Lovecraft, H P - The Terrible Old Man

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The Terrible Old Man

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written 28 Jan 1920

Published July 1921 in The Tryout, Vol. 7, No. 4, p. 10-14.

It was the design of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the

Terrible Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street

near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble; which

forms a situation very attractive to men of the profession of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and

Silva, for that profession was nothing less dignified than robbery.

The inhabitants of Kingsport say and think many things about the Terrible Old Man

which generally keep him safe from the attention of gentlemen like Mr. Ricci and his

colleagues, despite the almost certain fact that he hides a fortune of indefinite magnitude

somewhere about his musty and venerable abode. He is, in truth, a very strange person,

believed to have been a captain of East India clipper ships in his day; so old that no one

can remember when he was young, and so taciturn that few know his real name. Among

the gnarled trees in the front yard of his aged and neglected place he maintains a strange

collection of large stones, oddly grouped and painted so that they resemble the idols in

some obscure Eastern temple. This collection frightens away most of the small boys who

love to taunt the Terrible Old Man about his long white hair and beard, or to break the

small-paned windows of his dwelling with wicked missiles; but there are other things

which frighten the older and more curious folk who sometimes steal up to the house to

peer in through the dusty panes. These folk say that on a table in a bare room on the

ground floor are many peculiar bottles, in each a small piece of lead suspended

pendulum-wise from a string. And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these

bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe,

Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a bottle the little lead pendulum

within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer.

Those who have watched the tall, lean, Terrible Old Man in these peculiar conversations,

do not watch him again. But Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva were not of

Kingsport blood; they were of that new and heterogeneous alien stock which lies outside

the charmed circle of New England life and traditions, and they saw in the Terrible Old

Man merely a tottering, almost helpless grey-beard, who could not walk without the aid

of his knotted cane, and whose thin, weak hands shook pitifully. They were really quite

sorry in their way for the lonely, unpopular old fellow, whom everybody shunned, and at

whom all the dogs barked singularly. But business is business, and to a robber whose soul

is in his profession, there is a lure and a challenge about a very old and very feeble man

who has no account at the bank, and who pays for his few necessities at the village store

with Spanish gold and silver minted two centuries ago.

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Lovecraft, H P - The Terrible Old Man

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