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?"