We stood at the bar of a dingy little pub on the outskirts of the
dingy little district of Seven Dials. Geoff, who was learning to
orient himself by sounds, heard the clunk of his mug on the bar, and
unerringly put his fingers around it. "Pretty good, eh?" he asked me,
sipping the half-and-half.
"You'll be a wizard at it in a few months."
"I meant the ruddy ale, idiot. I'm not bragging about my
accomplishments yet. Seen any of our chums lately?" he asked.
"Oh, dozens. Run into 'em everywhere." It was a kind of simple code; I
was telling him that the pub was full of the aliens.
"Fine. Any of 'em give you any news? Anything startling been happening?"
"Not much. Same old stuff."
_Same old stuff!_
Same old fiends from Abaddon! Same old hosts of Hell! Same old ogres
and ghouls, harpies and bugaboos, hobgoblins and hellhags!
The barman, when I squinted, was a big jovial red-nosed Cockney. The
barman, when I opened my eyes normally, was a writhing monster, a
shapeless blob of intangible protoplasm in whose depths moved turgid
lights of orange and mauve; from whose devilish form the waves of
malevolence came and went like the roiled swell made by the sluggish
moving of some hideous primeval entity beneath the surface of a grisly
tarn....
I grinned at him. "Cool weather for June, mate," said I affably.
"Ar, yus," he agreed.
I was pleased with myself. Like a spy plunked down in a strange land, I
had been feeling my way to confidence these last days, growing used to
the shapes about me, learning to show an expression of bland normality
when confronted with unnameable horrors. I believed I was perfectly
ready now to begin our war.
The only trouble was that I hadn't the faintest idea of _how_ to begin
it!
* * * * *
One could move among these usurpers for a lifetime, I thought, and
learn nothing about them except that they were more hideous than
leprous two-headed baboons, more incomprehensible than might be the
dwellers of Mars. I watched them talking among themselves where they
sat at the little oak tables. While their earthly husks chatted of
prosaic things, the forms around the husks spoke--inaudibly to me--with
twisting tentacles, gesturing pseudopods, flowers of rotten-looking
"flesh" that grew upon their bodies and swelled and burst and subsided
to nothingness again. I knew they were speaking of terrible things....
"Let's go," I said to Geoff. "Time we were thinking of bed."
"Righto."
I gave the barman good-night in a pleasant voice, and we emerged from
that ninth circle of Hell into the cool and lovely air. Seven Dials lay
about us, all a-murmur with the homely human sounds of earth's evening.
I could not stand it.
"Geoff," I whispered, "I'm going to start the ball rollin'. I'm going
to find out something."
"How, old son?"
"I'm going to do a murder."
"Think it's wise?" he asked.
"I want to ascertain something. Just come along a bit."
We went up a dingy street and turned down a lane or two, until at last
we were alone on a length of grubby pavement, shadowed by the rickety
houses on either side. "Stand here," I said to Geoff Exeter. "It's
black in this corner and you won't be noticed. I'll come for you in
half a tick."
He saluted carelessly. What nerve he had! To stand alone, blind and
helpless, ignorant of what I meant to do--I think Geoff was the bravest
of all our little band.
* * * * *
I slunk up the street to a place some forty yards off, and hid myself
in a time-battered doorway. The street lay empty and deserted in the
early moonlight. I drew the great keen knife that lived on the side of
my belt these days, and I waited.
A man came down the road, staggering drunkenly. He was a man. I let him
pass.
Another came toward me. I heard his footsteps in the dark, echoing
valley of brick, and shortly thereafter saw him pass beneath a fading
street lamp.
Do you remember the passage in Doyle's _Lost World_, where the hero is
pursued along a jungle trail by a prehistoric carnivore?
"_This beast had a broad, squat, toad-like face ... the moonlight
shone upon his huge projecting eyes, the row of enormous teeth in his
open mouth, and the gleaming fringe of claws upon his short, powerful
forearms. With a scream of terror I turned and rushed wildly down the
path._"
Well, I did not turn and rush wildly down the street, but if I had
not been hardened by much contact with the aliens, I think I must
have done so. This was the worst I had seen: toad-like, yes, but
squat and loathsome as no toad ever hoped to be; and indeed some of
the projections of its form did look like claws and fangs. Yet no
prehistoric reptile could ever have exuded the repulsive effluvium of
evil which radiated from this hideous usurper.
As it passed me I felt my stomach draw in as if from a sharp blow,
and it is a wonder to me to this day that I did not scream or become
violently ill. The gods were with me, however, and I kept strict
silence.
* * * * *
When it had gone on a dozen paces, I slipped out and followed it
noiselessly. Moving as I had moved on many a commando raid in the old
days, I eased up behind it. It did not turn--neither of its bodies
turned. Narrowing my eyes, I lifted the great knife and struck, with
all the hatred in my soul concentrated in the blow. The blade sank
into the pseudo-human neck, severing the spinal cord instantly, and
before my horrified eyes the great toad-creature swelled, turned vivid
crimson, and went out like the flame of a trodden candle.
It had left our dimension in the very instant that its human husk had
died.
Sheathing the knife under my coat, I flew down to where Geoff stood
patiently waiting. I took his arm.
"Come on, boy, let's make tracks."
"Home?"
"No, to another pub." We hurried down an alley, turned up a street and
down another, until I had put a maze of lanes behind us. Then we slowed
abruptly and ambled into a smoky little room full of liquor fumes.
"Two beers, old toff," I said to the fright behind the bar.
We guzzled them slowly, while I watched the aliens around the tables
and at the bar. Shortly there was a flurry of excitement among them,
the tentacles writhing quickly and the ghastly brutes enlarging and
deflating as though pumped by a bellows. All the time the human
portions drank and chatted and played darts. But the usurpers were
excited over something. Shortly half a dozen of them moved toward the
door, the people in no evident hurry, but their marionette-masters
wriggling like mad, as though eaten with impatience.
I knew they were going to discuss something important. I had what I had
come for.
"Bedtime," I said to Geoff Exeter. We went out of the pub and caught a
tram for the vicinity of the Gloucester Club.