Chapter 8
In the meantime a quieter yet even more spiritually poignant
phase of the horror had been blackly unwinding itself behind the
closed door of a shelf-lined room in Arkham. The curious manuscript
record or diary of Wilbur Whateley, delivered to Miskatonic
University for translation had caused much worry and bafflement
among the experts in language both ancient and modern; its very
alphabet, notwithstanding a general resemblance to the
heavily-shaded Arabic used in Mesopotamia, being absolutely unknown
to any available authority. The final conclusion of the linguists
was that the text represented an artificial alphabet, giving the
effect of a cipher; though none of the usual methods of
cryptographic solution seemed to furnish any clue, even when
applied on the basis of
