The Terrible Old Man

by H.P. Lovecraft

Ricci, Joe and Manuel plan to see the Terrible Old Man. He lives all alone in a very old house on Water Street near the sea. Everyone thinks that he is both very rich and very weak; which is interesting to men with Joe's, Ricci's and Manuel's profession, because that profession is robbery.

The people of Kingsport say and think many things about the Terrible Old Man, which usually keep him safe from men like Mr. Ricci and his friends, because he hides a lot of money somewhere about his dirty, ancient home. He is, in fact, a very strange person, a ship's captain when he was younger; so old that no-one can remember when he was young, and so secret that very few people know his real name.

Among the trees in the front garden of his neglected home, he has some large stones, oddly grouped and painted. These scare away most of the small boys who make fun of the Terrible Old Man's long white hair and beard, or break the windows of his house; but there are other things which scare the older people who sometimes go to the house to look in through the dirty windows. These people say that on a table in an empty room on the ground floor are many special bottles and the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, and gives them names.

People who watch the Terrible Old Man in these strange conversations do not watch him again. But, Ricci and Joe and Manuel were not from Kingsport town; and they saw in the Terrible Old Man only a very elderly man who could not walk without his stick, and whose thin, weak hands shook helplessly. They are really quite sorry for the lonely old man that everybody avoids and all the dogs bark at. But business is business, and to a robber a very weak, old man who has no bank account, and who pays for his shopping with Spanish gold and silver made two hundred years ago, is very interesting.

Ricci, Joe, and Manuel chose the night of April 11th for the robbery. Ricci and Manuel were to talk to the poor old man, while Joe waited for them and the money in Ship Street, by the wall of the Terrible Old Man's garden.

As they agreed, the three men started out separately so that people would not remember them as a group. Ricci and Manuel met in Water Street by the old man's front gate, and although they did not like the way the moon shone on the painted stones through the trees, they had more important things to think about than superstitions. They were worried it might not be easy making the Terrible Old Man tell them where he hid his gold and silver, for old sea-captains are known to be stubborn. Still, he was very old and very weak, and there were two men. Ricci and Manuel were experienced in making people talk by force, and the screams of a weak man can be easily covered. So they moved up to the one lighted window and heard the Terrible Old Man talking childishly to his bottles. Then they put on masks and knocked on the door.

The wait seemed very long to Joe as he moved in the car by the Terrible Old Man's back gate in Ship Street. He was more kind-hearted than the others, and he did not like the screams he had heard in the old house just after the hour planned for the robbery. He had told his friends to be as kind as possible with the old sea-captain. Very nervously he looked at that gate in the high, white stone wall. Again and again, he checked his watch, and wondered why they were late. Had the old man died before telling them where his money was hidden, and did they need to look for the gold and silver? Joe did not like to wait so long in the dark.

But then he heard a soft noise on the path and saw the heavy door open. And in the light of the street-lamp he hurt his eyes looking for what his friends had brought out of that house. But when he looked, he did not see what he had expected; for his friends were not there at all, but only the Terrible Old Man smiling. Joe had never before seen the colour of that man's eyes; now he saw that they were yellow.

Little things make a lot of news in little towns, which is the reason that Kingsport people talked all that spring and summer about the three unidentifiable bodies, badly cut with many knives, and badly broken, which the sea washed in. And some people even spoke of things as small as the car found in Ship Street, or inhuman cries, probably of an animal or bird, heard in the night by people still awake.

But the Terrible Old Man took no interest at all in this village gossip. The old sea-captain had seen many, many strange things in the far-off days of his forgotten youth.