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."

Mr. Skale paused and drew deep breaths. This approach to his great
experiment, even in speech, seemed to exhaust him so that he was obliged
to call upon reserves of force that lay beneath. His whole manner
betrayed the gravity, the reverence, the mingled respect and excitement
of--death.

And the simple truth is that at the moment Spinrobin could not find in
himself sufficient courage to ask what this fearful and prodigious name
might be. Even to put ordinar