Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.

“I have told no one. This is no common case⁠—it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!

“I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later showed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world’s tombs, and at what you planned afterward , and I know how you did it.