Zorab Sale

What Happened

Evening, Wednesday 12 October 1814. The private sale the party had found in the Gazette’s back files was held at the Zorab and Sons godown, a long warehouse lit by trestles of lamps and crowded with collectors and Company men.

• The family. Hovhannes Zorab greeted the buyers. His daughter Mariam called lot numbers and served punch. His son Gregor, grey-faced, stood beside Lot 14 and would not leave it. The porters kept their eyes off the loft stairs, where a shutter banged in the wind.
• Dr Venn. Josiah Venn introduced himself beside Lot 14. He had already bought one case of instruments from the family, and complained of a numbness creeping into his hands. He handed the party a lens on a metal stalk. Through it Adrien saw two glowing, winged forms crouched either side of the banging shutter, and a glowing thread running from the roof out across Calcutta.
• The servant. A servant took Pratap Singh aside and told him in Hindustani that things walked on the rooftops at night, that his master’s hands had gone dead since the box arrived, and that there had been deaths.
• Gregor’s question. Gregor asked Adrien whether a man could honourably give his life for a kinsman, thanked him for the answer and walked away. The back of his head was shaved on both sides and dotted with rows of small scabs.
• Mariam’s plea. By the punch bowl, Mariam said her brother had been shut up for hours with their dead cousin’s Himalayan possessions while a vibration hummed through the door. A small crown-shaped fitting was missing from the collection and might be among the other lots.
• Lot 14. Hovhannes pulled the cover from the cylinder. Dr Venn pressed one of the sundry fittings into a socket. The cylinder hummed, then cried out in a dead man’s voice that it must not be sold.
• The stampede. Buyers ran for the doors. Gregor took the cylinder from the table and went out by a side door. The party seized Dr Venn and made for their carriage.

The pursuit across the esplanade and the night at Dr Venn’s bungalow in Chowringhee are told in Sundry Fittings.

Why It Matters

• The party left the night holding the cylinder and all its fittings, Dr Venn’s daybook and the Pnakotic Manuscripts.
• Gregor Zorab was returned to his family catatonic. The Zorabs have been told Dr Venn was responsible.
• The winged things over the godown were Mi Go, and at least one more attacked the warehouse while the party was away.

Related

• People: Hovhannes Zorab, Mariam Zorab, Gregor Zorab, Movses Zorab — the family and the dead cousin whose goods were sold. Josiah Venn — buyer. Adrien de Montferrand — saw the watchers in the loft through Venn’s lens. Emma Wentworth — took part. Georgiana Wentworth — took part. Katherine Ward — took part. Havildar Pratap Singh — warned by a servant about the rooftops.
• Places: Zorab and Sons Godown — where it was held. The Strand — the frontage.
• Things: Brain Cylinder Lot 14 — Lot 14. Venns Daybook — describes the instruments sold as Lot 9.