"...Thank you. She would be a great help. I believe the procedure is enough for her for now - though I will need human blood for a few months' time, and it is perhaps true that two vampires will be a greater burden than one."

"How much are you going to need?" 

He does some calculations. "I suspect... Approximately a pint every two weeks at a minimum. Such is an amount a single adult human can afford to lose once a month, albeit with some anemia. The process for my wife would improve upon that number, but not, perhaps, significantly enough. If I drank more, I would recover from the blood-lust more rapidly, but that trades against secrecy."

"I'll give it. I've plenty of reason to be pale and odd."

"I will as well. I am in good health, and it is easy enough to arrange for foods that promote recovery from blood-loss."

"I can acquire supplies for blood draws from the medical school easily enough." 

"How long will that take?"

"Not long." 

"I can withstand this for another few days with moderate discomfort, and for another week through force of will."

"I can have it by tomorrow." 

"You have my gratitude."

Nod. "I will do whatever is necessary to see this through." 

"I don't doubt it."

Nod. "What do you think we did wrong in rendering the ashes?"

"There's a few possibilities, and I would need to carefully read through your full methodology for a conclusive decision. However..." And he lists common problems with distillation, especially that have the results he's observed.

He scrawls notes in a notebook of his own as his ancestor talks. 

Once they've gone over everything they can before Hiram reads the annotated notes, he leaves for the university to get started on obtaining the equipment needed. 

Emma leaves to write letters to the family members who will need to support Hiram's existence, to inform her niece currently in town, and to begin making arrangements to travel to the old Curwen residence.

And Hiram settles in to read and make further notes.

Joseph manages to arrange to pick up the equipment the next day without raising any eyebrows. On the way home he stops by the library to pick up more obfuscating historical documents. 

Hiram is a fast reader if nothing else; he's already gone through the new supplementary texts and notes, and started writing down everything missing, or that he didn't get a chance to record before his death.

Joseph returns to the house and waits for nightfall, so as to try the first hidden entrance to the catacombs. 

Hiram directs them, wrenching himself away from his fascination with their automobile.

Emma accompanies them, primarily as a driver, and brings the car as close to the entrance as possible.

When the hidden door is wrenched open, stale and malodorous air billows out. A set of stone steps are revealed, once one recovers enough from the fumes of long-decayed abruptly-interrupted chemistry experiments to face the opening again. Moss coats the stone of the passage, almost to the very end, where it opens out into a chamber with arched doorways leading away from the hidden entrance and into the labyrinthine depths of the catacombs. 

"Marvelous," Joseph murmurs. 

"I was very exacting in my engineering specifications, and my workers did well."