“How do you know we shall go?” asked Hutton, fiercely.
“You believe nothing,” said MacIan, simply, “and you are insupportably afraid of death.”
“So this is suicide,” sneered the doctor; “a somewhat doubtful sign of sanity.”
“Not at all—this is vengeance,” answered Turnbull, quite calmly; “a thing which is completely healthy.”
“You think the doctors will go,” said Hutton, savagely.
“The keepers have gone already,” said Turnbull.
Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic, and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a man or woman moved.
“We hate dying,” said Turnbull, with composure, “but we hate you even more. This is a successful revolution.”
In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft chin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. “Quayle, Hutton,” he said, “you will escape with me.” And they went up the ladder like automata of lead.
Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction: