McGuire’s tone was dry. “You know the answer to that as well as I do. We have just two alternatives; either we get out of here—find some place to hide in, then find some way to put a crimp in their plans; or we get out of here for good. It’s twenty feet, not twenty thousand, from that window to the ground, but I think a head-first dive would do it.”
Sykes did not reply at once; he seemed to be weighing some problem in his mind.
“I would prefer the water,” he said at last. “If we can get away and reach the shore, and if there is not a possibility of escape—which I must admit I consider highly improbable—well, we can always swim out as far as we can go, and the result will be certain.
“This other is so messy.” The man had stopped his ceaseless pacing, and he even managed a cheerful smile at the lieutenant. “And, remember, it might only cripple us and leave us helpless in their hands.”
“Sounds all right to me,” McGuire agreed, and there was a tone of finality in his voice as he added: “They’ve made us do that traitor act for the last time, anyway.”
Daylight comes slowly through cloud-filled skies; the window of the room where the fountain sprayed ceaselessly was showing the first hint of gold in the eastern sky. Above was the utter darkness of the cloud-wrapped night as the two men swung noiselessly out into the grotesque branches of a tree to make their way into the gloom below. There, under the cover of great leaves, they crouched in silence, while the darkness about them faded and a sound of subdued whistling noises came to them from the night.
A wheel creaked, and in the dim light two figures appeared tugging at a cart upon which was a cage of woven 333 wire. Beyond them, against the darker background of denser growth, tentacles coiled and twisted above the row of guardian plants that surrounded the house.
One of the ghostly forms reached within the cage and brought forth a struggling object that whimpered in fear. The low whine came distinctly to the hidden men. They saw a vague black thing tossed through the air and toward the deadly plants; they heard the swishing of pliant tentacles and the yelping cry of a frightened animal. And the cry rose to a shriek that ended with the gulping splash of thick liquid.
The giant pod next in line was open—they could see it dimly—and its tentacles were writhing convulsively, hungrily, across the ground. Another animal was taken from the cage and thrown to the waiting, serpent forms that closed about and whirled it high in air. Another—and another! The yelps of terror grew faint in the distance as the monsters passed on in their gruesome work. And the two men, palpitant with memories of their own experience, were limp and sick with horror.