ces_."

"True, true, utterly true!" exclaimed the little man, dodging about
nervously in the depths of the chair. "But how, in the name of space, is
that to be done?"

"By concentration. They are all within you, these entrances, although
outer cases such as colour, music and other things lead you towards
them. These external things you cannot hope to destroy, but once the
entrances are blocked, they will lead you only to bricked walls and
closed channels. You will no longer be able to find the way."

"Quick, quick!" cried the bobbing figure in the chair. "How is this
concentration to be effected?"

"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 o