The Provost read these aloud at Christmas. Candles, a few friends, a fire, and then everybody walked home alone. That tells you everything about the man.
Because here is the thing nobody says about James: the horror never hunts you. You send for it. Every last one of these poor scholarly devils is punished for doing the reading. A man wants a manuscript, so he goes down the stacks after it, and something already down there has been waiting a very long time for somebody to want that manuscript. A tenant wonders why the ash tree scratches at the window, and gets his answer, and the answer has a great many legs.
Count Magnus is the pure specimen. De la Gardie stands outside the mausoleum and remarks — aloud, idly, twice, the way you'd say anything into an empty churchyard — that he should like to see the Count. That's all. That's the whole summons. And the three padlocks come off the door one at a time, on their own schedule, entirely at their leisure, because whatever is inside is in no hurry and has all the time there is.
The horror in James is polite. It waits to be asked. And James catalogued manuscripts for a living, so he knew better than anyone alive how easy it is to ask for a thing you did not mean.
