In these moments—­so frequent now as to be almost continuous—­he preferred the safety of his ordinary and normal existence, dull though it might be; the limited personality he had been so anxious to escape from seemed wondrous sweet and comforting.  The Terror of the approaching Experiment with this mighty name appalled him.

The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and more contradictory and confused.  The outcome for himself seemed to be the result of the least little pressure this way or that—­possibly at the very last moment, too.  Which way the waiting Climax might draw him was a question impossible to decide.

III

And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a sharp stage nearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr. Skale came up unexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand upon his shoulder in a way that made him positively jump.

“Spinrobin,” he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that shamed his timidity and cowardice, “are you ready?”

“For anything and everything,” was the immediate reply, given almost automatically as he felt the clergyman’s forces flood into his soul and lift him.

“The time is at hand, then,” continued the other, leading his companion by the arm to a deep leather sofa, “for you to know certain things that for your own safety and ours, I was obliged to keep hidden till now—­first among which is the fact that this house is not, as you supposed, empty.”

Prepared as he was for some surprising announcement, Spinrobin nevertheless started.  It was so abrupt.

“Not empty!” he repeated, eager to hear more, yet quaking.  He had never forgotten the nightly sounds and steps in his own passage.

“The rooms beyond your own,” said Skale, with a solemnity that amounted to reverence, “are occupied—­”

“By—­” gasped the secretary.

“Captured Sounds—­gigantic,” was the reply, uttered almost below the breath.

The two men looked steadily at one another for the space of several seconds, Spinrobin charged to the brim with anxious questions pressing somehow upon the fringe of life and death, Skale obviously calculating how much he might reveal or how little.

“Mr. Spinrobin,” he said presently, holding him firmly with his eyes, “you are aware by this time that what I seek is the correct pronunciation of certain names—­of a certain name, let us say, and that so complex is the nature of this name that no single voice can utter it.  I need a chord, a human chord of four voices.”

Spinrobin bowed.

“After years of research and experiment,” resumed the clergyman, “I have found the first three notes, and now, in your own person, has come my supreme happiness in the discovery of the fourth.  What I now wish you to know, though I cannot expect you to understand it all at first, is that the name I seek is broken up into four great divisions of sound, and that to each of these separate divisions the four notes of our chord form introductory channels.  When the time comes to utter it, each one of us will call the syllable or sound that awakens the mighty response in one of these immense and terrific divisions, so that the whole name will vibrate as a single chord sung perfectly in tune.”