The
_Tannhäuser_ 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. "Mr. Mudge has gone," he said quietly to Barker, noticing his
expression of alarm. "He's not taken his 'at with him, sir." "Mr. Mudge requires no hat where he is now," continued the doctor,
stooping to poke the fire. "But he may return for it----"

"And the humbrella, sir." "And the umbrella." "He didn't go out _my_ way, sir, if you please," stuttered the amazed
servant, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness. "Mr. Mudge has his own way of coming and going, and prefers it. If he
returns by the door at any time remember to bring him instantly to me,
and be kind and gentle with him and ask no questions. Also, remember,
Barker, to think pleasantly, sympathetically, affectionately of him
while he is away. Mr. Mudge is a very suffering gentleman." Barker bowed and went out of the room backwards, gasping and feeling
round the inside of his collar with three very hot fingers of one hand. It was two days later when he brought in a telegram to the study. Dr. Silence opened it, and read as follows:

  "Bombay. Just slipped out again. All safe. Have blocked
   entrances. Thousand thanks. Address Cooks, London.--MUDGE." Dr. Silence looked up and saw Barker staring at him bewilderingly. It
occurred to him that somehow he knew the contents of the telegram. "Make a parcel of Mr. Mudge's things," he said briefly, "and address
them Thomas Cook & Sons, Ludgate Circus. And send them there exactly a
month from to-day and marked 'To be called for.'" "Yes, sir," said Barker, leaving the room with a deep sigh and a
hurried glance at the waste-paper basket where his master had dropped
the pink paper. XIV

TRANSITION


John Mudbury was on his way home from the shops, his arms full of
Christmas presents. It was after six o'clock and the streets were
very crowded. He was an ordinary man, lived in an ordinary suburban
flat, with an ordinary wife and four ordinary children. _He_ did not
think them ordinary, but everybody else did. He had ordinary presents
for each one, a cheap blotter for his wife, a cheap air-gun for the
eldest boy, and so forth. He was over fifty, bald, in an office,
decent in mind and habits, of uncertain opinions, uncertain politics,
and uncertain religion. Yet he considered himself a decided, positive
gentleman, quite unaware that the morning newspaper determined his
opinions for the day. He just lived--from day to day. Physically, he
was fit enough, except for a weak heart (which never troubled him);
and his summer holiday was bad golf, while the children bathed and his
wife read "Garvice" on the sands. Like the majority of men, he dreamed
idly of the past, muddled away the present, and guessed vaguely--after
imaginative reading on occasions--at the future. "I'd like to survive all right," he said, "provided it's better than
this," surveying his wife and children, and thinking of his daily toil. "Otherwise----!" and he shrugged his shoulders as a brave man should. He went to church regularly. But nothing in church _convinced_ him
that he did survive, just as nothing in church enticed him into hoping
that he would. On the other hand, nothing in life persuaded him that he
didn't, wouldn't, couldn't. "I'm an Evolutionist," he loved to say to
thoughtful cronies (over a glass), having never heard that Darwinism
had been questioned....

And so he came home gaily, happily, with his bunch of Christmas
presents "for the wife and little ones," stroking himself upon their
keen enjoyment and excitement. The night before he had taken "the wife"
to see _Magic_ at a select London theatre where the Intellectuals
went--and had been extraordinarily stirred. He had gone questioningly,
yet expecting something out of the common. "It's _not_ musical," he
warned her, "nor farce, nor comedy, so to speak"; and in answer to her
question as to what the Critics had said, he had wriggled, sighed, and
put his gaudy necktie straight four times in quick succession. For no
"Man in the Street," with any claim to self-respect, could be expected
to understand what the Critics had said, even if he understood the
Play.