"If you'll forgive me, sir, it seems a terribly long chance to take. He might have been addled in the head, or drunk; or if he was right, you may all lose your eyes and never acquire his strange vision." "We're relying on old Jerry," said Alec Talbot. "You see, at least three of us were at loose ends, with nothing to make of our lives, and our hearts full of bitterness and frustration. It's given us an aim in life. It's given us life itself, by heaven! We drew lots, Geoff and Will and I; Geoff got first try, Will the second, and I lost. I'm to be the third one. Before he was murdered, Jerry told me who was all right and who wasn't. He'd seen a few chaps he knew--Will and Geoff and the doctor here, Marion and Colonel Bedford. He bequeathed me their names. I rounded them up and beat them with Jerry's yarn until they began to feel a horrid truth in it. Then just a few days ago I remembered that you'd been our waiter at the Club that night, and he'd sat easy and safe in your presence; so we knew you were human too." "I'm sure I'm very gratified, sir. But what can I do?" "We don't know. We don't know what any of us can do. But we were only six. Johnson--six against half a world. We grasped at you like a drowning man at a--" "Straw," said Marion. "Really, Alec, your similes stun me!" "I was going to say 'bottle of whisky'," growled Alec. "Do you get the whole picture now, Johnson?" I asked. "I think so, sir. Just one thing...." "What's that?" "Well, sir, what do these aliens look like? I mean, if you can see them?" "Like obscene nightmares," I said. "Like demons down under the sea. Like anything and everything you can conjure up that's evil and strange and full of hellishness." "Oh. Quite so, sir," said Johnson woodenly. "Jerry talked of toads, of sharks and dragons, weird tree-shapes and amoebae, but he made it clear that those were only far-fetched similes." Alec's voice was low; he was remembering his friend, haggard and gray in the face, a ghastly ghost of the man he had once been. I broke in. "Yes, Johnson, they're a fearful horde. If Jerry was right, they're overrunning us in a manner far more subtle and deadly than any invader ever did before. Which is why we must take these desperate measures. Are you with us?" "Of course, sir," said the old waiter. "Why?" asked the skeptical Doctor Baringer. "Why so quick to leap at this fantastic story, Johnson? I've got into the affair over my head, but I'm still not sure I believe in it." "Well, sir, you might say I'm in just about the same position as Mister Exeter and Mister Talbot and Mister Chester. I'm an old soldier, much too old to be of any use in a regular war any longer; and I still fret for the days of bivouac and battle. If you'll pardon the liberty, sir, I must agree with you that it's a rum go, a very rum go. But if it's true, then I may be of some slight use in the world after all." "You were a soldier, Johnson?" I asked.