“Quick!” he shrieked, “stop that band!  Send it away!  Catch hold of me!  Block the entrances!  Block the entrances!  Give me the red book!  Oh, oh, oh-h-h-h!!!”

The music had begun again.  It was merely a temporary interruption.  The Tannhaeuser March started again, this time at a tremendous pace that made it sound like a rapid two-step as though the instruments played against time.

But the brief interruption gave Dr. Silence a moment in which to collect his scattering thoughts, and before the band had got through half a bar, he had flung forward upon the chair and held Mr. Racine Mudge, the struggling little victim of Higher Space, in a grip of iron.  His arms went all round his diminutive person, taking in a good part of the chair at the same time.  He was not a big man, yet he seemed to smother Mudge completely.

Yet, even as he did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, it began to melt and slip away like air or water.  The wood of the arm-chair somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of Mudge.  The phenomenon known as the passage of matter through matter took place.  The little man seemed actually to get mixed up in his own being.  Dr. Silence could just see his face beneath him.  It puckered and grew dark as though from some great internal effort.  He heard the thin, reedy voice cry in his ear to “Block the entrances, block the entrances!” and then—­but how in the world describe what is indescribable?

John Silence half rose up to watch.  Racine Mudge, his face distorted beyond all recognition, was making a marvellous inward movement, as though doubling back upon himself.  He turned funnel-wise like water in a whirling vortex, and then appeared to break up somewhat as a reflection breaks up and divides in a distorting convex mirror.  He went neither forward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left, neither up nor down.  But he went.  He went utterly.  He simply flashed away out of sight like a vanishing projectile.

All but one leg!  Dr. Silence just had the time and the presence of mind to seize upon the left ankle and boot as it disappeared, and to this he held on for several seconds like grim death.  Yet all the time he knew it was a foolish and useless thing to do.

The foot was in his grasp one moment, and the next it seemed—­this was the only way he could describe it—­inside his own skin and bones, and at the same time outside his hand and all round it.  It seemed mixed up in some amazing way with his own flesh and blood.  Then it was gone, and he was tightly grasping a draught of heated air.

“Gone! gone! gone!” cried a thick, whispering voice, somewhere deep within his own consciousness.  “Lost! lost! lost!” it repeated, growing fainter and fainter till at length it vanished into nothing and the last signs of Mr. Racine Mudge vanished with it.

John Silence locked his red book and replaced it in the cabinet, which he fastened with a click, and when Barker answered the bell he inquired if Mr. Mudge had left a card upon the table.  It appeared that he had, and when the servant returned with it, Dr. Silence read the address and made a note of it.  It was in North London.