“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 state what are 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, if they do 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 one they die 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 of them who 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 of them ... 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 have all our 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.”
“I don’t think,” 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, maybe I’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 to you! 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 ti
ll 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 as they themselves. 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 hail that reverently,” 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?”
The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard Page 7