“Hurry up, everybody,” he ordered exasperatedly. “Stop acting slow-motion!”
Brimstine, Dora and Harris quickly fell in behind them. Jack brought up the rear with Phil.
“I had to do that,” Jack whispered in Phil’s ear. “I couldn’t take it and trust you to fake reactions well enough to fool Billig. But for God’s sake, don’t spill anything more about Romadka. I know you’re Juno’s lover. Well, Romadka made me bring him here. His friends are at the house. They’ll kill Mary and Sacheverell – Juno and Cookie, too – if he gets caught.”
As Phil was trying to formulate some sort of answer to this, they followed the others onto the balcony. Its railing was split by a gateway, from which a metal stairway projected down and out into the darkness, its first dozen treads glimmering faintly.
Without warning Mitzie left Billig and darted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Harris lunged after her, but Billig stopped him with a gesture. “She’s doing what I want,” he explained softly, “and five times faster than if you dragged her. Won’t you ever understand it’s speed I need?”
Brimstine was closely watching Mitzie, who was now no more than a glimmering moth flitting through a duller darkness. “She can’t see the steps any more,” he said with professional admiration. “That girl’s good.”
Billig shrugged and stepped to a control panel in the railing. He picked up a phone, then paused thoughtfully as if he were making sure it was a full fifteen seconds since he had spoken to Hayes and not a mere twelve or thirteen.
“Hayes?” Billig said, and then whispered rapidly. He paused for a moment, writhing his eyebrows, as though Hayes were being unbelievably slow in catching on. “Of course, of course!”
Then Billig touched a button and blinding light transformed the darkness into a huge, empty, gray garage, its floor some thirty feet below the balcony. There were all sorts of lines and signs indicating which way cars should move and park, only there weren’t any cars. There were also a dozen open gateways in the gray walls, eight of them marked “Exit.” The silvery stairs down which Mitzie had flown touched the center point of the garage’s vast floor. A few paces away from that, Mitzie stood tiny and stock-still, as if blinded by the light.
Somewhere, far off, an electric motor was revving up.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Billig said to Dora, Brimstine, Harris, and Jack, but mostly to Phil, “this is the place where people park their cars while they watch the wrestling bouts. But now the wrestling’s over and the cars are gone.” He delicately touched his cheek, where the four furrows had almost stopped bleeding. “So now we can have the place for our little show. Mr. Gish, I must have the green cat. I believe you value that girl’s beauty and life -”
But Phil, whose arms were gripped hard by Jack from behind, hardly heard him he was watching Mitzie so intently. She seemed to come out of her daze suddenly. Dark, close bars shot down and blocked it, as they did all the other gateways Phil could see. He looked at Billig and saw his dark fingers lifting from buttons. He looked back at Mitzie and saw her hesitate and then run back toward the silvery stairs. Billig touched another button and the stairs retracted, telescoping upward. Mitzie stood on the gray floor all alone.
The revving of the unseen motor grew louder. Billig leaned over the guard wall and looked thoughtfully at Mitzie, as if he were a cleverer Caligula, a more practical Nero. Then he turned back, and took the figurine of Mitzie out of his pocket, and spoke to Phil.
“Mr. Gish,” he said, “I seriously want to know where the green cat is, or where your Dr. Romadka has taken it. Otherwise, how would you like this to happen to her down there?” And he jerked off a leg of the figurine. Phil could see the twin ragged cones of wax where the leg had parted. “Or this?” Billig jerked off an arm. “Or this or this?”
At that moment an open topped black jeep came accelerating out from under the balcony. Phil saw there were three people in it, though for a moment he couldn’t tell who. But Mitzie darted to the car, calling out excitedly, “Carstairs!” The car came on. “You’re wonderful?’ Mitzie called. But then suddenly the car came forward faster and straight toward her, and she had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.
The car started to swing around in a great loop. Mitzie picked herself up from the harsh floor.
“Orthis! ” Billig hissed at Phil, and he ripped the figurine apart at the waist, while one thumb made a smashed flatness of the tiny breasts. “Now please tell me where’s this Dr. Romadka.”
“I don’t know!” Phil yelled, struggling to get away from Jack, who maddeningly whispered in his ear, “That’s right, don’t spill a word.”
“I’ll remind you,” Billig continued swiftly, taking something else from under his coat, “that it’s much more worse for her – or anyone – to be hurt by people she idolizes than by people she hates. So tell me about the green cat. Look here, this is an ortho. I can cut down that car any moment you tell me.”
But Phil, like all the others, was watching Mitzie. Having picked herself up, she didn’t move. She simply stayed there, facing the oncoming car. When it was so close that for an instant Phil saw Mitzie’s dark head against its chrome muzzle, it veered and missed her by a breath. Mitzie stood motionless as a statue, though her short skirt whipped out.
Then she turned at the waist and watched the retreating jeep.
“Chicken!” she jeered, loudly.
For an instant everyone on the balcony was very still. Then there was a dull banging, and Phil realized that Moe Brimstine was pounding the railing, and saying, “I tell you, that girl’s good.”
“Yes, she is,” Billig buzzed at him curtly. Brimstine stopped his applause, looking ashamed.
“But,” Billig continued smoothly, turning to Phil, “they’re bound to get her, sooner or later, unless…” And he wiggled the large black gun he held in his small hand. “So you better talk.”
The jeep swung round under the balcony in a much tighter loop and headed back, revving screamingly. Mitzie faced it, grinning, hands as light on her hips as before.
Then, just as – from Phil’s point of view – it had swallowed her up to the waist, she sprang to one side. Phil felt her foot must have brushed the tire. The jeep slammed through the air where she’d been.
“Dumb-bell!” Mitzie screamed.
Brimstine lifted his clenched fists above the railing, glanced at Billig, and with an effort dropped them to his sides. Phil realized his arms were numb, Jack was gripping them so tightly. Beyond Billig, Harris and Dora leaned forward over the guard rail, as abstracted as gamblers.
But Billig himself, though presumably a gambler, was neither still nor intent. “Look, Mr. Gish,” he said rapidly, “I don’t want to see this girl smashed myself, and Brimstine here is figuring on starring her in a knife throwing or dodge-the-car act. This is probably the last chance you have to save her. Where’s Romadka? Where’s the cat?”
A phone-light began to blink on the control panel. Billig ignored it. “Where’s the cat?” he repeated.
But all Phil could think, as the black jeep turned very tightly by the far wall and as Mitzie pivoted to face it – all he could think was that this had happened before, in ancient Crete, where girls as slim waisted and dark haired as Mitzie had faced the black, charging bull and dodged it or vaulted or somersaulted over its cruel horns, their breasts as bare as Mitzie’s, opposing the most tender thing in the world to the most terrible.
The phone-light continued to blink.
The jeep finished its tight turn, Llewellyn and Buck leaning out to balance it like a sailboat while Carstairs stuck steady as death behind the wheel. Then it shrieked toward Mitzie. She waited until it was almost as close as the time before, then sprang toward the left. Quickly, almost as if it were tied to her thoughts, the jeep veered toward the left, too. But Mitzie’s feet, slamming down after that first jump, didn’t carry her farther, but reversed her direction, carrying her back to the spot she’d first occupied.