“Brakes!” Greeley yelled and Phil almost tumbled into the lap of the man beside the driver as the forward rockets jetted and the back of the car lifted and slammed down. Then he realized he was the only one left in the car and scrambled out.

“The alley’s blind; there’s no way for it to get out,” Greeley was calling. “Advance abreast. Gish, back us up!”

“Don’t hurt him,” Phil warned.

“We know enough for that!” Greeley yelled back.

By this time Phil was behind them, and saw the green cat crouching defiantly in the narrow alley’s blind end, some twenty feet away from the advancing men.

The distance lessened to ten, and then the green cat darted forward, dodged this way, that, and dove between Greeley and the man on his right, straight into Phil’s outstretched hands.

“Lucky!” Phil said blissfully, lifting the cat closer.

Five claws raked his chin painfully, while fifteen others dug into his hands.

He looked at the little face. Except for its color, it was a most ordinary, though spittingly furious cat face. In fact, it was a most ordinary cat.

And he could smell the dye.

“Here,” he said calmly and handed the animal to Greeley.

“Lucky?” Greeley yelled as the claws sank into his hands. “It’s a dye-job, or I’ll eat it! They had it all ready and threw it out to misdirect us. Come on! Here, take it, Simms, we’ve got to keep it to be on the safe side.”

And presumably a third man’s hands got clawed as they sprinted to the car.

But Phil was not with them. He hadn’t the heart. As the rockets roared again, he simply stood halfway down the alley, scratched and weary.

XVI

ASthe elevator door closed behind Phil and he started the weary climb from twenty-eight to twenty-nine, he was already tormenting himself for having turned down Phoebe Filmer’s invitation to have a drink in her room. When she had accosted him in the lobby, babbling about how he had rescued her at the Tan Jet, he had felt the last thing he wanted to be with was a human being. But now, with nothing separating him from the loneliness of his room but an echoing flight of stairs and an empty corridor, he suddenly realized that he needed human companionship above everything.

He remembered how boldly he had set forth just yesterday afternoon from his room to look at life and plunge into any adventure that came along. And as it happened he had seen so shockingly much of life and been buffeted by such vast oceans of adventure, that his brain still buzzed from it. At times during those incredible twenty-four hours, it had seemed to him that his whole character was changing, that he was becoming the daring yet sympathetic adventurer and lover he had always dreamed of being.

Yet here he was, dragging himself miserably back to his room, having just pulled his usual craven trick of saying “No,” when he desperately wanted, at least ten seconds later, to say “Yes.” Why, from the speed with which he was falling back into his old habit patterns, he’d probably spend the evening spying on Miss Filmer from his darkened window.

Oh, he could tell himself there was no reason to give a second thought to an ordinary pretty woman when he’d just met such a wickedly desirable girl as Mitzie Romadka and seen such a beauty as Dora Pannes, not to mention sharing the society of such grotesque but attractive characters as Juno Jones and Mary Akeley. But that was just rationalization and he knew it. Phoebe Filmer was more his size, and he wasn’t even big enough for her.

Or he could once more tell himself that if only Lucky were at his side, he would be brave and bold again. But even that was no longer quite true. Fact was, that everything had become much too big for him. He wanted the green cat yes, but he wanted him as his own special pet, his mascot, his good luck cat, something to sleep at the foot of the bed – not as a mysterious mutant monster that kept getting him involved with male and female wrestlers, religious crackpots, gun-toting psychoanalysts, girls with claws, hep-thugs, world-famous scientists, espers, vice syndicates, FBL raids, national and international crimes, and a whole lot of other things that were much, much too big for Phil Gish.

He coded open his door, stepped inside, and had almost closed it behind him when he realized that he was not returning to loneliness.

On her hands and knees, apparently to look under his bed, but now with her face turned sharply towards him, was the black haired, faun-like girl whose window was opposite his. He froze in every muscle, his hand locked to the barely ajar door, ready to jerk it open and run.

She got up slowly, with a smile. “‘Allo,” she greeted in a warm voice with a foreign accent he couldn’t place. “I have lost something and I think maybe he hide in here.” She smoothed out the black pied gray suit he’d watched her take off last night. Then she leisurely ran her hand back across her head and down the pony tail in which her hairdo ended.

“Something?” Phil croaked gallantly, his hand still glued fast behind him. He couldn’t help it, but every time he looked her in the eye his gaze had to travel fearfully down her figure to her 10-inch platform shoes.

“Yes,” she confirmed, “a – how you call him? – pussycat.” Then, after a bit, “Say, you act like you know me.” Her smile widened and she shook a finger at him.

“‘Ave you been peek at me, you naughty boy?”

Phil gulped and said nothing, yet that remark did a great deal to humanize her for him. Hallucinations don’t make one blush.

“Thas all right,” she reassured him. “Windows across, why not? Same thing – windows across and both open a little – make me think maybe my pussycat jump over here. So I step across to see.”

“Step across?” Phil demanded a bit hysterically, his gaze once more shooting to her legs.

“Sure,” she said smilingly and indicated the window. “Take a look.”

With considerable reluctance, Phil unstuck his hand from the door and gingerly walked to the open window. Spanning the ten feet between it and the one opposite, was a flimsy looking telescope ladder of some gray metal.

Phil turned around, “Is it a green cat?” he asked reluctantly.

Her face brightened. “So he did jump across.”

Phil nodded. “What’s more,” he went on rapidly, “I think I met your brother today, a journalist named Dion da Silva, representing the newspaperLa Prensa. ”

She nodded eagerly at the first proper name. “Thas right,” she said. “I am Dytie da Silva.”

“And I am Phil Gish. Did you say Dytie?”

“Sure. Short for Aphrodite, goddess of love. You like? Please, where my brother and pussycat now?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Phil said sadly.

She shrugged as if she expected to hear just that. “Is nothing new. We are crazy people, always get lost each other.”

“Then you do come from Argentina?” Phil asked doubtfully. Her accent didn’t sound Spanish, but his acquaintance with Spanish accents was limited.

“Sure,” she confirmed carelessly, her thoughts apparently elsewhere. “Far, far country.”

“Tell me, Miss da Silva,” he went on, “does your cat have peculiar powers over people?”

She frowned at him. “Peculiar powers?” she repeated slowly as if testing each syllable. “Don understand.”

“I mean,” Phil explained patiently, “can he make people happy around him?”

The frown smoothed. “Sure. Nice little pussycat, make people happy. You like animals, Phil?”

Once again he couldn’t keep his gaze from flickering to her legs, but on the whole he was feeling remarkably bucked up.

“Miss da Silva,” he said, “I’ve got a lot more questions to ask you, but unfortunately I don’t know Spanish and I don’t think you understand English well enough to answer the questions if I put them to you cold. But maybe if I tell you just what’s been happening to me, you’ll be able to; at least, I hope so. Sit down Miss da Silva; it’s a long, long story.”