Howard Phillips Lovecraft, pale, gaunt, cadaverous, opened the door. "Mr. Drake?" he asked genially.
"It was good of you to see me," Drake said.
"Nonsense," Lovecraft replied, ushering him into the Colonial hallway. "Any admirer of my poor tales is always welcome here. They are so few that I could have them all here on a single day without straining my aunt's dinner budget."
He may be one of the most important men alive, Drake thought, and he doesn't really suspect.
("He left Boston by train this morning," the soldier reported to Maldonado and Lepke. "He was going to Providence, Rhode Island.")
"Of course, I have no hesitation in discussing it," Lovecraft said after he and Drake were settled in the old book-lined study and Mrs. Gamhill had served them tea. "Whatever your friend in Zurich may feel, I am and always have been a strict materialist."
"But you have been in touch with these people?"
"Oh, certainly, and an absurd lot they are, all of them. It began after I published a story called 'Dagon' in, let me see, 1919. I had been reading the Bible and the description of the Philistine sea god, Dagon, reminded me of sea serpent legends and of the reconstructions of dinosaurs by paleontologists. And the notion came to me: suppose Dagon were real, not a god, but simply a long-lived being vaguely related to the great saurians. Simply a story, to entertain those who enjoy the weird and Gothic in literature. You can't imagine my astonishment when various occult groups began contacting me, asking which group I belonged to and which side I was on. They were all terribly put out when I made perfectly clear that I didn't believe any such rubbish."
"But," Drake asked perplexed, "why did you pick up more and more of these hidden occult teachings and incorporate them in your later stories?"
"I am an artist," Lovecraft said, "a mediocre artist, I fear- and don't contradict me. I value honesty above all the other virtues. I would like to believe in the supernatural, in a world of social justice and in my own possession of genius. But reason commands that I accept the facts: the world is made of blind matter, the wicked and brutal always have and always will trample on the weak and innocent, and I have a very microscopic capacity to create a small range of esthetic effects, all macabre and limited in their appeal to a very special audience. Nevertheless, I would that things were otherwise. Hence, although a conservative, I support certain social legislation that might improve the conditions of the poor, and, although a poor writer, I try to elevate the status of my own wretched prose. Vampires and ghosts and werewolves are worn out; they provoke chuckles rather than terror. Thus, when I began to learn of the old lore, after 'Dagon' was published, I began to use it in my stories. You can't imagine the hours I have spent with those old volumes at Miskatonic, wading through tons of trash- Alhazred and Levi and Von Juntzt were all mental cases, you know- to sift out the notions that were unfamiliar enough to cause a genuine shock, and a real shudder, in my readers."
"And you've never received threats from any of these occult groups for mentioning lok Sotot or Cthulhu outright in your stories?"
"Only when I mentioned Kali," Lovecraft said with a wry smile. "Some thoughtful soul reminded me of what happened to Bierce after he wrote a bit frankly on that subject. But that was a friendly warning, not a threat. Mr. Drake, you are a banker and a businessman. Certainly, you don't take any of this seriously?"
"Let me reply with a question of my own," Drake said carefully. "Why, in all the esoteric lore which you have chosen to make exoteric through your stories, have you never mentioned the Law of Fives?"
"In fact," Lovecraft said, "I did hint at it, rather broadly, in 'At the Mountains of Madness.' Have you not read that? It's my longest, and, I think, my best effort to date." But he seemed abruptly paler.
"In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,'" Drake pursued, "you quote a formula from Eliphas Levi's History of Magic. But you don't quote it in full. Why was that?"
Lovecraft sipped his tea, obviously framing his answer carefully. Finally he said, "One doesn't have to believe in Santa Claus to recognize that people will exchange presents at Christmas time. One doesn't have to believe in Yog Sothoth, the Eater of Souls, to realize how people will act who do hold that belief. It is not my intent, in any of my writings, to provide information that will lead even one unbalanced reader to try experiments that will result in the loss of human life."
Drake arose. "I came here to learn," he said, "but it appears that my only possible function is to teach. Let me remind you of the words of Lao-tse: Those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak.' Most occult groups are in the first class, and their speculations are as absurd as you think. But those in the second class are not to be so lightly dismissed. They have left you alone because your stories appear only in magazines that appeal to a small minority. These magazines, however, have lately been printing stories about rockets and nuclear chain reactions and other matters that are on the edge of technological achievement. When these fantasies start coming true, which will probably occur within a decade, there will be much wider interest in such magazines, and your stories will be included in that renaissance. Then you will receive some very unwelcome attention."
Lovecraft remained seated. "I think I know of whom you are speaking; I can also read newspapers and make deductions. Even if they are mad enough to attempt it, they do not have the means. They would have to take over not one government but many. That project would keep them busy enough, I should think, to distract them from worrying about a few lines here and there in stories that are published as fiction. I can conceive of the next war leading to breakthroughs in rocketry and nuclear energy, but I doubt that even that will lead many people to take my stories seriously, or to see the connections between certain rituals, which I have never described explicitly, and acts which will be construed as the normal excesses of despotism."
"Good day, sir," Drake said formally. "I must be off to New York, and your welfare is really not a major concern in my life."
"Good day," Lovecraft said, rising with Colonial courtesy. "Since you have been so good as to give me a warning, I will return the favor. I do not think your interest in these people is based on a wish to oppose them, but to serve them. I beg you to remember their attitude toward servants."
Back out on the street, Drake experienced a momentary dejection. For nearly twenty years he's been writing about them and they haven't contacted him. I've been rocking the boat on two continents, and they haven't contacted me. What does it take to make them show their hand? And if I don't have an understanding with them, anything I work out with Maldonado and Capone is written on the wind. I just can't afford to deal with the Mafia before I deal with them. What should I do- put an ad in the New York Times: "Will the All-Seeing Eye please look in my direction? R. P. Drake, Boston"?
And a Pontiac (stolen an hour before in Kingsport) pulled away from the curb, several houses back, and started following Drake as he left Benefit Street and walked back toward the downtown area. He wasn't looking back, so he didn't see what happened to it, but he noticed an old man coming toward him stop in his tracks and turn white.
"Jesus on a pogo stick," the old man said weakly.
Drake looked over his shoulder and saw nothing but an empty street. "What is it?" he asked.
"Never mind," the old man replied. "You'd never believe me, mister." And he cut across the sidewalk toward a saloon.