"When they're leaning through, they haven't any powers except those of normal people. They can't hear any better than a man. They can't walk through bricks or see through stones. They can't look behind them without turning the human puppet around. I've been watching them and I feel pretty certain of that. In some curious way they're limited by their puppets' limitations here. That makes it easier to assassinate 'em, by the way--I just have to make sure that the human form doesn't get a chance to turn its head and spot me before it dies." * * * * * 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." "I see," nodded Johnson. "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...." CHAPTER VIII And so for a time I dwelt alone among the beast-folk.