He thought of making a wild effort to reach the door, but the weakness of his trembling knees, and the row of black figures that stood between, dissuaded him at once.  He would have screamed for help, but remembering the emptiness of the vast building, and the loneliness of the situation, he understood that no help could come that way, and he kept his lips closed.  He stood still and did nothing.  But he knew now what was coming.

Two of the Brothers approached and took him gently by the arm.

“Bruder Asmodelius accepts you,” they whispered; “are you ready?”

Then he found his tongue and tried to speak.  “But what have I to do with this Bruder Asm—­Asmo—?” he stammered, a desperate rush of words crowding vainly behind the halting tongue.

The name refused to pass his lips.  He could not pronounce it as they did.  He could not pronounce it at all.  His sense of helplessness then entered the acute stage, for this inability to speak the name produced a fresh sense of quite horrible confusion in his mind, and he became extraordinarily agitated.

“I came here for a friendly visit,” he tried to say with a great effort, but, to his intense dismay, he heard his voice saying something quite different, and actually making use of that very word they had all used:  “I came here as a willing Opfer,” he heard his own voice say, “and I am quite ready.”

He was lost beyond all recall now!  Not alone his mind, but the very muscles of his body had passed out of control.  He felt that he was hovering on the confines of a phantom or demon-world,—­a world in which the name they had spoken constituted the Master-name, the word of ultimate power.

What followed he heard and saw as in a nightmare.

“In the half light that veils all truth, let us prepare to worship and adore,” chanted Schliemann, who had preceded him to the end of the room.

“In the mists that protect our faces before the Black Throne, let us make ready the willing victim,” echoed Kalkmann in his great bass.

They raised their faces, listening expectantly, as a roaring sound, like the passing of mighty projectiles, filled the air, far, far away, very wonderful, very forbidding.  The walls of the room trembled.

“He comes!  He comes!  He comes!” chanted the Brothers in chorus.

The sound of roaring died away, and an atmosphere of still and utter cold established itself over all.  Then Kalkmann, dark and unutterably stern, turned in the dim light and faced the rest.

“Asmodelius, our Hauptbruder, is about us,” he cried in a voice that even while it shook was yet a voice of iron; “Asmodelius is about us.  Make ready.”

There followed a pause in which no one stirred or spoke.  A tall Brother approached the Englishman; but Kalkmann held up his hand.

“Let the eyes remain uncovered,” he said, “in honour of so freely giving himself.”  And to his horror Harris then realised for the first time that his hands were already fastened to his sides.