I spent my first evening in going over my clothing and other possessions, ripping out name tags, obliterating initials, and cleaning off fingerprints. I would not be trapped again as I had nearly been in Manchester.
The second day and the early evening thereof I walked through the streets, thinking furiously. And the only conclusions I could come to anent my problems were bitter and lonely and hopeless.
Going "home" about eight o'clock, I wandered into the parlor and was accosted diffidently by a very low-looking form of life, which begged the pleasure of my company in a nearby hooch hut. I agreed. I would have stood drinks to a wolverine if the creature would have listened to me. I was starved for speech.
When I had bought him a few rounds, his taste running to that noble old British concoction, a four-o'-gin-hot, we began to talk freely: of anything, the weather, the latest race results, the difficulty of getting "real prime raw gin"....
He was a curious fellow. The name he gave me was Arold Smiff, which I imagine had once been Harold Smith; he was small and stringy and of a tobacco-brown hue, with eyes in which liquor-broken veins had long since stained the irises and the white to an all-over muddy-crimson. He stank like a shebeen, his breath would have shriveled a brass monkey, but I soon noticed something really odd about him—he did not seem to be at all intoxicated. I made bold to comment on this.
"Why, General," he said, grinning wryly, "fak is, I been lushed for so long, I can't get lushed any more hardly at all. You ever had the snykes?"
I shook my head. He nodded wisely. "Ar, I thought not. You're clarss. Me, I got a permanent case of 'em, bloody snykes and 'orrors all the tyme. You wouldn't know what it's lyke, General, seeing such 'orrors all the bloody damn tyme."
Would I not, I said to myself, oh, would I not!
"No, you're clarss, any bloody fool could see that." He leaned over confidentially, and I could fairly feel my eyebrows curl under that breath. "Between pals, now, wot's your lay?"
"Lay?" I repeated idiotically.
"Gyme, General, gyme! I knew you was hot stuff the mo' I seen yer at Old Mag's. Wot's your specialty—jools?"
Good Lord! The man took me for a jewel-thief!
"Not exactly," I said.
We were sitting in a booth. He craned his neck around to see that no one could overhear us. "Aye, but it's something fust-rate. You're no bloomin' snaveler nor knuckler."
"Ah, no," I agreed, presuming that, whatever they were, I couldn't be one of them.
"You're clarss," he repeated obstinately. "Me, I may not look so likely now, but once I was Manny Jarman's right'and lad."
I tried to look impressed, and wondered who Manny Jarman had been. A great deal of ale had flowed down my gullet at a good clip, and I was feeling reckless and friendly. "I'll tell you one thing," I said, "the police want me rather badly. I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't trust you."
"Ar! You trust Arold Smiff, General. 'E won't letcher down. I knowed you was on the lam when you come into Old Mag's. You're okay there. And you're okay so long as I'm your chum, too, see? I got connections." He brooded darkly over his connections. "Mugs, but they respecks old Arold Smiff, knowing wot 'e was once. Before the gin got 'im," he added significantly, peering into the depths of his glass. I snapped my fingers for another four-o'-gin-hot.
He chattered on, in his strange drunk-sober style, for a few minutes: and then, someone pushing by me, I moved my elbow to make more room in the aisle. In doing so I glanced up. It was one ofthem. A truly fearsome beast, this one purplish, slimy and grotesque.
Arold bent closer, again singeing my eyebrows. "I'll give yer an example," he hissed. "Example o' wot I go through nowadyes. You seen that bloke leave?"
"Yes?"
"'E were a bloke to you, huh? Regular normal bloke?"
"Mmmm," I said noncommittally.
"Welp, me, I didn't see no bloke at all, d'yer get me? I seen a great big glob o' goop! A great big purple wet-looking barstid of a garstly freak! You think a joker's bad off when 'e's got snykes, huh? Wot about me, wot sees Frank and Stein's monsters all about?" He sat back triumphantly.
I suppose I gaped. I suppose my jaw dropped, my hands shook, my face grew pale. I don't know. For the moment the gin palace was a blur and my faculties were frozen, as Arold Smiff's words rang in my head.
Frankenstein monsters! Purple freak!
Fate had given me an ally worth more than all six of my band combined. A souse of an ally, a lowbred criminal of an ally, a gin-soaked worthless-appearing ally: but one who could see the aliens, evidently as plainly as I could myself!
Our gallant pioneer, Jerry Wolfe, had speculated that perhaps some people could see them when having a fit of what we call the d.t.s—when they were saturated with alcohol, their vision was warped into the uncanny dimension-piercing angles which the musket blast had given me. Here was living proof of the theory. And here likewise was a fellow so permanently full of liquor (I swear the stuff ran in his veins) that he could see themall the time!
CHAPTER XI
"Where can we talk?" I asked him quietly, when I had got control of myself.
"Why, 'ere, General."
"No, no. A good safe place where we can talk privately and without interruption."
"Ow! Old Mag's, o' course. None better. Your room or mine."
"Mine," I said. "Let's go, old horse."
We went, taking along a bottle of gin for medicinal purposes. I sat him down in the dilapidated rocking chair, in my bedroom and, staring into his brown face intently, said, "I've got a proposition for you, Arold. It's a whopper, too."
"Big job?" he said. "You want me on a big job?"
"Yes, you. You'll be my partner in it."
"Me?" he repeated incredulously.
"You're the one chap who can help me."
The muddy eyes actually filled with tears; it was not a maudlin drunk's easy weeping, though, but the honest emotion of a humble workman who finds himself asked to assist a master. "You want me, Arold Smiff, to link up wiff you, a gent, a real gent, clarss, wot I mean a toff as ever was? Cor! I knowed I wasn't through yet," said he. "Just you lead on, General."
"I was only a Captain," said I.
"Then you didn't 'ave your deserts, I'll say. Wot's the gyme?"
"The biggest."
"Bank o' England?" he asked without much astonishment.
"No, not theft. We don't have to steal anything in this game."
He frowned. "'Old on, now, you mean I gotta knock somebody orf? Scrag 'em?"
"Not you personally, Arold. You'll be too high in the game for that."
"Ow, not that I objecks, mindjer," he hastened to assure me. "It just took me off guard, as you might say, you not lookin' lyke a basher." He grinned. "'Twouldn't be the first mug I've did in, General."
"I'll wager on that," said I under my breath, and aloud, "I told you: you'll be too important in this affair to do any murdering yourself, Arold." I prodded him in the chest with a finger. "You'll give the orders," said I.
He was deeply impressed by that. "Cripes!" he said. "Me?"
"Yes. Now listen closely, and I'll explain the whole business. Think back. Remember that purple monster you saw leaving the pub?"
"Not 'arf. Holy hell, not 'arf!"
"It was something like a lizard in shape," I said slowly. "It had a long trailing tail, and two big hind legs it walked on; it had two sets of little forearms, only they weren't like arms, but more like big snakes: no fingers, no hands, just oozy rounded arms. It looked as if it had just crawled out of the sea, and around it there were a lot of thin silvery-blue lines, running at a tangent like this—" I chopped my hands through the air at a forty-five degree angle—"that seemed like a background to the creature. There were glowing eyes in its chest, and for a head it had what looked like a dead fish. Right?"
"Right." He gave me a long blank stare. Then he batted his lids up and down. "'Ow did you know? I never told you all that!"
"I saw it too."
"Garn!" he said scornfully. "Wotcher givin' us?"
"If I didn't see it, then how did I know just what it looked like?"
He thought that over, sucking his yellow teeth. Then he gasped. "My Gawd! You got 'em too?"
"Do I look drunk?"
"No, but—"
"And if I were, would I have seen exactly what you saw, unless it were really there?"
Arold Smiff sank back in the rocker and let out a wheeze that began in the tips of his toes. "My old mother! I'm off it for good. The snykes are catchin'. Ow!'O are you, mister?"
I threw my whole hand into the center of the table, staking everything on it.
"I'm the Manchester Slasher," I said.
He recoiled. His brown face, incapable of turning pale, nonetheless gave the effect of blanching in some mysterious manner of its own. The common little thief and garden-variety mugger quailed before the celebrated Mad Ghoul of Manchester. He drew out a large clasp knife and snapped open the blade, his hand shaking. "'Ere, now, you keep back from me, you 'ear? I'm not to be trifled wiff, see? You touch me and you're a deader, that's wot."
"Oh, put it away," I said fiercely. When he refused, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and struck it a stinging judo blow with my right: the knife fell.
"Ow-er!" he yelled. "You keep back!" Cowering, he gazed at me with those muddy-crimson eyes wide, his mouth stretched in a nervous, sickly grimace of fear. "Twenty you done in, all in a couple of dyes," he whispered. "And I been and gone and drunk wiff you lyke you was my brother. You're mad-dorg crazy, you are."
"I'm as sane as you are," I said, "or saner. For heaven's sake, man, get hold of yourself. Do you think I stood you a bucket of gin and wasted two hours on you just to murder you in my own room?"
"Welp, no," he said grudgingly.
"Up north I killed four in the time I've taken to talk to you," I said, to impress him further. "Now listen closely, because I don't want to go over this more than a couple of times. In the first place, those people I killed weren't people."
"Garn!"
"They were beasts like the purple lizard. Some of 'em were worse. I killed one that was like a giant hoptoad with fangs."
"I've seen 'em like that.... 'Ere, wotcher giving us?Iknow them 'orrors is all in my mind.Iain't no common lushington.Iknows it's the gin.Iknow they're folks like everyone."
"Oh,youknow, do you? Open up that walnut you call your mind, chum. Why do we both see the identical brutes, if they're in your mind?"
"I dunno," he growled sullenly.
"Then just sit quiet—there's the gin beside you—and I'll explain it all in words of one syllable."
And this I did. I went over the whole frightful business, with a side dissertation on the theory of a fourth dimension. Then I went over it again. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck two. I summarized it again. I could see it beginning to penetrate to his submerged intellect. I went through it all a fourth time, and his murky gaze began to glow. The far-away clock struck three.
"'Ere," he said at last. "You ain't loony at all, are yer? Tell me agayn about them as is in it wiff yer."
"There's an old Colonel, a real big gun in his day, with pots of money. There's two veterans, gentlemen both, and one the son of a lord. There's a doctor with plenty of brains, and an old chap with more dignity than you ever saw in your misspent life. There's even a girl, a real lady. And there's me. Do you think we'd all be chucking our lives into this mess if we didn't know it was desperately real?"
He scratched his nose with a black nail. "No," he said, "no, you wouldn't. I can see as you're real clarss, ripper or no. What d'yer want of me, though? I'm plain dirt compared wiff you."
"Why, you were Manny Jarman's right-hand man," I said. "You haven't forgotten what it's like to be top dog?"
He was immensely flattered at that. "Thank you kindly, General. You sees deeper into a bloke than most. Go on."
"I've only a hazy idea of what I want you to do, Arold, when the time comes. But here's an important part of it. Could you find me a whole raft of fellows who'd be willing to commit murder for money, no questions asked?"
"Hell," he grinned, "could a cat find garbage cans?"
"They'd have to be given definite instructions, and be the kind of men who would carry them out to the letter. And no copper's narks, see? Nobody who'd take our cash and then squeal."
"I could do it," he said, thinking. "I could get bullies 'ere in Brummagem who'd cut their mothers' necks for three quid. And they could get others. Ow, trust Arold Smiff to find the right 'uns!"
"We might need a hundred."
"There's that many and more."
I was giving slow birth to a real plan now. "It might be that they'd have to go all over England, and do these murders in a hundred different places. And they'd have to do them in a certain manner you'd tell 'em about, see? No slipshod hatchet work, but well-planned assassinations."
"Might be harder to find them as would work precise to orders, but I could do it. I know every rogue in these parts, don'tcher doubt it, General."
"That's why you're so valuable, Arold: that's why you'll be my right-hand man. And only you and I must know that the men we'll be killing aren't truly men, but—"
"But oosluppers," agreed Arold, proud of the new word. "Oosluppers from the fourth demented, yus. Why, General, it's lyke a crusade, a bloody noble crusade, ain't it?"
"That's what we think, pal. But that part's a deep secret."
"Hot knives won't drag it outen me," he bragged. "Gawd, to think I been seein' these 'ere Frank and Stein's monsters for eight years more or less, and thought all the time it was the gin!" He made his apologies to the liquor by taking an enormous gulp of it.
"Now I've got to go away for a while, Arold," I told him. "I've got to travel all over this island, and collect some names. When I've done that I'll let you know. Meanwhile you can be lining up your lieutenants. With care, old horse, with the greatest care." Then it occurred to me that he had never asked what his reward would be. "You'll find yourself a rich man when this is over, Arold."
"Garn, what'd I do wiff a lot o' money? I don't need much but gin and a few comforts now and agayn, and maybe a bit o' cash to swank it wiff around town."
"You'll be able to build a swimming pool and fill it with Gordon's if you do your job right."
"Trust old Arold, General."
"I do," I said. "I do."
"That's damn near thanks enough," said he in a choked voice. There was a stratum of pretty fine stuff in Arold Smiff, besides the streak of sentimentality you'll usually find in your lower-class Briton.
"Now," I went on, "here's the plan. I'll go over it until we both know it word for word."
I sketched it out as it had come to me in this strange night of lengthy explanation. Then I repeated it, and re-repeated it, until I thought it would bubble out of our ears.
And when the clock rang five, we were nearly ready to begin. But first we laid ourselves down to sleep for a few hours, till the pubs had opened again; when we arose, and put on our coats, and sallied out together to commit a murder ... a most unpleasant but most necessary murder.
CHAPTER XII
I walked out of Birmingham alone, just before noon, heading for the bombed-out old building in which I had left the Jaguar, with my Gladstone bag locked in her dickey, or rumble seat. I had not carried any baggage with me into the city except my razor, toothbrush, knife and automatic, and my pipe.
It occurs to me that, since she played nearly as useful a part in my adventures as did my human colleagues, I should perhaps devote a moment to describing my black Jaguar. I had bought her late in 1937 for a matter of some four hundred pounds, and except for the war years, which she waited out in a barn near my home in Coventry, we had been inseparable ever since. She was one of the mighty Standard Swallow 100s, with a wonderfully reliable three-and-a-half-liter engine, and as I've said, I once clocked her at a hundred and fourteen m.p.h. and believed she could do more. She would go from a standstill to eighty m.p.h. in a matter of twenty-seconds, for her acceleration was ferocious. Yet she was the smoothest-riding jade I ever owned. Her brown leather upholstery had faded through the years to a rich old tan, but her heart was as young as ever. I had lavished on her the affection that might more properly have gone to a wife or a kennel of hounds; in my lonely careering about the countryside in these last days she had amply repaid me. She had been companion and steed and confidante to a very homesick man.
It was a clear day, with a promise of sultry heat to come that prickled my body with sweat under the old tweed suit. I tramped briskly along, thinking of Marion—I thought of her whenever I could, for her sweet face shut out the menacing usurpers from my mind—until I came in sight of the wrecked building. As I swung down the hill toward it, I heard voices raised in argument.
Cautiously I slowed a little, looking nonchalant and disinterested. I walked past the ruin and from the corner of my eye saw a number of men (and monsters) clustered around the Jaguar looking at her curiously. "Aye," said one of them, "that's his, right enough. Black Jaggiar, it says here on the prints." Two of them were constables. I ambled over.
Now this was a particularly idiotic thing to do, but I must plead extenuating circumstances. In the first place, I had just been a partner in the commission of a messy homicide, and was strung up as high as a barrage balloon. Secondly, I had been hardheaded and coldly practical for many hours—indeed, since the night of my last murder in Manchester I had not done an impetuous act, nor played the swaggering gambler with death for any stakes except the highest. It suddenly came to me that I must do a doughty deed, act the bold Quixote for once, to liven up my interest and tone up my reflexes. I was never born to be an ice-brained plotter, although I had been forced by fate into that uncongenial role. Rather for me the swirling cape and impetuous rapier, the big-plumed hat and gallant gesture, the fiery and slightly ridiculousbeau geste. So I ambled into the wrecked building.
The men (and monsters) turned to stare at me. I could see the great brutes of aliens turning orange and green with interest. I had learned that they often swelled and changed color when intrigued or alarmed. "Cheero," I said vacuously. "What's up?"
One of the group, a portly constable with a red face, eyed me dourly and said, "Stranger 'ereabouts, sir?"
"I'm on a walking tour," said I. "Just spent a night in Birming'm. Saw you chaps in a rum sweat over something, thought I'd have a dekko. Dashed sleek-lookin' car, what?"
"Ar," said the constable, observing my boots. They were stout and old, the very thing for a walking tour. "You know anything about motors, sir?"
"Me? Lord, no," said I. I then giggled, which pained him visibly. "I wouldn't touch one. Cousin owned one, name of Algy; cousin, you know, not the car. Turned over in a treacherous manner and simply squashed him like a bloomin' bug. What's up with this one?"
The monsters were scrutinizing me intently. I told myself that I needn't be afraid of their inspection: in addition to my quite ordinary features, which could scarcely have been described in much detail by their compatriot who had seen me, I was at the moment wearing the shell-rimmed spectacles which I ordinarily used only for reading, being far-sighted as an eagle. I had put them on a few moments before, just in case.
An alien said, leaning his human form toward me, "We think it may be the Manchester Slasher's."
If he thought to startle me into betraying myself, he was disappointed. I fluttered my hands and bleated. "Gad! Not that murderer chappie? The one who killed about ninety people up north?"
"Twenty, sir." The alien appeared to relax. "Yes, it fits the description, all right." He turned to another. "Tom, you'd best go and telegraph Manchester. Sam, you go with him and bring back another couple o' boys. We'll just lay us a trap."
I walked all about the Jaguar, prodding her bonnet and peering at the dashboard gingerly. "Deuced mysterious affairs, motors," I said. "Don't see how anyone can tell what gadget to push next."
"We're a-going to lay an ambush for this 'ere Slasher, sir, if you don't mind," said one of them.
"Hear, hear," I said. "Chop the blighter, what? Pip him in the early counties, right?"
"There's liable to be trouble, sir," insinuated another.
"Rather," I yammered. "Oh, rather."
"We'd like to get ready now,ifyou please, sir."
"Oh, absolutely. Carry on. Lay a snare for the wretched person, lads," said I heartily.
"You'd better leave now, sir," said the constable firmly. "Before there's trouble, you know. Wouldn't want to get hurt."
"Heavens, no," said I. "I say, officer, could I just sit in that seat a mo'? Give one something to boast of, what?"
"No, sir. There may be fingerprints in the thing."
"I won't touch a bally thing," I assured him, and as there was no one within six feet of me, I hopped in behind the wheel. At once they all shouted angrily; but there was no suspicion of me yet. It is the firm belief of the lower-middle classes that anyone who bleats and says "bally" and "dashed" is a regular Bertie Wooster character and as harmless as a sheep, although somewhat less attractive. "Come out o' that, sir!" yelled the constable.
"Just want to get the feel of it, you know," said I reassuringly. "Want to tell old Algy I sat in what's-his-name's seat."
"I thought you said Algy was killed in a wreck."
"That was Algy Witherspoon, my cousin," I told him reproachfully, secretly extracting the ignition key from my pocket. "This is young Algy Pope, myothercousin. Regular ripping chappy on murders and all that, Algy is. Tell you all about Crippen, and whoozis that did in his maiden aunt over at that little place in Sussex, and all such bloody—pardon the expression—goin's-on. Likes birds, too. Sits about in swamps watchin' them. Deuced rum feller."
Suspicion must have dawned just about then.Theymoved toward me, while the humans still hesitated. I slid the key in under cover of my bent body, chortling something inane about the mythical Algy, and stepped on the clutch. A hand was laid heavily on my shoulder. The Jaguar leaped backwards at the same instant, hit someone who reeled away with a scream, rocked crazily over the rubble and struck the road. I twisted her madly around, waved my hand in an appropriately cavalier-like manner, and sped off south-eastward on the great road that leads to London. Shouts of rage followed me. I patted the Jaguar's wheel. "Everything's all right, baby," I said. "Old Will is back. It'll all be all right now."
I devoutly hoped that it would be.
CHAPTER XIII
It is a hundred and fifteen or twenty miles from Birmingham to London. Having gambled the fate of the world on a silly trick, and won back my two-seater from the very hands of the law and of the usurpers, I was wonderfully bouyed up; and decided to go down to my gang's headquarters and tell them all the new developments. I was aching to talk to someone ... preferably Marion.
In half an hour I had left Birmingham and then Coventry far behind me, and was feeling pretty safe, as there had been no signs of pursuit. Then, just as I roared into some cursed little hamlet along the route—I don't even know its name—a great black motor dashed out of a lane ahead of me and blocked the way. I saw it was crammed to the roof withthem; knew that this was no accidental barrier, but a contingent of the enemy, either lawful or of the misbegotten underground of the beasts; and without pausing ran the Jaguar up over the curb, squeezed through between their car and the wall of a shop, rocketed on two wheels back into the road and trod the accelerator down to the floor. The black job was after me in a flash. We howled through that hamlet like a pair of greased lightning bolts.
They gave me only a few bad minutes: when we hit the open road I drew away as though—to coin a stunning simile—they had been standing still. But even when their dust was no more than a puff on the horizon, I gnawed my lips and worried. My course was known, and the telegraphs and telephones would be crackling far in advance of me. Yet doggedly, and perhaps rather stupidly, I held to this main road until I had come nearly to St. Albans, for I could eat up the miles so swiftly on decent paving that it gave me the illusion of outrunning my enemies. At last, just before the old cathedral town, I turned off and lost myself in the network of country byways.
Evening was closing in when at last I rolled the black lass to a halt at a garage in the south of London. The owner was an old mate of mine with whom I'd seen a lot of action in the war. What lies I told him don't matter: suffice it that in three minutes the Jaguar was stowed in a dark corner of his big shed, and he had contracted to paint her a deep red hue by next afternoon ... and to keep quiet about her. Gladstone in hand, I then set out for The Gray Gander. I told myself that (a) I would be less conspicuous there than at the toney Gloucester Club or the exclusive Albany, (b) although three of my men were billeted at the latter place, Alec Talbot was the most able of the whole band, despite his single arm, and he was at the inn, (c) I did not want to be seen by any of the aliens who knew me—I hardly realized why, but I had the creepy feeling thattheywould somehow penetrate my secret—and on the single occasion when I had visited the Gander, I had seen none of the beast-folk. Finally I admitted to myself that these reasons were so much rot, and actually (d) Marion Black was drawing me like an irresistible whirlpool draws a chip of flotsam.
I went up to Alec's room, closed the door behind me, and fell on his bosom. He beat me on the back and gurgled wordlessly. I beat him on the back and sputtered idiotically. It was a grand reunion.
"Where's Marion?" I asked.
"I'll get her." He dashed out and brought her back. When she came into the room, lighting it up like a sunburst in a cavern, I took her in my arms and kissed her long and well.
"Marion, will you marry a poor devil who loves you in a humble but most passionate manner?"
"After one kiss?" asked Alec blankly. "Justonekiss?"
"Certainly," she said. "That can be remedied."
"Oh, Lord, not immediately," groaned Alec, as we began to do so. "Let him tell us where in hell he's been for seventeen years. Let him relieve my mind."
I ended the second kiss with a splutter. "Good God! I can't ask you to marry me, dearest. I—come and sit down—I'm a murderer."
"You can't call it murder, son, to chop an inhuman monster," said Alec.
"But I'm wanted by every policeman in the Kingdom. You see, I'm the Manchester Slasher."
I don't know what reaction I expected of Marion ... the pale cheek, the indrawn gasp, the expression of loathing and fear ... as a matter of fact, she clapped her hands and laughed.
"You owe Geoff ten bob, Alec!" she cried.
"Huh?" said I.
"Geoff bet Alec ten shillings that you were the Mad Ghoul. He said—" she became serious—"he said that one just couldn't give a man the power to see such nightmares as you've been seeing, and expect him to keep a cool head and not strike at them. He said he had wild bursts of fury himself when he thought ofthem, and knew if he could see them, he'd start a reign of terror."
"I thought you'd draw back with abhorrence," I said.
She threw her arms around me. "Oh, Will, poor old Will! My Uncle Geordie was a big game hunter, and I think he was a much more reprehensible character than you. After all, darling, the beasts you're stalking are far worse than any innocent old family-man of a lion."
"Say," put in Alec, "something's been puzzling me. Why haven't the coppers spotted the license of your Jaguar? It's famous, you know—on the wireless every hour these days."
"Oh, my dear chap! I stole a set of plates off a big Daimler before I ever left London. You're dealin' with a hardened crook." I told them how I had rescued her from the hands of the enemy in Birmingham. "It was the serial numbers on her innards that worried me. Except for them, though, she couldn't be traced to me." I kissed my girl again. Her lips were like a drug, that drew me back again and again for larger doses.
Alec clucked his tongue. "Most un-English!"
"See here, chum: you trot out and collect the lads. Have 'em come here unobtrusively by ones and twos, and we'll have a council of war."
"Oh, all right, if you don't want an appreciative audience to make funny remarks at appropriate places." He slapped on his hat and went out, while I returned to Marion's embrace. For a little while I could forget the whole abominable race of beast-people, the dire venture before me, and everything else except the incredible fact that she returned what I had always considered my hopeless love.
CHAPTER XIV
It was grand to see my half-dozen sub rosa crusaders gathered together again, sitting expectantly on sofas and chairs in Alec's room, watching me with friendship and love. What a tonic those comradely faces were! I drank a silent, sentimental toast to them, and began my yarn.
First I told them of Arold Smiff, the cheap, crooked, gin-soaked little man, who had taken his last bath in 1922; the man who could see the usurpers as well as I could. That roused them to gleeful vociferance, which I squashed with a bark. "Quiet, will you! I'm half starved—haven't had a bite since breakfast. I want to get this done, so I can go and eat a good dinner.
"You know that when I left you I could see just one dismal possibility—a long campaign of slaughter, slaughter, slaughter. But when I met Arold, a plan grew up in my mind—"
"Like a lovely flower in a swamp," murmured Geoff. "Sorry. Pray continue."
"The whole plan," I growled, "is about nine-tenths sheer bluff; but I think it may work. Here it is: first, I travel around the country and collect a hundred names; the names of usurpers whose human shells have had more or less spectacular careers. Not those born to the purple, but those who've come up like rockets, self-made men who've climbed to posts of importance in politics, the law, and elsewhere. I've seen a number of big shots of that sort who are nothing really but robots moved by slimy misshapen blobs ... and I've deduced (pardon the Holmesian expression) that the important members of their loathsome breed are probably those who rise to take over important positions in this world. That allows 'em to protect and to advance their secret cause."
"How?"
"By passing certain laws, and—well, here's an example. One of them commits some crime, perhaps inadvertently.Theydon't want him to get chucked into prison, where he'd be no use to them in furthering the birth rate. So a were-policeman, to coin a name, will let him escape; or a were-judge will set him free. Get the poisonous subtlety of it? They work themselves into posts where they can help each other to the top of their bent. Even on the lower levels, they're often bartenders and hotel-keepers, who can pass quick word of developments, and so forth. It's as if a lot of Nazis had become lawyers and judges and M.P.s here during the late fracas, and from their exalted seats had protected whole battalions of lesser spies when they ran afoul of the cops."
"I see," said the Colonel. "That's logic."
"So it stands to reason that, if I want to put a great big crimp in their plans, I have to chop a slice off the top of their organization, rather than out of the bottom. I slew a score of 'em while I was the Manchester Slasher, but those were common low folk whom I can't see as especially important to the general plan of the usurpers. They got very peeved about me, but it was nothing to the way they'd have acted had I murdered twenty judicial were-people, or twenty husks of Members of Parliament. My score of twenty lower-case aliens might have been accidental, but twenty upper-crusters wouldn't be. And a hundred will make them sit up and scream like hell.
"You can't hire decent men to commit pointless assassinations, so of course I was handicapped until I met Arold Smiff. In fact, I never even thought ofhiringkillers, until that night when I found that he could see 'em too. Then the dawn flashed up. Youcanpay professional rogues to commit murders, and no questions asked. So I deputized Arold to go out and collect a hundred scoundrels for me: the most reliable riffraff available, men who would, as he says, do in their old mothers for a chew of tobacco. He's to pay them ten pounds apiece in advance, with a promise of ten more when the business is done. Then, on a certain night, and within a period of a few hours, they're to strike all over England—and slay these usurpers I'll have collected in my little black book. I understand that the underworld looks with disfavor on a gentleman who collects a fee from a brother crook and then doesn't deliver the goods, so I believe that most of these cutthroats will keep faith and comply with his instructions."
"How do you know this Smith won't do a bunk with your money?" asked Doctor Baringer cynically. "After all, a common thief—"
"Not common," said I loyally. "He was Manny Jarman's right-hand man."
"Who in blazes is, or was, Manny Jarman?"
"Haven't the foggiest, John ... anyhow, Arold's been promised a lot of cash if he comes through; he's enthralled with the scheme, for after all he's been seeing these pink and crimson cacodemons since the early '40s; lastly, and maybe most important, he knows I'm the Manchester Slasher, and in his heart of hearts he's scared white of me. I felt no qualms at all about giving him eleven hundred quid."
Alec whistled. "What a wad!"
"Nearly all I had with me. It's a lucky thing some of us are loaded with the ready, for this affair will cost like sin.
"Then, after our pogrom, I call one oftheirbigwigs and tell him to meet me somewhere, with as many of his pals as he wants to bring. I say to 'em, 'Gents, you've just seen a sample of my power. I've reached out and obliterated a hundred of you, and they weren't any small potatoes either, but some o' your finest. You realize I didn't snag 'em all by myself; you're no village idiots. Those killings were done by a hundred chaps who canseeyou. We struck at you all over England. In a few days, another hundred of you get it—and some of you here now are on that list. Couple days later, a hundred and fifty. Then two hundred. And we'll go on knocking you over regularly, working from the top down, till there aren't any of your breed left here, and damned good riddance to filthy bad rubbish, too.'
"Then I make my point. 'The nub of the thing is this: we want you to go home. Pick up your kilts and vamoose. Beat it. This world isn't your world, and by heavens you'd better leave it while the leaving is good. Otherwise you're sunk. You can murder me now,' I tell 'em generously, 'but there's plenty more where I came from. We've perfected a system of warping our vision, and every day there are more of us who can see you in all your ugliness. You can't beat us, because we're the best underground organization that ever existed; and last night's massacre proves it. Till now you had no idea we even existed. Did you?' And they have to admit they didn't, because we don't."
"How's that again, Will?"
"Never mind. Anyway, then they think it over, and if we're in luck, they decide the hell with it, and go home."
"Leaving thousands of suddenly dead bodies, and incredible misery and sorrow among the friends of their puppets," said Geoff. "Oh, I'm with you. That's our whole objective, to rid ourselves of them. But it just hit me: what a lot of tears will be shed because we stepped into this matter."
"Shall we turn back now?"
"Don't drivel. Only ... great merciful powers!" He drank from his glass, his hand shaking. "What will we wreak!"
"Do you think it'll work, Will?" asked Marion quietly.
"It's the biggest bluff of all time, darling. But it must work!" I paused. "There's one big factor. I've hinted at it—here it is. We've always taken it for granted that when the human body dies, the usurper simply goes back to his own world and begins again by getting himself born into a new husk here. Jerry Wolfe figured that out originally, and we've accepted his theory as gospel. But I submit that it needn't be true. I don't know why I ever thought it was. How do we know what happens to the monster when its hull of human flesh dies? How do we know that it's only the puppet which perishes? Echo answers:we don't know. Maybe the aliens are so bound to their false humans in this dimension that when the bodies die, the aliens must die too. What's so impossible about that? After all, I've told you thattheyhaven't any powers here except those of the bodies they inhabit. God knows what they can do in their own never-never land—but here, they're little better than so many natural-born people. And if they're that restricted, that much identified with these puppets, maybe even their death is mutual."
I cleared my throat and took a drink of Scotch. "What happened when I killed my first ogre? I went to a pub with Geoff and watched. Pretty soon all the beasts sittin' there started to flap their arms at one another and turn different colors, and then a lot of them got up and left. Aha, yes, I said to myself, the gorgon who got his has gone around behind the dimension-screen telling his chums about it. But I was arguing from a false premise. I was basing my ideas on what I believed to be a fact—yet that fact hadn't been proven at all, and probably couldn't be proven this side of the silver land!"
"Nor disproven," put in Alec.
"But I can show you more to disprove it than you can dig up to prove it! What happens when I assassinate an alien? His human vehicle croaks, while he himself swells up, turns a vivid horrid hue, and goes pop. I submit that that looks more like the death of the alien itself than a simple relegation to another region.
"But I thinktheycan leave this world voluntarily, in which case they go on living in their own. Lord knows how long a life expectancy they've got, over there. Maybe their time is different from ours, so that the life of a man occupies no more than a fraction of a day in the silver land; the theft of a body and the puppeteering of it from womb to tomb may be no more than an hour's vicious pastime for an alien."
"I've been thinking of that," said Geoff slowly. "I see this whole business as a kind of fierce joke on their part, the slow and sly winning of a world from its unseeing inhabitants. So perhaps they'll leave us if their lives are endangered—perhaps the joke may not be worth dying for."
"All this," interrupted John Baringer testily, "is off the track, and really no more than so much anthropomorphism. How can a man finally and definitely statewhatare the purposes of a pack of inhuman beings? Go on, Will."
"Well, to prove my new theory, Arold and I went out to a pub this morning. We chose a frightful creature that was doing some solitary drinking, and Arold, who's a whizzer of a lad at such matters, slipped some slow poison into his liquor.
"We watched him die, in the throes of agony, which was taken by all the other denizens of the pub for simple indigestion or appendicitis. It took him twelve minutes to die on the floor. I timed him.
"The first three minutes he just writhed and changed colors and shot off angry sparks. He didn't know he was dying. I refer to the real entity, not the human part. Obviously he could feel the pain—they must be able to, otherwise they'd give themselves away by not making the human body jump when it's stuck with a pin, or sits on a hot stove, or whatnot—you can see that. Well, after those three minutes, he seemed to wake up to the fact that this was it. Immediately he started to leave this dimension. It was the damndest sight I ever laid eye on. It was like a man trying to haul himself out of quick-sand or heavy muck. The beast wrenched upward, and jerked back, and did what in any normal being would be called shrugging his shoulders, for all the world as if he was mired in something and wanted to get out. He had an awful time of it. Took him seven minutes and fifteen seconds. But at last he made it.
"He oozed back and away from that twisting body on the floor. He stood there, weaving and trembling, and I'll bet he was sweating, too, iftheydo any such prosaic thing as sweat. He was entirely divorced from the husk—which lived, mind you, for more than a minute after he'd left it. But as soon as he'd stepped away, he began to fade, and within three or four seconds he had vanished. At any rate, from my sight, and Arold's."
I signaled to Alec to fill my glass. "That's why I think they die when I murder them: because of the time it took that critter to get loose from his puppet. He was scared. I could feel it, just as I can feel their ordinary waves of hatred and abominable passions. I could sense the terror that filled that usurping bastard when he knew his husk was dying. He was purely scared to hell! Why? Why, unless he knew he'd die in both worlds if he couldn't rid himself of the shell before it perished?"
I sighed. I was tired of this whole rotten business, and light-headed from the liquor on my empty stomach. I said, "It was what I'd wanted to discover, why we poisoned the thing. I'd recalled that every alien death I'd seen, every one Jerry Wolfe saw, had been sudden and quick. I'd realized that there were no data on slow deaths. I had to have some. I got it. And I say, it's two to onetheydie when the human part dies, unless they have plenty of time to get away from it. That's the reason I think they'll leave us voluntarily, in a terrific hurry, when they think there's a whole crew of seers after 'em. They don't like death any more than we do. Death's a queer, an uncanny thing. Nothing that I know in nature likes to die."
"But how did the aliens in those pubs of yours learn so quickly about the killings, if the one who was killed—I mean the one—" Marion frowned angrily—"if the one who'd been relegated didn't go around behind the scenes and tell them?"
"Oh, dear girl!" shouted Geoff. "Messengers! Errand boys! The pony express of the silver land!"
"That's it," said I. "That's what we never thought of. There must be plenty ofthemwho don't have human bodies at all, and move freely in their own dimension. What's to keep them from spreading the word to their comrades when one dies?"
"Will, you've hit it," the Colonel said. "They die here. It's probable, it's the best news yet, and if it's true, the bluff will work."
"And now that I've lectured you for an hour," I said, reaching for Marion's hand, "let's go out to the best restaurant within walking distance, and have us a monstrous dinner. I could eat the proverbial horse."
"There's a place within two blocks where they give you a delightful Percheron steak," said Alec. "Let's travel."
CHAPTER XV
We ate a noble meal, sat long over the port, and came out into a deep July night canopied with a velvet turquoise sky in which the full moon was riding high. We began to stroll along, talking of inconsequential things; at the corner of Baker Street we split up, the others heading for their own digs, while Alec and Marion and I went toward the inn. As we passed beneath a lamp, I happened to glance over my shoulder. I do not know to this day whether I heard the footsteps, or sensed the hate-aura of the beast, or perhaps was warned by the primitive instincts that I had been developing through the past weeks of terror; whatever caused it, I peered back down the street, and saw one of the aliens following us. In the moonlight his human body was a dark form within an envelope of gray-blue mist.
Coincidence, I told myself, angry to feel the sweat leap out on my face and palms. Nonetheless, I had a second look in a moment, just as the thing was walking under the lamp. I was rewarded by a strange sight: in the flood of brilliant light I saw the puppet-body of the man all stark and clear and black, with the distorted form of the usurper about it flaming like a gaudy, transparent rainbow. It was an awesome spectacle, and sent the cauld grue racing up my backbone.
"Alec," I hissed from the corner of my mouth. "I'm going to stop in a minute. Take a good look at the bloke that's following us."
Then we halted, and to give us an excuse, I took out a cigarette and lit it. The monster passed us. I thought the moon-grayed protoplasm had a tinge of orange, which might indicate deep interest on the being's part, but I could not be sure. When it was out of hearing I said, "Anyone we know?"
"It's a man from the restaurant," said Marion. "I noticed him looking at us as we ate. I thought he was flirting with me."
"He gave you a damn hard stare, Will," said Alec.
"Jerusalem!" I growled. "May be a coincidence, but—he's one ofthem... and I let him have a ruddy good look at me with that match!"
"Could he have chased you from up north?"
"No, no. Nobody followed me on the roads I took, son. But he and his gang have my description." I threw away the cigarette angrily. "'Course, I look like anybody else, but—"
"You do not!" protested Marion. "You're very handsome, for one thing."
Alec laughed briefly. "Well, maybe not that, Will, but you are individual enough to be spotted from a good description."
I was astonished. I had never thought so. I said, "We've got to be careful, then. Can't let him see us go into The Gray Gander."
We walked past our inn. The creature had disappeared. We went on a short distance, and then I felt from the prickling of the hair on my neck that he was behind us again.
So began a game of cat and mice, which took us around corners and fleeing through alleys until at last I felt we had lost our silent pursuer, and with a sigh we entered our tavern.
I was awakened next morning, as I slept uneasily on Alec's couch, by Doctor John Baringer. He was puffing a pipe and grinning, but his eyes were shadowed. "What's up?" I asked.
"Everybody but you ... Will, there's a lashing of people about in Baker Street. I don't know why I noticed 'em, especially, but they're there—just standing or sauntering, watching folk pass. It struck me queerly, and Alec tells me you were followed last night."
I started to dress hurriedly. "Do they look like policemen?"
"I wouldn't say so," John mused. "They're just ordinary people, men and women both, standing in the sun. I can't say I like it."
"Nor I. Are they concentrated near the inn?"
"No. Within a block or two, though; I didn't begin to notice them till I'd passed that restaurant where we ate last night."
Alec came in. "You were right," he said to John. "By God, you were right! Forty or more, loitering ... Will's got to get out."
"Will's got to lie low," snapped the physician. "They obviously don't know just which building he's hiding in. He'll have to stop here until the fiends give up."
"Or at least until I can slip out at night," I said. "I say! Does it occur to you that the blighters now haveallour descriptions? We were under observation last night for an hour or two! Call—"
Alec was already pouncing on the phone. He rang through to the Albany, spoke ten words, and hung up with a long face. "The Colonel and Geoff are out. That means they're headed here. Too late! By the powers, we're dished!"
"Maybe not," I said hopefully. "It could be coincidence."
"And I could be the Lost Dauphin of France," said Alec gloomily. He put in a call to the Gloucester Club, got hold of Johnson, and told him to stay there till he heard from us. Then we waited, fretting, for Geoff and the Colonel: who came in blithely at ten.
We sat there, staring at one another morbidly, and argued and plotted futilely through a dragging, hot hour or two. It was dreadfully hard to decide on a plan, for now it was not a question of getting me out of London, but of finding a haven for all of us.
"You've got to collect a hundred names, if you hope to put that affair of yours through," said Geoff, chewing his pipestem. "You can't do that sittin' here on your well-cushioned behind. Your chum Arold will be gathering his ragtag army in Brummagem, and you've got to be ready to use 'em. Look here! Why not we form a flying wedge and bust you out o' here right now? If they're not coppers—and they didn't smell like the law to me when we passed 'em—they won't stop six of us in broad daylight. Wouldn't dare. We'll take Alec's Rolls and ditch them. Then we'll split up out of London, and you can put on a false beard and go it alone, if you like, or with one of us as sidekick. How's that sound?"
"I don't want to leap into it with both feet," I said. "Let's wait it out a bit. Maybe there's nothing in it. Maybe those people simply like to loiter in Baker Street. Maybe they're tourists, watching for Watson and Holmes." Dismal worries about the safety of Marion and my friends were crowding my mind, preventing rumination.
So we argued until luncheon, which we ordered sent up to the room; after which John went out to reconnoitre. He was soon back.
"Still there! There's no mistake, they're watching for you, Will. I couldn't be sure, but they may have noticed me, too." He scowled. "I hope not ... but they're clever as sin."
So, mainly because I was too unsure of myself to risk a bold move such as Geoff had suggested, we waited out the first half of the afternoon in the rooms of The Gray Gander. And nothing happened at all.
CHAPTER XVI
At three o'clock or thereabouts, there was a knock at the door. We all "stared at each other with a wild surmise," and then Colonel Bedford resolutely flung it open. I was sitting on a footstool beside Marion's chair, in such a position that I could not see the stranger; who said in an oily, semi-cultured tone, "Good day, sir! I'm making a survey—"
"Step in," said our old soldier. "Step right in, sir."
"Oh, no, I shan't bother you now, as I see you're having a bit of a gathering," said the unctuous voice. "I'll call round la—"
At this point the Colonel took him firmly by the lapels of his coat. Alec said afterwards that he never saw astonishment spread over a face so quickly. The man's mouth remained open in the middle of the word. The Colonel, a man of action who had been bottled up too long, now picked up our caller and genially hurled him halfway across the room. He slammed the door and turned the key, took it out of the lock and pocketed it with a sinister grin. Then he, as well as most of the other lads, gave me a brief inquiring glance. I nodded. It was one of the beast-folk.
"'Ere!" said that one, losing his pseudo-cultured accents. "Wot's the idear, sloshing a chap about!"
"Stow it," said the Colonel. "We can see you, you know. No use keeping up a pretense, old troll!"
Good for the Colonel!
"That's right," said I. "For the record, you're a lumpy-looking piece of dough, greenish-orange, with a tinge of maroon at the moment because you're mad. Madder'n usual, I mean. You blighters live in a constant state of ire, don't you?" Then I bellowed. "Stop him!" for the brute was edging toward the window. Alec picked up a small chair and tossed it at his legs, and as he tripped and went to his knees, John tapped him lightly but sternly on the head with a big glass ashtray. The alien sat cross-legged on the floor and glared wickedly at us, its true body quaking and shivering with wrath. "Well?" it said, through its robot's mouth. "Well?"
"First off," said I, strolling over to it and keeping a careless attitude tight-drawn about a wildly beating heart, "you'll answer us a few questions. Then ... we'll see."
"Idon'tthink," said the other.
It was brutal, but entirely excusable. I picked him off the floor—he was a slight, insignificant fellow—and hit him squarely on the nose. He catapulted backwards with a howl. Alec thoughtfully kicked him in the stomach.
"The idea, you see," I told him, "is to hurt you badly, but to keep you alive. For a while, anyway. And if you try that again," I roared, for the beast had given a kind of preliminary shrug of its real form in preparation for leaving this dimension, "if you make one more move like that, I'll murder you instanter—and you'll die, both you and that poor shell of yours. Won't you?"
It nodded sullenly. Its great amorphous being settled down into itself quietly, as the human massaged his stomach.
"Whereas," I went on, "if you're good, and answer a few queries,maybeI'll let you go back into the silver land of your own free will, before I slay that husk you've appropriated."
It watched me for a while, speculating. Then it said hoarsely, "Which of you is Robert Hood of Manchester? You?" pointing at me.
"That's right, chum."
"How did you find him?" asked Geoff. "How'd you follow him?"
The brute turned its marionette's head toward our blind companion, sneered, and said nothing. I would not have this draff, this other-world swine, sneering at Geoff; I lashed out and knocked him galley-west. Sniveling, he crawled up onto a straight-backed chair and sat there, peering round at us until his eyes lit on Marion.
"'Ere, miss," he whined, "you won't see 'em beat a poor chap to death, will you? I've done you no harm...."
I was proud of my girl then. I had been afraid our battering of the beast would set her teeth on edge; but she leaned forward and spat invective into its face. "You foul, filthy spawn of a Gadarene hog! I'd see you sliced to fringes, and laugh for joy!"
It sank back and regarded the carpet bleakly.
"How'd you follow the Slasher?" asked Geoff again.
"We all had his description. It was known he was in or near London. Then he was seen in a restaurant nearby. Our comrade lost him in Baker Street. We've been searching ever since." The voice was now too expressionless even to be called cold. "The others will find you. It doesn't matter what you do to me."
"Aha," I snapped, "except toyou! We can feel your fear, you know." It was true; he was loathsomely afraid. It gave me a good feeling, one of renewed confidence, to realize afresh that the usurpers were not omnipotent godlings, but beings who, like any others, could know fear. Again I thought I saw the thing pull himself up surreptitiously, like a man caught in the mire; and again I slapped his head sideways till his jaws grated. He stopped it.
"Next," said the Colonel, "what are you doing here? Your race, I mean. What d'you want with this earth? It isn't yours, damnit."
The beast looked at him. Then it laughed. Somehow it managed to get a shade of the horror of its own being into the vocal chords of the puppet, and the laugh was icy. It did not answer.
So the Colonel and Alec and I worked it over. We formed a triangle, like bullies persecuting a small boy, and threw it from one to the other, not really injuring it, but slapping its face and pummeling it until it shrieked hysterically. Then we let it sink to the floor, and we tried again.
"What are you doing here?"
I had been afraid that we would never find this out, or that, if one of them told us, we would not be able to understand; perhaps the concept, the point of view, would seem as wild and bizarre and incredible astheythemselves. But as it began to speak now, I found that its motives, those of all its uncanny race, were as plain and nearly human as could be.
"We found your land by accident," it said, nursing its head in its hands and speaking without inflection or accent. "I do not know how long ago it was by your standards. I think a long time. One of our people by a mischance of a kind I cannot describe in the words of your language was born into your dimension in conjunction with an infant of your race. When you are all dead, and we are the sole owners of both our dimensions and yours, and write history books here for our amusement even as you have done for your own, that chance birth will be hailed as joyfully and reverently as you hail the—discovery of America."
"Dashed if I hailthatreverently," murmured the Colonel. "Bloomin' colonials ... go on."
"I wonder if you can imagine with what delight our people greeted the discovery? How far can you see into our plane?"
I saw no harm in answering that. "Not far. Just a background of silver-blue lines at an angle."
"That is it. A silver land." Evidently they had the same color perception as we; a surprising but not wholly unthinkable fact. "Nowhere is there color or change of form or beauty, save in our own bodies. Your earth burst on our ken with such a wealth of beauty and such opportunities for pleasure as we had never dreamt of. At once we began to infiltrate, in the guise of normal humans; at first only by the route of births stemming from that original accident, then afterwards by births regulated and controlled from our plane, by methods you could not comprehend, which once discovered freed us from the necessity of waiting endlessly to be born into a body that had descended from that original fortuitous 'sport.' I believe that in terms of your space-time continuum, this discovery of ours has been quite recent."
I grew pale and cold at his words.
For—if true—this meant that the beast-folk could make a wholesale invasion of our dimension at any time! The brute saw me, and laughed again.
"Exactly. You are beaten. Indeed, you never had a chance, but now you have less than none. We are an advance guard, who have prepared the way for all the others of our race who will one day inhabit bodies on your plane. We have felt you out, tested your power to resist—which has been practically nil, my friend, with the exception of your own feeble and haphazard efforts—and spread out over this island until we are more numerous than you can imagine. But with the new method of coming in, there is no longer a need for infiltrating into high offices and key government positions, as we have so laboriously done before; for, my friend, D-Day is at hand."
He folded his arms and chuckled once more, icily, hideously. "Quite soon now, we will come into this dimension in one great wave that will obliterate your race as though the stars had never shone upon it at all! Every birth in the world shall be one of our robots—and then, no matter how you struggle and fume and plot, your people are doomed! Then, no matter how hard you fight, you will lose, for your species will ultimately die of old age!"
In the silence that followed this burst of ghoulish amusement, I heard someone who was going by in Baker Street whistling the Bronze Horse Overture, one of my favorites ... oddly, irrelevantly, I considered it a good omen, and was cheered. Then Geoff spoke.
"Just put my hands on his throat, somebody, will you?"
"Not yet, son. Go on, ogre. Why will you murder a whole race? Just for amusement? Just so you can see colors and pretty forms?"
"Yes. That simple a reason. And because we hate you, for that you have inherited a world of such perfections and do not appreciate it. To see colors, to revel in sounds and scents and tastes we had never imagined; to feel the vicarious ecstasy of these robots in acts you take for granted—acts of feeding, of drinking, of viewing and touching, of sex, which we do not have in our proper forms in any fashion whatever. We envy you, and hate you. We want your world, even if we must take its tactile delights vicariously—which is not so second-best as it sounds, for these robots are in a sense ourselves as much as our own bodies are. You who are born to this wondrousness—can you claim you properly appreciate it? Or will you admit that you have held it lightly and unthinkingly for as many generations as you can count?"
"Well, I'll be a devaluated pound," gasped Alec. "Will you listen to the conceited son-of-a-bitch!"
"Another question," I said to the beast. "How do—"
It was done almost before I could blink. He made a sudden break for the windows, one arm raised to smash the glass so that he could shout down to the street. Two feet short of his goal he ran into Alec's good right hand, swung round like the head of a short-hafted axe. He dropped with a crash.
"No use inspecting the body," I said. "His real shape blew up like a paper bag and went blam. I guess you broke his neck. He's dead."
Geoff stood up and said matter-of-factly, "Well, we'd best be going, what? If someone will just find my pipe for me, I'm ready."
"Wail till I toss a few things into my purse," said Marion. "Can't expect a gal to flee without a lipstick, can you?"
I stared at Alec, who nodded. It was time for us to be on the wing.
CHAPTER XVII
After three or four minutes of stuffing useful things into our pockets and a couple of overnight bags, we went downstairs to the ground floor; turning toward the back door, we ran smack into a sentinel of the usurpers. He wavered, then stepped aside as we strode toward him. I did not want to make a scene in The Gander, so waited until we stood in the lane behind the inn before I told them we had been seen.
"Never thought we wouldn't be," said the Colonel. "Where's the garage, Alec?"
It was directly opposite the rear of the inn. We went in and, unmolested, packed ourselves into the great red Rolls. "Whither?" said I, taking over the wheel.
"The Albany. I've guns there we'll need before we're much older."
"Then to the Gloucester," said Alec, "for Johnson."
I swung out into the lane and nearly ran down an alien, who leaped squeaking out of the way. Now they knew what our car looked like. I didn't care. We seemed to be in over our heads already.
"Do you know that in an hour or two we'll be much-wanted fugitives from the horrid vengeance of Scotland Yard?" I asked as we reared downtown. "We left a corpse on the floor of Alec's sitting room, with enough of our gear lying around to identify us all. My God! We're acting like a pack of heedless cretins. We should have stayed and made a plan."
"Hark to the Manchester Slasher!" shouted Geoff. "Why, my dear old cloth-head, the late lamented's buddies would have been on us in force in less than two ticks. Have you forgotten that somewhere in their dimension, at a spot approximating the location of Alec's flat, there's a dead beast-critter? Their pony express would ha' found him first thing. We had to run. And I didn't hear you objectin', when we snatched up Marion's intimate garments and Alec's dirty socks, to doing a bunk."
"My mind seems to be running ten minutes behind time," I said, skirting a corner and just missing a little old lady.
"Also there's this," put in the doctor. "We could never have gotten rid of the body, buttheycould, and I believe they will. They know now there's at least half a dozen of us in this business. Do you think they'll want us brought to trial? Granted that our story would sound like half a ton of wet fish ... would they want it spread on the front pages? After all, they can tell by our looks we're solid citizens. Wemightget some credence from the police—the last thingtheywould want. I think they'll quietly haul away that body, and set out on our trail by themselves. The time for worrying about the law is over, as I see it. There's too many of us. It wouldn't be like hauling up just one ripper with a mad story; it would mean publicity in every paper in Christendom—willtheyrisk that?"
"Good for you, John," I said. "You're right. It's them and us now."
We drew up at the Albany. Leaving Geoff and Marion in the car, the four of us hurried to the Colonel's rooms and began a systematic collection of weapons, even including a set of ancient Khattar daggers and a couple of pig-sticking spears which were part of a collection Bedford had made in India. Into a Gladstone we stuffed bottles of brandy and whisky, a first aid kit, such items of clothing as we'd need in our flight, and what looked like seven years' supply of ammunition. Down again and through the lobby we went, trying to look like eccentrics who habitually carried sporting rifles, elephant guns and pig-sticking lances under our arms when we ambled through the city; piled the stuff onto the floor of the tonneau, wedged in once more, ran down to the Gloucester to get Sergeant Johnson, and took the road out of London to the east. As the sun was setting we left the last suburb behind, and came to the quiet open countryside.
"Where now?" I asked.
"The castle?" suggested Geoff. "It's as good a hideout as any."
So, after a vote, we struck out for Exeter Castle.
CHAPTER XVIII
It was dark when we passed through Exeter Parva. So far as we could tell, there had been no pursuit; nevertheless I felt nervous and on edge, remembering what titanic forces were arrayed against us.
The elms and oaks and chestnuts whispered among themselves as we unloaded our gear and hauled it through the great iron-banded door to stack it in the empty hall. I was standing in the doorway looking at the dark groves and the moors beyond, when Marion touched my arm.
"Don't jump like that, boy! I only wanted to ask what you're gazing at so fiercely."
"The trees. They're like so many ghosts ... darling, I feel as though we'd walked into the dim and haunted past. This might be Glamis Castle itself."
She seized my hand and for the first time in the whole adventure I knew she was afraid. "I think it's a trap," she said. "Oh, Will, I can't say anything to the others—after all, there's nowhere else to go—but I don't like this place!"
"It's not what you'd call cheerful."
"It's a great box propped up with bait under it, and now that we've walked under it, it's going to drop over us. Don't listen. I'm only scared. That awful man, this afternoon, telling us their damnable plan in that cool way—I feel like Peter Rabbit, nibbling on a cabbage leaf while the farmer cocks his shotgun."
"Pass me one of those cabbage leaves, Pete," I said. "I'm hungry!" Which set her giggling, and broke the evil spell.
Lugging our weapons and bags, we followed the Colonel up the big curved staircase and down the dank passage to our old quarters. We lit a lamp or two; the familiar furniture sprang out of darkness, and my gaze fell first on the table to which the Tower musket had once been clamped. That seemed half a century ago. I dropped my pig-stickers and rifles on the table. "Let's hustle up some food."