do you think it wise, Andrew?”
The surveyor shook his head.
“Perhaps not. But I’m damned curious. Besides, there are two of us. And we have the lantern and my revolver. I can’t see that there’s likely to be any danger. And I can’t see any harm in our going a little way down the central tunnel.”
The Dean shrugged, though he felt far from easy. He glanced again round the central chamber, before acquiescing.
“As you wish. If you think it’s safe.”
The surveyor looked concerned at the academic’s obvious nervousness. He led the way quickly across the concourse, before the other could change his mind. The pale circle of light danced before them. Now that they were in its mouth the tunnel looked bigger than they had imagined and their footsteps echoed unnaturally loud, seeming to reverberate far longer than they should have done. Indeed, the effect was so strange that the two men stopped as of one accord, listening to the distant ripple of sound that took such a long time to die out. But neither said anything and Bellows avoided the other’s eyes, feeling a strange heaviness fall across his own heart, though he would not have admitted such a thing to his companion.
Then they walked on again, both men noting the smoothly chiselled walls of the tunnel and the evenness of the floor. The Dean cleared his throat.
“These are obviously man-made, as you earlier observed, Andrew. But the excellence of the workmanship, the antiquity of these workings and their extent...”
He broke off, a marvelling quality coming into his voice.
“All this through solid granite. You realise what it means?”
Bellows smiled thinly. “I ought to. I’m a surveyor by profession. Or hadn’t you remembered?”
The Dean shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound patronising. But I now realise why you were so worked up about this discovery. We must certainly explore a little. You are unravelling that twine, are you not?”
“Certainly. But this passage is absolutely straight. We have only to retrace our steps.”
The Dean shrugged.
“That’s as may be. But if we come to a side passage...”
Andrew Bellows had his head on one side now, his face taut and strained in the yellow cone of the torchlight, his hand still playing out the thick twine as they slowly advanced. He spoke as though musing to himself.
“There will be no side passages, unless they give direct crossaccess to the others. Have you forgotten the subsidiaries? They all lead toward Innsmouth and the sea. And they slightly diverge, as I had earlier observed.”
There was a dreamy quality in his voice now.
“Like the setting sun.”
The Dean looked at him sharply, all his earlier fears forgotten.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know, really. But there is a greater mystery here than even I had earlier contemplated.”
The two men were silent now for five minutes or so as they made steady progress in the warm, still air, the only sound their faint breathing and the sharp, brittle echoes of their onward march. The earlier draught they had felt in the concourse seemed to have died out. They had gone something like a quarter of a mile, the surveyor judged, and the great ball of twine he was unreeling had perceptibly diminished.
Then, he was aware of an almost imperceptible curve in the tunnel, that he knew from his professional experience must bring it eventually to the sea if it ran so far, directly to the ancient seaport of Innsmouth. At the same time there was a faint inrush of air on the two men’s faces and an indefinable odour; it had in it a stale, musty smell, mingled with another, stronger aroma; almost as if they were approaching a fish market. The two men, as though seized by a single thought, increased their pace.
Almost at once they were arrested by a strange sight in that mathematically precise world where every surface and plane of the circular walls of the tunnel and its footing beneath, seemed to have been meticulously incised as though with a ruler, so straight and orderly was everything.
Ahead was chaos, depicted in the wavering yellow torchlight; great blocks of stone, smooth as if carved with some gigantic knife, lay tumbled and awry, from floor to ceiling. Yet to the surveyor’s expert eye it did not look as though there had been a rock fall. For one thing, the blocks were of a different material to that of the granite from which the passages were hewn. These rocks were dark brown, basaltic and incredibly old; it was as though they had been brought there from a distance. Bellows’ lip trembled slightly and his voice also as he whispered to his companion.
“It’s almost as though some beings had brought these blocks here... for the sole purpose of blocking the tunnel.”
Darrow did not speak and the two men stood immobile, their souls weighed down with the secret thoughts within them. The dust marks had long died out, which was bizarre in itself, so it was obvious that no one had preceded them there, along the tunnel floor. Therefore, the prodigious power that had erected this mighty barrier had come from the other side; that which lay toward the sea and the great reef of Innsmouth.
“This is beyond belief,” Bellows muttered at last.
The only answer he got was a strangled gargling noise from his companion. It was so unexpected and horrible in that place that the surveyor almost dropped the torch. He had the revolver out now and moved it in a steady arc but nothing stirred in the smooth expanse of tunnel except for the wavering torchlight. He became aware that Darrow had dropped to his knees. His face was ghastly in the dim light.
“Did you see them?” he asked in a strangled voice.
Bellows felt a sudden chill and he kept his voice steady with an effort.
“No, I saw nothing.”
The Dean leaned against him for support.
“Terrible squirming things, with flat heads like snakes. They seemed to go through the wall.”
Bellows’ voice was trembling as he replied.
“Let us get out of here,” he muttered in a low voice, not far from panic himself.
He half-dragged his companion away from the rock wall and they set off at a tottering run, the ball of twine abandoned now, the torchlight dancing on the roof of the passage.
They were both near collapse when they reached the circular chamber and Bellows had to support his companion. Behind them the echoes of their mad progress were prolonged for a far greater interval of time than they should have been.
V
“I am going to show you something few people have ever seen,” said Darrow.
It was almost dusk now and the two men were back in the Dean’s study.
“I have had a de-code done of some of the books in the sealed section of the library here. By one of my most brilliant colleagues, Jefferson Holroyd. He spent time on the staff some years ago and now lectures here regularly. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
Bellows glanced at the half-empty whiskey bottle on the desk between them and re
-filled his glass. He felt ashamed of his earlier panic now but it was evident that his companion had suffered a far more severe shock; he had had to cancel his lecture and the two men had gone straight to his quarters, after re-sealing the tunnel workings behind them. They seemed to have been talking for hours.
“Vaguely,” Bellows said. “What’s this business of de-coding? Are these the famous secret books of which I’ve heard so often?”
The Dean nodded. His face had lost something of its pallor and he appeared more at ease, though he occasionally shot worried glances about the comfortable panelled room. Lights were beginning to prick the distant campus and he moved somewhat unsteadily to draw the thick velvet drapes across the windows. Then he returned to the desk.
“About this hallucination,” the surveyor went on, as his companion resumed his seat. “I would suggest...”
Darrow shook his head.
“That was no hallucination, Andrew. Those things were as real as you and I, though I glimpsed them only for a few seconds.”
Bellows persisted.
“The strange atmosphere, the wavering torchlight, the tension of the moment...” he suggested.
Again the vehement shaking of the head.
“Nothing like that. Listen, Andrew, I’m going to tell you something. Something that I shouldn’t because the knowledge is restricted to a mere handful of people. Above all, we don’t want a panic on campus here.”
He lowered his voice as though somebody or something might be listening.
“Peculiar things have been happening over the past two years or so. Strange, unexplainable things, of which this latest is but one manifestation. That’s why I asked the help of Holroyd. He’s one of the most brilliant cryptographers in the States. He’s also a scholar with a mastery of ancient languages. I set him to work on some of the typed copies of the rare volumes here. He’s starting to get results. That was why some of the material was stolen from the locked section.”
Bellows looked at him sombrely.
“How can you possibly know that?”
Darrow shook his head.
“I just know, Andrew. Deep in my bones.”
He smiled thinly, pouring himself more whiskey, with a dash of soda-water this time.
“Fortunately, I’d had everything in those books copied. There are three typescripts of each, all safely under lock and key in areas only two people know about. One of these persons is myself; the other is the University Librarian.”
“I don’t really know what you’re trying to tell me,” Bellows said after a long interval of silence. “There doesn’t seem to be any point in all these strange happenings...”
Darrow leaned forward across the desk, his face a strained, taut mask, bisected by the white line of his straggly moustache.
“There is a point, Andrew. A terrible pattern here. That is why I have such faith in Holroyd. If anyone can find the key to these awful mysteries it is he. I have taken the liberty of sending for him. He should be here within the next ten minutes. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity and he has iron nerve. You and he would be ideally suited to lead the exploration of these passages together. I’m afraid I could not descend there again. My nerves have been too badly shaken. And now there are the problems of the police investigation...”
“You surprise me,” Bellows said. “I have heard strange rumours about the campus, of course. Gossip about odd happenings over a long period of time. Lights that switch on and off in the students’ halls of residence. The discovery of the body of Conley in that pond; the thefts of the books. But I did not know until today that you were so involved or that you had discerned a pattern in all this.”
The Dean smiled rather wearily.
“I have learned to conceal my true feelings over the years, my dear Andrew,” he said gently. “It is an invaluable attribute when one is dealing with academics, many of them powerful personalities who are sometimes at war with one another.”
Bellows smiled too.
“That is not confined merely to the academic world. We all have our crosses to bear.”
He stood up as there came a firm, confident rapping at the study door. He waited with interest as the Dean hurried to let the newcomer in.
Holroyd was a good-looking man of about forty-five, lean but powerfully built, with a thick shock of curly hair, just starting to turn grey and a heavy black moustache which made a startling contrast with his strong white teeth when he smiled, which was a frequent occurrence with him. Steady brown eyes surveyed the two men as he stood framed in the doorway before being led over to the desk to be introduced to Bellows, whom he already knew by sight.
“I’d like you to come to the Library, Dr. Darrow,” he said without preamble. “I have worked out a mechanical method of assessing the data, using mathematical formulae. The results should be quite interesting. The method could be useful to Miskatonic in the future.”
He smiled at the Dean’s rising excitement.
“Please don’t get your hopes up too high, gentlemen. But it’s a start.”
The Dean wrinkled up his face.
“Do you mean to say that you actually have some results?”
Holroyd hovered uncertainly between the desk and the door.
“I dislike making too high a claim, Dean, as you know. But things are interesting. These writings are some sort of code, without doubt. And I have managed to reduce a few sentences to English.”
The Dean’s excitement seemed to have passed to Bellows also because he rose impetuously.
“This we must see.”
The three men were talking animatedly, almost as though they had been friends for years as they passed through the Dean’s private apartments and ascended the great gloomy staircase which led to the architecturally splendid but somewhat forbidding Central Library of the University. A slight trace of the sunset still lingered and the oriel windows in the arcade leading to the bookstacks themselves stained the parquet blood-red and cast brooding shadows before them as the trio hurried on. But none of them had any thought for their surroundings and presently they found themselves in a vast, shadowy area where green-shaded lamps burned.
It was an L-shaped reference section, set out with long deal tables, many of them weighted down with massive leather-bound volumes; it adjoined the locked and sealed section of the Library to which access was barred to everyone but the Chief Librarian and the Dean himself. Bellows wondered why that gentleman had himself not been consulted but was told by the Dean that he was currently on leave from his post to visit a sick relative in Maine.
Holroyd had brought the typed symbols of the volume on which he had been working down to the Dean’s study with him but his working notes and other material were still scattered about the table as he had left them. There had been an unusual scuttling noise as the men entered and Holroyd looked sharply round the great shadowy place, where the rays of the setting sun competed with the green-shaded lamps.
“Was there anyone in here when you came down?” the Dean asked, unnecessarily sharply, the surveyor thought.
“Not that I know of,” Holroyd replied. “The main library is usually left open, is it not, for students’ evening study?”
“Of course,” the Dean assented hastily. “That was not my meaning...”
He broke off, following the direction in which Holroyd was looking. Bellows stared too, noting for the first time the jumbled mass of metal that was lying beneath the far table.
Holroyd swore and went arrow-swift to scrabble among the wreckage. He rose white-faced and incredulous.
“Your deciphering machine?” said the Dean in a tremulous voice.
Holroyd nodded.
“Almost seventeen months’ work, gentlemen. Destroyed in a few seconds.”
The Dean’s voice rose.
“By God, if this is students’ work...”
Holroyd shook his head.
“You know that is not so.”
“But how can you tell?” said Bellows, puzzled. “If there
is no one in here...”
Holroyd’s handsome face was regaining its normal complexion now.
“The Dean knows what I’m talking about, Mr. Bellows. If you’ll forgive me...”
He went over quickly, ignoring the wreckage of the shining metal machine on the floor.
“Could it have fallen by itself?” asked Bellows helplessly.
Neither man answered, both absorbed by the cryptographer’s frantic scrabbling among the tangled sheets of paper on the desk. Presently Holroyd straightened, his breath coming fast and shallow.
“Nothing?” said the Dean heavily.
Holroyd sank into a chair, looking at his two companions unseeingly. The three men started as a shadow swept across the doorway through which they had just entered. But it was only a college servant hovering uncertainly in the shadowy space.
“It is all right, Tibbs,” said the Dean in his normal voice. “A slight accident. I will call if I need you.”
The man withdrew with a muffled apology.
“Merely sheets of blank paper,” said Holroyd, answering the Dean’s previous question, which now seemed to the three men as though it had been spoken at a period remote in time.
“You mentioned something about English phrases,” said Darrow when another long interval had elapsed. “Can you remember what it was you were going to tell us?”
An astonishing change had taken place in Holroyd since the Dean had begun speaking. He passed his hand across his forehead.
“They seem to have slipped my mind temporarily,” he said apologetically.
“Perhaps the typed notes will refresh your memory,” Bellows suggested.
He had not finished speaking when the folder, which Holroyd had placed on a corner of the table, suddenly fluttered to the floor, as though a strong but unseen, unfelt wind had rippled through the vast library. The papers were scattered all about the floor and as the two men went to help their companion sort and collate them they saw that they were nothing more than blank sheets of paper too.
VI
“It is impossible,” the Dean agreed, “and yet it has happened.”
Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 11