"Anything else?"
"The first son looks like us."
"He also looks a lot like Howard Dunstan."
Robert waited.
"The roughneck was Carpenter Hatch. The girl who turned into a phantom was called Ellie, short for Ellen, as in Ellendale. Their first son wound up in jail, disappeared, and supposedly died. The second son, Cobden, went to work for his father, got married, and had a son.
All his life, Cobden Hatch was afraid his son, Stewart, might turn out like his brother."
"Who happened to resemble Howard Dunstan. And when he was supposed to be dead, this cuckoo in the nest tame back to Edgerton, calling himself Edward Rinehart."
"He came back a second time as Earl Sawyer. A lot of people have done their best to keep me from finding out that he was my father. Our father."
"That would mean ..."
"Tell me," I said. “I'd like to know."
“It means Edward Rinehart was a Dunstan, and you and I are Hatches. Good old Dad ties the two families together, and what's the physical proof? Ned Dunstan. No wonder Stewart grabbed our photographs and wanted you run out of town. You could ruin his family's reputation." He laughed. “It's delicious. Rinehart worked for his nephew for fifteen years, and he was so blown out Stewart never recognized him. The only way Stewart knew him was in these pictures."
What about Nettie and May?I wondered. Nettie would instantly have recognized "Edward Rinehart" as her father's illegitimate son. But "Edward Rinehart" had avoided the Dunstans as he must have avoided the Hatches; he had never even allowed himself to be photographed. If the aunts had not known the identity of Star's lover, they could not have blackmailed Stewart Hatch, and there was no way they could have known it.
I swerved into a parking place on Word Street, where the facade of the Hotel Paris shimmered like lava. A hot electrical tingle moved across my scalp, down my spine, and into my arms. The more I learned, the more confusing it became. Every new bit of information led into another blind alley.
"Go to my room," I said. “I'll be right there."
“I'm not making any promises." Robert disappeared from the back seat.
I sped through the bursting sounds and blooming colors in the lanes and charged across Veal Yard. The grain of the wood on the Brazen Head's reception desk swam up through layers of lacquer. "Yes, we have a fax for you, Mr. Dunstan," the day clerk said. With a thunderous explosion of summery blue from his shirt, the clerk produced a bundle of ivory-gray fax paper.
I went to the stairs reading the brilliant black lines of the fax. Major Audrey Arndt was pleased to supply, so on and so forth, with the understanding that I had agreed, so on and so forth. Her signature boomed from the page like a cannonball. I read down names listed under the years from 1938 to 1942. The fifth name down in the class of 1941 was Cordwainer C. Hatch.
Robert was standing near the window when I came in. From the edge of the table, the jewel-like arc of P.D. 10/17/58 floated out into the room. "You got a fax?"
"Cordwainer Hatch," I said. "Cobden's brother. I think he killed a student at a military school to get his hands on the book I stole from Buxton Place." Blue light flashed at the periphery of my vision, and the immense pressure in the atmosphere concentrated into a steady urgency. "You know what we have to do, Robert."
He held up his hands. "You don't understand. It would be harder on you than on me. I don't know if you could take it."
I moved toward him. An ivory-colored haze I would not have seen at any other time floated through his skin and hung like tobacco smoke. In the second before I reached for him, I took the copy ofThe Dunwich Horror from the table and rammed it into a pocket of the pink jacket. Everything crashed and boomed. I fastened my hand on Robert's, knowing exactly what we were about to see.
115 • Mr. X
•O You SwarmingMajesties Cruelties, Who Giveth with one hand and Taketh Away with the other—I begin to see—
•First I must address amore crucial point.I only now
It is bitter, bitter, with a bitterness I only now begin to comprehend.
•As the decades passed—I grew accustomed to the consolation of a Fancy—that a Godlike & Ironic Amusement—abstract—beyond the ken of the Providence Master—hadBlessed Lumbered me with the Task—Mighty—of Killing the Antagonist—or—as I have discover'd— Antagonists.—Ican only here inscribe that the Horrors—perpetrated by these Same—haveled me to believe taught me that I misunderstood Your True Nature. Gifts and Revelations encouraged this Servant's Illusion of a Favored Election—foolish,IMBECILE me.
•Last night—in Darkness—my Madness Soared—before the evidence of a Great Destruction. The Sacred Flameboiled tortured the Heavens—I stood in Ashes—below—
And—in Horror & Despair—Receiv'd the Gift.
I stood, as if Youdidn't know knew not, a'midst the Ashes—as Smoke from the Cannon's Mouth—sent Rage streaming forth—& then—Devour'd—the Substance Molten—Which is Time—& Travel'd Back—Godly & Engorg'd—to Where I shall once again slay Ferdy Dunstan, called Michael Anscombe, and Moira Hightower Dunstan, called Sally Anscombe—and Then—in Triumph—Destroy the Twin Antagonists—
•Humor—has no Place in Your Realm—Irony—as foreign as Pity. I lash myself, that I so fell short—that I could not see my Gethsemane— my Golgotha—
•The River-bank—has its Purpose & its Purpose—Terrifying. Pain equal to Pain—Rage equal to Rage—no Triumph without a Testing. Here are my wrists and ankles Pierced—here the Centurion's Sword is Thrust—
Crucifixion is no picnic, let me say that. Let me add that a half-human Wretch and Outcast can only take so much! I scream—my Scream shall reach the Heavens—they have Destroyed my Work!
Yet—in the midst of Annihilation—I get the point—You Creeping Obscenities—& Bless my Wounds & Sword Slits—My Great Loss— & Torment—is foreshadowing of the Great Fire to come—For my Identity cannot be Gainsaid—the Great Fire Follows the Smoke from the Mouth of the Cannon—
Half-mad with rage—with insult—Since discovery of the Crime, sleep has not been mine—I tremble & sweat, soak my clothing through & cannot eat—These Blessings are given in earnest of the End— when I shall Perish—to gain Eternity—
My foes Torment me—I call to them—as of old—the Advantage Mine—my Army Mightier—in Intelligence—a New Ability given me by Need—& the Foe ignorant of my Earthly Name—Even more—I known them Two—a Grand Superiority—They do not Suspect—And will Show One—whilst I conquer Time—
In the midst of Rage—I Laugh—to regard such Play—
I set down the Pen—& close the Book—theTriumph hastens— My Heartless Fathers—
•116
•A half second before we were to be delivered to Boulder, Colorado, I was united with my shadow again.
As in childhood, I recoiled from trespass and invasion; this time, I felt Robert's revulsion as well as my own. We were thirty-five, not nine, and the shock was far greater. But I had become more like Robert than I knew: the powers I had discovered and those he had known all his life shared a common root. There came again a breathtaking expansion into unguessed-at wholeness and resolution that in no way erased our separate individuality. We knew what the other knew, felt what the other felt, but within this symbiosis remained a Robert and a Ned. Surprisingly to both, it seemed that Ned was in charge of the decisions.