“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 comer 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 at at Phil, he held carefully out from his side.

“All right,” Billig said, “what have you done with the green cat?”

XII

IT couldn’t have been three minutes since Phil’s capture, yet it seemed that he had been listening to Mr. Billig for years. He was sitting apprehensively on a stool in a long low room to which he had been conducted by two men in sober sports togs – obviously a cut above company guards – whom Mr. Billig addressed as Harris and Hayes. Along one of the long sides of the room were windows and a doorway leading onto a balcony of some sort, beyond which yawned perplexing darkness. Harris and Hayes stood behind Phil while Billig paced in front of him.

Just now the voice that was like a tape played at triple speed, but not so high-pitched, was saying, “Have you ever pictured $10,000,000 concretely? Think of it this way: a yacht on the Amazon, bubble-dome cabin, your private copter, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, yourself absolute monarch of a very interesting microcosm. Doesn’t it appeal to you?”

“But I didn’t take the green cat,” Phil replied quickly – Billig’s speed was catching. “I don’t know where it is.”

“What do you want then?” Billig demanded. “Or like most people, are you afraid to say? Tell me, I’ve heard everything.”

Phil opened his mouth, thought of Lucky, and said nothing.

“Hit him, Harris,” Billig ordered, “and don’t be all day about it!”

Pain bounced like a steel ball back and forth inside Phil’s skull at Harris’ dispassionate swipes. At the last one Phil felt his head go numb and his thoughts glassy. Harris’ bank cashier face swam out of sight, to be replaced by Billig’s smooth mask with its lurking host of wrinkles.

Billig produced the gun he’d been carrying when Phil was caught. He informed Phil, “I propose to cut your limbs off, one by one. The beam burns, which keeps you from bleeding too fast.”

All Phil’s glazed mind could think was how ludicrous the word “limb” was. He wondered if Billig considered him a tree. Billig’s head persisted in circling Phil like a small planet, though that may only have been the room swimming. Suddenly Phil stuck out an arm.

“All right,” he informed Billig, “Begin with this. Don’t hurt the leaves.”

Billig lowered the gun. “You hit him too hard,” he told Harris, “or else he likes it. There are other kinds of pain. Where’s Brimstine? I told him he had only two minutes to find Jack. Hayes, frisk this man.”

Slim fingers rippled through Phil’s pockets and tossed Billig commonplace items. When the hand went for his right hand pocket, Phil had a belated memory and made a move to prevent it, but Harris grabbed his arms from behind.

Hayes carefully handed Billig the figurine of Mitzie Romadka in black, off the bosom frock.

Billig rattled softly to Hayes, “I’d swear this is Mary what’s-her-name’s work – the girl who used to do strip-tease dolls for us. She always had a touch and now it’s got better.” He fingered the doll delicately, studying the reactions in Phil’s face. “Do you want her?” he asked suddenly. “Would it pain you to see her hurt?” He made as if to wring the doll’s head off, then quickly set it on a table beside him and threw up his hands. “Whereis Brimstine!”

“Here,” the latter announced, hulking into the room like a bear in a great hurry. “I’ve located Jack. And we’ve caught the girl the three hep-jerks blabbed about. She lined herself up with the dress-display robots and might have passed herself off as one, but she sneezed.”

Mitzie was marched into the room, her hands twisted behind her by Dora, whose face wore a disdainful smile that now seemed spiced with cruelty. The analyst’s daughter had lost her evening cape and her long dark hair hung half over one eye. She held her chin up, as one who has struggled, found it no use, yet not really submitted. She saw Phil and looked away from him proudly, as if her being caught had wiped out the problem into which he had plunged her.

“Ah, the original,” Billig observed, looking up from the figurine, which he deftly pocketed. “Darling,” he said, walking toward Mitzie, “would you care to be featured in coast-to-coast living ads, or sit for a line of ultra deluxe dress display robots; would you like to be a handie star, ambassadress to Brazil, or become my girl Friday and be in on everything interesting that goes on in the world; would you take $10,000,000? Just tell us what you’ve done with the green cat.”

Mitzie answered the five-second barrage with a shrug of her upper lip. “Darling, I’m serious,” Billig assured her. “This is a lifetime opportunity and you’re a nice girl.” And he made as if to caress her shoulder affectionately, but instead whipped around to catch Phil’s reaction.

Jack Jones ran into the room and whisked to a stop. He glanced at Phil as if he didn’t know him and then saluted Billig sardonically.

“What are you standing around for?” Billig demanded. “Get to work. Hayes, I want those three hep-jerks in here.”

Phil tried to squirm away from Harris’ seemingly casual grip. And then Jack’s fingers were digging at nerves and pain was not a steel ball but a fiery plant’s red hot roots and million rootlets finding an instant way through every crevice between the cells of his body. He heard himself squealing, “Romadka! Romadka!” The pain lessened and he babbled swiftly, “Dr. Romadka stole the cat. I saw him coming out of the room where the cage is, carrying his black bag. The cat must have been inside.”