Lovecraft's Book

by Richard A. Lupoff

Genres: Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

Endpages are a pretty lavender.

Release date: May 1, 1985

Publisher: Arkham House Pub

Print pages: 320

Sample

In a sense, my work on Lovecraft’s Book commenced in 1943 when I first encountered one of Lovecraft’s stories and was at once captivated by it. My interest in the man, his work, and his life has thus persisted for more than forty years.

My interest in Lovecraft remained purely literary, however, until the publication of his selected letters beginning in 1965. The connections between Lovecraft and other personages of his era, and his comments on various events and organizations, struck me as covering relationships and occurrences far beyond what was overtly revealed.

This led me to the investigation of a sequence of events, in which undertaking I have had invaluable assistance from many individuals and organizations. To list them all would be impossible, but I will mention at least the most noteworthy:

John Stanley, of the San Francisco Chronicle, for access to his priceless collection of tapes, including rare recordings of Father Charles Coughlin’s radio broadcasts.

The other John Stanley, of the John Hay Library at Brown University, for access to the library’s Lovecraft collection and for assistance in its use.

The late Vincent Starrett, for information and advice contained in numerous unpublished letters, as well as the material found in Chapter Ten of Lovecraft’s Book.

Dr Fred Stripp, of Berkeley, California, for insightful information and anecdotes regarding extremist movements in the San Francisco area from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The late Larry Brown, for technical information and historical data concerning the early installation of radios in cars, as well as his personal reminiscences of social and cultural life in Brooklyn during the 1920s.

Frank Belknap Long, for his generous reminiscences of his legendary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft, and in particular for information concerning the relationship between Lovecraft and George Sylvester Viereck.

Dr Kenneth Sterling, Lovecraft’s onetime literary collaborator; Donald A. Wollheim, Lovecraft’s onetime editor and publisher; Julius Schwartz, Lovecraft’s onetime literary agent; and E. Hoffmann Price, Lovecraft’s collaborator and host; all of them, for their recollections of Lovecraft, his life and times.

My high school acquaintance Mike Morelli, for information and insight into his family background in Providence.

My son Kenneth Lupoff, for information concerning Theodore Weiss (Hardeen the Mysterious) and for important suggestions on further areas of investigation.

The folklorist ‘Uncle Wash’, now of Oakland, California, for his recollections of conditions in rural Texas in the 1920s, most notably regarding the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and ‘the Germans’.

Cedric Klute for information regarding the history of the Thor Hotel in San Francisco; and Cedric Klute and Walter B. Gibson for further information regarding Hardeen.

Joe Gores, for examples and advice as to technique and for encouragement in the present project.

The staff of the Providence Journal-Bulletin archives, and of the newspaper room of the library of the University of California at Berkeley, for their courtesy, patience, and assistance.

The numerous bookmen (and women) who assisted in identifying and obtaining needed materials. These included Jack Biblo, Jack Tannen, Alice Ryter, Howard Cherniak, Nikki St Onge, Marcia S. Wright, Stuart Teitler, Michael Kurland, Daryl van Fleet, and Thomas Whitmore.

Brunhilde Gisela Pronzini, for indispensable assistance with non-English-language documents; my own knowledge of languages is limited, and of German in particular, almost nonexistent.

My agent Henry Morrison and the several editors who provided advice and assistance with Lovecraft’s Book. These included Clyde Taylor, formerly of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, who taught me more of textual structure and discipline in one grueling battle than all my composition teachers from kindergarten through university; David G. Hartwell, most peripatetic of redactors; and James Turner, of Arkham House, whose patience, encouragement, assistance, and support have been little short of saintly.

And especially my wife Patricia, who spent weeks tramping with me through Lovecraft country, and our sons and daughter, Kenneth, Katherine, and Thomas, who spent an unforgettable summer reliving with me the daily installments of a serial that included Babe Ruth’s sixty home runs, Charles A. Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, the wedding of Chiang Kai-shek, the climactic struggle between Stalin and Trotzky for leadership of the Soviet Union, the plan of Treasury Secretary Mellon to make Prohibition self-enforcing by simply providing poisoned alcohol to those who wished to drink it, the nearly simultaneous Broadway openings of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, Bela Lugosi in Dracula, Jimmy Durante’s latest production, Texas Guinan’s newest speakeasy, and an obscure but promising hoofer-comedian named Humphrey Bogart – to name just a few of the incidents in that year.

In addition I feel obligated to acknowledge the assistance of the United States Department of Justice for materials provided, however grudgingly, under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (DJ file number 146–7–51–1538). And finally, special thanks must be extended to Dr Hans Werner Büchner, director of the Bibliothek für Militärgeschichte in Koblenz, West Germany, for furnishing a microfilm copy of the previously unpublished blueprint of the Unterwasserprojekt Elf.

RICHARD A. LUPOFF

The December air was wintry and moist with falling snow. Howard Phillips Lovecraft lifted his long lantern-jawed face toward the midnight sky, scanning the heavy clouds for a break, then shuddered once against the cold, pulled down the brim of his dark fedora, and turned up the collar of his heavy overcoat.

He was troubled by cold weather, a sensitivity that could render him almost paralyzed if he didn’t bundle up properly, but for a magical moment he forgot the December chill and stood gazing down dark Angell Street toward the Seekonk River. His ears strained for the creak of ghostly carriage wheels and the soft clop-clop of horses’ hooves in fresh, soft snow.

Briefly he surrendered to his yearning for the vanished past, the days of comfort and grace when he was himself a small child and could ride between his Grandfather Phillips and his pretty mother Susie while the coachman whipped up the splendid team.

But the spell popped like a bubble. Instead of a carriage he heard the growl of an automobile’s engine. A yellow glow swept along the white-coated roadway. The motor car roared up, a heavy high-bodied model casting twin shafts of light in its path. It swept past him, then disappeared onto River Drive where the snow-dusted road curved northward toward Swan Point.

Lovecraft stamped his feet to restore circulation and continued his interrupted walk. He reached River Drive just at the Narragansett Yacht Club. The club’s lights were ablaze, and inside he could hear a society orchestra playing some popular tune; a few senseless lyrics drifted across the white-coated lawns, lines about mountain greenery where God painted scenery. Howard Lovecraft kept to the opposite side of River Drive until he was past the lights of the club. His feet and legs were growing chilled despite his thick woolen socks and long underwear. He was ready to turn back toward home when he heard the sounds of a struggle from the river’s edge.

There were shouts, curses, the thump of blows being struck. There was a final heavy crunch, a moment of silence, a splash. Lovecraft started forward, toward the source of the sounds, but he was halted by the shrill grinding of an automobile’s self-starter. Two lights sprang into life. With a screech and a roar the heavy car Lovecraft had seen on Angell Street spun through a U-turn on River Drive and sped past him, headed back the way it had come.

Lovecraft paced uncertainly for a few strides, then ran at top speed toward the Seekonk. He was a sedentary man, approaching forty years of age, yet he reached the riverbank in seconds. He peered down into the water. A few lights reflected on its surface from East Providence – the Seekonk was relatively narrow at this point – and an occasional sliver of moonlight penetrated the clouds.

Three white blobs wavered a foot or so beneath the surface of the river. For a moment Lovecraft wished for the reading glasses he’d left at home at Barnes Street. He leaned over the bank, trying to identify the blobs. Startled, he realized what they were. He stiffened with sudden resolve. He pulled his overcoat and suit jacket off with a single movement, dropping them onto the snowy grass.

He flopped onto his belly and stretched as far as he could over the water, but was unable to reach the objects. He drew a deep breath, inched forward, and slipped from the riverbank into the water, striving for the two hands just below the surface, grasping them and kicking with his feet to stay afloat.

The two hands clutched Lovecraft’s with desperate strength. From close range he could see the third, larger blob deeper in the water. It was a man’s face, a grotesque expression of panic etched upon its features, dark hair waving. Howard tugged harder at the hands. He thought he felt the man rise a trifle. The eyes in the pallid face were wider than seemed possible. The mouth dropped open and air bubbled upward. Lovecraft wondered if the victim was bound by supernatural forces to the riverbed.

Lovecraft tugged again at the hands, felt them pull back convulsively. He was drawn deeper into the water, his hands on the sides of the man’s head straining to raise him. Instead he felt himself being drawn down, deeper into the dark icy river. He released his grip on the head and shoved against the shoulders to get his own face above water.

He succeeded in snapping his face upward, gasping icy air into straining lungs. He hardly noticed that the man had released his hands as well, had grabbed frantically at Lovecraft’s legs as he pushed the other away. Lovecraft lowered his face once more. The man held his ankles in a desperate convulsive grip. He reached towards the man’s head. All he could see now was the dark, floating hair. He tilted back the head and saw the face staring blankly at him. The mouth was still open, fixed in a silent scream; the eyes betrayed the dull emptiness of death.

Lovecraft shuddered, suddenly aware of the icelike chill of the Seekonk. He turned to swim back the short distance to shore. He was not an expert swimmer, had only enjoyed an occasional dog paddle at summer shore resorts. Now he reached out for the bank and found himself held back by the drowned man’s unyielding grasp on his ankles.

He turned and drew a deep breath, reached back to dislodge that icy clutch. He managed to loosen the fingers of one hand completely before they snapped shut again in chilly convulsion. Lovecraft drew another breath and pried at the dead man’s other hand. The fingers resisted, then yielded, then clenched again. Lovecraft’s ankle was free. The fingers had closed in the heavy cloth of his trouser cuff. He tried again and again to pry open the fingers.

Finally, shuddering with despair from his grisly exertions, Lovecraft opened his metal belt buckle, unbuttoned his trousers, and squirmed free of them. Panting and sobbing, he fought his feet clear, pulled himself onto the bank, and struggled upright. He stood dazed, unable to collect his thoughts. He had not faced death since his mother had expired six years earlier, and hers had been a quiet death in a hospital ward. This –

Through some vagary of night air the strains of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ drifted along the river from the Narragansett Club to jar Lovecraft from his reverie. He was shivering violently, and his feet and his fingers were growing numb. He cast about him in the thin snow and found his suit jacket and overcoat, the one garment still nested neatly within the other.

He struggled back into the dry coats and started to jog towards home. Within seconds he realized that he had not the stamina to make it. He slowed to a dogtrot, then to a walk. He wished for a car on River Drive, but there was no traffic. He could still hear the faint wisps of melody from the yacht club, and the still fainter clangor of distant church bells heralding the New Year.

The glittering facade of the Narragansett Club appeared. He turned and stumbled through the ornate iron gate. The front courtyard of the club was filled with parked automobiles, and the lights of the clubhouse were ablaze. He staggered up the driveway, slumped against the huge main doorway of the clubhouse, and pounded desperately.

After an eternity the door swung open and Lovecraft stumbled into the hall. He was caught by a liveried doorman. In a dazzle he saw dozens of celebrants, men in formal black and white, women in highly colored gowns, rushing to cluster around him. He was half carried to a sitting room and placed on a heavy stuffed divan.

Faces appeared, voices buzzed and mumbled, hands worked over him.

There came a period of half-heard voices and half-sensed movement. Then Lovecraft felt himself supported to an upright posture, something was pressed against his lips, and an unfamiliar burning sensation entered his mouth. He sputtered and gasped for breath, then was fully conscious.

A stocky man in formal dress was bending beside the divan, holding Lovecraft upright. Howard looked down and saw that a heavy car-blanket had been drawn over him; his soaked clothing had been thrown in a dripping pile near the divan. ‘I – there was a man –’ Lovecraft began to say.

‘What happened to you?’ the stocky figure interrupted.

Lovecraft shook his head, gathering his thoughts. ‘There was a man. In the Seekonk. I tried to pull him out. He grabbed me and we both nearly drowned. I barely managed to escape.’

The stocky man said, ‘Are you certain? Maybe you’ve celebrated the New Year too much. Mightn’t you have fallen in the river?’

‘No, no,’ Lovecraft protested. If only this person would take him seriously – murder had been done!

The stocky man grinned. ‘Well, it’s a little odd, don’t you agree? The way you arrived here, I mean. Thumping at the door of the clubhouse at midnight on New Year’s Eve, drenched in cold water. Maybe you decided to have a little dip on your way home from a party.

‘But there’s no harm done.’ The stocky man patted Lovecraft on the back. ‘One little snort of brandy seems to’ve fixed you up, sir. And you provided some fine excitement for us all. I’m the manager here, and our New Year’s gala was getting a trifle tired until you arrived!’ He smiled at his companions.

‘Well, if you’d like to use our telephone to summon a taxicab. Or is there someone who can come fetch you home?’

‘But there really was a man!’ Lovecraft pounded his fist on the plump divan. ‘We need to summon the police!’

The stocky man laughed. For the first time genuine concern registered in his expression. ‘Don’t you think you’d just be embarrassed in the morning? If you really insist, of course, I can place a call. It’s your responsibility, sir.’

Now Lovecraft was determined. ‘Yes!’

‘But then how will you explain your odd state of costume?’ The manager nodded towards Lovecraft’s lower extremities. ‘Where are your trousers?’

By the time the Providence police arrived, Lovecraft was sitting in the manager’s office, outfitted with a set of nondescript borrowed garments. He had telephoned his two aunts and assured them that he was all right. They’d been worried by his long absence from home on a cold winter’s night. He told them he would be some while longer but that he was safe and warm.

The manager of the yacht club left the office to meet the police, returned chatting familiarly with a jowly plainclothesman. Howard Lovecraft rose and shook hands with the officer, who introduced himself as a lieutenant of the homicide detail. A uniformed sergeant and a patrolman stood behind the lieutenant.

Lovecraft told the lieutenant all that had happened, from the first passage of the heavy car on Angell Street to his arrival at the yacht club. The plainclothesman asked questions throughout Lovecraft’s story while the patrolman unobtrusively jotted notes. At the completion of Lovecraft’s recital the lieutenant said, ‘There’s only one way to find out if this all really happened. Will you take us there and show us the drowned man?’

Lovecraft assented. The evidence would prove him to be a sober and reliable reporter. He had acted properly, despite the manager’s jocular implications.

They clambered into the Providence police car, the patrolman driving and the plainclothesman beside him, Lovecraft seated uneasily with the officer in the rear seat. He directed them to the location on River Drive, where they climbed from the patrol car and permitted Lovecraft to lead them to the edge of the Seekonk. Thick flakes still sifted down from heavy clouds, but the reflected lights of East Providence had diminished during these postmidnight hours.

The patrolman produced a large electric torch and played its light over the water at Lovecraft’s direction. ‘There!’ Lovecraft exclaimed. ‘You see? There are my trousers!’

He pointed at the spot. Beside the trousers, unmoving under dark, rippling water, the dead face seemed almost to glow.

‘Okay,’ the lieutenant grunted. ‘I gotta believe you now, Mr Lovecraft.’ He turned to the patrolman. ‘You stay here and stand guard. We’ll get back to the yacht club and call for the coroner’s wagon.

‘Mr Lovecraft, you’ll have to come down to Elbow Street and give us your full statement.’

Lovecraft blanched. Must he face interrogation like some mongrel thug? ‘I told you everything at the yacht club. Won’t that do, sir?’

The officer shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that was just a preliminary statement, Mr Lovecraft. What we call an incident report. Now that we know there’s been a homicide, we’ll need a full statement. We’ll ask you to sign it before a notary. You have no objection?’

Lovecraft shook his head. As long as he himself was not under suspicion, he was pleased to provide assistance.

‘Unless you’d rather do it in the morning?’

‘No. I – but if I could get my own clothing back. I don’t see my fedora anywhere. I suppose it’s down in the harbor by now. One doesn’t find a good hat easily these days.’

‘No, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘But we can pick up your other clothes at the club, and you’ll have these trousers back in a day or two. Once we pull that poor simp out of the drink and check everything for clues.’

Lovecraft grinned inwardly at the word clues. ‘I was a devoted follower of the great Sherlock Holmes as a child, but I never dreamed that I would be involved in a homicide investigation!’

At Elbow Street, Lovecraft sat in the lieutenant’s stuffy green-walled office and answered question after question, working his way through the night once again. No, he couldn’t identify the heavy car. He hadn’t noticed its license tags. He wasn’t certain of the make – some large model, a Packard or Pierce. Maybe even a foreign design. He didn’t know.

And, no, he hadn’t seen inside the passenger compartment. The only light had come from the headlamps of the car.

He’d heard voices and a struggle before the splash, but he hadn’t made out any words except a few profanities. Were they speaking English? He wasn’t sure. It might have been some lingo like Portuguese. And the man in the river hadn’t been able to say anything during the minute or so – that was as long as the whole incident could have taken – of Lovecraft’s futile attempt at rescue.

To Lovecraft’s own ear the statement was unsatisfying. The narration was bald, vital details were absent. There were merely events without pattern or meaning.

When he was finished, Lovecraft asked the lieutenant if he knew the identity of the drowned man. The officer shook his head. He opened the door of his office and queried a desk sergeant whether identification had been made. He returned to the green room and told Howard Lovecraft that he could drink a cup of coffee while his statement was typed for signature and notarization.

Lovecraft followed the officer to a corner where a pot of black sludge simmered over a chipped porcelain hot plate. Vaguely from the other end of the long room he could hear the arrhythmic clicking of an upright typewriter. A sudden worry flickered across his mind, and Lovecraft patted the breast pocket of his recovered suit jacket. The rustle of papers assured him that his letters had not been lost in the excitement and activity of the night.

He pulled the three envelopes from the pocket and examined them. The letters from Viereck and Starrett were typewritten and relatively unharmed by their adventure. Sonia’s was inscribed in her familiar hand, in her favorite odd shade of Waterman’s ink. The suit jacket had never got drenched but the envelope was damp, the address blurred. He extracted the folded sheets of stationery and opened them: he found the ink still legible and returned the letter to his pocket.

The plainclothes lieutenant had disappeared from the room, but now he returned holding a slim sheaf of notepaper and report forms. He took Lovecraft by the elbow and steered him back to the office where his statement had been taken.

‘Mr Lovecraft, we have a tentative identification now, and of course the cause of death. He’d been battered pretty well and there was a good blow to the skull, but death was caused by drowning.’

Lovecraft nodded. They both took seats in the lieutenant’s office.

‘Standard technique. The perpetrators put the victim’s feet in a bucket of wet cement. Kept him there until the cement was hard, dumped him in the river and let nature take its course.’

Lovecraft nodded but said nothing. His intimation of a supernatural weight had been close to actuality.

‘You were very lucky, in fact,’ the lieutenant said. ‘They must not have seen you, in the snow. And they passed you twice, eh? On their way to the river and again on their way back to Federal Hill.’

Lovecraft jerked in astonishment. ‘How do you know they came from Federal Hill? Do you know who the killers are?’

The lieutenant leaned forward. ‘Let me. . .