Haha nice.

The telegram reads:

MPA191 R295CC IF FT                              AUG 29 1924 1725P

MASSAUA, ERITREA

PROF. HAMISH MACDUNN

100 DODD HALL, 405 N HILGARD, LA CA

VOLUMES OF GREAT INTEREST IN ECHAVARRIA AUCTION. OBTAIN LOT 18. CULTS OF AKUSMITE, RIFT OF MOUTH PRIMARY IMPORTANCE.

AYERS

Cool. Anemone puts the address book in her bag because it's probably small, and then... looks through the boxes and sees if she can find anything titled Cults of Akumsite or Rift of Mouth.

She finds both. Cults of the Aksumite Empire is a PhD thesis about cults in Ethiopia in the fifth century BC and their survival to the present. Rift of the Mouth seem to be... poetry?

Huh.

Anemone puts the books into her backpack underneath some other stuff and then looks through the mail. She is going to read 100% of this mail unless there is a ridiculous amount. She finds a bunch of useless stuff, an autographed photo of noted film star Olivia Claredon ("George-- thanks for all your help!"), and Ayers's itinerary.

She take the itinerary and the photo and puts them carefully in a folder in her backpack so they don't get mushed, and then begins to look through the research notes. Ayers's research notes are cryptic and disorganized and she can tell it will take the rest of the morning to make head or tails of them.

Anemone cracks her knuckles. Let's do this.

Ayers’ research appears to be primarily concerned with Gol-Goroth (aka the Fisher from Outside) and the Liar from Beyond. The earliest notes seem to indicate that these are one and the same, but later notes seem to evolve an understanding of duality in their nature-- possibly indicating that Gol-Goroth is in some way the “herald” or the “harbringer” of the Liar. 

Hoo boy our boys ten years ago had the prologue and we got ourselves a main event on the way.

Anemone looks at the collection of books for books referenced in Ayers's notes. It has:

-Fishing the River of Stars, a history of tenth and eleventh century China
-Unaussprechlichen Kulten, a book about secret societies and cults
-Ziggurats of the Pre-Helladic Period, which is about exactly what it sounds like

Let's take a look at that second one.

Written by the German eccentric von Junzt, the original edition of Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults) is also known as the Black Book. That edition was published in Dusseldorf in 1839; this copy is the cheap and faulty translation pirated by Bridewell in London in 1845. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the better known, but thoroughly expurgated, version published by Golden Goblin Press of New York in 1909. And even more so because the margins of this copy appear to have been heavily annotated by someone consulting the original German text.

Von Junzt (1795-1840) spent his entire life delving into forbidden subjects; he traveled in all parts of the world, gained entrance into innumerable secret societies, and read countless little-known and esoteric manuscripts in the original. In the chapters of Nameless Cults, which range from startling clarity to murky ambiguity, there are statements and hints to freeze the blood of the thinking man. Reading what von Junzt dared put into print arouses uneasy speculations as to what it was that he dared not tell.

In addition to the annotations mentioned above, there are additional annotations in a different hand calling particular attention to specific passages regarding the Black Stone. These annotations appear to cross-reference and copy text selected from some unknown secondary source (perhaps a travelogue of some sort). These notes identify the Black Stone – that curious, sinister monolith that broods among the mountains of Hungary – as the “spikes of his world” and the “ladders of faith” (intimating, perhaps, that other such monoliths might exist). It is described as octagonal in shape, some sixteen feet in height and about a foot and a half thick. Its surface had evidently once been highly polished, but it was now (according to von Junzt) thickly dented as if savage efforts had been made to demolish it (although to little effect). The travelogue draws parallels between the surviving symbols upon the Black Stone and “crude scratches on a gigantic and strangely symmetrical rock in a lost valley of the Yucatan”. A note of commentary remarks, “The God of the Black Stone cannot be summoned without the link of His stone or the Fire of his Jewel.”

........Anemone is going to keep this one too.

She puts the other books back and the mail back like she found it and.... eh she shouldn't definitely keep the address book if it might be missed. She looks through it and sees how many names there are. There are hundreds of names; of note are the address of Ramon Echavarria's house and an Italian address for Bartolo Acuna, the person Ayers was apparently going to meet.

There could be other related people that they don't know the names of yet, so Anemone writes those addresses down on a separate sheet of paper but then also keeps the whole book.

She thinks. She guesses if the histories were in boxes that no one has opened in a very long time and not with the rest of the library then it's probably safe to steal them.

Argh. She'll take all the interesting stuff, the photo and the itinerary and the address book and the five books, and close the boxes with the rest of the books all up nice and neat like she found them, and tell the librarian that getting to look through everything was super helpful and she's so glad she came, and then head out to meet up with the others.

Meanwhile--

Mr. Burlington uses Zoe's key and the bank's master key to open the safety deposit box.

Zoe peers inside.

She sees a set of photos and some notebooks.

Thanking Mr. Burlington once more, she retrieves the photos and notebooks, fills out the appropriate paperwork, and goes back to the hotel.

Photographs

-Half of the photos are of cheerful people at some sort of party or soiree. They smile, laugh, and gossip. 
-Half of the photos show grotesque acts of torture and murder.
-The victims generally appear to be bums, but one picture involves a child, and another an elderly person.
-Clearly taken from concealment. 
-Slightly more than half of the photos were taken indoors in one or more residences of opulent yet tasteful decoration and costly furnishings. 
-A few photos were taken outside, apparently in private gardens.
-Two photos were taken in the same non-opulent working-class apartment or servant’s room.
-Those in the photos are well-dressed and well-coiffed, with some wearing elaborate jewelry.
-One man, apparently of Latin American descent, recurs in all of the photos. In the party scenes, people turn towards him and are often laughing at his jokes; he seems to be well-liked. In the torture scenes, he is the main perpetrator. 
-Lev Aarons appears in two photos, both in the main interior set, neither of which are torture photos. 

Books of Account

-These books are actual working books, instead of copies.
-The books appear to be written in some sort of code.
-There is a buck sheet tucked into the back cover of the book. 

"Wow. These photos... sure are something. I suppose that's Echavarria?"

Carrie can tell that all of the photos, save perhaps the last two, share the same location, a single mansion and its grounds. She can’t rule out the possibility that the last two may have been taken on the same grounds. They could easily be downstairs servants’ quarters, a carriage-house room, or similar.

She tells this to Zoe.

"Do you recognize the building in the print?"

"No, I don't recognize the building. And the name Buchwald doesn't ring a bell either. ...Probably these were taken by Katherine Clark?""

"Oh, that seems likely! She was the photographer, right? --Well, it looks like it's supposed to be some sort of local landmark. Maybe we can ask the person at the front desk."

Carrie looks at the photos more closely. "That's Richard Spend! He's a famous actor. He died in 1924."

"I guess he must have been involved in the cult."

Zoe and Carrie try to figure out whether anyone knows where the pictures were taken, but do not have much luck.

"Well I had a SUPER productive day, I dunno about you guys. Uh, sorry for leaving you, Mordred, but I got like five books that I could use some help looking through?"

"You don't need to apologize, your story worked."

"The box had accounting books and photos! Uh, fair warning, these are some really grisly photos, you might not wanna see them."

"We got the deposit box's contents, we've got photos of Echavarria's parties, and also of things that are probably cult-related, and some encoded accounting books, and this not."

"Ayers' stuff has been in the back of the library for a decade; I don't think anybody's been through it. I got a ten-year-old travel itinerary of where he went, an address book, an autographed photo from the actress Olivia Claremont, and five books from a larger lot of books that belonged to Echavarria. There might be other important stuff in some of the other books, but these ones were the ones noted as being especially important or referenced in Ayers' research notes. He seems to have thought that Gol-Goroth was some kind of herald, or Harbinger, of something called the Liar from Beyond."

"--Hey, has Lacie gotten back yet? We don't want to go through everything twice."

"I haven't seen her, no."