Luga,
his lost comrades, to hear their extraordinary stories!... Trembling
seized him. If the work could by any possibility be played again would
not the same awful fate overtake the new men and perhaps himself?
Decidedly that way would be courting disaster.

As he strode desperately toward the stage, staring at its polished
boards as if to extort their secret, he discerned the shining pipes of
the monster mechanical organ that Balakian municipal pride had imported
and installed there. Pobloff was a man of fertile invention: the organ
might serve his purpose. But then came the discouraging knowledge that
he could not play it well enough. No matter; he would make the attempt.
He clambered over the stage, reached the instrument, threw open the case
and inspected the manuals. By pulling out various stops he soon had a
fair reproduction of the instrumental effects of his score. Trembling,
he placed the music upon the rack, tremblingly he touched the button
that set in movement the automatic motor. Forgetting the danger of
detection, he set pealing in all its diapasonic majesty this Synthesis
of Instruments. He reached the enchanted passage, he played it, his
knees knocking like an undertaker's hammer, his fingers glued to the
keys by moisty fear. The abysm was easily traversed; nothing occurred.
Despair crowned the head of Pobloff, pressing spikes of remorse into
his sweating brow. What could be the reason? Ah, there was no tam-tam!
He rushed into the music-room and soon returned with an old, rusty
Chinese gong. Again the page was played, the tam-tam's thin edge set
shivering with mournful resonance. And again there was no result.
Pobloff cursed the organ, cursed the gong, cursed his life, cursed the
universe.

The door opened and the stage carpenter peeped in. "Say, Mr. Pobloff, do
come and have your coffee! The coast's clear. All the women have gone
away to the country on a wild goose chase." His voice was kind though
his expression was one of suspicion. Pobloff did seem a trifle mad. He
went into the property room. As he drank his coffee the other watched
him. Suddenly Pobloff let out a huge cry of satisfaction. "Fool! Dolt!
Idiot that I am! Of course the passage will have to be played backward
to get them to return, to disenchant the symphony!" He leaped with joy.
"Yes, governor, but you've upset your coffee," said the carpenter
warningly. Pobloff heard nothing. The problem now was to play that vile
passage backward.