"What did you think of the fight?" I asked him. "How did you explain it to them?"
"Hexplyne? To them barst--them blokes? I guv 'em fifteen quid apiece and all the loot they could find. What else 'ld they be wanting?" He grinned. "I might have cawst a few 'ints, such as that we was involved in a political move; the boys is hell on political moves. Maybe I mentioned the Sinn Feiners, careless-lyke. They drawed their own conclusions." He squinted into his cup. "I think I shall call meself Jock MacSmiff," he said meditatively. "Ar, that's a good Scotch name. Maybe I'll even give up the gin. Take Scotch whisky instead, I mean. More patriotic, lyke."
"You'll be able to afford it, old chap, should you live to be a hundred," I told him. "It was nearly all your doing, yours and Geoff's, that we won our fight."
The waiter brought a bottle of Piper Heidsieck '43. The Colonel stood up to propose the first toast.
"Gentlemen and Marion, I give you ex-Sergeant Henry Johnson. There is only one thing we can say of him: greater love hath no man, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
We drank standing. The waiter popped up with a second bottle. We resumed our seats, and Alec said, "The next is mine. I drink to the good green earth, and the race of men who live on it. Maybe they don't go about slopping over with gratitude for its beauty, but I think they appreciate it just the same, and I'm damned glad we saved it for 'em!"
Half-laughing, we drank that one, and many more. I drank to my Jaguar, now a deep red color and never to be identified with the sinister black car which flew out of Manchester that night so long ago. Doctor John drank to Jerry Wolfe, who first discovered the abominable race of beast-folk. Geoff toasted our army of rogues.
They all drank to our happiness, Marion's and mine. Then we called for a fifth bottle, and drank a tall glass down in memory of our victory, total and forever final, over the beast-folk of the silver land. I twirled my glass and stared at it, my eyes unfocused slightly, and I mused on _them_.
Sir Lawrence Hockling, to give him his human name, had been as good as his word. Within a day, all through the land, the aliens had begun to decamp in disgust. As messengers raced behind the veil to tell their brothers the sad news, the exodus spread, first through the great centers of population, London and Birmingham and Sheffield, Cardiff and Liverpool, and thence into the countryside until all England was touched by this incredible mass desertion of a world, the beasts relinquished their stolen bodies and retreated into their own dimension. Well within my time limit of three days, the flight was completed. Some twenty-seven thousand robots were abandoned in the withdrawal.