His eyes flickered for a minute. "Bill Jones," he said weakly. I doubled my fist and regarded his face. After a minute he said, "All right. It's Sam D'Peero." "Where are they?" "Took another trail. Off west, I think." I killed him then. "Deep hole near here?" I asked yellow-hair. He grinned, shouldered a corpse and picked up a dead hound by its collar. We followed him, myself dragging two men by the belts so as not to get any bloodier than I was. We found a big reeking boghole and threw them into it. Going back, we destroyed the signs of the battle. Then I picked up the walkie-talkie, switched it on. "Sam!" I shouted, pitching my voice high and filling it with terror. "Sam, can you hear me? Oh, my God, we're trapped! The dogs run us into the swamp!" I waited a moment, heard someone say faintly and tinnily, "Johnny, what's the matter?" "I--oh Lord, I'm sinking! I can't hold onto this branch much longer. Sam, Sam! I think the Cuff guy came and fell into this hole. You can't tell it ain't solid, and the dogs followed him and all the others--oh Sam, help me!" "Explain, Johnny!" said the instrument. "What's wrong with the others?" "I tell you we fell in, Sam! We were all bunched and this stuff's like quicksand. I'm--" I broke off, shrieked, gurgled horridly, and then picked up the walkie-talkie and heaved it deep into the swamp. Yellow-hair laughed. "It might not put them off, but it'll confuse them no end. If you're worried about them finding the house, don't. A cross between a bloodhound and a private eye couldn't locate it. Come on." He patted my arm. "Let's go home." CHAPTER XI The house was old but well-kept, upreared in the heart of the great green swampland. It was such a house as a troll might have built--a troll with a Gothic imagination. Rambling, with a ramshackle look despite its sturdiness, wood-turreted.... "One of our more exotic head-quarters," said yellow-hair, whose name was Skagarach. "Don't know what madman built it. We have them, HQs that is, all over the world; but not many in so congenial a setting." "Are we truly all over the world, then?" "Most of it. Maybe not in deep Africa, nor in places like the South Seas, but wherever there're big enough colonies of so-called white men, we are there." There arose a faint barking, somewhere in the depths of the house. Skagarach shook his head as I snarled. "No, they're ours. We have dogs, of course. The friendship of the dog was not always limited to man. He was our servant too. And will be again." "Who were we?" He returned a question. "Do you know why you came here?" "I was called. Something in my mind--" "Yes. We're telepathic to a degree." He grinned. "Don't let it go to your head. It's a gift we share with the ants and the bees." We entered the house and I found a spacious living room furnished with big leather armchairs. "Have a drink," he said, pointing to a wall bar. "One worthwhile invention of our friend Man."