Phil reached for the knob (how often had Barnes made those futile, and some said drunken, threats, when everyone knew his administration was hand in glove with Fun Incorporated!) but he hesitated as an unfamiliar and rather eerie note crept into the President’s voice.

“Fellow Americans,” Barnes almost whispered, wobbling a little from side to side, “strange forces are abroad, insane thoughts, spirits of the upper air like those which troubled ancient Babylon. Our minds are being worked upon, it is the final testing time for -”

His momentary curiosity gone, Phil twisted the knob to silence and darkness. Nevertheless, the President’s rhetoric set the tone of his next reverie. He did not pace now, but crouched back in the foam chair wedged between the radio and bed.

He must be crazy, he told himself with a quiet certainty that didn’t hurt for the moment, perhaps because he sat so very still. Everything he’d felt this afternoon had been out of character, including his ridiculous overvaluation of that dream cat.

Yes, he must be crazy.

At that moment the dim circle of the window was intersected by a smaller and much brighter circle. He automatically stood up and stepped forward.

The girl in the room across the bay had switched on her light. Now she threw down a cloak and walked around the room as if searching for something, the horsetail of black hair flirting from side to side as she turned her head this way and that. She was less than twenty feet away and he could see her clearly. She was wearing a gray suit fashionably pied with great splotches of black. Her face was compact, nose small, mouth broad, eyes very wide set, and, as Phil now noticed definitely for the first time, her ears were lobeless and curved up to an almost faun-like tip. As on those rare occasions when he’d glimpsed her before, he felt a quiver of uneasiness.

She shrugged her shoulders, as if giving up her hunt, and walked over to the window, looking straight at Phil. He shrank back a bit, though he knew he was invisible. She grasped a knob on the rim and swung her hand in a quarter-circle, the window gradually blacking out as she did so.

Then, just as Phil started to turn away, the window began to brighten again until it was almost as transparent as before. He realized what must have happened. The inner pane of polarizing glass had missed its catch and revolved silently onward a few extra inches. He’d known it to happen to his own.

The girl across the way thought she was hidden. She wasn’t.

She stretched and took off her coat. Phil gnawed his lip. He didn’t quite want to watch her. But anything was welcome that would distract him from the thought with which his last reverie had ended, and, Phil knew very well, this window could provide most gripping, if barren, distractions.

She slowly parted the magnetic clasps on her blouse, then slipped out of it with a lithe twist of her shoulders. Phil forgot his fears, enthralled by the beauty of her dark-nippled breasts. Below them, almost cupping them, she seemed to be wearing some sort of close fitting, velvet black undergarment.

She stepped out of her skirt. The undergarment ended raggedly at her thighs. It puzzled him, perhaps because of the faint smokiness of the window. It looked almost as if it were made of some sort of fur.

Balancing expertly on one leg, she drew the stocking from the other, and along with the stocking one of those grotesque ten-inch platform shoes.

Only – and here Phil’s heart jumped – she seemed to have stripped off much more than that. To be precise, her foot.

Then he saw she hadn’t taken off quite all her foot. At the point where her ankle should have been, her leg curved backward a trifle, then sharply forward again, slimming down abruptly to end in a neat little black hoof.

She stripped off the other stocking and shoe with the same result. Phil could see how the foot fitted into a well in the dummy foot and the platform, and was in that way concealed.

She danced exuberantly around the room. He could hear the clicks of the little hoofs. He remembered how he’d heard her practicing tap. He could see very distinctly her slim pasterns, her dainty fetlocks tufted with fur exactly the same texture and blackness as her “undergarments.”

She stopped dancing, took up an electric razor, and began critically to shave the edge of her “undergarment.”

Phil started to think in words. He got as far as “First a green cat, then -” The next moment he turned and plunged for the door.

He wasn’t very clear about anything for a while after that. For instance, when he darted across the street two blocks away from the Skyway Towers he was almost run down by a slowly moving black electric, stylishly designed in the antique, museum-case style of the early 1900’s. In it were sitting Cookie, the Akeleys and Swish Jack Jones with a box on his lap. Phil didn’t even recognize them at the time.

All he was really conscious of was what his hand clutched in his pocket – the crumpled phonoscribe tape with Dr. Romadka’s name and address.

IV

THE indicator light sped to the top of the tall column of studs, the elevator whooshed to a stop, the door opened and Phil stumbled out into a tiny foyer with carpeting like a gray lawn.

A wall – this one was female, a regular charmer – murmured, “Good evening. You have an appointment?”

“Uh,” Phil managed, rather surprised that he could speak at all.

“Do you have an appointment?” the wall repeated. “Please answer yes or no.”

“Yes,” Phil said.

“May I have your name, please?”

“Phil Gish.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered whether he shouldn’t have said Jack Jones, but after humming delicately for a moment the wall said, “How do you do, Mr. Gish. Please come in.”

The wall slid open to a surrealist pear shape. Phil stepped through. A sinuous arm, slim and glittering as a serpent, sprang from beside him and indicated a nearby chair with the gracious wave of a hostess who has studied ballet.

“Will you please sit down?” the wall suggested. “Dr. Romadka will be a few secs.”

Phil gulped. He had the feeling that if he strayed beyond the indicated area of the room, the arm would do quite as efficient a job as had the heavier one at the wrestling arena, although probably with an “Excuse me, please,” or even a “Now, Phil.”

He took the suggestion. As if, by sinking into the chair, he had completed a circuit, the wall said, “Thank you.” He stood up. The wall said, “Yes?” with just a hint of impatience. He sat down again. “Thank you,” the wall repeated.

The room was as dark, soft and silent as a womb. Evidently most of Dr. Romadka’s patients dreamed expensively. The inevitable desk had a double curve like a love seat. There were no advertisements anywhere; a sure sign of wealth. On one wall was a large, round design, apparently copied from some classical Greek original, which disturbed Phil with its suggestions of nymphs and satyrs. He quickly shifted his gaze to an arch, through which he could see the beginning of a stairway. He decided Dr. Romadka must also have a penthouse.

Suddenly he heard angry voices, a man’s and a girl’s. The latter’s rose to a catsquall of hate. A door somewhere shut with a snap, and a bit later a man came down the stairs without moving his feet. Phil deduced an escalator.

Dr. Romadka was tubby, bald and beaming with subtlety. He had on his left cheek four new, deep scratches, which he ignored completely and apparently expected Phil to. He summoned Phil to the desk with an indicating nod. They sat down and looked at each other across the curved and gleaming plane.

The analyst smiled. “Well, Mr. Gish? Yes, Jack Jones told me your name, and since Sacheverell and Mary are paying for things in any case, the new arrangement is quite all right. Oh, Sacheverell and Mary are Mr. and Mrs. Akeley, Jack Jones’ friends. I thought you might have known. Incidentally, you’re an hour late for your appointment.”