For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes, the altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen . Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen⁠—Ward⁠—Curwen⁠—it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What really had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too “squeamish,” and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that “Curwen” must be likewise obliterated? What was the change

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