“Stop!” The hoarse, oddly alien voice of the Swami held a tone beyond all mere earthly fight “I told you there was another form of proof which I could give if necessary, and I warned you not to provoke me to it. This red-faced old meddler is right – I’m not really an East Indian. This face is a mask, and what it covers is not human. You others have guessed — I felt that minutes ago. It wouldn’t be pleasant if I took that mask off — let it alone, Ernest I may as well tell you that I am Randolph Carter.”
No one moved. Aspinwall snorted and made vague motions. De Marigny and Phillips, across the room, watched the workings of the red face and studied the back of the turbaned figure that confronted him. The clock’s abnormal ticking was hidious and the tripod fumes and swaying aras danced a dance of death. The half-choking lawyer broke the silence.
“No you don’t, you crook — you can’t scare me! You’ve reasons of your own for not wanting that mask off. Maybe we’d know who you ate. Off with it — ”
As he reached forward, the Swami seized his hand with one of his own clumsily mittned members, evoking a curious cry of mixed pain and surprise. De Marigny started toward the two, but paused confused as the pseudo-Hindoo’s shout of protest changed to a wholly inexplicable rattling and buzzing sound. Aspinwall’s red face was furious, and with his free hand he made another lunge at his opponent’s bushy beard. This time he succeeded in getting a hold, and at his frantic tug the whole waxen visage came loose from the turban and clung to the lawyer’s apoplectic fist.
As it did so, Aspinwall uttered a frightful gurgling cry, and Phillips and de Maigny saw his face convulsed with a wilder, deep and more hideous epilepsy of stark panic than ever they had seen on human countenance before. The pseudo-Swami had meanwhile released his other hand and was standing as if dazed, making buzzing noises of a most abnormal quality. Then the turbaned figure slumped oddly into a posture scarcely human, and began a curious, fascinated sort of shuffle toward the coffin-shaped clock that ticked out its cosmic and abnormal rhythm. His now uncovered face was turned away, and de Marigny and Phillips could not see what the lawyer’s act had disclosure. Then their attention was turned to Aspinwall, who was sinking ponderously to the floor. The spell was broken when they reached the old man he was dead.
Turning quickly to the shuffling Swami’s receding back, de Marigny saw one of the great white mittens drop listlessly off a dangling aarm. The fumes of the olibanum were thick, and all that could be glimpsed of the revealed hand was something long and black.. Be fore the Creole could reach the retreating figure, old Mr. Phillips laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t!” he whispered, “We don’t know what we’re up against. That other facet, you know — Zkauba, the wizard of Yaddith . . . ”
The turbaned figure had now reached the abnormal clock, and the watchers saw though the dense fumes a blurred black claw fumbling with the tall, hieroglyphed door. The fumbling made a queer, clicking sound. Then the figure entered the coffin-shaped case and pulled the door shut after it.
De Marigny could no longer be restrained, but when he reached and opened the clock it was empty. The abnormal ticking went on, beating out the dark, cosmic rhythm which underlies all mystical gate-openings. On the floor the great white mitten, and the dead man with a bearded mask clutched in his hand, had nothing further to reveal.
* * * * *
A year passed, and nothing has been heard of Randolph Carter. His estate is still unsettled. The Boston address from which one “Swami Chandraputra” sent inquiries to various mystics in 1930-31-32 was indeed tenanted by a strange Hindoo, but he left shortly before the date of the New Orleans conference and has never been seen since. He was said to be dark, expressionless, and bearded, and his landlord thinks the swarthy mask — which was duly exhibited — looked very much like him. He was never, however, suspected of any connection with the nightmare apparitions whispered of by local Slavs. The hills behind Arkham were searched for the “metal envelope,” but nothing of the sort was ever found. However, a clerk in Arkham’s First National Bank does recall a queer turbaned man who cashed an odd bit of gold bullion in October, 1930.