“This little book,” continued Dr. Silence calmly, “will explain to you the way.”  He tapped the cover.  “Let me now read out to you certain simple instructions, composed, as I see you divine, entirely from my own personal experiences in the same direction.  Follow these instructions and you will no longer enter the state of Higher Space.  The entrances will be blocked effectively.”

Mr. Mudge sat bolt upright in his chair to listen, and John Silence cleared his throat and began to read slowly in a very distinct voice.

But before he had uttered a dozen words, something happened.  A sound of street music entered the room through the open ventilators, for a band had begun to play in the stable mews at the back of the house—­the March from Tannhaeuser.  Odd as it may seem that a German band should twice within the space of an hour enter the same mews and play Wagner, it was nevertheless the fact.

Mr. Racine Mudge heard it.  He uttered a sharp, squeaking cry and twisted his arms with nervous energy round the chair.  A piteous look that was not far from tears spread over his white face.  Grey shadows followed it—­the grey of fear.  He began to struggle convulsively.

“Hold me fast!  Catch me!  For God’s sake, keep me here!  I’m on the rush already.  Oh, it’s frightful!” he cried in tones of anguish, his voice as thin as a reed.

Dr. Silence made a plunge forward to seize him, but in a flash, before he could cover the space between them, Mr. Racine Mudge, screaming and struggling, seemed to shoot past him into invisibility.  He disappeared like an arrow from a bow propelled at infinite speed, and his voice no longer sounded in the external air, but seemed in some curious way to make itself heard somewhere within the depths of the doctor’s own being.  It was almost like a faint singing cry in his head, like a voice of dream, a voice of vision and unreality.

“Alcohol, alcohol!” it cried, “give me alcohol!  It’s the quickest way.  Alcohol, before I’m out of reach!”

The doctor, accustomed to rapid decisions and even more rapid action, remembered that a brandy flask stood upon the mantelpiece, and in less than a second he had seized it and was holding it out towards the space above the chair recently occupied by the visible Mudge.  Then, before his very eyes, and long ere he could unscrew the metal stopper, he saw the contents of the closed glass phial sink and lessen as though some one were drinking violently and greedily of the liquor within.

“Thanks!  Enough!  It deadens the vibrations!” cried the faint voice in his interior, as he withdrew the flask and set it back upon the mantelpiece.  He understood that in Mudge’s present condition one side of the flask was open to space and he could drink without removing the stopper.  He could hardly have had a more interesting proof of what he had been hearing described at such length.

But the next moment—­the very same moment it almost seemed—­the German band stopped midway in its tune—­and there was Mr. Mudge back in his chair again, gasping and panting!