“Who’s this Romadka?” Billig whipped at him.

“An analyst,” Phil gasped weakly. He nodded at Jack Jones. “He can tell you about him.”

“I never heard of the man,” Jack asserted instantly.

“You did,” Phil mumbled desperately. “You saw how he was after me tonight. You must have guessed he was after the green cat.”

Jack shook his head curtly. “He’s making it up,” he assured Billig.

Across the room Brimstine put down a phone and called to Billig, “Benson says Greeley ’s acting cool as they come, still confident the raid will start when he said.”

“Well, don’t freeze!” Billig rapped exasperatedly at Jack. “Get back to work on him.”

As the small terrible hands approached, Phil looked imploringly at Mitzie.

“Dr. Anton Romadka is my father,” she said coldly, “reputed to be a great psychoanalyst. This hysteric you’re wasting time on is one of his patients.”

“Darling, why didn’t you say so before?” Billig asked her joyfully. “Dora, let go of her wrists at once!” The violet blonde complied with a cynical hop of her slim eyebrows.

“Darling, it escaped my mind she was still doing that, I’m sorry,” Billig assured Mitzie as he glided towards her, his feet moving almost as glibly as his tongue. “Darling, it’s very clear to me now: this hysteric, as you accurately describe him, stole the cat on your father’s orders and handed it to your father, whom I can see you don’t like and who probably forced you to come along. Now just tell us where your father is, or where you think he is, darling, and you’ll have, not one, but all of those things I mentioned to you a half minute back.”

“My father hasn’t skill enough to burgle a banana-vending robot,” Mitzie snapped at him. “You’re as stupid and conceited and unbalanced as all men, only faster. You think because something clever has been done, a man must have done it. My father’s a rotten analyst, but you could use a few sessions with him.”

“Darling, we’re not going to get anywhere if you talk that way,” Billig assured her laughingly. “Realize it, darling, you’re among friends and well-wishers.” And he took her arm with a paternal amiability.

Mitzie’s right hand was a blurred are and Billig sashayed back with four bright red lines on his left cheek.

“Grab her, Dora!” Billig ordered. The violet blonde willingly wrapped her arms around Mitzie’s waist and elbows. Mitzie avoided noticing it. Meanwhile, Billig was rapid firing, “I assumed she was disarmed, Brimstine. Get those claws off her.” Brimstine grabbed Mitzie’s right hand around the knuckles with one of his big paws and began to jerk off the needle-fanged thimbles. Billig waved off Harris, who had let go Phil to offer to minister to his boss’s dripping cheek.

Billig paced back toward Mitzie. “Darling,” he said, and for once the words came slow, “you’re really wonderful, you’re just the sort of charming vixen the sadisto-hackers dream up to torture the hero. But tonight I’m afraid you’re going to have to reverse roles.”

Phil’s mysterious inward tormentor who had made him go up against Moe Brimstine at the Akeleys’, now got to work again and despite the weakness of his pain-threaded muscles, forced him to start a staggering rush at Billig, meanwhile calling out, “Don’t you touch her!”

Naturally Jack tripped him, caught him by the collar almost before he’d painfully smashed into the flooring, and slammed him back onto the stool.

At that moment, Hayes and four or five other men, the latter in the company guard costume of the half-headless man, marched a banged up Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck into the far end of the room. Carstairs, who now had blood as well as hair trailing down his forehead, looked steadily at Mitzie.

“Thank you for this, Mitz,” he said rather quietly.

Llewellyn and Buck each nodded his head.

“You take it for granted I skunked on you?” Mitzie asked. None of the three acted as if they’d heard the question.

Phil, watching Billig, noted a very slight shiver, smile, and widening of the eyes, although the boss man of Fun Incorporated wasn’t looking at anything in particular.

“Take those boys down to the company garage,” Billig called to Hayes; keeping his slashed cheek turned away. “I’ll phone you orders about them in fifteen seconds.” Then, as Hayes and the guards jumped to obey, Billig said to Mitzie in a voice just loud enough to reach Carstairs, “Thanks again, darling. That was a nice job.”

Carstairs had time to give her one last deadly look before he was hurried out with the others.

“Come on, everybody,” Billig said gayly, “we’re going to have a little show. Darling, would you like to take my arm? I’ve quite forgotten that love tap. If you promise to be a good girl, I’ll tell Dora to let go of you.” Mitzie made no reply but Dora unwrapped her arms with lazy reluctance. “Come on, darling,” Billig entreated, starting for the balcony. Mitzie didn’t look at him, but she walked at his side. He didn’t try to touch her. They moved fast. Billig looked back over his shoulder.

“Hurry up, everybody,” he ordered exasperatedly. “Stop acting slow-motion!”

Brimstine, Dora and Harris quickly fell in behind them. Jack brought up the rear with Phil.

“I had to do that,” Jack whispered in Phil’s ear. “I couldn’t take it and trust you to fake reactions well enough to fool Billig. But for God’s sake, don’t spill anything more about Romadka. I know you’re Juno’s lover. Well, Romadka made me bring him here. His friends are at the house. They’ll kill Mary and Sacheverell – Juno and Cookie, too – if he gets caught.”

As Phil was trying to formulate some sort of answer to this, they followed the others onto the balcony. Its railing was split by a gateway, from which a metal stairway projected down and out into the darkness, its first dozen treads glimmering faintly.

Without warning Mitzie left Billig and darted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Harris lunged after her, but Billig stopped him with a gesture. “She’s doing what I want,” he explained softly, “and five times faster than if you dragged her. Won’t you ever understand it’s speed I need?”

Brimstine was closely watching Mitzie, who was now no more than a glimmering moth flitting through a duller darkness. “She can’t see the steps any more,” he said with professional admiration. “That girl’s good.”

Billig shrugged and stepped to a control panel in the railing. He picked up a phone, then paused thoughtfully as if he were making sure it was a full fifteen seconds since he had spoken to Hayes and not a mere twelve or thirteen.

“Hayes?” Billig said, and then whispered rapidly. He paused for a moment, writhing his eyebrows, as though Hayes were being unbelievably slow in catching on. “Of course, of course!”

Then Billig touched a button and blinding light transformed the darkness into a huge, empty, gray garage, its floor some thirty feet below the balcony. There were all sorts of lines and signs indicating which way cars should move and park, only there weren’t any cars. There were also a dozen open gateways in the gray walls, eight of them marked “Exit.” The silvery stairs down which Mitzie had flown touched the center point of the garage’s vast floor. A few paces away from that, Mitzie stood tiny and stock-still, as if blinded by the light.

Somewhere, far off, an electric motor was revving up.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Billig said to Dora, Brimstine, Harris, and Jack, but mostly to Phil, “this is the place where people park their cars while they watch the wrestling bouts. But now the wrestling’s over and the cars are gone.” He delicately touched his cheek, where the four furrows had almost stopped bleeding. “So now we can have the place for our little show. Mr. Gish, I must have the green cat. I believe you value that girl’s beauty and life -”

But Phil, whose arms were gripped hard by Jack from behind, hardly heard him he was watching Mitzie so intently. She seemed to come out of her daze suddenly. Dark, close bars shot down and blocked it, as they did all the other gateways Phil could see. He looked at Billig and saw his dark fingers lifting from buttons. He looked back at Mitzie and saw her hesitate and then run back toward the silvery stairs. Billig touched another button and the stairs retracted, telescoping upward. Mitzie stood on the gray floor all alone.