It was a mean street, one of the meanest in the whole city. The moon
was vivid, and straight overhead, so that my shadow lay in a black
little pool around my feet. I sought a dark doorway and waited, knife
in hand, my brain full of liquor and loathing.
A man, and a man, and then a beast....
I slid along in his tracks, glancing quickly behind me to make sure
we were unobserved, and swiftly performed the now-familiar operation
of driving the impalpable demon back to its own dimension by hacking
the throat of the man-shape. Standing above the dead thing, I knew for
a second or two the feeling that must have held Jack The Ripper as
he stood over his victims: I wanted to stab and slash and mutilate, I
wanted to let out some of the terrible hatred that boiled in my heart.
Civilization won, however, and I sheathed the knife after wiping it
clean on the man's leather jacket.
At that moment one of _them_ came round the corner and stood staring at
me, not twenty feet off!
It was a gorgon of a brute, with several repulsive "heads" on lean
stalks of necks; the biggest one looked rather like a hippopotamus
whose mother had been frightened by a Ubangi, and I was so used to the
weird beings by now that, had I seen this one on a daylit street, I
think I would have chuckled. In that deserted lane, though, with the
shell of its brother's puppet at my feet, I didn't chuckle. I turned
and ran like hell.
A whistle split the air; I turned my head as I pelted away, and
squinted my eyes. By all the gods! The hippo gorgon was a bobbie! A
ruddy P.C.!
The garage where my Jaguar champed at her inactive gears was only a
couple of blocks from the lane. I made for it, taking an extra turning
or two in order to lose my pursuer. Coming to the big double doors, I
slowed to a business-like stride, went in and demanded my car with a
brisk tone, and bestowed a couple of notes on the attendant who brought
her to me.
"Be coming back again?" he asked me cheerily.
"Oh, very likely," I lied, and because he was a blessedly human little
man, I tipped him an extra pound, which made him goggle and stutter as
he thanked me.
* * * * *
I shot the black car out into the street, turned left and lost myself
in the maze of Manchester. The distant whistling of the searchers died
out behind me.
Now, I thought, I was in the bloody soup. My description would be
circulated in the other world, first of all. Well, I look like the
common man, and that wouldn't help them much. Second, however, they'd
be sure to discover that a fellow came into a garage in the vicinity
and took his two-seater at the very time the bobbies were hunting
the Manchester Slasher (as the papers called me) thereabouts. That's
elementary police work. So up to there all I really had to fret over
was the ordinary human bloodhound business.
I'd given the garage a false name, naturally, when I took the old girl
in to leave her. A purely automatic precaution. Lucky I have a turn for
the criminal life, said I to myself smugly. Nothing to identify her
with me, Will Chester of London.
Then there was my gear in the hotel.
_Whoa!_ I slapped the wheel with one palm. I'd given the hotel the same
fake name--Robert Hood--but in my Gladstone were half a dozen items
with my own label on them. I'd intended a quick baggageless dash out
of the city, before they traced me to the garage and sent out a call
for a black Jaguar; but to leave without that damning luggage would be
to present my true identity to the police in a matter of a few days,
or even less. I headed for the hotel. Minutes counted, but so did that
accursed Gladstone bag.
Then I bethought myself of the garage again. Of course they knew
where I had been staying! That meant that within two minutes of the
police--_they_--arriving at the garage and discovering that I had come
in and hared out, the hotel would be receiving a call about me.
I groaned aloud. The Jaguar, sensitive to my thought waves or
perhaps to the unconscious pressure of my foot, pounced forward at a
law-shattering speed. Minutes counted? Seconds!
The hotel was no fly-by-night, tuppenny-ha'penny wee place, for I had
seen no reason on earth why I should not be comfortable while on my
crusade; I put the Jaguar alongside the curb within a dozen paces of
the entrance, walked nonchalantly in and demanded my key. The desk
clerk was listening to the telephone. "One moment," he said, and then
to me, holding his hand over the mouthpiece, "I think this is for you,
sir."
* * * * *
My mind speeded up and raced like a mad thing. No one would be calling
me, so it must be _about_ me; therefore the police had already found
the garage; and the clerk must only have heard them say my name (my
false name) within the instant. I imagined that they had said, "Have
you a Mister Robert Hood staying there?" or something of the sort.
Now I had two choices: I could bolt at once, leave my luggage to be
inspected, and subsequently have my face plastered on every newspaper
in England as the Manchester Slasher; or I could brazen it out.
Instinctively I chose the right course, the only course. I bluffed to
the top of my bent.
"Give me my key first," I said. He did so. "Now just tell 'em I'm not
in, and hang up. It's a bloke I don't care to talk to."
"Ah," said he, smirking, "I see." To the instrument he murmured, "I'm
sorry, Mister Hood is out at present," and--my eternal gratitude to
that sleek-haired, smug-faced desk clerk!--rang off without asking if
there was any message. He had given me a good half minute of free time.
I went to the lift and said, "Four please." If it had not been there
I should have had to take the steps. Surely my luck was running that
night!
I judged that, just about the time I struck the fourth floor, that
phone at the desk would be sounding impatiently again. I opened my
door, bolted it behind me, and began to throw things into my Gladstone.
My phone started to ring.
I emptied the drawers of the high-boy, the devilish jangle in my ears;
leaped into the bathroom and brushed my shaving kit and toilet articles
into a little leather bag I used for them. I would be certain I was
leaving nothing behind on which there might be a monogram, an engraved
name....
Fingerprints! Great merciful God!
I was packed. Everything I had brought with me was in the Gladstone.
The phone stopped ringing.
They would be on their way. A hotel detective or a couple of policemen,
called in after that urgent message from the garage. Perhaps the
usurpers--
* * * * *
I whipped out my handkerchief, wrapped it round my right hand, and
started in to dust that room as no chambermaid had ever dusted it in
all its memory. Each piece of wood which I might have touched in the
past week received a quick vigorous swipe. Each glass and porcelain
surface in the bathroom. Everything. The door knob. The glasses. Is
that all? The window, which I'd raised a few times. Is that all? It
that _all_?
I believed it was. I snatched up the Gladstone and with the cloth still
around my hand I opened the door and slipped into the corridor.
Close the door, son. That'll halt them for a precious two seconds.
Down the corridor, around the first turn....
Safe, for the moment, safe!
And now what? Here was a flight of stairs. And in the distance I heard
a lift door open.
Down the stairs I rushed, and was on the third floor.
Running for another flight, a different one, with a vague thought of
confusing my trail, I stumbled and almost fell. Recovering, I fled down
these, on down, down, down.
I was on the ground floor at last. The men's bar lay before me. The
lobby was far away in the front of the building.
I straightened my tie, tried to appear like an eccentric who always
carried a large brown bag with him, and paced into the bar.
As I put my hand--still swathed in the linen--to the outer door, the
barman cried out, "'Ere, sir!" but I was gone. They would think I was
an absconding guest. They would pursue me. But I shouldn't run, didn't
dare run, along this street where humans and aliens strolled singly and
in couples. I walked as fast as I thought I could without attracting
attention. The hue and cry arose behind me. I came to the corner,
rounded it without halting, and saw my dear old Jaguar twenty yards off.
I ran then, for there was no help, indeed there was deadly peril, in
walking any longer. I went with great bounds, brushing aside people
and _them_ indiscriminately. Hurling the bag onto the seat, I hurdled
it with a last burst of energy, crashed in behind the wheel, and in a
flash my motor and I had leaped forward and were on our merry way.
We had gone a dozen blocks before I took my right hand off the wheel
and unwrapped the handkerchief from it, stowing it away in the side
pocket that also contained my hotel key. Mentally I checked over every
clue to my true identity; so far as I could think, I had wiped them all
out. Now all that remained was to get out of Manchester safely.
* * * * *
Choosing the darkest streets almost without volition, I had put a
couple of miles between me and that by-now-surely-tumultuous deathtrap
of a hostelry. I thought of road blocks. One is always reading in
American mystery stories of road blocks set up to catch thieves and
murderers, but I had no notion as to whether they were used in England.
Relying on the thought that at any rate I had never heard of one here,
I tore for the outskirts of the city.
_They_ would be on my trail. I kept seeing mental pictures of the
alien beasts, sniffing me out like so many obscene bloodhounds. My
hands grew slippery on the wheel with the sweat of fear. Then I put my
panic behind me; _they_, after all would be working in the usual human
channels, for surely they had at worst no more than a hazy suspicion
that I could see them. True, I had relegated quite a few of them. But
it must seem more likely to them that I was a maniac with luck on his
side, rather than a seer. I doubted strongly that they would make such
a concentrated effort at finding me as they had done last year with
poor Jerry Wolfe. So I had only the laws and power of Old England to
worry about.
Going over the past hour again and again, while driving, now at
breakneck speed through deserted streets and now at a snail's pace in
traffic, I decided that once I had left the city I had a very good
chance of escaping entirely. Therefore I set myself to leave it as
soon as possible. Beneath me the Jaguar purred contentedly as my foot
caressed her accelerator.
And so the notorious Manchester Slasher went into the fastnesses of the
Peak District, and laid his course south for Birmingham.