Cookie said, “I didn’t realize it, Sacheverell: you partly mean what you say. It isn’t all faking.”

Mary said, “And you actually want Jack to be happy, Cookie. It isn’t simply vanity and envy.”

Sacheverell said, “My God, it’s happening. And I mostly thought it was a stunt I was stage managing.”

As for Phil, his feelings were in that golden sea they’d swum in this afternoon. He felt as if his heart were joined by sensitive strands to those of the five persons around him. It even seemed to him that there were delicate, gossamer wires connecting him to the figurines so that he understood Romadka, Barnes, Vanadin, maybe even himself.

Then, simultaneously with the others, he turned toward the velvet curtains. A few inches above the floor, Lucky’s little green head had poked through. It hung there like a large green jewel, flooding them in turn with its mellow rays. Then Lucky pushed all the way through the curtains.

Swiftly, from under tables and chairs, out from the fireplace, and from behind tiers of books, all the other cats appeared and gathered around Lucky in a circle.

“It has begun,” Sacheverell whispered happily. “The world is changing.”

“Saint Francis of Assisi,” Mary murmured weakly, “incarnate in a cat.”

Then Lucky walked slowly across the room. The other cats made way for him and then followed him, still keeping a respectful distance. He passed Mary and Cookie, passed Sacheverell, who looked just a shade disappointed, and sprang lightly into Phil’s arms.

Phil had never held anything that weighed so little, or felt fur so electric. His chest seemed to him to be rather too small for his heart.

Sacheverell called softly yet ringingly, “You are the chosen one.” Phil looked at him and then, with an unreasoning and almost mystical gust of apprehension, at the black window behind him.

The glass in the window was vibrating, circular gray waves were spreading in it from a central spot.

At the same instant he felt his left hand, the one cradling Lucky, go dead. Lucky leaped convulsively in the air and fell perhaps six feet away from him and was still.

The glass in the window shattered all at once and tinkled to the floor, leaving only a few jagged shards around the frame.

Lucky’s cat cortege broke up and its members raced into the hall and up the stairs.

Moe Brimstine stepped in through the window, with a suppleness one would never have expected of his huge body. He stood just inside it, gripping a stun-gun in his big mitt. His jowl seemed to Phil to be smeared with the darkness behind him, and his glasses elliptical patches of it.

“There’s a couple of boys with orthos out there,” Moe said, stepping to one side of the window. “I know you don’t want to get yourselves sliced up.”

Apparently nobody did, though Phil at least hadn’t any idea of what orthos might be.

“Listen carefully, everybody,” Moe said. “So long as you forget about all this, so long as you act and think like it never happened, beginning with finding the cat this afternoon, then I’m going to forget all about you. That goes for you, Jack, though you’re a dumber bunny than I ever thought and did yourself out of an easy ten – and for you, Juno, and Cookie, too. But if you don’t forget, if I get just the littlest hint that you’ve remembered – well, we won’t talk about that.” He slowly scanned their faces. “Okay, then,” he said, and shifting the gun to his left hand, stepped forward and scooped up Lucky.

“He… he…” Sacheverell mumbled despairingly. Moe looked at him and Sacheverell was quiet.

“How long did this pussy sleep after you stun-gunned it?” Moe asked Jack.

Jack wet his lips. “Almost until now,” he said. “Until maybe five minutes ago.” Moe backed away toward the window.

Phil felt something moving from inside, something that tortured him into movement, for he certainly didn’t want to stir a muscle.

He advanced toward Moe, a shaky step, then a couple, all the while feeling the most exquisite pains racking his torso as it was sliced by imagined orthos.

“Put that cat down,” he croaked.

Moe looked at him with utter boredom.

“He’s just a nut,” he heard Jack assure Moe in an anxious whisper. “He won’t cause trouble.”

“I can see he is and won’t,” Moe said drily, shifting the gun to the hand from which Lucky dangled.

But Phil kept on toward the towering figure. He tried to stop, but the torturer inside him wouldn’t let him – and now once again the same torturer pried open his teeth and lips.

“Put him down,” he repeated. “You can’t have him. Nobody can.” He raised his fists, but the left one wouldn’t close.

Moe looked at him disgustedly. The big fist came toward Phil’s jaw, very slowly. Still, there somehow wasn’t enough time to get out of the way.

VIII

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.”