With patient listening I began to distinguish clearly between voices, even though I could not grasp much of what any of the voices said. I seemed to catch certain typical emotions behind some of the speakers. One of the buzzing voices, for example, held an unmistakable note of authority, whilst the mechanical voice, notwithstanding its artificial loudness and regularity, seemed to be in a position of subordination and pleading. Noyes’s tones exuded a kind of conciliatory atmosphere. The others I could make no attempt to interpret. I did not hear the familiar whisper of Akeley, but well knew that such a sound could never penetrate the solid flooring of my room.

I will try to set down some of the few disjointed words and other sounds I caught, labelling the speakers of the words as best I know how. It was from the speech-machine that I first picked up a few recognisable phrases.

[the speech-machine] ‘ . . . brought it on myself . . . sent back the letters and the record . . . end on it . . . taken in . . . seeing and hearing . . . damn you . . . impersonal force, after all . . . fresh, shiny cylinder . . . great God . . . ’

[first buzzing voice] ‘ . . . time we stopped . . . small and human . . . Akeley . . . brain . . . saying . . . ’

[second buzzing voice] ‘Nyarlathotep . . . Wilmarth . . . records and letters . . . cheap imposture . . . ’

[Noyes] ‘ . . . (an unpronounceable word or name, possibly N’gah-Kthun) harmless . . . peace . . . couple of weeks . . . theatrical . . . told you that before . . . ’

[first buzzing voice] ‘ . . . no reason . . . original plan . . . effects . . . Noyes can watch Round Hill . . . fresh cylinder . . . Noyes’s car . . . ’

[Noyes] ‘ . . . well . . . all yours . . . down here . . . rest . . . place . . . ’

[several voices at once in indistinguishable speech]

[many footsteps, including the peculiar loose stirring or clattering]

[a curious sort of flapping sound]

[the sound of an automobile starting and receding]

[silence]

That is the substance of what my ears brought me as I lay rigid upon that strange upstairs bed in the haunted farmhouse among the daemoniac hills – lay there fully dressed, with a revolver clenched in my right hand and a pocket flashlight gripped in my left. I became, as I have said, broad awake; but a kind of obscure paralysis nevertheless kept me inert till long after the last echoes of the sounds had died away. I heard the wooden, deliberate ticking of the ancient Connecticut clock somewhere far below, and at last made out the irregular snoring of a sleeper. Akeley must have dozed off after the strange session, and I could well believe that he needed to do so.