Plot Summary:Howard Philips, a student of Metaphysics is forced by finances to take lodgings in the cheapest accommodation he can find. He takes a room in a near empty boarding house on the Rue d'Auseil. He becomes fascinated by the unearthly music emanating from the room above his own and discovers the music is played by an eccentric German violinist called Erich Zann. Howard attempts to befriend the old man and get him to play some of the hauntingly beautiful music he had heard. But when Zann plays for him the music is quite pedestrian and nothing like what Howard had heard. Howard eventually discovers that the elderly musician hides a terrible secret.