Greeley flushed. For a few seconds he seemed to be concentrating on his breathing. “Look here, Billig,” he said finally, “don’t get the idea that either I or the government feels anything but loathing and detestation for you. Fun Incorporated has corrupted a third of a nation, and we have your headquarters here and in twenty cities so well cordoned a wasp couldn’t get out. The sole reason we haven’t smashed you is that you tell us you’ve captured something that is a little more dangerous to America than even your rotten organization. But our patience is wearing thin. We suspect a bluff, in spite of those green hairs you sent us. Make a deal while you can.”
“The chemical and physical analysis of the hair must have shown your experts something very interesting,” Billig murmured with a reflective smile. “Like you say, Mr. Greeley, we have something you can’t do without. Something worth roughly – shall we say a third of a nation? It seems to me that we are letting you off very cheaply. Consider what the Russkies might be willing to pay. So I’m afraid the witnesses are an essential part of the exchange. In fact, I’m certain.”
“I’m warning you,” Greeley flared, “that I’m in full charge of Project Kitty under Emmet and that I’ve advised Emmet and the president to break off the deal and raid if you insist on that condition.”
“You’ve advised,” Billig replied, “and you’re under Emmet. I’m only interested in what Barnes and Emmet have advised.”
Greeley looked as if he wished he were deaf and dumb. His hands clenched and slowly unclenched. He set himself to speak.
Just then a phone-light blinked. Moe Brimstine snatched it up, obviously prepared to roar out a rebuke and slam it down. Instead he listened silently, and kept on listening. Greeley watched him intently.
At that moment, Phil heard the soft kiss of a door slitting open and faint footsteps drabber in quality than the binaural richness of the stuff he’d been listening to. He looked down the straight dark corridor on his side of the panel. Some forty feet down it, where it ended in a T, light now flooded across. Then Phil saw Dr. Romadka cross the corridor at that point. The analyst was still carrying his black bag. In the other hand was a gun. He disappeared from sight.
“You better take this, Mr. Billig.”
Phil switched around just in time to see Billig grab the phone from Brimstine with a glare. “Three of them?” Billig’s words were staccato. “And a fourth man and a girl, they said? And what did they tell you the fourth man wanted? I don’t care if it sounds silly!What? ”
Holding the phone, Billig spared Greeley a glance. “We’re going to have to delay making final arrangements for a few minutes,” he said curtly. “Dora will entertain you.”
“You can’t delay,” Greeley assured him with a sudden note of triumph. “The raid starts in ten minutes unless I return. Besides, there’s only one thing important enough to make you interrupt this interview. You’ve lost the green cat, or you’re afraid you have.”
“I know Emmet would allow more time than that, even if he didn’t tell you,” Billig snapped back at him. “Put Benson in charge of him, Brimstine. Then come back.”
“Let me contact Emmet,” Greeley said quickly. “We’ll cooperate with you fully in finding the cat. You have my word the indictments will be quashed.”
“Word! Take him out,” Billig said sharply.
Greeley, lifting his elbow contemptuously away from Brimstine’s hand, started with him out of the room. Dora accompanied them. Greeley pointedly edged away from her.
“Don’t be frightened, lambie,” the violet blonde told him, “I’m just bound for the little girl’s room.”
Billig lifted the phone. But before he’d quite got it to his ear and mouth, the skin around his eyes contracted with sudden suspicion and he gazed toward Phil, or rather toward a point near Phil, so sharply that the latter would have sprinted off, except he could not decide for a second which way.
Then the spread two first fingers of Billig’s right hand struck like a serpent’s fangs at two buttons.
Lights flared around Phil, everything was suddenly very still, and Phil saw himself in a bright mirror that hid Billig and halved the length of the room. His reflection, although fully clothed, had the expression of a man caught naked in public. He hesitated for another desperate second, frozen by the thought that the mirror was one great eye, then ran down the straight corridor. He came to the T and whisked around the comer in the direction Romadka had gone, until he heard footsteps ahead and pounding toward him. He darted back the way Romadka had come and found himself in a brightly lit room chiefly occupied by a heavy copper cage with less than an inch between the bars.
But one corner of the cage had been neatly sliced off and rested on the floor beside it like a little three-sided orange tent. Phil looked around for a way out and saw nothing but bright white wall marred only by a deep cut in the same plane as the slice through the cage. His circling look ended at the door through which he’d come. Mr. Billig and Moe Brimstine were standing in it. Brimstine held a stun-gun, Mr. Billig a larger weapon which, while pointing at at Phil, he held carefully out from his side.
“All right,” Billig said, “what have you done with the green cat?”
XII
IT couldn’t have been three minutes since Phil’s capture, yet it seemed that he had been listening to Mr. Billig for years. He was sitting apprehensively on a stool in a long low room to which he had been conducted by two men in sober sports togs – obviously a cut above company guards – whom Mr. Billig addressed as Harris and Hayes. Along one of the long sides of the room were windows and a doorway leading onto a balcony of some sort, beyond which yawned perplexing darkness. Harris and Hayes stood behind Phil while Billig paced in front of him.
Just now the voice that was like a tape played at triple speed, but not so high-pitched, was saying, “Have you ever pictured $10,000,000 concretely? Think of it this way: a yacht on the Amazon, bubble-dome cabin, your private copter, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, yourself absolute monarch of a very interesting microcosm. Doesn’t it appeal to you?”
“But I didn’t take the green cat,” Phil replied quickly – Billig’s speed was catching. “I don’t know where it is.”
“What do you want then?” Billig demanded. “Or like most people, are you afraid to say? Tell me, I’ve heard everything.”
Phil opened his mouth, thought of Lucky, and said nothing.
“Hit him, Harris,” Billig ordered, “and don’t be all day about it!”
Pain bounced like a steel ball back and forth inside Phil’s skull at Harris’ dispassionate swipes. At the last one Phil felt his head go numb and his thoughts glassy. Harris’ bank cashier face swam out of sight, to be replaced by Billig’s smooth mask with its lurking host of wrinkles.
Billig produced the gun he’d been carrying when Phil was caught. He informed Phil, “I propose to cut your limbs off, one by one. The beam burns, which keeps you from bleeding too fast.”
All Phil’s glazed mind could think was how ludicrous the word “limb” was. He wondered if Billig considered him a tree. Billig’s head persisted in circling Phil like a small planet, though that may only have been the room swimming. Suddenly Phil stuck out an arm.
“All right,” he informed Billig, “Begin with this. Don’t hurt the leaves.”
Billig lowered the gun. “You hit him too hard,” he told Harris, “or else he likes it. There are other kinds of pain. Where’s Brimstine? I told him he had only two minutes to find Jack. Hayes, frisk this man.”
Slim fingers rippled through Phil’s pockets and tossed Billig commonplace items. When the hand went for his right hand pocket, Phil had a belated memory and made a move to prevent it, but Harris grabbed his arms from behind.