And then it occurred to him that he didn’t know where the Akeley house was located. But a sudden memory of a huge show window full of marching mannequins came to his rescue. The Akeley house was next to Monstro Multi-Products, and everybody knew the address of that vast department store. He located it for Dytie on the street map and then on the screen. Soon they were accelerating downward, so that he had to cling to the handles again, while the squares on the screen were growing larger, with the large square that was Monstro Multi-Products moving toward the center.
He started to ask Dytie to answer the questions he’d put to her in his room, but she cut him off with, “Like say, very long story. No time now. First find pussycat. Very ‘portant.”
The rectangle representing the roof of Monstro Multi-Products now filled quite a bit of the screen, and the streets beside it were broad ribbons. Their descent slowed. Dytie maneuvered the dinghy around the department store until Phil spotted, at the base of the building next to it, the tiny slot indicating the cubical pocket of space in which the Akeley house stood, robbed of its air rights.
As they dropped slowly into the canyon of the street past windowed and windowless walls, Phil felt a witchery in the violet version of the city. He could make out beetles and tinier bugs – cars and people.
Soon they were hovering only ten feet above the violet sidewalk and the unsuspecting pedestrians.
Then Dytie slipped the dinghy between the rail of the sidewalk and the “floor” of the tall building over the Akeley house. The violet picture grew quite dark. They descended a little farther, past the top-level street and the one next below it until they were a couple of feet above the pile of bricks from the fallen chimney. Dytie moved some controls. The screen went blank, the lights went out, and with breath-taking suddenness Phil’s body crunched into the soft lining as normal weight returned.
“Got legs down for dinghy to stand on,” Dytie told him. “Quiet now, Phil.”
A slit of lesser darkness appeared beyond Dytie and widened to a rectangle through which, after a bit, he could make out a section of the Akeley porch. Then the rectangle was obstructed as Dytie climbed out through it. Phil followed her, feet first, moving them around until they found the rungs, and carefully climbed down until he could step off onto the Akeleys’ gritty front yard. Then he looked up. As far as he could see there was absolutely nothing above him except the two upper-level streets and the dull black “ceiling” above the house. Not only did light “go around” the dinghy, but it did so without getting shuffled.
“All safe,” Dytie assured him. “Nobody climb over rocks, bump in ladder legs. This place, Phil?”
The Akeley house looked more ancient and dangerously dilapidated than ever, canted forward at least a foot after the chimney’s collapse. A gaping wound had been left in the two upper stories and nothing had been done to bandage it. However, a little light glowed through the shutters of the living-room windows.
Stepping gingerly, with an eye cocked on the ominously slanting wall, Phil led Dytie up onto the porch and around the corner of it. He hesitated for a moment in front of the old door with the tiny cat door cut in the bottom of it, then lifted his hand to the cat-headed knocker and banged it twice. After a while there were footsteps, the old style peephole was opened, and this time Phil immediately recognized the watery gray eye as Sacheverell’s.
“Greetings, Phil,” the latter said. “Who’s that with you?”
“A young lady named Dytie da Silva.”
Sacheverell opened the door. “Come right in. Fate must be at work. Her brother’s here.”
XVIII
THE Akeley living room was as crazily cluttered as when Phil last saw it. No one had done much, if any, cleaning up after the fight. In addition, there were a large number of dirty plates, cups and glasses abandoned in odd places. Judging by the remnants of food and drink in them, three informal meals had been consumed since last night, not counting snacks.
The black velvet curtains at the far end of the room had been pulled aside, revealing the altar Sacheverell had prepared for Lucky in what had been the dining room a century ago. It consisted of a small table or box set against the far wall and covered with reddish-brown velvet that trailed to the floor in graceful folds. Fastened to the wall above it was an ancient ankh or crux ansata, the Egyptian cross with looped top, symbolizing procreation and life. On lower tables to either side were large unlit candles and statuettes of many of the Egyptian gods: queenly Isis, whip-wielding Osiris, jackal-jawed Anubis and cat-headed Bast herself.
And there was the same profusion of cats, though they were no longer peaceful as they’d been when Lucky was in the house. They stalked about with ears drawn back and fur fluffed fearsomely; they ambushed each other from behind and under furniture; they snarled and jumped whenever they met. Those wolfing the bits of food left on plates would lift their heads every few seconds to hiss warnings. The only one asleep was impiously curled on Lucky’s altar.
The dark low table inlaid with a silver pentacle had been righted and placed in the center of the room. On it were glasses and a bottle of brandy. Beside it sat Juno Jones, still in her dowdy dress with the ripped sleeves hanging from her meaty arms, but with her flower covered hat once more jammed down over her cropped blonde hair. She looked sullen and on the defensive.
Across the table from her, leaning forward in their chairs, sat Dion da Silva and Morton Opperly. Both of them stood up as Sacheverell triumphantly swept Phil and Dytie into the room, saying “Our council of war – or perhaps I should say muscular peace – is complete!”
Opperly smiled courteously, seeming completely at home in these wild, wonderful and crummy surroundings; perhaps a mind hungry for any and all facts liked a grubby bohemian atmosphere.
Dion da Silva on the other hand, as soon as he spotted Dytie, put down the big glass of whiskey he was holding and whooped out three or four words in a foreign language, then caught himself and changed to, “‘Allo, darling! Great see. ‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo.”
By this time he had Dytie in his arms and was hugging her with a hungriness that struck Phil as distinctly unbrotherly. She wasn’t being any too sisterly about it herself. But finally she pushed him away with a gasp. “Thas ‘nough,” she told him. “Great see too, dumbhead. ’bout time turn up.’
Dion looked hurt for as long as it took him to get his glass of whiskey. “Know what doing?” he asked his sister excitedly.
“Yes, get drunk,” she told him and whispered to Phil, “Know what Dion short for? God wine. Pick good name, eh?”
“No get drunk,” Dion asserted with some dignity. Then his excitement got the better of him again and he burst out with, “We finding pussycat!”
There was a giggle that Phil recognized. Looking around, he saw Mary Akeley sitting in her alcove backed by her shelves of wax dolls and busy at work sewing clothes for another under a large magnifier. Sacheverell’s witch-nosed young wife had shifted to an almost off the bosom evening dress and tied a huge green bow around her coarse dark hair.
“That man, he cuts me up in little pieces every time he says a word,” she gurgled, without pausing in her work. “He’s so cute.”
“Thanks sweetheart,” Dion replied, gayly waving his glass at her, “I cute all over. All full s’prises. Show sometime.”
Dytie suppressed a guffaw and whispered to Phil, “‘Member tell you: two legs, milk glands?” Phil nodded, though he judged that Dion’s interest in Mary didn’t nearly come up to his thirsty adoration of Dora Pannes. The satyr (Phil felt shocked at how glibly the word came into his mind) was just keeping his hand in.