Edmund Fiske, lifelong friend of the late Robert Blake (hapless protagonist of "The Shambler from the Stars" and "The Haunter of the Dark"), is not satisfied with the official explanation of Blake's sudden demise (the truth of which is recounted in "The Haunter of the Dark"). He begins an investigation.
Said investigation takes many years, as Fiske corresponds with many of those who had contact with Blake. This includes no less than H.P.L. himself, who was also investigating, and published what he had learned and/or surmised as the aforementioned story "The Haunter of the Dark".
His investigations continue to point to the riddle of Dr. Amrose Dexter, who tossed the Shining Trapezohedron, said to release the Haunter, into the Narragansset Bay. Why there? And why has a medical doctor, since the war, spent years apparently involved in atomic energy? And why won't he answer any of Fiske's letters requesting a meeting?
After many failed attempts, Fiske arrives at Dexter's Providence home, and finds Dexter in residence. He confronts Dexter about the Trapezohedron, Blake's death, and his apparent involvement in the development of nuclear weapons. He quotes from Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, sonnet XXI: Nyarlathotep
And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.
...accusing Dexter of being no less than Nyarlathotep himself. He pulls a gun, but at that moment Dexter switches out the light, revealing himself as a glowing, inhuman thing. Fiske dies of a heart attack.
As Dexter's butler calls for the police, Dexter steps into his garden. Two panthers, recently escaped from a zoo, enter the garden. They fawn at his feet, licking his hands...
This tale, one of the last Lovecraftian stories that Bloch would ever publish, is one of his best. By this time, Bloch had outgrown his HPLisms and had developed his own voice - straightforward, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but with an acidic tone that kicks in at the end and twists the knife. The outcome may be a bit inevitable, but its richly satisfying all the same.
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