It was a thing, trivial enough, yet so strangely mystifying in its happening that the mind hesitated to accept it as an actual occurrence despite the indisputable evidence of the sense of hearing. As the seconds ticked on, Franklin Phillips was not at all certain that it had happened, and gradually the doubt began to assume the proportions of a conviction. Then, because his keenly-attuned brain did not readily explain it, the matter was dismissed as an impossibility. Certainly it had not happened. Mr. Phillips smiled a little. Of course, it was — it must be-a trick of his nerves.

But, even as the impossibility of the thing grew upon him, the musical clang still echoed vaguely in his memory, and his eyes were still fixed inquiringly on the Japanese gong whence it had come. The gong was of the usual type — six bronze discs, or inverted bowls, of graduated sizes, suspended one above the other, with the largest at the top, and quaintly colored with the deep, florid tones of Japan’s ancient decorative art. It hung motionless at the end of a silken cord which dropped down sheerly from the ceiling over a corner of his desk. It was certainly harmless enough in appearance, yet — yet —

As he looked the bell sounded again. It was a clear, rich, vibrant note — a boom which belched forth suddenly as if of its own volition, quavered full toned, then diminished until it was only a lingering sense of sound. Mr. Phillips started to his feet with an exclamation.

Now, in the money-marts of the world, Franklin Phillips was regarded as a living refutation of all theories as to the physical disasters consequent upon a long pursuit of the strenuous life — a human antithesis of nerves. He breathed fourteen times to the minute and his heartbeat was always within a fraction of seventy-one. This was true whether there were millions at stake in a capricious market or whether he ordered a cigar. In this calm lay the strength which had enabled him to reach his fiftieth year in perfect mental and physical condition.

Back of this utter normality was a placid, inquiring mind; so now, deliberately, he took a pencil and tapped the bells of the gong one after another, beginning at the bottom. The shrill note of the first told him instantly that was not the one which had sounded; nor was the second, nor the third. At the fourth he hesitated and struck a second time. Then he tapped the fifth. That was it. The gong trembled and swayed slightly from the blow, light as it was, and twice again he struck it. Then he was convinced.

For several minutes he stood staring, staring blankly. What had caused the bell to ring? His manner was calm, cold, quiet, inquisitive — indomitable common-sense inspired the query.

“I guess it was nerves,” he said after a moment. “But I was looking at it, and —”

Nerves as a possibility were suddenly brushed ruthlessly aside, and he systematically sought some tangible explanation of the affair. Had a flying insect struck the bell? No. He was positive, because he had been looking directly at it when it sounded the second time. He would have seen an insect. Had something dropped from the ceiling? No. He would have seen that, too. With alert, searching eyes he surveyed the small room. It was his own personal den — a sort of office in his home. He was alone now; the door closed; everything appeared as usual.

Perhaps a window! The one facing east was open to the lightly stirring air of the first warm evening of spring. The wind had disturbed the gong! He jumped at the thought as an inspiration. It faded when he saw the window-curtains hanging down limply; the movement of the air was too light to disturb even these. Perhaps something had been tossed through the window! The absurdity of that conjecture was proven instantly. There was a screen in the window of so fine a mesh that hardly more than a grain of sand could pass through it. And this screen was intact.

With bewilderment in his face Mr. Phillips sat down again. Then recurred to him one indisputable fact which precluded the possibility of all those things he had considered. There had been absolutely no movement — that is, perceptible movement — of the gong when the bell sounded. Yet the tone was loud, as if a violent blow had been struck. He remembered that, when he tapped the bell sharply with his pencil, it swayed and trembled visibly, but the pencil was so light that the tone sounded far away and faint. To convince himself he touched the bell again, ever so lightly. It swayed.

“Well, of all the extraordinary things I ever heard of!” he remarked.

After a while he lighted a cigar, and for the first time in his life his hand shook. The sight brought a faint expression of amused surprise to his lips; then he snapped his fingers impatiently and settled back in his chair. It was a struggle to bring his mind around to material things; it insisted on wandering, and wove fantastic, grotesque conjectures in the drifting tobacco smoke. But at last common-sense triumphed under the sedative influence of an excellent cigar, and the incident of the bell floated off into nothingness. Business affairs — urgent, real, tangible business affairs — focused his attention.

Then, suddenly, clamorously, with the insistent acclaim of a fire-alarm, the bell sounded — once! twice! thrice! Mr. Phillips leaped to his feet. The tones chilled him and stirred his phlegmatic heart to quicker action. He took a long, deep breath, and, with one glance around the little room, strode out into the hall. He paused there a moment, glanced at his watch — it was four minutes to nine — then went on to his wife’s apartments.

Mrs. Phillips was reclining in a chair and listening with an amused smile to her son’s recital of some commonplace college happening which chanced to be of interest to him. She was forty or forty-two, perhaps, and charming. Women never learn to be charming until they’re forty; until then they are only pretty and amiable — sometimes. The son, Harvey Phillips, arose as his father entered. He was a stalwart young man of twenty, a prototype, as it were, of that hard-headed, masterful financier — Franklin Phillips.

“Why, Frank, I thought you were so absorbed in business that —” Mrs. Phillips began.

Mr. Phillips paused and looked blankly, unseeingly, as one suddenly aroused from sleep, at his wife and son — the two dearest of all earthly things to him. The son noted nothing unusual in his manner; the wife, with intuitive eyes, read some vague uneasiness.

“What is it?” she asked solicitously. “Has something gone wrong?”

Mr. Phillips laughed nervously and sat down near her.

“Nothing, nothing,” he assured her. “I feel unaccountably nervous somehow, and I thought I should like to talk to you rather than — than —”

“Keep on going over and over those stupid figures?” she interrupted. “Thank you.”

She leaned forward with a gesture of infinite grace and took his hand. He clenched it spasmodically to stop its absurd trembling and, with an effort all the greater because it was repressed so sternly, regained control of his panic stricken nerves. Harvey Phillips excused himself and left the room.

“Harvey has just been explaining the mysteries of baseball to me,” said Mrs. Phillips. “He’s going to play on the Harvard team.” Her husband stared at her without the slightest heed or comprehension of what she was saying.

“Can you tell me,” he asked suddenly, “where you got that Japanese gong in my room?”

“Oh, that? I saw it in the window of a queer old curio shop I pass sometimes on my charity rounds. I looked at it two or three months ago and bought it. The place is in Cranston Street. It’s kept by an old German — Wagner, I think his name is. Why?”

“It looks as if it might be very old, a hundred years perhaps,” remarked Mr. Phillips.

“That’s what I thought,” responded his wife, “and the coloring is exquisite. I had never seen one exactly like it, so —”

“It doesn’t happen to have any history, I suppose?” he interrupted.

“Not that I know of.”

“Or any peculiar quality, or — or attribute out of the ordinary?’”

Mrs. Phillips shook her head.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she replied. “The only peculiar quality I noticed was the singular purity of the bells and the coloring.”

Mr. Phillips coughed over his cigar.

“Yes, I noticed the bells myself,” he explained lamely. “It just struck me that the thing was — was out of the ordinary, and I was a little curious about it.” He was silent a moment. “It looks as if it might have been valuable once.”

“I hardly think so,” Mrs. Phillips responded. “I believe thirty dollars is what I paid for it — all that was asked.”

That was all that was said about the matter at the time. But on the following morning an early visitor at Wagner’s shop was Franklin Phillips. It was a typical place of its kind, half curio and half junk-store, with a coat of dust over all. There had been a crude attempt to enhance the appearance of the place by an artistic arrangement of several musty antique pieces, but, otherwise, it was a chaos of all things. An aged German met Mr. Phillips as he entered.

“Is this Mr. Wagner?” inquired the financier.

Extreme caution, amounting almost to suspicion, seemed to be a part of the old German’s business regime, for he looked at his visitor from head to foot with keen eyes, then evaded the question.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to know if this is Mr. Wagner,” said Mr. Phillips tersely. “Is it, or is it not?”

The old man met his frank stare for a moment; then his cunning, faded eyes wavered and dropped.

“I am Johann Wagner,” he said humbly. “What do you want?”

“Some time ago — two or three months — you sold a Japanese gong —” Mr. Phillips began.

“I never sold it!” interrupted Wagner vehemently. “I never had a Japanese gong in the place! I never sold it!”

“Of course you sold it,” insisted Mr. Phillips. “A Japanese gong — do you understand? Six bells on a silken cord.”

“I never had such a thing in my life — never had such a thing in my shop!” declared the German excitedly. “I never sold it, so help me! I never saw it!”

Curiosity and incredulity were in Mr. Phillips’ eyes as he faced the old man.

“Do you happen to have any clerk?” he asked. “Or did you have three months ago?”

“No, I never had a clerk,” explained the German with a violence which Mr. Phillips did not understand. “There has never been anybody here but me. I never had a Japanese gong here — I never sold one! I never saw one here!”

Mr. Phillips studied the aged, wrinkled face before him calmly for several seconds. He was trying vainly to account for an excitement, a vehemence which was as inexplicable as it was unnecessary.

“It’s absurd to deny that you sold the bell,” he said finally. “My wife bought it of you, here in this place.”

“I never sold it!” stormed the German. “I never had it! No women ever came here. I don’t want women here. I don’t know anything about a Japanese gong. I never had one here.”

Deeply puzzled and thoroughly impatient, Mr. Phillips decided to forego this attempt at a casual inquiry into the history of the gong. After a little while he went away. The old German watched him cautiously, with cunning, avaricious eyes, until he stepped on a car.

As the cool, pleasant days of early spring passed on the bell held its tongue. Only once, and that was immediately after his visit to the old German’s shop, did Mr. Phillips refer to it again. Then he inquired casually of his wife if she had bought it of the old man in person, and she answered in the affirmative, describing him. Then the question came to him: Why had Wagner absolutely denied all knowledge of the bell, of its having been in his possession and of having sold it?

But, after a time, this question was lost in vital business affairs which engrossed his attention. The gong still hung over his desk and he occasionally glanced at it. At such times his curiosity was keen, poignant even, but he made no further effort to solve the mystery which seemed to enshroud it.

So, until one evening a wealthy young Japanese gentleman, Oku Matsumi, by name, son of a distinguished nobleman in his country’s diplomatic service, came to dinner at the Phillips’ home as the guest of Harvey Phillips. They were classmates in Harvard, and a friendship had grown up between them which was curious, perhaps, but explainable on the ground of a mutual interest in art.

After dinner Mr. Matsumi expressed his admiration for several pictures which hung in the luxurious dining-room, and so it followed naturally that Mr. Phillips exhibited some other rare works of art. One of these pictures, a Da Vinci, hung in the little room where the gong was. With no thought of that, at the moment, Mr. Phillips led the way in and the Japanese followed.

Then a peculiar thing happened. At sight of the gong Mr. Matsumi seemed amazed, startled, and, taking one step toward it, he bent as if in obeisance. At the same time his right hand was thrust outward and upward as if describing some symbol in the air.

. . . Utter silence! A suppliant throng, bowed in awed humility with hands outstretched, palms downward, and yellow faces turned in mute prayer toward the light which fluttered up feebly from the sacred fire upon the stony, leering countenance of Buddha. The gigantic golden image rose cross legged from its pedestal and receded upward and backward into the gloom of the temple. The multitude shaded off from bold outlines within the glow of the fire to a shadowy, impalpable mass in the remotest corners; hushed of breath, immovably staring into the drooping eyes of their graven-god.

Behind the image was a protecting veil of cloth of gold. Presently there came a murmer, and the supplicants, with one accord, prostrated themselves until their heads touched the bare, cold stones of the temple floor. The murmur grew into the weirdly beautiful chant of the priests of Buddha. The flickering light for an instant gave an appearance of life to the heavy lidded, drooping eyes, then it steadied again and they seemed fixed on the urn wherein the fire burned.

After a moment the curtain of gold was thrust aside in three places simultaneously, and three silken robed priests appeared. Each bore in his hand a golden sceptre. Together they approached the sacred fire and together they thrust the sceptres into it. Instantly a blaze spouted up, illuminating the vast, high roofed palace of worship, and a cloud of incense arose. The sweetly sickening odor spread out, fanlike, over the throng.

The three priests turned away from the urn, and each, with slow, solemn tread, made his way to an altar of incense with the flaming torch held aloft. They met again at the feet of Buddha and prostrated themselves, at the same time extending the right hand and forming some symbol in the air. The chant from behind the golden veil softened to a murmur, and the murmur grew into silence. Then:

“Gautama!”

The name came from the three together — the tone was a prayer. It reverberated for an instant in the recesses of the great temple; then the multitude, with one motion, raised themselves, repeated the single word and groveled again on their faces.

“Siddhartha, Beloved!”

Again the three priests spoke and again the supplicants moved as one, repeating the words. The burning incense grew heavy, the sacred fire flickered, and shadows flitted elusively over the golden, graven face of the Buddha.

“Sayka-muni, Son of Heaven!” The moving of the multitude as it swayed and answered was in perfect accord. It was as if one heart, one soul, one thought had inspired the action.

“O Buddha! Wise One! Enlightened One!” came the voices of the priests again. “Oh, Son of Kapilavastu! Chosen One! Holy One who found Nirvana! Your unworthy people are at your feet. Omnipotent One! We seek your gracious counsel!”

The voices in chorus had risen to a chant. When they ceased there was the chill of suspense; a little shiver ran through the temple; there was a hushed movement of terrified anxiety. Of all the throng only the priests dared raise their eyes to the cold, graven face of the image. For an instant the chilling silence; then boldly, vibrantly, a bell sounded — once!

“Buddah has spoken!”

It was a murmurous whisper, almost a sigh, plaintive, awestricken. The note of the bell trembled on the incense laden air, then was dissipated, welded into silence again. Priests and people were cowering on the bare stones; the lights flared up suddenly, then flickered, and the semi gloom seemed to grow sensibly deeper. Behind the veil of gold the chant of the priests began again. But it was a more solemn note — a despairing wail. For a short time it went on, then died away.

Again the sacred fire blazed up as if caught by a gust of wind, but the glow did not light the Buddha’s face now — it was concentrated on a bronze gong which dropped down sheerly on a silken cord at Buddha’s right hand. There were six discs, the largest at the top, silhouetted against the darkness of the golden veil beyond. From one of these bells the sound had come, but now they hung mute and motionless. Only the three priests raised reverential eyes to it, and one, the eldest rose.

“O Voice of Buddha!” he apostrophized in a moving, swinging chant — and the face of the graven-god seemed swallowed up in the shadows —“we, your unworthy disciples, await! Each year at the eleventh festival we supplicate! But thrice only hast thou spoken in the half-century, and thrice within the eleventh day of your speaking our Emperor has passed into the arms of Death and Nirvana. Shall it again be so, Omnipotent One?”

The chant died away and the multitude raised itself to its knees with supplicating hands thrust out into the darkness toward the dim lit gong. It was an attitude of beseeching, of prayer, of entreaty.

And again, as it hung motionless, the bell sounded. The tone rolled out melodiously, clearly — Once! Twice! Thrice! Those who gazed at the miracle lowered their eyes lest they be stricken blind. And the bell struck on — Four! Five! Six! A plaintive, wailing cry was raised; the priests behind the veil of gold were chanting again. Seven! Eight! Nine! The people took up the rolling chant as they groveled, and it swelled until the ancient walls of the temple trembled. Ten! Eleven!

Utter silence! A supplicant throng, bowed in awed humility, with hands outstretched, palms downward, and yellow faces turned in mute prayer toward the light which fluttered up feebly from the sacred fire upon the stony, leering countenance of Buddha! . . .

Mr. Matsumi straightened up suddenly to find his host staring at him in perturbed amazement. “Why did you do that?” Mr. Phillips blurted uneasily. “Pardon me, but you wouldn’t understand if I told you,” replied the Japanese with calm, inscrutable face. “May I examine it, please?” And he indicated the silent and motionless gong.

“Certainly,” replied the financier wonderingly.

Mr. Matsumi, with a certain eagerness which was not lost upon the American, approached the gong and touched the bells lightly, one after another, evidently to get the tone. Then he stooped and examined them carefully — top and bottom. Inside the largest bell — that at the top — he found something which interested him. After a close scrutiny he again straightened up, and in his slant eyes was an expression which Mr. Phillips would have liked to interpret.

“I presume you have seen it before?” he ventured.

“No, never,” was the reply.

“But you recognized it!”

Mr. Matsumi merely shrugged his shoulders.

“And what made you do that?” By “that” Mr. Phillips referred to Mr. Matsumi’s strange act when he first saw the bell.

Again the Japanese shrugged his shoulders. An exquisite, innate courtesy which belonged to him was apparently forgotten now in contemplation of the gong. The financier gnawed at his mustache. He was beginning to feel nervous — the nervousness he had felt previously, and his imagination ran riot.

“You have not had the gong long?” remarked Mr. Matsumi after a pause.

“Three or four months.”

“Have you ever noticed anything peculiar about it?”

Mr. Phillips stared at him frankly.

“Well, rather!” he said at last, in a tone which was perfectly convincing.

“It rings, you mean — the fifth bell?”

Mr. Phillips nodded. There was a tense eagerness in the manner of the Japanese.

“You have never heard the bell ring eleven times?”

Mr. Phillips shook his head. Mr. Matsumi drew a long breath — whether it was relief the other couldn’t say. There was silence. Mr. Matsumi closed and unclosed his small hands several times.

“Pardon me for mentioning the matter under such circumstances,” he said at last, in a tone which suggested that he feared giving offence, “but would you be willing to part with the gong?”

Mr. Phillips regarded him keenly. He was seeking in the other’s manner some inkling to a solution of a mystery which each moment seemed more hopelessly beyond him.

“I shouldn’t care to part with it,” he replied casually. “It was given to me by my wife.”

“Then no offer I might make would be considered?”

“No, certainly not,” replied Mr. Phillips tartly. There was a pause. “This gong has interested me immensely. I should like to know its history. Perhaps you can enlighten me?”

With the imperturbability of his race, Mr. Matsumi declined to give any information. But, with a graceful return of his former exquisite courtesy, he sought more definite knowledge for himself.

“I will not ask you to part with the gong,” he said, “but perhaps you can inform me where your wife bought it?” He paused for a moment. “Perhaps it would be possible to get another like it?”

“I happen to know there isn’t another,” replied Mr. Phillips. “It came from a little curio shop in Cranston Street, kept by a German named Johann Wagner.”

And that was all. This incident passed as the other had, the net result being only further to stimulate Mr. Phillips’ curiosity. It seemed a futile curiosity, yet it was ever present, despite the fact that the gong still hung silent.

On the next evening, a balmy, ideal night of spring, Mr. Phillips had occasion to go into the small room. This was just before dinner was announced. It was rather close there, so he opened the east window to a grateful breeze, and placed the screen in position, after which he stooped to pull out a drawer of his desk. Then came again the quick, clangorous boom of the bell — One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven!

At the first stroke he straightened up; at the second he leaned forward toward the gong with his eyes riveted to the fifth disc. As it continued to ring he grimly held on to jangling nerves and looked for the cause. Beneath the bells, on top, all around them he sought. There was nothing! nothing! The sounds simply burst out, one after another, as if from a heavy blow, yet the bell did not move. For the seventh time it struck, and then with white, ghastly face and chilled, stiff limbs Mr. Phillips rushed out of the room. A dew of perspiration grew in the palms of his quavering hands.

It was a night of little rest and strange dreams for him. At breakfast on the following morning Mrs. Phillips poured his coffee and then glanced through the mail which had been placed beside her.

“Do you particularly care for that gong in your room?” she inquired.

Mr. Phillips started a little. That particular object had enchained his attention for the last dozen hours, awake and asleep.

“Why?” he asked.

“You know I told you I bought it of a curio dealer,” Mrs. Phillips explained. “His name is Johann Wagner, and he offers me five hundred dollars if I will sell it back to him. I presume he has found it is more valuable than he imagined, and the five hundred dollars would make a comfortable addition to my charity fund.”

Mr. Phillips was deeply thoughtful. Johann Wagner! What was this new twist? Why had Wagner denied all knowledge of the gong to him? Having denied, why should he now make an attempt to buy it back? In seeking answers to these questions he was silent.

“Well, dear?” inquired his wife after a pause. “You didn’t answer me.”

“No, don’t sell the gong,” he exclaimed abruptly. “Don’t sell it at any price. I— I want it. I’ll give you a cheque for your charity.”

There was something of uneasiness in her devoted eyes. Some strange, subtle, indefinable air which she could not fathom was in his manner. With a little sigh which breathed her unrest she finished her breakfast.

On the following morning still another letter came from Johann Wagner. It was an appeal — an impassioned appeal — hurriedly scrawled and almost incoherent in form. He must have the gong! He would give five thousand dollars for it. Mrs. Phillips was frankly bewildered at the letter, and turned it over to her husband. He read it through twice with grimly-set teeth.

“No,” he exclaimed violently; “it sha’n’t be sold for any price!” Then his voice dropped as he recollected himself. “No, my dear,” he continued, “it shall not be sold. It was a present from you to me. I want it, but”— and he smiled whimsically —“if he keeps raising the price it will add a great deal to your charity fund, won’t it?”

Twice again within thirty-six hours Mr. Phillips heard the bell ring — once on one occasion and four on the other. And now visibly, tangibly, a great change was upon him. The healthy glow went from his face. There was a constant twitching of his hands; a continual, impatient snapping of his fingers. His eyes lost their steady gaze. They roved aimlessly, and one’s impression always was that he was listening. The strength of the master spirit was being slowly destroyed, eaten up by a hideous gnawing thing of which he seemed hopelessly obsessed. But he took no one into his confidence; it was his own private affair to work out to the end.

This condition was upon him at a time when the activity of the speculative centres of the world was abnormal, and when every faculty was needed in the great financial schemes of which he was the centre. He, in person, held the strings which guided millions. The importance of his business affairs was so insistently and relentlessly thrust upon him that he was compelled to meet them. But the effort was a desperate one, and that night late, when a city slept around him, the bell sounded twice.

When he reached his downtown office next day an enormous amount of detail work lay before him, and he attacked it with a feverish exaltation which followed upon days and nights of restlessness. He had been at his desk only a few minutes when his private telephone clattered. With an exclamation he arose; comprehending, he sat down again.

Half-a-dozen times within the hour the bell rang, and each time he was startled. Finally he arose in a passion, tore the desk-telephone from its connecting wires and flung it into the wastebasket. Deliberately he walked around to the side of his desk and, with a well-directed kick, smashed the battery-box. His secretary regarded him in amazement.

“Mr. Camp,” directed the financier sharply, “please instruct the office operator not to ring another telephone-bell in this office — ever.”

The secretary went out and he sat down to work again. Late that afternoon he called on his family physician, Doctor Perdue, a robust individual of whom it was said that his laugh cured more patients than his medicine. Be that as it may, he was a successful man, high in his profession. Doctor Perdue looked up with frank interest as he entered.

“Hello, Phillips!” was his greeting. “What can I do for you?”

“Nerves,” was the laconic answer.

“I thought it would come to that,” remarked the physician, and he shook his head sagely. “Too much work, too much worry and too many cigars; and besides, you’re not so young as you once were.”

“It isn’t work or cigars,” Phillips replied impatiently. “It’s worry — worry because of some peculiar circumstances which — which —”

He paused with a certain childish feeling of shame, of cowardice. Doctor Perdue regarded him keenly and felt of his pulse.

“What peculiar circumstances?” he demanded.

“Well, I— I can hardly explain it myself,” replied Mr. Phillips, between tightly-clenched teeth. “It’s intangible, unreal, ghostly — what you will. Perhaps I can best make you understand it by saying that I’m always — I always seem to be waiting for something.”

Doctor Perdue laughed heartily; Mr. Phillips glared at him.

“Most of us are always waiting for something,” said the physician. “If we got it there wouldn’t be any particular object in life. Just what sort of thing is it you’re always waiting for?”

Mr. Phillips arose suddenly and paced the length of the room twice. His under jaw was thrust out a little, his teeth crushed together, but in his eyes lay a haunting, furtive fear.

“I’m always waiting for a — for a bell,” he blurted fiercely, and his face became scarlet. “I know it’s absurd, but I awake in the night trembling, and lie for hours waiting, waiting, yet dreading the sound as no man ever dreaded anything in this world. At my desk I find myself straining every nerve, waiting, listening. When I talk to any one I’m always waiting, waiting, waiting! Now, right this minute, I’m waiting, waiting for it. The thing is driving me mad, man, mad! Don’t you understand?”

Doctor Perdue arose with grave face and led the financier back to his seat.

“You are behaving like a child, Phillips!” he said sharply. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

“Now, look here, Perdue,” and Mr. Phillips brought his fist down on the desk with a crash, “you must believe it — you’ve got to believe it! If you don’t, I shall know I am mad.”

“Tell me about it,” urged the physician quietly.

Then haltingly, hesitatingly, the financier related the incidents as they had happened. Incipient madness, fear, terror, blazed in his eyes, and at times his pale lips quivered as a child’s might. The physician listened attentively and nodded several times.

“The bell must be-must be haunted!” Mr. Phillips burst out in conclusion. “There’s no reasonable way to account for it. My common-sense tells me that it doesn’t sound at all, and yet I know it does.”

Doctor Perdue was silent for several minutes.

“You know, of course, that your wife did buy the bell of the old German?” he asked after a while.

“Why, certainly, I know it. It’s proved absolutely by the letters he writes trying to get it back.”

“And your fear doesn’t come from anything the Japanese said?”

“It isn’t the denial of the German; it isn’t the childish things Mr. Matsumi said and did; it’s the actual sound of the bell that’s driving me insane — it’s the hopeless, everlasting, eternal groping for a reason. It’s an inanimate thing and it acts as if — it acts as if it were alive!”

The physician had been sitting with his fingers on Mr. Phillips’ wrist. Now he arose and mixed a quieting potion which the other swallowed at a gulp. Soon after his patient went home somewhat more self-possessed, and with rigid instructions as to the regularity of his life and habits.

“You need about six months in Europe more than anything else,” Doctor Perdue declared. “Take three weeks, shape up your business and go. Meanwhile, if you won’t sell the gong or throw it away, keep out of its reach.”

Next morning a man — a stranger — was found dead in the small room where the gong hung. A bullet through the heart showed the manner of death. The door leading from the room into the hall was locked on the outside; an open window facing east indicated how he had entered and suggested a possible avenue of escape for his slayer.

Attracted by the excitement which followed the discovery of the body, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips went to investigate, and thus saw the dead man. The wife entered the room first, and for an instant stood speechless, staring into the white, upturned face. Then came an exclamation.

“Why, it’s the man from whom I bought the gong!” She turned to find her husband peering over her shoulder. His face was ashen to the lips, his eyes wide and staring.

“Johann Wagner!” he exclaimed.

Then, as if frenzied, he flung her aside and rushed to where the gong hung silent and motionless. He seemed bent on destruction as he reached for it with gripping fingers. Suddenly he staggered as if from a heavy blow in the face, and covered both eyes with his hands.

“Look!” he screamed.

There was a smudge of fresh, red blood on the fifth bell. Mrs. Phillips glanced from the bell to him inquiringly.

He stood for a moment with hands pressed to his eyes, then laughed mirthlessly, demoniacally.
2

Here a small brazier spouting a blue flame, there a retort partially filled with some purplish, foul-smelling liquid, yonder a sinuous copper coil winding off into the shadows, and moving about like an alchemist of old, the slender, childlike figure of Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., etc., etc. A ray of light shot down blindingly from a reflector above and brilliantly illuminated the laboratory table. The worker leaned forward to peer at some minute particle under the microscope, and for an instant his head and face were thrown out against the darkness of the room like some grotesque, disembodied thing.

It was a singular head and face — a head out of all proportion to body, domelike, enormous, with a wilderness of straw-yellow hair. The face was small, wizened, petulant even; the watery blue eyes, narrow almost to the disappearing point, squinted everlastingly through thick spectacles; the mouth drooped at the corners. The small, white hands which twisted and turned the object-glass into focus were possessed of extraordinarily long, slender fingers.

This man of the large head and small body was the undisputed leader in contemporaneous science. His was the sanest, coldest, clearest brain in scientific achievement. His word was the final one. Once upon a time a newspaperman, Hutchinson Hatch, had dubbed him The Thinking Machine, and so it came about that the world at large had heard of and knew him by that title. The reporter, a tall, slender young man, sat now watching him curiously and listening. The scientist spoke in a tone of perpetual annoyance; but a long acquaintance had taught the reporter that it was what he said and not the manner of its saying that was to be heeded.

“Imagination, Mr. Hatch, is the single connecting link between man and the infinite,” The Thinking Machine was saying. “It is the one quality which distinguishes us from what we are pleased to call the brute creation, for we have the same passions, the same appetites, and the same desires. It is the most valuable adjunct to the scientific mind, because it is the basis of all scientific progress. It is the thing which temporarily bridges gaps and makes it possible to solve all material problems — not some, but all of them. We can achieve nothing until we imagine it. Just so far as the human brain can imagine it can comprehend. It fails only to comprehend the eternal purpose, the Omnipotent Will, because it cannot imagine it. For imagination has a limit, Mr. Hatch, and beyond that we are not to go — beyond that is Divinity.”

This wasn’t at all what Hatch had come to hear, but he listened with a sort of fascination.

“The first intelligent being,” the irritated voice went on, “had to imagine that when two were added to two there would be a result. He found it was four, he proved it was four, and instantly it became immutable — a point in logic, a thing by which we may solve problems. Thus two and two make four, not sometimes, but all the time.”

“I had always supposed that imagination was limitless,” Hatch ventured for a moment, “that it knows no bounds.”

The Thinking Machine squinted at him coldly.

“On the contrary,” he declared, “it has a boundary beyond which the mind of man merely reels, staggers, collapses. I’ll take you there.” He spoke as if it were just around the corner. “By aid of a microscope of far less power than the one there, the atomic or molecular theory was formulated. You know that — it is that all matter is composed of atoms. Now, imagination suggested and logic immutably demonstrates that the atoms themselves are composed of other atoms, and that those atoms in turn are composed of still others, ad infinitum. They are merely invisible, and imagination — I am not now stating a belief, but citing an example of what imagination can do — imagination can make us see the possibility of each of those atoms, down to infinity, being inhabited, being in itself a world relatively as distant from its fellows as............