”⁠—in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too⁠—and if not the salts of “guards,” then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, “all civilization, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe?” And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!