Wednesday 14^th January 1925

Arrived in New York aboard the RMS Olympic of the White Star line and to the Waldorf Astoria where we had been booked rooms by our mysterious summoner, Dr Emile Lestrang, whose reputation had proceeded him in the Order of the Silver Twilight. Supper and to bed.

Thursday 15^th January 1925

A late rise and some sightseeing in this city, before our first appointment with our patron, in his suite at six o’clock in the evening. This was to have been supper but he, having introduced himself in the most elegant manner with but a trace of a French accent in his voice, revealed that he indeed had not gathered us together but was merely a proxy for another, one Jackson Elias, an old acquaintance of his, again via the Order of the Silver Twilight, who, desiring a group of able and experienced persons, had commissioned Emile on his behalf to gather said group, and that we were the worthies thus chosen, ill-measured for this task or description though we might feel ourselves. Our repast was delayed however by his revelation that his erstwhile friend had telephoned him in a state of some excitement the previous evening and changed the rendezvous from the current location which it was to have been, to a new location, to wit, room 410 of the Chelsea Hotel at 8 o’clock that very evening. The more experienced among us, myself included, felt that when investigators of the occult phone up in an excited mood it is often worth forgoing fashionable lateness and even worth arriving impolitely early, and so the others rapidly made our way to the Chelsea hotel. Fortunately, as will be seen, they had been wary enough when calling on Emile to have brought a few self-defence items along with them. I made my way to the hotel buffet, where I removed the edge from my hunger with a few hors d’oeuvres before retiring to the library to await their return with a glass of brandy and a small selection of crystallised fruit, my doctor being among those who had left.

They arrived at the Chelsea and rapidly gulled the bell-boy into allowing us up onto the 4^th floor. Once at room 410 their innate or acquired paranoia reasserted itself at the thought a meeting a stranger and they had a quick listen at the door. The sound of several people moving rapidly around convinced them that Jackson Elias was certainly not awaiting them alone and so they attempted to burst in. Unfortunately Mr Byrne bounced off the door on the first attempt and it only gave in on the second attempt. The delay had been enough to alert the occupants, one of who was trying to climb out of the window and another two of who rushed at the door with knives. The fourth drew a gun. The fifth was in no state to join the attack, lying as he was, spread-eagled upon the bed with his internal organs arranged around him. This was, it was correctly assumed, Jackson Elias. The fight in the room was comparatively brief, as fights between men with knives and men with guns often are – something of a motif of the fortnight’s events. In the brief interlude between Dr Grey blowing the last of the raiders off the fire-escape with his shotgun and the police arriving, as was all but inevitable given that even dear meek Dr Relkin had produced a pistol and started shooting chunks out of the wall to add to the general level of excitement, in this interval, they managed to make a rapid and through search of the room and find a number of items and clues which they were able to smuggle out of the room when the police arrived.

Friday 16^th January 1925

I waited up for them until almost 11 o’clock and then retired to bed. It was only the next morning that I discovered that rather than having been invited out by Mr Elias for a splendid four-course banquet in some esoteric New York restaurant, they had spend the night in police custody being questioned and that the state of Jackson Elias’ body was so hideous that they none of them felt able to face breakfast. As I started on their fried eggs and bacon, they described the events to me, which I agreed were gruesome enough to put any sane man off his appetite and as I polished off a second round of toast and marmalade, they showed me the items that they had found in Jackson’s room before the police search.

The items were an interesting assortment that hopefully will provide some sort of clue as to what Jackson had found. There were two business cards, one for the Penhew foundation in London, one for Emerson Imports in New York. There was a match book for a Chinese bar. There was a photograph of a yacht in a harbour full of junks. There was a letter to a librarian at Harvard asking after a book and a bill for a lecture on Polynesian customs.

We decided, over coffee and biscuits in the salon, to split up and follow the various leads in small groups, in order to follow up the information as quickly as possible.

Mr McNaire called upon some of his former colleagues at the New York Police Department to see if they had any background on similar crimes and indeed 9 similar crimes had been committed in New York in the last 2 years.

Dr Grey telephoned Miriam Atwright at Harvard to ask about the book that Jackson Elias had tried to obtain. It turned out that the unavailable book was Africa’s Dark Sects and had been donated to the museum by Dr Armitage. A phone call to Dr Armitage met with a wall of silence, Henry being a somewhat secretive soul with strangers, although always open to bribery with a jam doughnut.

Mr Moriarty and Dr Relkin went back to the scene of the crime to attempt to recover a knife that Dr Lexington had hidden under a drain grating. Moriarty was unable to locate the knife and when challenged by the police there, froze like a startled gazelle and was metaphorically shot between the eyes by being arrested.

Dr Relkin, showing his normal courage and spirit, left him too it and proceeded to their secondary objective, to wit the offices of Emerson Imports. There, posing as a clergyman importing statuary into America and having been recommended to Emerson by Jackson Elias, he was able to elicit the information that Elias had never used Emerson but had been interested in the activities of Ahja Singh, an exporter operating out of Mombassa, whose sole client in New York was one Silas N’Kwane, of the Juju House curiosity ship in Harlem. Since this name corresponded most accurately with a name scribbled on the back of the Emerson business card, Relkin hurried back to the Waldorf Astoria to relate this information to me over a beautifully prepared chateaubriand washed down with a pleasant ’09 claret in the hotel restaurant.

That evening, we dined with Dr Lestrang in his suite, making a second attempt at the meal that had been so rudely interrupted the evening before. Over the glazed pears we discussed the leads that we had uncovered and decided upon the lines of enquiry for the next day.

Saturday 17^th January 1925

Dr Grey caught the morning train to Boston to talk to Professor Cowles, who had given the lecture on Polynesia, at Harvard. He also resolved to attempt to talk to Dr Armitage in person, although, rising late and dining in my room on some delightful devilled kidneys, I forgot to mention his propensity for deep-fried bread products.

Mt Byrne decided in the morning to call Jonas Kensington, the late Mr Elias’ literary agent and he proved to be a mine of information. We gained possession of copied of a large volume of correspondence from Jackson, both from Kenya and London. The London letter, in particular, was most poorly written and disturbing, reminding me in a way of some of Estelle’s later correspondence before she entered her last sleep.

The police released Mr Moriarty at this point, although they kept his gun and gave him a stern talking to, which seemed to have little effect on his spirits.

That afternoon I left on the evening train for Boston, in order to visit Henry at Harvard and to do some reading at the Miskatonic University.

While I was away I understand that Byrne, McNaire and Moriarty carried out surveillance on the Juju House shop in Harlem. Moriarty and Relkin had already alerted the owner to our interest with some cack-handed inquiries in the afternoon, but amazingly this did not appear to affect the behaviour of the owner or his multitudinous visitors.

Sunday 18^th January 1925

The Lord’s day passed in contemplation of either the many and various clues that we had in our rooms in the Algonquin hotel (whence we had repaired several nights previously for some trivial reason), or God, or the exterior aspects of the Juju House, or the card-index file system of the Miskatonic University, the sole purpose of which card-index file system being to make the identification of the volume for which one is searching as difficult as possible. It is only the insight that years of dedicated study of madmen has given me, coupled with a few pipefuls of hashish that I was smoking in the west stacks in direct contradiction of the rules of the library, that led me to realise that obviously a book named Cults of Blood would be indexed under ‘of’. I fully appreciate the Miskatonic’s policy of finding jobs for some of its more ‘damaged’ alumni within the university system but feel that the cataloguing system for the library should have been left in the hands of someone who was at least partially sane.

Then to meet Henry for tea and Bath buns in his rooms at the university. Over a fine meal at High Table we discussed many topics including the best mechanism for preserving jellyfish and the origins of Africa’s Dark Sects.

Monday 19^th January 1925

In an effort to make contact with Erica Carlyle, the New Yorkers resolved to use a travelling companion of Dr Grey’s (or at least so she was presented to us although to have sent her un-chaperoned all the way to New York seemed to strike at one’s sense of the proprietaries of things. Still at least it was New York and hopefully when we return to London, social mores will be more properly observed) to strike up a friendship with her companion, a Miss Post, currently studying art at Colombia University. Dr Lestrang arranged for her to be admitted and she struck up a friendship based on a mutual love of horses (for riding rather than as a nutritional source though).

Tuesday 20^th January 1925

The watchers in the pawn shop (unfortunately for Mr McNaire not a porn shop as he had been led to believe) finally gave up their vigil this day, having observed many comings and goings of many sinister Africans. The day was spent in a long debate in New York on the merits and demerits of assaulting the Juju shop, divided between those who wished to attack it to remove the scourge of these evildoers from the face of New York and those who felt this was tantamount to suicide. I spent the day in the library at the Miskatonic again, which was not entirely wasted as I found some superb edible fungi at the back of one of the shelves on the third floor of the east stack, which complimented the ’12 Pouilly-Fume that I had packed in my picnic hamper to cover just such an opportunity.

The debate in New York was raging without conclusion into the night, when Dr Lestrang telephoned with information that he had just seen men carrying 4 large packing cases into the Juju House. After the inevitable, and unanswered, questions as to what he was doing by the Juju House, the investigators decided that a raid was in order; a raid led of course by New York’s finest. Mr McNaire was therefore prevailed upon to use the last of his influence to persuade the police to raid the premises. McNaire’s influence was not what we had been led to believe it was, since all we were given was a Lieutenant and a couple of Sergeants, but needs must when the devil drives.

The enhanced party made its way by car (or charabanc) to Harlem and disembarked in 137^th Street. Paul stayed with the car, to keep the engine running apparently, and the rest made their way to the unlocked shop, where Dr Lestrang joined them, revealing his sword-cane to much amusement to the others, who were armed like Barbary pirates with a variety of shotguns, rifles, revolvers and pistols.

They entered the shop, found the trapdoor and descended the stairs into the corridor. At the end of this they found a large room full of an even larger number of madly dancing cultists. Full of the enthusiasm of youth and optimism of inexperience, they charged in, shotguns blasting. The room proved even larger than thought and the numbers of cultists reached into the thirties, backed up by half a dozen or so zombies, although the post-battle reports of casualties caused that I collected reveal that either there was an element of double counting of kills or that there were over eighty cultists in the rooms to start with. I cannot comment either way, not having been present for this climactic engagement, indeed I have calculated that at the very moment I was having a nice cup of warm milk and a couple of slices of toast as a small snack to ward off midnight starvation.

But back to the engagement. The battle at first seemed doomed, but the tide started to turn as luck held out and waves of knife-armed cultists threw themselves forward to be slaughtered by fusillades of buckshot. The zombies proved tougher to kill and the enemy leader soon revealed himself by melting the police Lieutenant before our very eyes by some diabolic incantation that I really must get my hands on. The battle raged on the turn but we started to get the upper hand. The enemy magician killed one of the police sergeants with another incantation but he could see the situation was hopeless and his zombie minions started to push a wedge through our ranks towards the door. Finally he made a run for it down the corridor. McNaire tried to shoot him, but a mind blast sent him mad. Finally Dr Grey reached the corridor and let him have both barrels, converting him to a pasty mush on the stairs.

A quick search of the room revealed an alcove with Africa’s Dark Sects, a metal headband and a copper bowl and a large pit in the floor containing an unspeakable monstrosity that was finishing off the remains of those that had fallen in during the battle. The artefacts were purloined by Lestrang and the unspeakable monstrosity was finished off (hopefully) with a can of petrol and a match. A search of the remains of the mage revealed an ornate sceptre, which they also took. Three of the four sacrificial victims had also survived, so they dropped them off at the nearest hospital and headed for their beds (or padded cells in the case of McNaire and Byrne).

Wednesday 21^st January 1925

After a night like that, people slept in late, so there was time for me to arrive on the lunchtime train (escalope of veal) from Boston by the time the others were up. Emile had locked himself in his room and only emerged in the evening when he had finished reading Africa’s Dark Sects, which was then snapped up by a rapidly recovered Byrne before I could get my hands on it, although Dr Relkin gave me a very stern look when I expressed an interest in it.

The next few days were spent recuperating and examining our finds. I had a bit of a bad turn, brought on I believe by a rather poor clam chowder in Boston, but by stress according to Dr Relkin, who started trying to inject sedatives into me.

Thursday 22^nd January 1925

Both Lestrang and Byrne complain of terrible nightmares from having read Africa’s Dark Sects. The connection with the fate of Carlyle seems obvious. Maybe I will hold off reading it until I see what happens to them over the next twelve months. The thought of turning into an avatar of Nyarlathotep holds little appeal at the moment, although it would probably make it easier to get table bookings at restaurants.

Friday 23^rd January 1925

Miss Harrison (Dr Grey’s ‘travelling companion’) and Dr Lestrang are to go to a party at Erica Carlyle’s mansion. I probably should have mentioned the invite earlier, but I forgot. Dr Lestrang was chosen for his charm, wit, French accent and ability to sneak around very quietly. In the event this proved to be unnecessary because Miss Carlyle spoke quite candidly to Miss Harrison and Dr Lestrang was able to bring the conversation round to her brother’s books. At that point she obligingly showed us not only the location of the safe, but also the book that she kept the combination number in. Roger had owned four mythos tomes – the Pnakotic Manuscripts, part of the Liber Ivonis, the People of the Monolith and one about becoming a God. I need to get my hands on these, especially the part of the Liber Ivonis to see if it complements my section of the Liber Ivonis. This is something I will need to think about since the Carlyle mansion is guarded like a fortress but I will get my hands on them, I will, I will.

Anyway, apparently a good time was had by all, although Dr Lestrang was unable to comment on the quality of the appetizers.

Saturday 24^th January 1925

More rest, recuperation and debate. I think we have decided to leave New York to the snow and return to London to follow up on the Carlyle and Elias trail there.

Sunday 25^th January 1925

We have booked passage on the Mauretania, sailing tomorrow. Second class only unfortunately but hopefully the food will still be at least palatable.

Monday 26^th January 1925

Said farewell to New York and set off. Weather fine, sea calm. Lunch passable. Dinner well within expectations.

Tuesday 27^th January 1925

Dr Relkin is counselling Byrne and McNaire. Moriarty is in the ship’s gym. Dr Grey is mooching around the ship in a bad mood. I am updating my card index file system of things. Weather still fine, food improving (or my palate is becoming accustomed to it).

Wednesday 28^th January 1925

Weather deteriorating. Saw some icebergs to the north. Food still palatable.

Thursday 29^th January 1925

Arrived in Cherbourg in the evening. Popped ashore with Dr Relkin for a decent Normandy meal. Rolled back to the ship at 1 o’clock.

Friday 30^th January 1925

Arrived in Southampton. To Wainthrop Hall to catch up on things. Everything pretty much as I left it. Unpacked the tomes and replaced them in the library. Slight problem sleeping everybody; probably should have cabled to mention that we were returning.

Saturday 31^st January 1925

Caught the early train to London. Kippers on the train again at long last.