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.
"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.