Who is Mr. E. Grant?

It was a particularly fine and sunny Thursday morning, not too early, when Bessie Coleridge was asked by Carrie Brown of Jules Pollack Fine Antiques to forward a note to Cannon, Doctorow and Lockwood, Arkham's premiere private investigators. Some claimed that they were Arkham's only private investigators, but that may not be entirely true. Bessie walked up the stairs to the office of the investigators and knocked on the door, just below the frosted glass pane that displayed the names of said investigators. She was greeted by a curt "come in" and the sight of three gentlemen enjoying a slow morning with coffee, cigarettes, and the Arkham Advertiser. The note was presented:

A case! Brad Doctorow didn't really seem too eager, but Carrie Brown was, after all, the prime buyer of Bessie Coleridge's acquisitions from all over the northeast. But what about the jewelry? It did seem to be not unlike the jewelry Bessie and her friends had found in the hold of that disturbing ship in Martin's Beach just a couple of weeks ago, the jewelry that was safely locked up in Bessie's Franz Jaeger safe?

To confuse matters further, one of the true characters of Arkham entered the office of the investigators: the legendary Madame Tekla, Arkham's favorite medium, and spiritist extraordinaire. "Fraud! Harold Biggs gave me a check that bounced!" Doctorow looked at the check. It was probably the worst forgery he'd ever seen, but Madame Tekla was upset and in distress, so Frank Cannon assured her that her 15 dollars would be reimbursed, one way or the other. Meanwhile, Bill "The Hook" Lookwood looked up from the morning edition of the Advertiser. "Hey, guys, did you see about the burglary at Miskatonic University?" Frank Cannon frowned. Anything going on at M.U. was destined to be weird or outright bizarre, despite Arkham being such a sleepy town.

Madame Tekla

But what about the jewelry? It was decided to move the jewelry to the much bigger and safer Franz Jaeger in the P.I. office, and then go and have a chat with Carrie Brown at J. Pollack Fine Antiques as well as the phone exchange to see if the call from E. Grant could be traced. It was odd, though, the usually fairly vain Bessie Coleridge had actually only tried on the alien jewelry once, since it simply didn't feel right, and even looking at the ornate carvings and figures on the bracelet and the diadem filled her with a sense of unease, perhaps a bit like standing at the edge of a cliff and not knowing how long you could keep balancing. She had also been unable to trace the origin of the odd characters that were found on the inside of the pieces, and the small characters were simply just a tad disturbing. Was it the angles? The postures? She wasn't certain, and as Bessie took out the jewelry from her safe. her four compatriots had to agree that there was something unwholesome about both the diadem and the bracelet. Cannon even sensed a faint pulsating light as the investigators locked the jewelry into the sturdy Franz Jaeger at the P.I. office. It was also decided that Bill Lockwood was to remain at the office while the fellow investigators visited J. Pollack Fine Antiques and the phone exchange. The conversation with Carrie Brown was most pleasant, but rather fruitless, although the "E. Grant" had promised the enormous sum of 50,000 dollars for the jewelry. This was followed by Doctorow's charm blitz against the phone exchange, and it turned out that "E. Grant" had telephoned from Boston. 

Meanwhile, Bill Lockwood had a visitor. An odd-looking woman with a raspy voice by the name of Hortensia Robinson, who claimed to be a jeweler, had some questions regarding jewelry theft. However, Bill Lockwood did not appreciate being disturbed, and his brusque manners convinced Mrs. Robinson to leave after just a few minutes.

Hortensia Robinson

It was by now clear that the odd jewelry was of great interest to any number of strange individuals, and it was time to pay a visit to the burglary site at Miskatonic University. But who was the man in the black stovepipe hat staking out the office, or had Lockwood just been mistaken? Anyway, Bessie hab been introduced to Professor Freeborn previously, and she was disappointed to hear from the young administrator's assistant that Professor Freeborn was on sick leave, while Professor MacNamara was abroad. However, Professor Harold C. De Winter, the chair of the Department of Anthropology was on his way down the stairs. The assistant warned Doctorow that he used to be a notorious crank, but that he was all sunshine and flowers nowadays, albeit with a stroke of eccentricity. Madame Tekla was unperturbed. She displayed all of her exotisms, and De Winter went straight to Sanskrit. The confused conversation ended up in De Winter's office, but not before Lockwood spotted the man with the black stovepipe hat and long black coat across the campus. It was eerie and unnerving, and Lockwood quietly mentioned the strange man to his fellow investigators.  

Professor Harold De Winter.

Professor De Winter's office had indeed been broken in to, but nothing had been stolen, and neither had the finds from the archaeological digs outside Martin's Beach more than a year ago. The investigators had brought along the jewelry, and De Winter was most curious. But before presenting the diadem and the bracelet, Bessie secured the window, while Lockwood glanced outside the massive office door. He was greeted by a thoroughly disturbing sight: the man with the stovepipe hat, standing at the front doors of the Department of Anthropology a mere 50 feet away, just down the massive staircase that dominated the lobby of the department. Lockwood closed the to De Winter's office with a bang and pulled out his .45 Browning. All of a sudden poor Professor De Winter found himself surrounded by guns in every direction, but De Winter retained his composure. He cleared off his desk, and Cannon pulled out the jewelry. De Winter seemed stunned, and with a shaking hand he asked Madame Tekla to pull out volume III of "South Pacific: A Travelogue" by Robert Loveman, printed around 1822. And there it was: a drawing that bore more than a little resemblance to the pieces lying on De Winter's desk. "Jewelry from Ponape or Conakry found by Captain Marsh. According to legend associated with lost Mu or Lemuria". It seemed as if the sun dimmed for a second or two. De Winter leaned forward, whispering that according to vague rumors, possession of the Polynesian jewelry led to insanity, death, or worse!

Things were about to get even more complicated. The office of Cannon, Doctorow, and Lockwood had been broken into during the afternoon, and Lockwood's whisky bottle was smashed to pieces! The case was now personal! Even the sizeable Franz Jaeger safe had been broken into, but nothing was missing.

The investigators were troubled by strange dreams about watery depths and oceans that night, and it seemed as if Lockwood had walked out in his pajamas into the cold winter air. There were wet footprints leading up to Lockwood's bed, and young Joe Scacci, the bakery boy had seen Lockwood together with a man wearing a stovepipe hat. What was going on? What had happened to Bill Lockwood? "Well, he sure smells like Mr. Lockwood..." Madame Tekla's words were not reassuring.

Arkham in the winter.

Around the university.

Miskatonic University.