Phil struggled through the slap-slap of an invigorating gray surf, until he realized it was a wet towel wielded by Juno.
"How's the head?" she inquired with a grin that showed her lip scar.
The head seemed twice as thick and heavy as usual to Phil, but he didn't feel any special pain until his exploring hands came to the lump on his chin.
"You're okay," she told him, tossing the towel on the upset black and silver table. He doubted it.
"Do you think that by any chance Mr. Brimstine is a Beelzebite?"
Phil gingerly swiveled his head around. Sacheverell, whose green garment now seemed just a garish and not too clean bathrobe and whose dark complexion was merely sunburn again, appeared to be having a conference of some sort with Jack and Cookie. They were drinking. Mary was busy at her work table.
"A what?" Cookie asked suspiciously.
"You know, a Satanist, a devil-worshipper," Sacheverell explained briskly. "That would explain his stealing the Green One. A Satanist wouldn't want good to bloom in the world."
"Stop talking that silly guff," Cookie told him. "Moe Brimstine isn't interested in any kind of mystical crud or anything else, for that matter, except the do-re-mi. And neither is Mr. Billig. And Moe Brimstine wouldn't be working for anyone but himself or Mr. Billig—probably both. That's true, isn't it, Jack?"
The kingman didn't seem at all inclined to be talkative, but at this question he did nod his head with conviction.
Juno put a glass in Phil's hand. "Here, drink this," she told him. Phil looked at the brown stuff. "What is it?" he asked.
"Not soybean milk," she assured him. "Drink it up!"
The whiskey, which tasted as if it were laced with something bitter, burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes, but almost immediately his head began to feel clearer. He surveyed the room. Outside of Mary's work table, none of the mess had been cleaned up, though someone had taped the Moslem prayer rug over the broken window.
"And what's more," Cookie was saying dogmatically, "your idea about that cat being mystical is crud too."
Sacheverell looked at him and Jack with exquisite blankness. "But didn't you feel it?" he asked. "Didn't you feel what it did to all of us?"
Jack shifted uneasily and didn't meet his gaze, but Cookie shrugged his shoulders and said nervously, "Oh, that! We were just all of us worked up, between your mumbo-jumbo and the fighting. We'd have believed anything."
"But didn't you feel your whole being change?" Sacheverell insisted. "Didn't you feel universal love and understanding burgeon?"
"Universal sky-pie!" Cookie said rudely. "I didn't feel a thing that meant anything. Did you, Jackie?"
The kingman didn't quite nod his head, but he certainly didn't shake it. And he didn't look at Sacheverell.
The latter surveyed them both with sad wonderment. "You've already forgotten," he said. "You've made yourselves forget. But how," he asked Cookie, "do you explain the behavior of the cats? They recognized the Green One. They tendered him worship."
"They just panted around after him," Cookie asserted. "He's probably an oversexed hermaphrodite mutant. And another thing—if that cat's mystical and all dripping with powers, why did he let himself be knocked out? Why didn't he feed Moe Brimstine some universal sky-pie?"
"There was glass and distance between them," Sacheverell reminded him. "Besides, if Mr. Brimstine is a Beelzebite—"
"What's more," Cookie went on relentlessly, "why did he let himself be knocked out by Jack in the first place? Jackie, before you stun-gunned the little brute, you didn't feel any great burgeon of universal love, did you?"
Jack frowned. "I stunned him instinctively," he said slowly, his downward gazing eyes studying the upset chalice, which chose this moment to roll two inches. "I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye and shot." He paused. "I actually thought it was a mouse."
"Instinctively or not, you stun-gunned it and we hustled it into the locker as soon as we saw it was green," Cookie assured him decisively. "Which certainly proves the cat has no powers. Sash here just worked us up into thinking he had. Gave even me such an eerie feeling that if someone had come in wearing an orange sheet and Sash had said it was Mohammed, I'd have believed him."
"But suppose the Green One was taken by surprise," Sacheverell argued. "All gods have limitations. Perhaps the Green One is not so much able to read thought as to join together telepathically the thoughts and feelings of mortals."
Cookie made a rude noise. Jack gave Cookie a quick look that was both angry and imploring, as if to say, "You've proved your point. Lay off."
Sacheverell shrugged and said, "Well, if I have to descend to your materialistic level, what is it that makes the Green One so important to Mr. Brimstine?"
"How should I know?" Cookie said huffily. "Maybe he's smuggling heroin in it or secret documents for Vanadin; maybe it belongs to the current mistress of the King of South Africa. Did Moe tell you anything, Jackie?"
"Just that he'd give $10,000 for a green cat and that he didn't want any dye-jobs. That was a couple weeks ago. Some of the other boys asked for details, but he said there weren't any." He stood up. "But what's the use of talking about it? We can't do anything," he said harshly, suddenly glaring at Sacheverell, as if daring him, or imploring him, to answer.
"Well ..." said Sacheverell.
Phil had finished his thinking. He got to his feet and squared his narrow shoulders. "We can rescue the green cat from Brimstine," he said. "Who's with me?"
Cookie whirled on him. "Nobody, not even yourself," he said, while Jack put his hand to his temple and groaned, "Now the Ikeless Joe."
Juno heaved herself out of her chair and lumbered over with her glass and bottle. "Look, Phil," she said, "I gotta admit you're a spunky little mutt. But nobody, simply nobody, goes up against Moe Brimstine."
Phil considered that for a moment. "I did," he said proudly.
"Yeah, I know," she admitted, "but he didn't take it seriously."
Phil looked at Sacheverell. "How about you?" he asked. "You believe in Lucky."
Cookie glared warningly at Sacheverell. "If any one of us bothers Moe Brimstine about the green cat," Cookie said, "we'll all be inhaling molten plastic!"
"Well ..." said Sacheverell, looking around for advice. His gaze settled on his wife. "Mary, what steps do you think we should take?"
Mary, chewing her tongue over a difficult job of wax shaving, twitched her shoulders. "I don't care what anyone else does," she said, lifting off the microtome-thin flake. "I'm working on Moe Brimstine my own little way." And she held up for their inspection a small wax head which already was beginning to look like the heavy jowled assistant boss of Fun Incorporated. "And when it's all finished," she told them, "then needles and pins!"
Juno said, "Ugh!" Cookie looked almost impressed. While Sacheverell gnawed his lip thoughtfully and, with a wary eye on Jack and Cookie, said, "Yes, I suppose that is the best way after all."
"Okay," Phil said and started for the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" Cookie demanded.
"To get him back," Phil said.
At that there was a rush of footsteps and several voices competing in assuring him he would do no such thing, but it was Juno who grabbed his shoulders and swiveled him around.
"Phil," she said, "for wunct I gotta admit that I agree with these jerks. You're not going to do anything about that—that fool cat. You just gotta get that through your nut wunct and for all."
Phil just smiled at her.
She shook her head disgustedly. "I shouldn't have give you that whiskey."
"It wasn't the whiskey, but what you put in it," Cookie interjected crisply. "He's high."
Phil grinned at him serenely, as if to prove his point, then suddenly they all stepped back a bit, and for a moment he thought they had recognized his supreme self-confidence and bowed to the inevitable. Then he realized that they were looking beyond him and he felt cool air from the porch.
Dr. Romadka put down a black bag inside the doorway, said smilingly, "Hello, Sacheverell. Hello, Mary," and nodded briefly to Jack, Juno, and Cookie, before casually turning his gaze to Phil.
"Well, Phil," the analyst said waggishly, "that was quite a chase you led me, and I consider myself very lucky to have found you at all. It was a most interesting conversation we were having and I'm eager to continue it." He spared the others a glance. "You'll excuse us talking professional matters for a moment, I hope. Now, Phil," he went on persuasively "I imagine that the ... er ... person who persuaded, or rather forced you to run away, tried to put all sorts of ideas into your head. But I'm sure I can show you in a few moments just how nonsensical they are. Incidentally, it was that same person who turned out the lights in the first place and put all the doors on code. Quite a trickster, eh? And my daughter, too! So say good-by to your friends, Phil—I hope they won't be too angry with me for dragging you off."
By this time Dr. Romadka was far enough into the light so that the four streaks of dried blood on his cheek showed up plainly. Mary said mischievously, "Anton, I never did believe in that wild woman patient of yours who was always threatening mayhem, but now I guess I'm going to have to. Somebody clawed you real good."
Dr. Romadka's smile thinned a trifle. "Quite a few illusions turn out to be very real, Mary," he said lightly, "although it's usually my job to prove the opposite. Eh, Phil? Such as that there really aren't any young women with hoofs and black fur who forget to turn off the window when they undress?"
"Or any green cats?" Phil asked quietly.
"Yes, anything like that," Dr. Romadka agreed curtly.
"Why don't you admit, doctor," Phil went on coolly, "that the green cat is another of those illusions that turn out to be very real? And that you're after it? You wouldn't startle these people a bit. They've all seen the green cat."
Dr. Romadka's eyes blazed with sudden suspicion, which didn't altogether abate when Cookie said in scandalized tones, "We did not," and Jack insisted, "Doc, we don't know what the guy's talking about. But we do know he's a nut. That's why I sent him to you in the first place."
Phil watched with amusement as the psychoanalyst sharply scanned Juno, Sacheverell and Mary. Then Phil chuckled and said to them, cryptically, "It might be worse for you if I go off with the doctor instead of up against Brimstine."
New suspicions flared in Dr. Romadka's eyes, but Jack said swiftly, "Look, doc, are you going to take this guy in charge and put him away somewhere so that he won't be able to cause any trouble?"
"That's one thing you can be sure of," Dr. Romadka snapped, shedding his smiles and subtlety. "Get this straight, Phil, you're coming with me whether you want to or not. In case you're thinking about running away again, I have several friends outside."
"Then that's swell," Jack said, "I'm all for it. We'll be glad to get rid of him."
Juno, who had been frowning for a long while, now rocked her head like a puzzled bull. "Gee, Jack, I dunno," she said. "I don't like it at all."
"Juno—" Jack began threateningly.
"I don't like the idea of tossing the little guy to the wolves," she finished defiantly.
"To the wolves, Mrs. Jones?" Dr. Romadka asked dangerously. "That's done to save others. Please explain—"
But at that moment Sacheverell came hustling forward with great determination. There were no longer any traces of sympathy in the stern glance he fixed on Phil. "I think that Anton and Jack are quite right," he announced, seizing Phil by shoulder and elbow and marching him toward the door. "I'm tired of your deceptions, Mr. Gish. You go right along with Anton and his friends, and no nonsense."
Phil heard a grunt of satisfaction from Dr. Romadka. He tried to twist away from Sacheverell, but the latter pressed even more closely to his side, so that his face was next to Phil's ear, and suddenly whispered, "Up the stairs, two flights."
The next moment, Phil felt himself pushed away, while Sacheverell reeled with a yelp into Dr. Romadka, who was stooping for his black bag, and at the same time managed to upset the antique floor lamp that dimly lit the hall.
Then Phil was racing up the creaking stairs in the sudden darkness, helping himself along by yanks at the ricketty balustrade, while behind him he heard shouts and racing footsteps. Nearest were those of Sacheverell, who was crying manfully, "There he goes! After him, everyone!"
Phil raced along the backstretch of corridor and up the second flight, Sacheverell flapping at his heels like a green bat. At the top he grabbed Phil and shoved him through a door. For a moment their faces were close.
"Out the window and over the beam," Sacheverell whispered. "Dare anything forhim."
Then the door was swiftly shut and he heard Sacheverell yell, "He's gone up in the attic. Follow me." Phil was in darkness, facing a tall window dimly aglow from outside, while about his feet cats who had taken refuge in the room scurried frantically.
He walked over to the double-paned thing of wavy, ancient glass. He had read more than one comedy scene involving the impossibility of opening such primitive windows, but this one came up easily enough and all the way. He ducked through and crouched on the sill outside, steadying himself with one hand.
Around him was nineteenth-century, musty smelling wood and slate. Opposite him, about twenty feet away, was the top-level street, busy with speeding electrics. Joining the two was a metal beam about eight inches wide, faintly outlined in the glow from the car's headlights. The beam was grimy with dirt. It based itself in the brick chimney that rose just beside the window. In fact, one of Phil's feet was on it. Below were two stories of mostly darkness.
What happened next may very well have been made possible by the fear-abolishing, nerve-steadying drug Juno had put in his whiskey, though Phil laid it to the influence of Lucky and to Sacheverell's grotesque yet strangely thrilling injunction. Certainly Phil was no athlete and had, if anything, a touch of acrophobia.
At any rate, he slowly got to his feet, let go the window, poised himself for a moment, and then ran lightly across the beam. He rolled clumsily over the railing at the other end and sprawled on the sidewalk.
At the same instant a needle of glaring blue lanced up through the dark behind him. It cut through the beam at an angle, spat redly for a moment against the black "roof" a few feet above the Akeleys' house, and winked out.
The beam held for a moment, then slowly slid past itself at the cut. The chimney fell lazily. There were yells and one scream came from below. The roof of the Akeley place slid forward a foot—and stopped. Dust mushroomed up.
Then Phil was racing down the street to a cab parked a quarter of a block away. He was thinking that, whatever those orthos of Moe Brimstine's boys were, apparently Dr. Romadka's friends had them too. He couldn't help sparing a thought for the plight of the group in the reeling attic. He could almost hear Juno's titanic curses.
Then he was piling into the cab.
"The Tan Jet," he told the driver. "It's a kind of night club."
"Yeah, I know," the latter said in a voice heavy with knowledge, fixing on Phil the sad, resigned gaze one reserves for those who insist, against all good advice, on running to their dooms.
Someone singing, "Turn of the Century Blues" in a sultry, melancholy voice was all that Phil could hear as he walked down the dark ramp and into the hardly brighter Tan Jet. No live or robot doorman was on guard, at least no obvious one, and no hostess came hurrying up. Apparently customers were supposed to know their way around.
There were a lot of them. They sat in small parties with a truculent quietness that sneered at and challenged the frantic hustle of the times and the belief that the hustle was leading anywhere. There were no juke box theaters in the corners, no TV screens visible, and the booths didn't seem to be equipped with handies. Four live musicians softly blew and strummed old jazz instruments, while a single amber spotlight shone on the coffee colored, deceivingly languid songstress, whose sequined dress went all the way to her wrists and chin.
I'm sad-crazy, sweetheart, tonight,My heart is heavy in the sodium light....
I'm sad-crazy, sweetheart, tonight,My heart is heavy in the sodium light....
I'm sad-crazy, sweetheart, tonight,
My heart is heavy in the sodium light....
A young man and woman coming from opposite shadowy walls sighted each other. "Lambie Pie!" he cried. She stood stock-still as he walked up to her and gave her a slap that rocked her red-ringletted head. Then, "Loverman!" she cried and slapped him back. Phil could see his eyes roll ecstatically as the red flamed in his smacked cheek. They linked arms ritualistically and made off.
And it don't help, sweetheart, to knowThat the whole world went crazy—Moon-mazy and space-hazy—About a hundred years ago,So—
And it don't help, sweetheart, to knowThat the whole world went crazy—Moon-mazy and space-hazy—About a hundred years ago,So—
And it don't help, sweetheart, to know
That the whole world went crazy—
Moon-mazy and space-hazy—
About a hundred years ago,
So—
At that moment Phil spotted the dark sheen of Mitzie Romadka's hair and cloak at the far end of the room. He started toward her, suddenly feeling a trifle uneasy.
Put away my sky-high platform shoesAnd don't bring me any happy news,For—I've got those turn of the century—Turn of the millennium—Blues!
Put away my sky-high platform shoesAnd don't bring me any happy news,For—I've got those turn of the century—Turn of the millennium—Blues!
Put away my sky-high platform shoes
And don't bring me any happy news,
For—
I've got those turn of the century—
Turn of the millennium—
Blues!
As the listeners softly hissed their applause, Phil stopped a few feet away from Mitzie's table. She was with three young men, but they sat away from her pointedly, as if she were ostracized.
The three young men, without lifting a finger, showed more of the mystic toughness that seemed to be the specialty of the joint than any other people in it. They had the quiet dignity of murderers. When Mitzie turned to see what they were looking at, she sprang up with the delighted cry of "Phil!" though there was alarm in her eyes. She wasn't wearing her evening-mask. She walked over to him and slapped him stingingly with her left hand.
He whipped up his hand to slap her back, hesitated, and barely managed a sketchy pat. She glared at him but turned back with a bright smile, saying gayly, "Fellows, Phil. Phil, meet Carstairs, Llewellyn, and Buck."
Carstairs had a head that bulged at the top like a pear. He wore thin bangs, the effect of which was not effeminate. He remarked lazily to Mitzie, "So this is the clown you blabbed tonight's plans to."
Llewellyn looked very British and was very black. He said, "You also seem to have told him we'd come here later. Puzzles me why he didn't bring the police."
Buck was hawk faced and had a Kentucky accent that sounded as if it had been learned from tapes. "P'lice never tried to pick up anybody in the Tan Jit, yit," he observed. "Not here, Otie!" This last remark was addressed to a gaunt, mangy dog which thrust its head from under his legs and snapped at Phil.
Phil leaned on the table, his hand next to a tall, slim pitcher. He said to Mitzie, "I'm surprised to find you at a tame place like this. I expected drugs, knife fights and naked women."
Mitzie whirled his way. "As for drugs, what do you think we're drinking?" she said furiously. "As for knife fights, wait. And as for naked women, you devotee of male-female wrestling, well, if Carstairs, Llewellyn, or Buck should happen to see a girl who took their fancy, I'd just walk up to her and rip off her clothes!"
She was looking past Phil when she finished. He swiveled his head and saw Miss Phoebe Filmer with a rather scared looking young man. But Phoebe, in a half off-the-bosom chartreuse evening gown, looked even more frightened, her face almost as green as her green-blonde hair. Perhaps she had heard Mitzie's last remark. Then she recognized Phil, and astonishment was added to her fright. Phil smiled at her with a somewhat forced reassuringness. At that moment Phoebe's escort called her attention to an empty booth back toward the door, and the two of them hurried toward its haven with the eagerness of skimmers who have overreached themselves.
Phil felt remarkably bucked up. He snared an empty chair from the next table and found himself an empty glass and filled it from the tall, slim pitcher. Llewellyn, who, like the others had a half-inch in the bottom of his glass, caught Buck's attention and rolled his eyes significantly toward the ceiling. The white made eerie half-moons under the irises.
"Just rip 'em off," Mitzie repeated with conviction.
Carstairs said, with a quietly scathing coldness, "Mitz, quit playing the solicitous little mother to Llewellyn, Buck and me." He carefully smoothed his bangs, as an ancient judge might have adjusted his wig before pronouncing sentence. "It's quite clear that you spilled our plans to this clown, and that he told the police so that they were waiting for us when we knocked over the first sales-robot."
"Quite," Llewellyn said, while Buck nodded.
"And if I hadn't insisted on putting a new charge in the rocket assist," Carstairs continued, "we'd have been nabbed."
"It was just a coincidence," Mitzie asserted sharply.
"First time we ever had a coincidence," Carstairs observed. "Personally, I don't believe there are such things."
Phil took a deep drink. It seemed mild, sweet stuff, compared to the adulterated whiskey Juno had fed him. That is, it seemed so for the first two or three seconds. Then he felt the top of his head balloon outward, pear-wise, like Carstairs'. The dark songstress was singing some song the refrain of which was,
Darling, I'm queer for you.I'm really strange, quite out of any ordinary range....
Darling, I'm queer for you.I'm really strange, quite out of any ordinary range....
Darling, I'm queer for you.
I'm really strange, quite out of any ordinary range....
Carstairs continued quietly, "Mitz, we let you into the gang, we initiated you, although we knew you were a psychoanalyst's daughter and doubtful material—"
Mitzie glared at him. "Initiated me?" she said. "I'll say you did!"
"Be that as it may," Carstairs asserted slowly, "you betrayed the gang tonight. At the best you acted irresponsibly." His words came slower still. "Your irresponsibility lost us a wad of dough." He paused for a long cruel moment. "You're out, Mitz.
"Out," Carstairs repeated.
"Definitely," Llewellyn agreed. "Yeah," Buck said, rubbing Ortie's lean snoot.
Phil put his elbows on the table. "Gentlemen," he said quietly, "you say you are out a wad of dough? I am in a position to remedy that."
Carstairs looked at him with mild irritation and raised his open hand. Phil smiled and advanced his cheek. "I am seeking a jewel beyond price," he continued. "In order to obtain it, I intend tonight to burgle the premises of Fun Incorporated. I am willing to let you help me."
At the mention of Fun Incorporated, Buck turned his head at least half an inch, while Carstairs almost blinked.
"You have rather big ideas, don't you?" Llewellyn remarked quietly.
"Yeah," Buck agreed with a yawn, "he maybe could have picked an easier place."
Carstairs asked Mitzie softly, "You did say he was one of your father's nuts, didn't you?"
Mitzie started to reply, but Phil interposed blandly, "I know a private way into Fun Incorporated, right through Billig's office. It'll be simple. You needn't worry about the wasps."
Buck drawled, "What is this jewel beyond price, anyhow."
"Something I wouldn't expect you to appreciate," Phil replied. "However," he continued, taking a more cautious slug of the mind swelling drink, "there should be enough in the way of ordinary valuables lying about to compensate you for your effort. I understand that Fun Incorporated is rather wealthy. For one thing, all sales-robots work from there," he finished grandly. "Why not hit them where they live?"
Otie stretched leanly from under Buck's chair and snapped at Phil's hand. Phil, stiffened by the drink, didn't move it. The jaws clashed hardly an inch away. "Why do you call him Otie?" Phil asked.
"'Cause he's a coyote," Buck explained, almost with condescension. "S'posed to have been bred back for ancestral traits to the Oligocene type."
Phil found himself wondering whether cats could be bred back to their Egyptian ancestors and whether those ancestors might have been green.
In the pause, Mitzie's eyes grew bright. She looked at her companions. "Why don't we take him up on it?" she said lightly but not casually. "I mean, about Fun Incorporated. It sounds exciting.
"Why don't we?" Mitzie repeated after a moment.
Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck sat there as coolly and as contemptuous of any challenge as when Phil had first seen them. Yet there was a difference.
"Of course, it's risky," Phil cut in. "Moe Brimstine's boys have orthos."
"What do you know about orthos?" Carstairs demanded hungrily.
Phil shrugged. "They're blue and they sizzle," he said. "I got shot at with one earlier tonight."
"Why don't we, I'm asking?" Mitzie pressed.
"I asked Juno and Jack Jones to help me," Phil put in. "You know, the wrestlers. But they decided not to."
Still no one answered Mitzie's question. "Well, I guess that's it," she said with a triumphant smile, turning away from the table. "Come on, Phil."
They had taken three steps when Carstairs began to chuckle quietly. Phil might have kept going, but Mitzie turned back with a carefully repressed eagerness that Phil resented.
"Don't kill yourselves running," Carstairs said. "Llewellyn and Buck and I are signing up for this little expedition, providing the clown can give the right answers to a few questions when we get outside." He smiled as he got up. "Just one thing, Mitz. This time there better be no cops."
Mitzie laughed. Phil accepted the situation with a "Glad to have your help, boys," and started to take Mitzie's arm, but she linked hers with those of Carstairs and Llewellyn, not sparing Phil another look.
The sequined singer had shifted to a snappier rhythm.
Slap me silly, honey,Beat me till I break.Love is very funny,Laugh until I ache....
Slap me silly, honey,Beat me till I break.Love is very funny,Laugh until I ache....
Slap me silly, honey,
Beat me till I break.
Love is very funny,
Laugh until I ache....
To solace his injured feelings, Phil veered over to Phoebe Filmer's booth, where the green-blonde was being rather pointedly annoyed by two bearded young men while her escort looked on agitatedly.
Phil tapped the nearest ruffian on the shoulder. "Lay off, boys," he commanded, with a meaningful nod toward his own party. Buck at least looked his way and Otie growled. The bearded ruffians slunk off. Phil made Phoebe a tiny bow.
"Thank you," she said weakly and astoundedly.
He gestured that it was a mere nothing and walked off.
"Say," she asked, hurrying after him and dragging her escort with her, "did you ever find that green cat of yours?"
He smiled at her. "No," he said, "but I'm going to."
"And how did you plan to get inside when the place is closed for the night?" Carstairs prodded sardonically.
For answer Phil cocked his eyebrows defiantly and gave the restaurant door a smart shove. It swung silently inward. He led them in haughtily, vaguely aware that Llewellyn was examining the lock.
The long room was very dark. It smelled stalely of people and liquor and seared meat; Phil even thought he could distinguish Juno's burned rabbit chops. Otie snuffed eagerly and tugged Buck forward by his leash. Phil steered their course confidently between the counter and the booths. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself because Mitzie had found opportunity to ask him for his address on the way over.
"All right, all right," he heard Carstairs whisper behind him to Llewellyn, "so the lock was burned. Somebody's ahead of us. We'll be watching out."
Phil pushed open the door to the stairs, and hesitated. Inside it was now completely black.
Something hissed softly beside him and a luminescent cone puffed out. A couple of seconds later, the half dozen treads of the stairway glowed milkily.
Buck chuckled inches from Phil's ear. "Lum'niscint mist," he explained with professional casualness. "You get going. I'll spray."
Phil started up, the milky surface light keeping two or three treads ahead of him in blobby advances. The mist got on Otie, so that he glowed like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Some of it even got on Phil's trouser bottoms and sockasins.
"We're certainly marked if we have to run away and hide," Phil commented dubiously as he reached the corridor he and Juno had come through and then took the unknown way upward.
"Uh-uh," Buck chuckled wisely, "'cause I'm spraying a neutralizer behind us." He directed at Phil's feet a dark, faintly hissing cannister and Phil's feet blacked out, along with a blob of surrounding treads. Looking back, Phil saw that the glow on the stairs vanished abruptly. He could not see Mitzie, Carstairs, and Llewellyn.
He asked Buck, "How do you manage two cannisters and Otie all at the same time?"
"Hell, I could aim a squirrel rifle and run a still in addition," Buck assured him.
Phil became aware of a dim radiance above him, beyond the range of Buck's mist. Buck hurriedly neutralized all the luminescence, including that on Otie and Phil. Phil cautiously went up the last ten treads, the upper radiance increasing all the while, and found himself in a shadowy, curving corridor. His steps got shorter and shorter, then stopped.
A couple yards ahead lay three swollen furry shapes, each with a half dozen slim black things stuck into them, like feathered darts.
He recognized at least two of the dead cats. Although grotesquely puffed up, their markings told him they were a Siamese and a short hair he had seen at the Akeleys'.
"Watch it!" he heard Carstairs whisper, but at the same instant Otie jerked away from Buck and moved swiftly forward, his leash trailing, to snuff at the nearest swollen shape. The tail of the dart next to Otie's nose began to revolve with a faint, feathery rustle. Otie became tensely still, disregarding his master's anxious, "Back, Otie!" The rustle became a whirr. Otie suddenly snapped sidewise at the dart, but at the same instant the dart withdrew quickly from the dead cat. Otie's teeth clashed emptily. The dart hovered a few feet in the air, just like a huge black wasp. "Don't anybody go closer," Carstairs ordered hoarsely. Buck grabbed for the end of the leash, but it was flirted away from his hand when Otie abruptly changed position, watching the dart with deadly intentness.
The whirr became a loud sinister buzz. There were two quickzingsand the hovering dart trembled like a blown candle flame. Half turning, Phil saw that Carstairs was shooting at it with some sort of airgun. The dart began to waltz in little loops. Otie leaped straight up and snapped at it as a dog might at a bee, but the dart curtsied away.
Buck's "Back, Otie," was desperate. Otie stayed on his feet and batted at the dart with his paws. There were more futilezingsfrom Carstairs' airgun. The dart looped back and hovered in front of Otie's muzzle. As he opened his jaws for a snap, it shot down his throat.
Otie, his eyes and jaws open wide, beat the air with his paws. Then he dropped to all fours and hurled himself off at top speed. He slammed against a wall, got up with difficulty, trembled over to Buck, and fell down and didn't move. It seemed to Phil that the gaunt creature was taking a deep breath, and then Phil suddenly felt sick, for the coyote was beginning to swell.
"Don't touch him!" Carstairs shouted, but Buck was keeping his distance. Carstairs came up beside Buck and leaned prudently forward, his bangs swinging out from his forehead. "Always did want to see one of those things in action," he said softly.
"They're what they call singular missiles, aren't they?" Llewellyn asked fascinatedly, coming up. "Anti-individual, I mean."
Carstairs nodded. "Used them in the last cold war, though hardly any rumors got out. They were for assassinations. The FBL and the Russkies could tell tales. They're supposed to be driven by a tiny, ion-emitting radioactive fan. I wish I had a counter so I could know. And of course, they home on the radiant heat of flesh and then inject a poison."
Buck muttered, "Otie." The coyote's puffed eyes turned toward him, then glazed over. Buck jerked up and made a derisive noise. "Always was a dumb pooch," he said harshly. Mitzie, drawn even with Llewellyn, looked on coldly.
Phil started ahead, drugs battling nausea inside him, so that the dim corridor seemed both vivid and unreal.
"Where are you going?" Carstairs demanded.
Phil shrugged. "To find what I came for," he said hazily.
"Well, keep away from the cats," Carstairs called after him softly, but Phil was already hugging the wall.
"How we know those sing'lar missiles won't heat up and go for us like they went for Otie?" he heard Buck demand fretfully.
"The others got through, didn't they?" Carstairs said irritably.
"What others?" Phil heard Buck ask.
"The ones who burnt the lock on the door, the ones who threw the cats ahead of them to draw the missiles," Carstairs told him impatiently. "Incidentally, if any of the missiles start spinning their tails, you might by throwing your coat over them."
Beyond the dead cats, Phil came to a silvery mesh barricade with several jagged cuts in it, three of them making a crude doorway. The mesh looked fine and strong enough to have kept the wasps on this side. He stepped over the fallen section of mesh. The cut ends of silvery wire were rounded and fused, as if by great heat.
Just beyond the mesh lay a chunky man in a gray, company guard uniform. He had a gun in his hand. He was intact except that the top of his head had rolled about a foot away. It had been sliced off tidily just above the nose by something hot. Phil remembered how neatly the blue needle had sliced the steel beam. He hurried past toward an open arch just ahead, and jerked back from a large gray snake coiled there. Then he saw that the snake was a robot doorman like Old Rubberarm, and looking higher he saw that it had been sliced off close to the wall.
Mitzie and the rest came through the mesh. Carstairs kneeled eagerly by the dead man and examined the gun he was clasping, but a moment later got up with a shrug.
"Not an ortho, eh?" Buck inquired. "Usin' those sing'lar missiles, you'd think they'd be up to date in other things."
"No, just an ordinary gas gun," Carstairs told him. "But we can be pretty sure his head wasn't taken off by a red hot buzz saw. The others must have orthos." He turned on Phil and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. "Look here, clown," he said quietly, "who are those others? You must have known someone was going to break in here tonight. You were counting on that door being open."
"We are a bit like jackals, aren't we?" Phil remarked dreamily.
Carstairs twisted his jacket. "Who were they?"
Phil didn't react, but he did jerk around suddenly when he heard Moe Brimstine say metallically, "Whatcha want, Mack?"
Llewellyn had pulled out the stub of gray robot arm sticking from the wall.
"Quit that," Carstairs ordered curtly, letting go of Phil.
"Take it easy, Carstie old boy," Llewellyn said with a smiling flash of white teeth. "Here's a bit of an odd thing. See where whatever sliced this robot arm cut into the wall beyond? Well, follow back from the cut in a straight line through the slice in the robot arm."
Like the others, Phil followed Llewellyn's directions and saw that the straight line ended in a deep cut in the floor a half dozen feet behind them.
"I don't git it," Buck said. "You mean somebody shot some kind of beam from the next floor under us?"
Llewellyn said, "Hardly. The evidence points to a gun that shoots in opposite directions at the same time. I fancy that if we'd have looked behind us at the head of the stairs, we'd have seen some cuts mirror-imaging those in the mesh."
He thinned his eyes at Carstairs. "I'm beginning to think orthos are rather strange weapons, Carstie old boy." He glanced at Phil. "You said they're blue and sizzle, Mr. Gish. Do they also backfire?"
"Say, look at this here communicator," Buck interrupted. He had been poking around the side of the corridor behind the guard. "One button's got a new-looking gadget rigged up to it that's pushed it twice now while I've been watching."
"Don't touch it," Carstairs said. "It's probably a button Headless here is supposed to thumb every so often to show he's on guard. Whoever broke in ahead of us knows their business. Once more, clown, who were they?"
"Yeah, talk," Buck said, coming up beside Carstairs. "I figure you're responsible for my Otie gettin' killed."
"Indeed, do," Llewellyn said, at the same moment letting go of the stub arm which contracted toward the wall until it was like a wrinkled scar, while at the same time, as though internal injuries were now showing up in the thing, a broken clockworks version of Moe Brimstine's voice wheezed, "That's right, Mack. Go away and stay away."
In the moment while that eerie and ominous admonition held everyone else stock-still, Phil walked with drugged aplomb past Llewellyn and through the arch.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I imagine you would like to inspect the treasure house."
He faced a room that was not extremely high ceilinged, but so wide and long that the only clearly visible wall was the one against which they were standing. The room was not brightly lit, yet it seemed so because of the brightness of the two sorts of ranked objects on which the light fell. To the left were row on endless row of sales-robots, shiny high turtle shapes with a smaller dome set on the main one, the same efficient metal hucksters that daily and eveningly roamed the streets, guiding themselves and spotting customers by hypersonic radar and visual scanner. Only now their fascinating windows for displaying samples were closed, their money collecting and commodity bestowing arms were neatly folded, the restless wheels under their metal skirts were still, and their dulcet voices rich with a restrained sex appeal suitable to robots (male voices for females, female for males, sprightly and wise-cracking for children) were likewise silent.
To the right, marshaled with equal precision, were a host of dress-display robots, arrayed in everything from high collared sable evening cloaks to bathing jewelry. Their hair gleamed with a hundred tints, their suede-rubber skins glowed with a creamy seductiveness, they held themselves with the poise of princesses, but like the sales-robots they were still. No slinky parading, no cute individualized gestures, no mysterious or haughty smiles, no soft lips opening to recite the qualities and prices of the garments they were modeling. They all stared straight ahead like Egyptian mummies not yet wrapped and indeed one, appropriately crowned and clad in a filmy sheath, was a precise copy of Nefertiti.
It occurred to Phil that the ranked sales-robots and dress-display robots really were a military display, that he was looking at the armed might—the money army and the glamor army—of Fun Incorporated.
Llewellyn was the first to break the silence. He darted to the nearest sales-robot, made some practiced manipulations, and then there was a clinking and he was waving a green and silver handful and his teeth and the whites of his eyes shone gleefully in his black face.
"They're still carrying the day's cash!" he called softly.
Buck looked from the money army to the glamor army with greedy indecision. When Carstairs snorted contemptuously, he trotted over to help Llewellyn, who was methodically working his way down the first row of sales-robots.
Despite his show of greater self control, it was obvious that Carstairs' hands were itching too. He looked at Phil uncertainly. Then, "Wake up, Mitz," he commanded sharply. She obediently turned toward him an oddly incurious face. "Mitz," he went on, "I want you to guard the clown. If he tries to get away or goes for any buttons, use your shiv on him." She nodded.
"Hey," Buck called in an excited stage whisper, "I think we're coming to some that are gambling robots."
But Carstairs didn't go at once, although he was noiselessly snapping his fingers in an excess of impatience. He studied Mitzie fiercely. "You get it, Mitz? I don't want any slip-ups. You made one already today. Not that I believe for a minute you're soft on the clown, but you've acted a bit silly around him. There mustn't be any more of that. Understand?"
This time her nod, though mute as the first, seemed to satisfy him and he rushed off to join Llewellyn and Buck.
At the same instant Phil quietly turned around and walked through an archway just beside the one through which they had entered the big room. He hadn't taken ten steps down the curving corridor before Mitzie had whirled past him and poised herself squarely in his path.
"Get back," she whispered. The hand directing the ten-inch knife at Phil's chest didn't waver enough to make the frosty highlights on it flicker.
Phil smiled at her. "Mitzie," he said gently, "your friends have found what they came for, but I haven't. You're going to let me go past."
She spat her denial and advanced the knife so that it touched his shirt.
Phil didn't budge. "You're going to let me go past," he repeated softly, "because you're not sure any more that being cruel and smart, and if need be deadly, is the right way to face the world. You're not sure any more that the approval of your gang is the only thing that matters. Incidentally, it's a pretty grudging approval, Mitzie, something you've had to sit up and do tricks for like that other dumb pooch, and your comradeship with them isn't at all the romantic, until death, one for all and all for one thing you pretend it is. But I haven't the time to tell you any more about that now, because I've got my business and I've got to get on with it."
"Get back," she snarled. But Phil, although the knife now pricked his chest, knew it was no longer a command but a plea.
"I'm going past now, Mitzie," Phil murmured and walked ahead into the knife. For about two feet it drew back at exactly the same speed with which he walked into it, then it was whipped suddenly to one side, and as he passed Mitzie he caught the choked off beginning of a sob.
Neither of them made another sound. He looked back once and saw her profile in the light from the big room, and the slack line of her shoulder and the arm holding the knife. Often faces look unexpectedly weak in profile, but Phil felt he'd never seen one that also looked so tragically lost.
Its image haunted him as the curving corridor grew darker and then lighter again and then made a very sharp turn and unexpectedly emerged into a long, richly furnished room. He blundered a step forward before he saw there were three people at the far end and that one of them was Moe Brimstine. They weren't looking his way and he could have ducked back out of sight easily enough, but he hurried it too much and brushed against a slim pillar topped by a small aquarium in which tiny pink, green and violet octopuses clung and swam. The pillar teetered dangerously. Stumbling as he grabbed to steady it, he fell out into the room with it and thudded into the foam flooring, as the water and the candy colored octopuses gushed all over.
After a couple of seconds Phil decided regretfully that keeping himself scrunched against the yielding floor with both eyes tightly closed was not going to help. He opened them cautiously, blinked at the flooring, and tried to nerve himself to look up. Meanwhile:
"Brimstine, what's keeping that FBL man?"
"Now don't worry, Mr. Billig. He'll be here any minute."
"I'm beginning to doubt it. What if they're lying about sending a man, and actually they're planning to raid us, counting on picking up the green cat when they do?"
"The government wouldn't dare do that, Mr. Billig. They need the green cat, or they think they do."
"Then why isn't that FBL man here?"
"I tell you not to worry, Mr. Billig. Relax. Let Dora stroke your forehead."
"Pfui!"
Considerably puzzled, Phil lifted his chin off the flooring and cautiously swiveled his head. The Mr. Billig he'd heard mentioned with so much awe turned out to be a very gaunt dark man who looked at first glance thirty, at second seventy, and at third a mystery to which youth-prolonging hormones might provide a clue. He was dressed in severely cut black sports togs. Moe Brimstine bulked a lot bigger, but only physically—his blunt manner had altered to that of a servant with clownish privileges. Even his black glasses now looked a trifle comic.
The other member of the trio was a breathtakingly beautiful violet blonde whose dress consisted of an endless spiral of fine silver wire over a white satin sheath. She was sitting on a table, watching the others with a cold smile. Mr. Billig was pacing steadily as if engaged in some kind of road-work, while Moe Brimstine was hovering behind him like an anxious trainer.
But to Phil the one overwhelming fact was that they weren't paying any attention to him at all. Apparently his crashing with the aquarium into the room hadn't been of enough importance to rate a glance—or if there had been a glance, it had been a mighty short one. Besides being utterly mystified and quite frightened, Phil felt a bit piqued.
"I don't think you should take that attitude toward Dora, Mr. Billig," Moe Brimstine was saying. "She's a very clever girl; just how clever even you might enjoy finding out. Isn't that right, Dora?"
"I am infinitely skilled in giving pleasure to men, women and children," Dora said with a yawn. "Among other things I have memorized all the important pornographic books written since the dawn of history."
"Pfui and trash! Brimstine, you still don't seem to realize just how serious this is. I guess I should tell you that, according to my latest information, the government is all set to indict not only three of our governors and a half hundred of our mayors, but also four of our national senators and a dozen of our representatives."
This news did seem to take Moe Brimstine aback. "But that's the whole lot," he said softly.
"Not quite, but almost," Billig snapped.
"It would mean the absolute finish of Fun Incorporated."
"And what have I been saying to you?" Billig demanded.
Phil sat up a bit morosely and settled his chin on the back of his right hand to watch them. This maneuver attracted no attention whatsoever. He gave up trying to figure it out.
Moe Brimstine had recovered his spirits with a happy shrug. "Anyhow, you've got the green cat, so you're safe."
"Have I got it?" Billig demanded, stopping his pacing. "How well have you got that cat locked up, Brimstine?"
"Look, Mr. Billig, I got it in a copper cage where nobody can get at it and it can't get at nobody, even electronically. Besides, it's still stunned. You can't ask for more than that, can you?"
"Maybe not," Billig allowed grudgingly. "But then I come back to my other point: How can we be sure the government needs the cat so badly they'll be willing to quash all those indictments in exchange for it?"
"Now, don't worry about that, Mr. Billig. That's one thing we can be sure of. We've known for at least a month that finding that cat has been the absolute top priority, top secret job of the FBL, the FBI and the special secret service."
"But why should it be?" Billig was pacing again. "Just a funny colored animal. It doesn't make sense."
"Look, Mr. Billig, we've been all through this before. They're absolutely convinced that cat is terribly dangerous. They think it can control minds and change personalities, and they seem to think they have cases to prove it, including four top officials who've managed to skip the country, apparently headed for Russia. They've taken all sorts of secret steps, not only to find the cat, but to guard the president and all important officials from any possible contact with it. As far as our information goes, the first government theory was that the cat came from Russia, that the Lysenko view of genetics was true and that the Russkies were able to breed intelligent animals with extrasensory powers, for use as spies and saboteurs and possibly to replace a large part of the world's population. But now the government seems to believe that the cat is a mutant or monster of some sort and that it's in a position to conquer America—the whole world even—by controlling feelings and thoughts."
Phil sat up indignantly. He wanted to say, "Why, Lucky isn't like that at all." In his interest in the conversation, he had almost forgotten his incredible situation.
"I know, I know," Billig was saying, "but what do you think about it, Brimstine?"
Brimstine shrugged. "I think they're nuts," he said happily. "The cat didn't seem anything peculiar to me, though I'm taking no chances. I think it's all a grade-A delusion, a top secret panic."
"You think they're nuts and you expect me not to worry," Billig groaned. "Where's that FBL man?"
"On his way," Brimstine assured him. "Everything's going to turn out all right."
"That's what you told me when the president first started to take action against Fun," Billig flared. "You said it was just a bluff, a sop to the midwestern vote. You told me Barnes was a drunken farmer who could be got at twenty ways. You told me it would all blow over, like the other six times. Well, it didn't. Something happened that changed things."
"I know," Brimstine admitted, seeming for once at a loss for easy words.
"Do you know yet what happened?" Billig pressed.
Brimstine shrugged. "I think Barnes is nuts."
"That's your explanation for everything!" Billig roared softly. "If something happens this time, do you suppose I'll be happy because you tell me the coppers arresting me are nuts? Whereisthe FBL man?"
"You really should try and relax, I tell you, Mr. Billig," Moe Brimstine suggested, recovering himself. "Distract yourself somehow. Like with Dora here." And ignoring Billig's third, "Pfui," Brimstine looked at her critically. "Fix your mouth, dear," he said.
With a graceful obedience that nevertheless managed to be contemptuous the violet blonde beauty slid from the table and came straight toward Phil, who decided that now at last they'd have to stop pretending he wasn't there.
"Get that slinky walk, Mr. Billig," Moe Brimstine was urging. "What a gorgeous babe, eh?"
She tossed her head, stopped six feet short of Phil, took out a lipstick, looked straight ahead of her, and very carefully made up her lips. At the same time something cold and sucking closed on the fingers of Phil's left hand. He instinctively flipped it, and a tiny pink octopus sailed through the air toward the girl and flattened itself against something in the air about two feet short of her.
Phil watched it clinging there and felt his mind swell to bursting, as if he'd had another shot of Tan Jet lemonade. Then he got up, walked cautiously forward, and felt.
There was an invisible flat surface, extending as far as he could reach, between himself and the other half of the room. He realized he was on the viewing side of a one-way mirror bisecting the room. Dora, standing so close he could otherwise have touched her, turned, and as she did so, her skirt brushed the other side of the surface. He saw it was at least two inches from the side to which the octopus still clung. A mirror would hardly be that thick. It must consist of two panes probably with the space between them evacuated. For as he realized with a new surprise, he must not be hearing their voices directly, but a miked and transmitted version of them, which in turn must be binaural, so that they would be heard in depth and the proper direction.
Confirming this, he noted that the voices did not localize quite as perfectly as they had seemed to before he had caught on to the illusion. Also, the depth effect was a bit too rich, as if the mikes were more than ears-distance apart.
He also saw that all sources of illumination were beyond the panel.
But now that he knew they were not ignoring him, but simply unaware of his presence, he felt very much the burglar and very uneasy. He looked nervously back along the corridor he'd traveled and ahead along its darker and straighter continuation that, also this side of the panel, led out of the room. He asked himself why Billig should have the setup arranged and the sound turned on so that he and Brimstine and Dora could be spied on. It didn't make sense. Although he was protected, Phil felt a shiver legging it up his spine.
He might have left the spy chamber but at that moment Moe Brimstine put down a phone and said excitedly, "He's coming!" whereupon Billig at once stopped pacing and became as cool and unworried as dark tranquil water. He pointedly did not look at the archway beyond him, though Brimstine did.
A man came through the archway and stopped. He held his spine and the expression of his face very straight. His hair was touched with gray and his face showed years of worry—but not Billig's kind.
Billig looked at him with a questioning smile that barely stopped short of a smirk. He waited a moment and said softly, "Under the circumstances, I suppose you do not care to use your name, but—"
"It's Dave Greeley," the other said bluntly.
"—but I do suppose that you come from the Federal Bureau of Loyalty and that you are fully empowered to deal for the services and the president?"
The other nodded once.
"Mr. Greeley, Mr. Brimstine," Billig said with a gracious wave of his arm that reminded Phil of the swaying of a snake. "Mr. Greeley, Dora ... er, Dora Pannes."
The government man barely acknowledged the introductions.
"Mr. Billig," he said, "you tell us you have the green cat. If you have, we'll buy it."
"And what will you pay?" Billig murmured.
"The Moreland-McCartney letters, proving the graft those senators received from Fun Incorporated, plus all related recording and microwave taps. Similar material in sixty-odd other cases, which I hardly need enumerate to you in detail."
"Not enough," Billig said softly.
Greeley hesitated. "Of course, I could appeal to you," he said in a different voice; "simply as Americans, as citizens of this hemisphere facing a deadly danger—"
"Please, Mr. Greeley," Billig said with a chuckle.
Greeley shut his lips tight. When he opened them, his earlier voice spoke.
"Letters of confidence on all the indicted officials, dated today and signed and thumbprinted by the president and all the service heads, with confirming vocal recordings and pictures of the recordings being made. Naturally our experts will have to examine the cat before the exchange is made. They can be here in twenty minutes."
"That is better," Billig murmured, "quite a bit better. But not enough."
"What else do you want?" Greeley demanded angrily, but it seemed to Phil that he knew.
"The witnesses, delivered into our hands," Billig said. "O'Malley, Fattori, Madelin Luszcak, and the thirty-odd—no, I'll be precise—thirty-four others."
"That's out," Greeley said sharply. "I can't offer to pay you in human lives."
"Who mentioned anything like that?" Billig asked mildly. "I didn't, did I, Moe? It's just that we'd feel safer with the witnesses in our protective custody rather than yours."
"You know what you'd do to them," Greeley said.
Billig shrugged. "You wouldn't have to think about it. In any case, there are ways to forget." And he glanced at Dora, who flashed the FBL man a lazy, provocative smile.
Greeley flushed. For a few seconds he seemed to be concentrating on his breathing. "Look here, Billig," he said finally, "don't get the idea that either I or the government feels anything but loathing and detestation for you. Fun Incorporated has corrupted a third of a nation, and we have your headquarters here and in twenty cities so well cordoned a wasp couldn't get out. The sole reason we haven't smashed you is that you tell us you've captured something that is a little more dangerous to America than even your rotten organization. But our patience is wearing thin. We suspect a bluff, in spite of those green hairs you sent us. Make a deal while you can."
"The chemical and physical analysis of the hair must have shown your experts something very interesting," Billig murmured with a reflective smile. "Like you say, Mr. Greeley, we have something you can't do without. Something worth roughly—shall we say a third of a nation? It seems to me that we are letting you off very cheaply. Consider what the Russkies might be willing to pay. So I'm afraid the witnesses are an essential part of the exchange. In fact, I'm certain."
"I'm warning you," Greeley flared, "that I'm in full charge of Project Kitty under Emmet and that I've advised Emmet and the president to break off the deal and raid if you insist on that condition."
"You've advised," Billig replied, "and you're under Emmet. I'm only interested in what Barnes and Emmet have advised."
Greeley looked as if he wished he were deaf and dumb. His hands clenched and slowly unclenched. He set himself to speak.
Just then a phone-light blinked. Moe Brimstine snatched it up, obviously prepared to roar out a rebuke and slam it down. Instead he listened silently, and kept on listening. Greeley watched him intently.
At that moment, Phil heard the soft kiss of a door slitting open and faint footsteps drabber in quality than the binaural richness of the stuff he'd been listening to. He looked down the straight dark corridor on his side of the panel. Some forty feet down it, where it ended in a T, light now flooded across. Then Phil saw Dr. Romadka cross the corridor at that point. The analyst was still carrying his black bag. In the other hand was a gun. He disappeared from sight.
"You better take this, Mr. Billig."
Phil switched around just in time to see Billig grab the phone from Brimstine with a glare. "Three of them?" Billig's words were staccato. "And a fourth man and a girl, they said? And what did they tell you the fourth man wanted? I don't care if it sounds silly!What?"
Holding the phone, Billig spared Greeley a glance. "We're going to have to delay making final arrangements for a few minutes," he said curtly. "Dora will entertain you."
"You can't delay," Greeley assured him with a sudden note of triumph. "The raid starts in ten minutes unless I return. Besides, there's only one thing important enough to make you interrupt this interview. You've lost the green cat, or you're afraid you have."
"I know Emmet would allow more time than that, even if he didn't tell you," Billig snapped back at him. "Put Benson in charge of him, Brimstine. Then come back."
"Let me contact Emmet," Greeley said quickly. "We'll cooperate with you fully in finding the cat. You have my word the indictments will be quashed."
"Word! Take him out," Billig said sharply.
Greeley, lifting his elbow contemptuously away from Brimstine's hand, started with him out of the room. Dora accompanied them. Greeley pointedly edged away from her.
"Don't be frightened, lambie," the violet blonde told him, "I'm just bound for the little girl's room."
Billig lifted the phone. But before he'd quite got it to his ear and mouth, the skin around his eyes contracted with sudden suspicion and he gazed toward Phil, or rather toward a point near Phil, so sharply that the latter would have sprinted off, except he could not decide for a second which way.
Then the spread two first fingers of Billig's right hand struck like a serpent's fangs at two buttons.
Lights flared around Phil, everything was suddenly very still, and Phil saw himself in a bright mirror that hid Billig and halved the length of the room. His reflection, although fully clothed, had the expression of a man caught naked in public. He hesitated for another desperate second, frozen by the thought that the mirror was one great eye, then ran down the straight corridor. He came to the T and whisked around the corner in the direction Romadka had gone, until he heard footsteps ahead and pounding toward him. He darted back the way Romadka had come and found himself in a brightly lit room chiefly occupied by a heavy copper cage with less than an inch between the bars.
But one corner of the cage had been neatly sliced off and rested on the floor beside it like a little three-sided orange tent. Phil looked around for a way out and saw nothing but bright white wall marred only by a deep cut in the same plane as the slice through the cage. His circling look ended at the door through which he'd come. Mr. Billig and Moe Brimstine were standing in it. Brimstine held a stun-gun, Mr. Billig a larger weapon which, while pointing it at Phil, he held carefully out from his side.
"All right," Billig said, "what have you done with the green cat?"