I drank a little brandy and went on intently. "The only way they really have me beat six ways from the jack is in their system of tidings, of spreading 'em, I mean. That's a marvel. For as soon as I shoot or stab or throttle a puppet, the beast that's been twiddlin' his strings leaves him and goes along behind that hypothetical screen between the worlds, telling all his playmates about it; and if he's had a chance to see me, and can describe me, then about a thousand of the others will be watching through their holes in the screen for a blighter of my specifications, and my name is Lord Jonathan Mud."
"So my problem is to remain utterly anonymous. And I needn't tell you that if I try to embark on a career of murder-by-night, I won't last very long."
"No, you won't." Geoff was grave. "What else is there to do, though?"
"I don't know. And I think I could watch them for a lifetime and not learn another thing about 'em. I'm a tremendously handicapped spy because I can't disguise myself as one of them, and I can't understand what they say to each other. It's like a man going into a colony of bears and trying to pass himself off as a bear, except that I can't even begin to look like a usurper, while I _could_ put on a grizzly skin."
"What are we to do, sir?" asked Johnson. His pale face was deadly serious. "We must do something, sir--but only you can decide what it's to be."
Two weeks before, I might have groaned aloud at such a responsibility. Now I took it in stride. Anyone who had been observing the demons of Hell at their work for fourteen days and nights had either to take things as they came along or to go stark staring loony.
"I'll tell you what we'll do first. I'll take Geoff over to the Albany. Then I'll strike out alone for a bit. Maybe for a week, maybe a month. Travel light, fast, and inquisitive. Give myself a chance to cook up plots. And if nothing's come of it by then, why, I suppose we'll just have to set up an assassination bureau and hope I live a hundred years...."
And so for a time I dwelt alone among the beast-folk.
Packing a few shirts and such in a Gladstone bag, I left London in the black Jaguar, ostensibly on a casual motoring jaunt. I headed up through the East Anglian Heights, stopping the first night in the lovely town of Bury St. Edmunds. Strolling through the streets next morning, I was astonished and heartened beyond measure to find not a single usurper abroad. I went into a pub--I had begun to think that the aliens were concentrated in pubs, so many horrendous bartenders had I seen--and bought a pint from a perfectly normal girl. Lingering about the town, I passed the time of day with gardeners and workmen and loafers, and was tempted to throw up the game and stay here in this oasis of normality forever; but after lunch forced myself to get into the Jaguar and roar off into the Lincoln Heights, where I spent a jolly evening in Old Bolingbroke talking politics with a spidery yellow creature who amused himself by flicking my face now and again with his hairy-looking, tenuous, unfelt members. When at last I went to bed I felt that I had served my apprenticeship and was a full-fledged spy who could thenceforth bear anything the enemy could show or do....