him nothing had happened to Mr Sharnall--he was
practising in the church; it was only some mad freak of his to be
playing so late; he was practising that service "Sharnall in D flat."

He took out his key to unlock the wicket, and was surprised to find it
already open, because he knew that it was the organist's habit to lock
himself in. He passed into the great church. It was strange, there was
no sound of music; there was no one playing; there was only the
intolerably monotonous booming of a single pedal-note, with an
occasional muffled thud when the water-engine turned spasmodically to
replenish the emptying bellows.

"Sharnall!" he shouted--"Sharnall, what are you doing? Don't you know
how late it is?"

He paused, and thought at first that someone was answering him--he
thought that he heard people muttering in the choir; but it was only the
echo of his own voice, his own voice tossed from pillar to pillar and
arch to arch, till it faded into a wail of "Sharnall, Sharnall!" in the
lantern.

It was the first time that he had been in the church at night, and he
stood for a moment overcome with the mystery of the place, while he
gazed at the columns of the nave standing white in the moonlight like a
row of vast shrouded figures. He called again to Mr Sharnall, and
again received no answer, and then he made his way up the nave to the
little doorway that leads to the organ-loft stairs.

This door also was open, and he felt sure now that Mr Sharnall was not
in the organ-loft at all, for had he been he would certainly have locked
himself in. The pedal-note must be merely ciphering, or something,
perhaps a book, might have fallen upon it, and was holding it down. He
need not go up to the loft now; he would not go up. The throbbing of
the low note had on him the same unpleasant effect as on a previous
occasion. He tried to reassure himself, yet felt all the while a
growing premonition that something might be wrong, something might be
terribly wrong. The lateness of the hour, the isolation from all things
living, the spectral moonlight which made the darkness darker--this
combination of utter silence, with the distressing vibration of the
pedal-note, filled him with something akin to panic. It seemed to him
as if the place was full of phantoms, as if the monks of Saint
Sepulchre's were risen from under their gravestones, as if there were
other dire faces among them such as wait continually on deeds of evil.
He c