He made several calls--first bus lines, then railroad and air. It was impossible to get a reservation on the air lines, but tonight's train would get him into Jersey City an hour ahead of the bus she must be traveling, according to the deductions he made from the place and time of the postmarks. He had ample time to pack a few things, cash a check on his way to the station-- He spread her three notes on the table--the one in pen, the two in pencil. He reread the crazy incomplete formula. He shook his head. He frowned. Would a scientist neglect the millionth-and-one possibility? Would the commander of a trapped army disdain a stratagem just because it was not in the books? This stuff looked like gibberish. Yesterday it might have meant something to him emotionally. Today it was just nonsense. But tomorrow night it might conceivably represent a fantastic last chance. "Norman, you _must_ do what I tell you." The scrawled words stared at him. He went out in the kitchen and got a ball of white twine. He rummaged in the closet for his squash racket and cut out the two center strings. That ought to do for gut. The fireplace had not been cleaned since the stuff from Tansy's dressing table had been burned. He poked around the edges until he found a piece of lodestone. He located the recording of Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata" and started the phonograph, putting in a new needle. He glanced at his wrist watch and paced the room restlessly. Gradually the music took hold of him. It was not pleasant music. There was something tantalizing and exasperating about it, with its droning melody and rocking figures in the base and shakes in the treble and elaborate ornamentation that writhed up and down the piano keyboard. It rasped the nerves. He began to remember things he had heard about it. Hadn't Tansy once told him that Scriabin called his "Ninth Sonata" a "Black Mass" and had developed an antipathy to playing it? Scriabin, who had conceived a color organ and tried to translate mysticism into music, and had died of a peculiar lip infection. An innocent-faced Russian with a huge curling mustache. Critical phrases Tansy had repeated to him floated through his mind. "The poisonous 'Ninth Sonata'--the most perfidious piece of music ever conceived--" Ridiculous! How could music be anything but an abstract pattern of tones? And yet--while listening to the thing--one could think differently. Faster and faster it went. The lovely second theme became infected, was distorted into something raucous and discordant--a march of the damned--a dance of the damned--breaking off suddenly when it had reached an unendurable pitch. Then a repetition of the droning first theme, ending on a soft yet grating note low in the keyboard. He removed the needle, sealed it in an envelope, and packed it along with the rest of his stuff. On an afterthought, he tore out of the big dictionary a page carrying an illustrated list of knots. The telephone stopped him as he was going out.