Mirror, Yard, Penhew, Foulness

Upstairs in the Soho spice shop, the investigators decide to experiment with the mirror and vials of stuff that they've acquired. They pour the contents of both a red liquid vial onto the mirror and the black powder. Nothing seems to happen. Sullie starts concentrating on the idea of Oscar, and suddenly the mirror glows where the red liquid was poured, and Oscar is visible in the mirror, hiding in the jungle. Sullie stops before anything weird happens. The black powder seems to have done nothing, so they return it to its vial. (There are 14 vials of red liquid, 8 black powder).

Back at the hotel, the gang meets someone new: Adrian Linpool, a former Scotland Yard man who now works as a private investigator, and he seems to know a lot about what is going on. He has been tracking Gavigan and says that: 1) Gavigan is indeed evil; 2) the cult of the Black Pharaoh actually worships a horrifying, powerful outer-god known as Nyarlathotep. He offers to come with the group and help.

Pyle visits Barrington at Scotland Yard and updates him, asking about this Adrian Linpool. Barrington confirms that Adrian was a great detective, but saw some very disturbing things that made him decide to take a leave from the Yard and go do some mental rehab and also some investigating. 

Mickey and Sullie visit Oxford U to discover that there are no birth records for Edward Gavigan, and that his name appears for centuries back in the record books. On their way out they are attacked by three men with weird clubs--each having a large nail sticking out of it. They kill the men and decide that these clubs must be causing dead bodies to be found with a hole in the heart.

Babe and a few others visit the Penhew Foundation once more and find nothing much in the front rooms. They discover a back room with a sarcophagus in it.

The group finally decides to make their way to Gavigan's country estate, which is located on an island in Essex, in the east of England--Foulness Island.

Some the group (Suzie, Mickey, Babe, Pancho, & Bruce) are going to try to enter through the front gate. The rest (Adrian, Raju, Sullie, and Pyle) rent a boat and approach the island on the water, from the north.

Spicing Things Up: Friday, Feb. 6, 1925

After some deliberation, the gang decides to investigate the "Egyptian Murders" of London, which all seem to center around Soho. They begin at the Blue Pyramid, a club not far from the Carlyle Foundation. Pyle, Raju, Bruce, and Pancho visit to see what they can find.

This club is the center of all culture and life for Egyptians who live in London--Egyptian food, belly dancers, and exotic music. [For full effect, leave that tab open while you read.] Raju takes the lead, since he is the closest thing to an Egyptian in the group, and after shelling out a sizable tip to the bartender ("Stanley"), he and the others are seated at the table of the owner--a fat, fairly quiet Egyptian man named Abdul.

A psychological assessment from Dr. Bruce seems to indicate that Abdul is an innocent (and lazy) businessman who wants the Egyptian murders to stop as quickly as anyone else. He really likes the four guys, and when Raju says that they are interested in traveling to Egypt, not only to see the sights, but to spend a lot of money on antiquities, Abdul says that his brother-in-law owns a hotel in Cairo. Abdul eventually seats the four at a table right in front of the belly dancers for their amusement.

At a pause in the program, one of the lead dancers, Yalesha, sits with the four guys. Once she learns that they are investigating the Egyptian murders, she gets looks around her suspiciously and then starts telling them what she knows. Her boyfriend was one of the victims, and she wants revenge. She does not know who is ultimately responsible, but she knows two things:
1) once a month, a truck comes by the club at about one o'clock in the morning, loads up with people from the club, and drives out of town, off east somewhere she thinks;
2) this endeavor is always led by a certain Tewfik al-Sayed, a local spice shop owner.

The four return to the hotel room at the Ritz, only to find a scene of chaos. Four men lie dead in the hotel room: three cultists, and, sadly, Dr. I. The cultists had suprised Dr. I at the door before anyone knew what was going on. Aside from a nasty bruise on Sullie's arm, the group suffered little additional damage. Each of the cultists was carrying his ritualistic club with a spike in it, and wearing the upside-down ankhs of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah.

The investigators remove the ankhs and call Inspector Barrington to clean up the mess. Before the bodies are taken away, Pyle gets pictures of the cultists and sends them off to The Scoop, where he hopes Mickey Mahoney will process them.

The next morning, Pyle, Raju, Bruce, and Pancho head out to the spice shop. It's a very nice, two-story building, the bottom floor of which is wall-to-wall exotic cooking spices from around the world. Tewfik sits at the cash register while a few British people mill around the store. The four guys walk up to him wearing the ankhs and confront him directly. Tewfik appears very angry, but he smiles cruelly and says that they do not know what they are getting into.

Tewfik shouts that he wants everyone to leave, and the other customers do, but the four investigators refuse. Suddenly he begins chanting. Bruce shoots at his neck and hits, causing serious damage, but not before Tewfik starts transforming into a wormy bat-thing with a human head. Bruce gets scratched by the thing before the rest of the four unload their guns and bring it dead to the ground.

Searches of the ground floor reveal nothing, so the group goes to look around Tewfik's apartment upstairs. A bizarre, asymmetrical mirror on the wall gives everyone the heebie-jeebies, and Dr. Bruce has an insight: he knows he's heard of this mirror, and he knows it's powerful, but he does not know how it works. He covers it and takes it. Inside a roll-top desk, Pyle finds a secret compartment: robes, an ankh, a skull-cap, a very ancient scroll with hieroglyphics, a pair of scepters (one ending in a crook, the other in an inverted ankh), and about twenty-five vials. Two-thirds or so contain a red, syrupy liquid (not blood), while the rest contain a black powder with odd rubbery crystals in it.

Castle Plum & London: Thurs, Feb 5, 1925

[Quick summary of our last meeting, which was way back on June 19.]

The werewolf in the dungeon of Castle Plum is actually the daughter, Eloise Vane. Their family has a curse on it ("The Gavigan Curse"), going back hundreds of years, which turns female Vanes into werewolves. Since the family seems to have the situation under control, the general opinion (not without dissent) is to let her live, so long as the family promises to do everything it can to keep her from escaping again.

The gang then returns to London to discuss the current leads in their investigations:

1) Edward Gavigan's name continues to pop up in strange circumstances.

2) Tex Rickard suggested that you all speak to Inspector James Barrington at Scotland Yard.

Mickey and Pyle go to speak to Inspector Barrington, then will head off to the King's College Library to do some research.

Pyle gets a number of things from Barrington:

a) He investigated Edward Gavigan, at the prompting of good old Jackson Elias, and found nothing.

b) In the last three years, there have been 24 victims of the "Egyptian Murders." Seventeen of those people were from Egypt, and all were somehow associated with Egyptian culture in London. Almost all were found beaten and stabbed in the heart with something narrow. Barrington's predecessor was one of the victims.

c) The Blue Pyramid is a local hangout (in Soho) for Egyptians. Barrington's efforts to investigate the place have all found nothing.

Mickey and Pyle then head over to the King's College Library.

They find very little there, but Mickey discovers that there is a major estate in Essex owned by Edward Gavigan. It is located on Foulness Island, where the Rivers Roach and Crouch meet.

On their way out of the library, in broad daylight, the boys are attacked by three Middle Eastern-looking men. After some work the three are defeated. All three were carrying clubs with 4 to 5 inch nails sticking out of them. Ritualistic weapons?

Lesser-Edale: Wed. Feb 4, 1925

With a full moon about to show itself tonight, the gang decides to get to the bottom of the recent nighttime attacks in Lesser-Edale, and try to discover if it has anything at all to do with their other cult investigations. They hear a rumor in the Laughing Horse pub that the vicar of this little hamlet is secretly a druid, so they will throw that into their investigations as well.

Since Raju has a connection with Sir Arthur Vane (led his cousin on a safari), he drives a cart up the cliff road to Castle Plum on Wednesday morning to see if he can get an audience with Sir Arthur. The servant who opens the door, however, suggests that Raju send a letter and sends him away.

Meanwhile, almost everyone else checks out the caves at the base of the cliff. All five of the former mining caves entrances are sealed tight with piles of rock. Smaller fissures above the entrances would allow birds in and out, but nothing else.

Mickey returns from his research at the University of Nottingham with some new information, and with a new person: Dr. Edwin Bruce. Dr. Bruce is a psychiatrist who, by complete coincidence, recently gave treatment to Harold Short, the one surviving victim of the Lesser-Edale attacks, and happened to run into Mickey, who was looking for answers to some of the same questions that he was at the University library.

Dr. Bruce says that he has recently seen an increase in patients with very strange stories from the eastern counties of England, Short included. Harold Short believes that Sir Arthur Vane's family is subject to a curse of some kind, and Mickey's research just led him to discover this morning that a certain evil priest named Edward Gavigan in 1714 put a curse on the Vane family which involves full moons and beastly transformations. Dr. Bruce would like to help the team get to the bottom of these weird happenings.

Sullie tries his hand at spying on the vicar, the Right Reverend Jeremy Stratton, whose church and vicarage are on the edge of town. As he wanders the adjacent graveyard, the vicar's elderly housekeeper comes out and chats with him. She reports the vicar to have been more nervous in the last month, praying more and locking himself in his study more.

Late that night, Dr. Bruce, Pancho, & Sullie knock on the vicar's door, force their way in, and hold a gun to his head, demanding to know who he really is and what he is doing. He is horribly shaken, and eventually admits that he is translating a very old diary (18th century) of a past vicar who was trying to deal with the "Gavigan curse" that is on the Vane family. What parts the vicar has translated out of ancient Greek (not his forte) confirm that the curse indeed changes some members of the Vane family into werewolves during a full moon.

Pancho discovers a photo on the wall of the vicarage: "Derwent Valley Order of the Golden Druid." It appears to be a group of mostly women and children who might have just come from Sunday School, sitting at a picnic. His "druid" group is just a historical society with an interest in pre-Roman Britain.

The clock in the vicarage strikes midnight and suddenly the horrible howling noises begin echoing throughout the town. The investigators, armed with all manner of silver bullets, trace the sounds to the fissures in the cliff wall. The origin must be a lower chamber of Castle Plum.

Gun to his head, they drag the vicar with them up the cliff road to Castle Plum. They make use of the big knockers, and the surly servant opens the door. The vicar, with Dr. Bruce, persuades the servant to rouse Sir Arthur, while the rest of the group hides in the shadows. As soon as the servant is gone, all others rush the house and search for stairs going down.

The kitchen leads down to a wine cellar and storage. Eventually (when Suzie finds a key), they discover more steps that lead down to an ancient dungeon, complete with torture chamber and holding cells.

Pyle is relieved to see that the torture equipment looks very old and out of usage. The howling now is horribly intense and coming from behind an iron door. Suzie, Raju, Babe, and Pyle all slam into the door to force it open, and--sure enough--there in an iron-cage cell at the end of the hallway is a nasty looking thing, half human, half beast.

Green Vials, Green Valleys

Monday, Feb. 2, and Tuesday, Feb. 3, 1925

Once they are in full force, the gang decides to return to the Shipley home and check for boogadees in the basement. It is a relatively calm trip, though. A careful search of the house, top to bottom, reveals only a few new things: a lacquered box in Miles's closet that contains a syringe and a vial of weird-looking green stuff. A secret room in the basement contains some strange symbols on the wall, large jars full of various substances that are beyond anyone's reckoning, and a stone tub. Sullie does not hesitate. He opens the tub. A severed (and chewed on) head looks back at him. The gang decides to leave the place, but take along all paintings, along with the green stuff in vials.

Back at the hotel, they finally decide to let Miles Shipley go, paying him a sizable amount of money for his paintings. He'll probably be fine...

At the bar that evening, feeling very sad and confused about the Oscar's fate, the gang happens to meet a certain Raju Thomas, a former Sikh soldier who now hosts safaris in the Punjab jungles for spoiled Brits. He hears some of what the investigators are up to and is fascinated, having some experience with murder, Thuggee, and the unnatural things happening in jungles. He asks if he can tag along...

After leaving Oscar's special mask in the hotel safe, everyone hops into the car and heads north out of Lodon towards Lesser-Edale. About 130 miles north of the city, near Derby, is the valley of Derwent, one of the most picturesque parts of England. Its valleys are covered in a new snow today as the gang finds the tiny town of Lesser-Edale: thirty homes with thatched roofs, the Laughing Horse Pub, limestone cliffs with waterfalls. Atop one of the cliffs is the Castle Plum, home to Sir Arthur Vane and his family.

The investigators waste no time entering the pub, chumming up to the locals, and finding plenty of people who will cheerfully talk about the strange night-time attacks of the area that have left two dead and one out of his mind.

Farmer George Osgood was "torn to shreds" on the first night of attacks, several months ago. Miss Lydia Parkins, twenty-year old daughter of horse-dealer John Parkins, was killed the next night. His neighbor Tom Corty witnessed it, and the investigators got from Tom Cortny that he saw Lawrence Vane, son of Sir Arthur, fleeing the scene. Wheelwright Harold Short survived the attack on the third night. He lives alone in Lesser-Edale, but is now recovering at his brother's house in Norfolk County, half a day east of Lesser-Edale. One villager reports that after the attack, the only word he keeps repeating is "Gavigan."

Mickey discovers that the University of Nottingham is only an hour away, and decides to try his hand at doing some research on the area. Maybe he can dig up something useful. Suzie drives him out there for the day.

Wait, is that Oscar?

Monday, Feb. 2, 1925

The intrepid investigators decide to spend their first full day in London by splitting up and checking out two of their leads--some to the Penhew Foundation and the home of Miles Shipley.

Miles Shipley lives in a two-story brick house where he paints pictures that have attracted attention because of their horrifying and mesmerizing nature. Oscar, Sullie, Pancho, & Pyle all approach the house, posing as art collectors.

The door is answered by a sweet old lady carrying her knitting. It's the mother of Miles Shipley, and once she hears how much money the investigators are ready to pay for a painting, she allows them up to see Miles' paintings up in the garret.

The paintings are all horrifying, and each tests the sanity of whomever is looking at it. One depicts a weird little bleeding statue of a boy. Another shows a group of bull-headed men ravaging a group of women. Another seems to be just full of shapes, but the shapes are impossible, and cause great mental discomfort. The one painting that attracts the attention of the investigators the most shows a group of cultists in front of a mountain wearing intestine headbands and worshiping a giant monstrosity: it's vaguely humanoid, standing on three legs, and has a tremendous red tentacle instead of a face.

The investigators want to check out the rest of the house, but the feisty Mrs. Shipley won't let them, and eventually, with some prodding, the feisty Mrs. Shipley moves to a corner of the room and shape-shifts into her real form--a lizard creature, who had eaten Mrs. Shipley. It attacks. It manages to bite Oscar before being shot to death.

Miles is insane and keeps babbling about the stuff in the basement that he's addicted to. The group, maybe not so comfortable with basements these days, decides to leave the basement alone for now. But as Miles keeps babbling, he says emphatically that they should not bother the painting in the closet upstairs. Oscar goes immediately to the painting.

After shooting the lock off the closet door, he unveils a painting of a swamp with a stone altar. But the painting is sucking him in, and despite his amazing level of magical mojo, he loses the psychic battle. Oscar finds himself in a swamp. He hears strange, loud animal noises in the distance. The stone altar is in front of him. A lizard creature comes out of a patch of trees and rushes him, but he blows its head off in short order. He climbs onto the altar. In the distance he sees a flash of light, but really nothing else besides endless swamp. At least for now, Oscar Marin lives in a swamp.

Back in the garret, Pyle sees that Oscar has been sucked into the painting, but can't determine any way to get him back. Pyle takes the painting. Sullie knocks out Miles Shipley. The group returns to the hotel with Miles and the painting.

                                                              *        *       *

At the Penhew Foundation, Mickey, Babe, and Dr. I present themselves as the posse of Babe Ruth, rich American celebrity who wants to start learning about and investing money into Egyptian exploration. The front-desk secretary, and then eventually the current director, Mr. Edward Gavigan, welcome Babe and his friends.

Mr. Gavigan discusses a number of things with the group: Egypt, the Foundation's collection of artifacts, and then even the Carlyle expedition. And yes, Jackson Elias was here, asking about the Carlyle expedition, just last month. Mr. Gavigan is happy to share with you all that he shared with Elias.

He says that Sir Aubrey Penhew was indeed looking for more artifacts for his collection, but more than that he was researching the idea that a powerful sorcerer once ruled in the ancient days of Egypt. According to Gavigan, they discovered that the idea was false--there really was no ruling sorcerer. And then the mysterious African woman of the Carlyle expedition made off with 3,500 pounds, never to be seen again. The expedition then decided to take a vacation from their Egyptian work in the cooler climate of Kenya, where they finally met their horrible fate.

Gavigan happily shows the group all of the artifacts that they have up in their second-floor showroom. He lectures about pyramids and dynasties. Nothing among the artifacts seems to be connected with the dark cultist events that have pervaded the investigators' recent lives. They decide to leave for now, agreeing on a later day for Babe to come back and start the process for sponsoring an Egyptian expedition of their own.

Boat to London

Sunday, Feb. 1, 1925

Ready to leave New York City behind, the investigators decide what to bring with them to London, shop, pack, and catch the S.S. Resolute across the Atlantic on Tex's dime.

Speaking of Tex's dime...the gang is also now joined by James Monroe Pyle, an honest law man, whose work in solving murders in Osage County caught the attention of the government, and he's now been sent (by both Tex and J. Edgar Hoover) along with the investigators to help in any way he can. He has a huge wad of British pounds that Tex entrusted to him.

Almost the whole gang spends the duration of this boat ride to Southampton absorbed in evil books. Each comes away with horrible, arcane knowledge, and a strange, new awareness of the universe which makes their guts tighten a little more.

In London, Tex's secretary has set the investigator's up at the Ritz, on the west side of town, just north of Buckingham Palace, across Green Park. Tex also sent along a car and driver--a very capable woman from Boston named Suzie.


Once settled in, the investigators go first to see a certain Mickey Mahoney, the Irish cigar-chomping editor of a cheap London paper called The Scoop. Mickey knew Elias Jackson, and is very saddened to hear about his death. Mickey does not entirely know why Elias left London in such a hurry, but he says that Elias was interested in three specific stories that The Scoop published.

Mickey digs up the three stories and hands them over. He thinks he might have written all these, but also might have just borrowed some from other London rags, and maybe even embellished a few. He does so many stories like this that he honestly can't remember. Mickey says that he will help the gang however he can.

Meanwhile, Suzie drove several of the investigators past the Penhew Foundation for a first look. The Penhew Foundation for Egyptian research occupies a Victorian building just north of Soho, so it only has two floors (fewer than the others around it), but each floor is tall and covered in ornate detail, even on the outside. There's a tall black gate that closes off the sides and back of the building from the public. A delivery truck is parked outside the front, and Sullie tries persuading the delivery man that he works there, but the delivery guy doesn't buy it. The investigators drive away, deciding to form some plans before making another move.