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By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy.As his first confidant he selected Capt.James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect.The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin’s Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt.Mathewson was tremendously impressed.Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely.At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men.He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer.Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.

The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr.Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev.James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr.Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen’s odd purchases; and Capt.Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed.These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.

The mission of Capt.Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden’s tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and coördinated action.Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost.Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures.Weeden’s notes, which he had given to Capt.Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details.Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt.Whipple’s bluff and resonant profanity best expressed.They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary.With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place.The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King’s revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled.Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself.If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined.If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die.It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.

While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around.In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk’s Head.There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible.Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search.The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott’s distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering.It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory.They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity—and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.

Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come.He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow.The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced.They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town.Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source.It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled.As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight.Dr.Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly.The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for.Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body’s likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen’s employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried.That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden’s Lane and opened a grave.They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.

Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen’s mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the coöperating citizens think deeply.Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:

“I delight that you continue in ye Gett’g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr.Hutchinson’s in Salem-Village.Certainely, there was Noth’g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H.rais’d upp from What he cou’d gather onlie a part of.What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss’g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak’g or yr Copy’g.I alone am at a Loss.I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII.Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende.But I wou’d have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak’g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr.Mather writ in ye Magnalia of ——, and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported.I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use.Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.I was frighted when I read of your know’g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you.And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon.In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son.I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig’d for ye Lend’g of ye MS.you speak of.”

Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:

“I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them.In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly.You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure.It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e.St.Peter’s, St.Paul’s, St.Mary’s, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all.But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais’d up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc’d to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters.I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr.Biddle’s Wharf.”

A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet.In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word.None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps.The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr.Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia.But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden’s disclosures.Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen’s noxious mysteries.

Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look.His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town’s prejudice.The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence.Mr.Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen’s extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken.This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised.Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways.To them Mr.Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.