"I'd have left a note, or come back to tell you, but I was all carried away with the spirit of rollicking adventure and looniness," said Geoff, filling his pipe. "I expect I gave you some bad hours. I'm sorry."
"Forgiven," gruffed the Colonel. "You saved our bacon."
"Yes, the world! The jolly old human race, that didn't even know it was in danger, and wouldn't believe it now if we told it! Hell's sweet bells, it's hard for _me_ to believe!" Geoff laughed. "Did we really pit ourselves against ten thousand fantastic beasts, and drive them from our dimension by a colossal bluff? Or did we dream a long horrid dream, we seven strange crusaders?"
"I begin already to doubt my memory," answered Doctor John. "I was never cut out for a cavalier, wooing weird adventures. I'm a solid citizen. I'm going back to my practice on the steamers."
"Next week." Now the present had intruded in our talk, and the future. "What will you do, Colonel?"
"Been thinking of retiring to the country, but I doubt I could stick it after all the excitement we've been through. I expect I'll stay on at the Albany. Lots of things happening about one, you know, keep a chap young."
I laughed to myself at the thought of the staid old-fashioned Albany being a bee-hive of activity, but said nothing. John went on. "You, Alec, what will you do?"
"Huh? Me? Dunno," said Alec blankly. "Haven't cogitated on it."
"Marion and Will will marry, of course," said the Colonel, as though that accounted for us forever, and no question about it. "And you, sir," he said to Arold, making that worthy leap in his chair, "what do you intend doing? You're a fairly well-to-do man now."
"Ah, yes, thanks to you gents! As generous and kindly a lot o' toffs--that is to say, gentlemen--as you could arsk for. Me? I'm going over the border. Scotland, that's the ticket for Arold Smiff; nice little village, cozy house, new name, and plenty of gin--welp, anyway, I'm going to Scotland. Never meet nobody there who'd know me, and that's 'ow I wants it after the killings we done down at that there cawstle. Some of the blokes I 'ad to enlist ain't what you'd call above thinkin' of blackmail, to put it straight out. Course they don't know you, but they knows Arold Smiff. Me for the heather!"