Sacheverell ignored the flirtatious interchange. His sunburned features gleamed with controlled excitement. “The young lady is Dytie da Silva, Dion’s sister,” he told Opperly and Juno. Then he turned to Phil. “I suppose you’re wondering why Dr. Opperly and Señor da Silva are here. Well, I brought them along with me from the Foundation because both of them are genuinely interested inhim, and among the lot of us I think we have a very good chance of deliveringhim from his enemies.”
“What he mean, him?” Dytie asked Phil. “He means pussycat?”
Phil nodded.
“I mean the Green One,” Sacheverell confirmed a bit reprovingly. “I mean Bast Returned, the Bringer of Love and Concord.”
Dytie didn’t bother with that, but went on to whisper to Phil, “He say Op’ly. Op’ly nice slim man there good face? Meet us please.”
Sacheverell was getting set for a speech and he gave Phil a faintly pained look when the latter performed the desired introduction. Dr. Opperly surprised Phil by gallantly kissing Dytie’s hand and then not letting go of it. He didn’t behave at all like a scientist of eighty-plus years should. And Dytie turned on a lot more charm than Phil recalled her using on him. As the two of them stood there murmuring happy but probably highly intelligent nothings to each other, Phil felt a jealous impulse to call out to Opperly, “Wait until you see her real legs,” but he somehow suspected that Opperly wouldn’t be shocked at Dytie’s real legs or anything about her. He had noted a look of surprise come into Opperly’s face as the latter took Dytie’s hand, and from his own experience he’d known why, but Opperly’s surprise had turned not to revulsion, but to eager interest.
Opperly’s voice suddenly became sharp, clear and romantic: “I’d be delighted to, Miss da Silva.”
Dytie turned to the others with a self-satisfied smile. “Op’ly me got much talk ’bout,” she announced. “‘Scuse please. Dion you take care pussycat business me.”
And she and Dr. Opperly strolled out through the dining room arm in arm, beaming at each other and chatting happily.
Sacheverell looked after them a shade critically. “They don’t seem to have any great regard for the importance of the situation, I must say, so we’ll carry on by ourselves in making plans to rescue the Green One. Mr. Gish, what have you to contribute?”
In a few sentences Phil sketched how he’d found Lucky at Fun Incorporated, lost him again, then caught up with him at the Humberford Foundation just before Dora Pannes grabbed him.
As soon as Phil finished, Mary Akeley cut in. She was through sewing clothes and had begun to put them on a relatively bulky doll which Phil recognized as the portrait of Moe Brimstine she’d started on last night. To his amazement, Phil noticed that she was even putting underwear on the doll and slipping almost microscopically tiny objects into its pants pockets with a tiny tweezer.
She said, “Did you happen to find out, Phil, why little old Dr. Romadka kidnapped those three cats of ours?”
Phil explained, as briefly and unsickeningly as he could, what had happened to them.
Mary reached over her shoulder and got the doll that was the image of Dr. Romadka. She fixed on it her witchiest stare.
“Slow, slow acid dripped on your forehead,” she incanted with a sincerity that sent gooseflesh coursing under Phil’s shirt. “And I hope it’s days before it gets in your eye. That’s the first and mildest of your torments.” She picked up the doll she’d been dressing and informed it, “That goes for you, too. After the acid really gets in the first eye, we deviate to other parts of your body. To begin with…”
A sudden cat fight prevented Phil from finding out just how nasty Mary Akeley’s imagination could get. Sacheverell separated the five squalling combatants with a few painless but strategic kicks. Then he hitched up his turquoise slacks and said, looking at his wife severely, “Now perhaps we can forget all hates and other dark vibrations and get down to business. Here’s the situation, Mr. Gish. Earlier today, Juno overheard her husband Jackie tell Cookie where Billig and Mr. Brimstine are hiding…”
“Just Moe Brimstine,” Juno corrected dourly.
“Comes to the same thing,” Sacheverell went on. “Now Jackie and Cookie are safely asleep upstairs…”
“Yes,” Juno butted in again, “but they’re not going to stay that way too much longer.”
“Not after what you put in their whiskey?” Sacheverell asked her with a thin smile.
“Listen,” Juno told him, “those two guys have had more things in their whiskey than ever got wrote down in books jerks like you read. They’re tough, the little punks.”
“Well, if they do wake up, I’m sure you can take care of the two of them. So there’s the situation, Mr. Gish, and the only trouble is that Mrs. Jones won’t tell us where Mr. Brimstine is. She started to, but then she shut up like an air lock. We’ve pleaded with her, we’ve implored her, we’ve promised her things. I’ve done my best to explain to her just how cosmically important it is that the Green One be served and worshipped properly so that he will be able to change the world. Señor da Silva flattered and jollied her, and Dr. Opperly was friendly as anything. But she just won’t talk.”
“I sure won’t talk to nuts like you,” the female wrestler told him wrathfully. “If you hadn’t started acting so squirrely, I’d have probably spilled it straight off. But I’m not the sort of person who likes to be jollied or anything else -”
“‘Scuse please,” Dion interrupted. “No jolly, really mean. Much like you, Juno Jones. Big strong woman.”
“And I don’t enjoy nut talk,” Juno said to Sacheverell, ignoring da Silva. “Every crazy reason you gave me for talking made me that much surer I wouldn’t.” She took a drink and turned toward Phil, her elbows on her correspondingly large knees. “Now, with you it’s different,” she said. “You got a nut’s idea of food, but outside of that you’re pretty human. And I gotta admit you’re a gutsy little guy, because I saw you go up against Brimstine and from what I hear you did some more of the same later. But the main thing is that you own this crazy cat, or at least you was looking for it when I first met you. And I don’t believe you had any nut ideas about it, though I thought so at the time. That right, Phil? Or are you planning to do something cosmic with that cat?”
“I just want to find it,” Phil said honestly.
“That settles it for me. It’s your cat and you got a right to know where it is, even if you get killed trying to get it and I get into all sorts of mucking trouble for telling you. You want I should tell you in private, Phil, or just say it right out in front of all these screwballs?”
“Thank you, Juno,” Phil said quietly. “Just say it right out.”
Juno opened her mouth – and then said, “Oh, Lord.”
Phil turned around. Jack and Cookie were just coming in from the hall.
“Fine sort of wife you turned out to be,” Jack informed Juno, striding toward her with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Can’t leave you ten minutes but you start pulling some dumb trick.” With circles under his eyes and a day’s growth of beard, the black-sweatered little wrestler did a fair job of looking outraged and dejected. But Cookie, automatically imitating his hero, could produce only an expression like that of a blonde baby about to cry.
“Getting sneaky, too,” Jack observed. “Spying on me.”
“Underhanded,” Cookie commented.
“Underhanded?” Juno banged the silver inlaid table so hard that it jumped and she had to grab at her glass and the bottle. Why, you two stinkers are so permanently underhanded you couldn’t play no game but softball.”
“Also, I don’t like the company you keep,” Jack continued. “The Ikeless Joe was bad enough,” he said, giving Phil the barest glance before going on to da Silva, “but where between here and Pluto did you ever pick up this silly greaser who can’t even talk English?”