Good for the Colonel!
"That's right," said I. "For the record, you're a lumpy-looking piece of dough, greenish-orange, with a tinge of maroon at the moment because you're mad. Madder'n usual, I mean. You blighters live in a constant state of ire, don't you?" Then I bellowed. "Stop him!" for the brute was edging toward the window. Alec picked up a small chair and tossed it at his legs, and as he tripped and went to his knees, John tapped him lightly but sternly on the head with a big glass ashtray. The alien sat cross-legged on the floor and glared wickedly at us, its true body quaking and shivering with wrath. "Well?" it said, through its robot's mouth. "Well?"
"First off," said I, strolling over to it and keeping a careless attitude tight-drawn about a wildly beating heart, "you'll answer us a few questions. Then ... we'll see."
"I don't think," said the other.
It was brutal, but entirely excusable. I picked him off the floor—he was a slight, insignificant fellow—and hit him squarely on the nose. He catapulted backwards with a howl. Alec thoughtfully kicked him in the stomach.
"The idea, you see," I told him, "is to hurt you badly, but to keep you alive. For a while, anyway. And if you try that again," I roared, for the beast had given a kind of preliminary shrug of its real form in preparation for leaving this dimension, "if you make one more move like that, I'll murder you instanter—and you'll die, both you and that poor shell of yours. Won't you?"
It nodded sullenly. Its great amorphous being settled down into itself quietly, as the human massaged his stomach.
"Whereas," I went on, "if you're good, and answer a few queries, maybe I'll let you go back into the silver land of your own free will, before I slay that husk you've appropriated."
It watched me for a while, speculating. Then it said hoarsely, "Which of you is Robert Hood of Manchester? You?" pointing at me.