Hayes carefully handed Billig the figurine of Mitzie Romadka in black, off the bosom frock.
Billig rattled softly to Hayes, “I’d swear this is Mary what’s-her-name’s work – the girl who used to do strip-tease dolls for us. She always had a touch and now it’s got better.” He fingered the doll delicately, studying the reactions in Phil’s face. “Do you want her?” he asked suddenly. “Would it pain you to see her hurt?” He made as if to wring the doll’s head off, then quickly set it on a table beside him and threw up his hands. “Whereis Brimstine!”
“Here,” the latter announced, hulking into the room like a bear in a great hurry. “I’ve located Jack. And we’ve caught the girl the three hep-jerks blabbed about. She lined herself up with the dress-display robots and might have passed herself off as one, but she sneezed.”
Mitzie was marched into the room, her hands twisted behind her by Dora, whose face wore a disdainful smile that now seemed spiced with cruelty. The analyst’s daughter had lost her evening cape and her long dark hair hung half over one eye. She held her chin up, as one who has struggled, found it no use, yet not really submitted. She saw Phil and looked away from him proudly, as if her being caught had wiped out the problem into which he had plunged her.
“Ah, the original,” Billig observed, looking up from the figurine, which he deftly pocketed. “Darling,” he said, walking toward Mitzie, “would you care to be featured in coast-to-coast living ads, or sit for a line of ultra deluxe dress display robots; would you like to be a handie star, ambassadress to Brazil, or become my girl Friday and be in on everything interesting that goes on in the world; would you take $10,000,000? Just tell us what you’ve done with the green cat.”
Mitzie answered the five-second barrage with a shrug of her upper lip. “Darling, I’m serious,” Billig assured her. “This is a lifetime opportunity and you’re a nice girl.” And he made as if to caress her shoulder affectionately, but instead whipped around to catch Phil’s reaction.
Jack Jones ran into the room and whisked to a stop. He glanced at Phil as if he didn’t know him and then saluted Billig sardonically.
“What are you standing around for?” Billig demanded. “Get to work. Hayes, I want those three hep-jerks in here.”
Phil tried to squirm away from Harris’ seemingly casual grip. And then Jack’s fingers were digging at nerves and pain was not a steel ball but a fiery plant’s red hot roots and million rootlets finding an instant way through every crevice between the cells of his body. He heard himself squealing, “Romadka! Romadka!” The pain lessened and he babbled swiftly, “Dr. Romadka stole the cat. I saw him coming out of the room where the cage is, carrying his black bag. The cat must have been inside.”
“Who’s this Romadka?” Billig whipped at him.
“An analyst,” Phil gasped weakly. He nodded at Jack Jones. “He can tell you about him.”
“I never heard of the man,” Jack asserted instantly.
“You did,” Phil mumbled desperately. “You saw how he was after me tonight. You must have guessed he was after the green cat.”
Jack shook his head curtly. “He’s making it up,” he assured Billig.
Across the room Brimstine put down a phone and called to Billig, “Benson says Greeley ’s acting cool as they come, still confident the raid will start when he said.”
“Well, don’t freeze!” Billig rapped exasperatedly at Jack. “Get back to work on him.”
As the small terrible hands approached, Phil looked imploringly at Mitzie.
“Dr. Anton Romadka is my father,” she said coldly, “reputed to be a great psychoanalyst. This hysteric you’re wasting time on is one of his patients.”
“Darling, why didn’t you say so before?” Billig asked her joyfully. “Dora, let go of her wrists at once!” The violet blonde complied with a cynical hop of her slim eyebrows.
“Darling, it escaped my mind she was still doing that, I’m sorry,” Billig assured Mitzie as he glided towards her, his feet moving almost as glibly as his tongue. “Darling, it’s very clear to me now: this hysteric, as you accurately describe him, stole the cat on your father’s orders and handed it to your father, whom I can see you don’t like and who probably forced you to come along. Now just tell us where your father is, or where you think he is, darling, and you’ll have, not one, but all of those things I mentioned to you a half minute back.”
“My father hasn’t skill enough to burgle a banana-vending robot,” Mitzie snapped at him. “You’re as stupid and conceited and unbalanced as all men, only faster. You think because something clever has been done, a man must have done it. My father’s a rotten analyst, but you could use a few sessions with him.”
“Darling, we’re not going to get anywhere if you talk that way,” Billig assured her laughingly. “Realize it, darling, you’re among friends and well-wishers.” And he took her arm with a paternal amiability.
Mitzie’s right hand was a blurred are and Billig sashayed back with four bright red lines on his left cheek.
“Grab her, Dora!” Billig ordered. The violet blonde willingly wrapped her arms around Mitzie’s waist and elbows. Mitzie avoided noticing it. Meanwhile, Billig was rapid firing, “I assumed she was disarmed, Brimstine. Get those claws off her.” Brimstine grabbed Mitzie’s right hand around the knuckles with one of his big paws and began to jerk off the needle-fanged thimbles. Billig waved off Harris, who had let go Phil to offer to minister to his boss’s dripping cheek.
Billig paced back toward Mitzie. “Darling,” he said, and for once the words came slow, “you’re really wonderful, you’re just the sort of charming vixen the sadisto-hackers dream up to torture the hero. But tonight I’m afraid you’re going to have to reverse roles.”
Phil’s mysterious inward tormentor who had made him go up against Moe Brimstine at the Akeleys’, now got to work again and despite the weakness of his pain-threaded muscles, forced him to start a staggering rush at Billig, meanwhile calling out, “Don’t you touch her!”
Naturally Jack tripped him, caught him by the collar almost before he’d painfully smashed into the flooring, and slammed him back onto the stool.
At that moment, Hayes and four or five other men, the latter in the company guard costume of the half-headless man, marched a banged up Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck into the far end of the room. Carstairs, who now had blood as well as hair trailing down his forehead, looked steadily at Mitzie.
“Thank you for this, Mitz,” he said rather quietly.
Llewellyn and Buck each nodded his head.
“You take it for granted I skunked on you?” Mitzie asked. None of the three acted as if they’d heard the question.
Phil, watching Billig, noted a very slight shiver, smile, and widening of the eyes, although the boss man of Fun Incorporated wasn’t looking at anything in particular.
“Take those boys down to the company garage,” Billig called to Hayes; keeping his slashed cheek turned away. “I’ll phone you orders about them in fifteen seconds.” Then, as Hayes and the guards jumped to obey, Billig said to Mitzie in a voice just loud enough to reach Carstairs, “Thanks again, darling. That was a nice job.”
Carstairs had time to give her one last deadly look before he was hurried out with the others.
“Come on, everybody,” Billig said gayly, “we’re going to have a little show. Darling, would you like to take my arm? I’ve quite forgotten that love tap. If you promise to be a good girl, I’ll tell Dora to let go of you.” Mitzie made no reply but Dora unwrapped her arms with lazy reluctance. “Come on, darling,” Billig entreated, starting for the balcony. Mitzie didn’t look at him, but she walked at his side. He didn’t try to touch her. They moved fast. Billig looked back over his shoulder.