The Dark Brotherhood Read Online Free PDF Page B

in them.
    “I’ll think it over,” she said crisply.
    “I’ll try to explain when I see you,” I promised.
    She bade me good night and rang off with an intransigence that boded ill, and left me profoundly disturbed.

V
    I come now to the final, apocalyptic events concerning Mr. Allan and the mystery surrounding the house on the forgotten knoll. I hesitate to set them down even now, for I recognize that the charge against me will only be broadened to include grave questions about my sanity. Yet I have no other course. Indeed, the entire future of humanity, the whole course of what we call civilization may be affected by what I do or do not write of this matter. For the culminating events followed rapidly and naturally upon my conversation with Rose Dexter, that unsatisfactory exchange over the telephone.
    After a restless, uneasy day at work, I concluded that I must make a tenable explanation to Rose. On the following evening, therefore, I went early to the library, where I was accustomed to meeting her, and took a place where I could watch the main entrance. There I waited for well over an hour before it occurred to me that she might not come to the library that night.
    Once more I sought the telephone, intending to ask whether I might come over and explain my request of the previous night.
    But it was her sister-in-law, not Rose, who answered my ring.
    Rose had gone out. “A gentleman called for her.”
    “Did you know him?” I asked.
    “No, Mr. Phillips.”
    “Did you hear his name?”
    She had not heard it. She had, in fact, caught only a glimpse of him as Rose hurried out to meet him, but, in answer to my insistent probing, she admitted that Rose’s caller had had a moustache.
    Mr. Allan! I had no further need to inquire.
    For a few moments after I had hung up, I did not know what to do. Perhaps Rose and Mr. Allan were only walking the length of Benefit Street. But perhaps they had gone to that mysterious house. The very thought of it filled me with such apprehension that I lost my head.
    I rushed from the library and hurried home. It was ten o’clock when I reached the house on Angell Street. Fortunately, my mother had retired; so I was able to procure my father’s pistol without disturbing her. So armed, I hastened once more into night-held Providence and ran, block upon block, toward the shore of the Seekonk and the knoll upon which stood Mr. Allan’s strange house, unaware in my incautious haste of the spectacle I made for other nightwalkers and uncaring, for perhaps Rose’s life was at stake—and beyond that, vaguely defined, loomed a far greater and hideous evil.
    When I reached the house into which Mr. Allan had disappeared I was taken aback by its solitude and unlit windows. Since I was winded, I hesitated to advance upon it, and waited for a minute or so to catch my breath and quiet my pulse. Then, keeping to the shadows, I moved silently up to the house, looking for any sliver of light.
    I crept from the front of the house around to the back. Not the slightest ray of light could be seen. But a low humming sound vibrated just inside the range of my hearing, like the hum of a power line responding to the weather. I crossed to the far side of the house—and there I saw the hint of light—not yellow light, as from a lamp inside, but a pale lavender radiance that seemed to glow faintly, ever so faintly, from the wall itself.
    I drew back, recalling only too sharply what I had seen in that house.
    But my role now could not be a passive one. I had to know whether Rose was in that darkened house—perhaps in that very room with the unknown machinery and the glass case with the monster in the violet radiance.
    I slipped back to the front of the house and mounted the steps to the front door.
    Once again, the door was not locked. It yielded to the pressure of my hands. Pausing only long enough to take my loaded weapon in hand, I pushed open the door and entered the vestibule. I stood for a moment to