"That's your explanation for everything!" Billig roared softly. "If
something happens this time, do you suppose I'll be happy because you
tell me the coppers arresting me are nuts? Where _is_ the FBL man?"
"You really should try and relax, I tell you, Mr. Billig," Moe
Brimstine suggested, recovering himself. "Distract yourself somehow.
Like with Dora here." And ignoring Billig's third, "Pfui," Brimstine
looked at her critically. "Fix your mouth, dear," he said.
With a graceful obedience that nevertheless managed to be contemptuous
the violet blonde beauty slid from the table and came straight toward
Phil, who decided that now at last they'd have to stop pretending he
wasn't there.
"Get that slinky walk, Mr. Billig," Moe Brimstine was urging. "What a
gorgeous babe, eh?"
She tossed her head, stopped six feet short of Phil, took out a
lipstick, looked straight ahead of her, and very carefully made up her
lips. At the same time something cold and sucking closed on the fingers
of Phil's left hand. He instinctively flipped it, and a tiny pink
octopus sailed through the air toward the girl and flattened itself
against something in the air about two feet short of her.
Phil watched it clinging there and felt his mind swell to bursting, as
if he'd had another shot of Tan Jet lemonade. Then he got up, walked
cautiously forward, and felt.
There was an invisible flat surface, extending as far as he could
reach, between himself and the other half of the room. He realized he
was on the viewing side of a one-way mirror bisecting the room. Dora,
standing so close he could otherwise have touched her, turned, and as
she did so, her skirt brushed the other side of the surface. He saw it
was at least two inches from the side to which the octopus still clung.
A mirror would hardly be that thick. It must consist of two panes
probably with the space between them evacuated. For as he realized with
a new surprise, he must not be hearing their voices directly, but a
miked and transmitted version of them, which in turn must be binaural,
so that they would be heard in depth and the proper direction.
Confirming this, he noted that the voices did not localize quite
as perfectly as they had seemed to before he had caught on to the
illusion. Also, the depth effect was a bit too rich, as if the mikes
were more than ears-distance apart.
He also saw that all sources of illumination were beyond the panel.
But now that he knew they were not ignoring him, but simply unaware of
his presence, he felt very much the burglar and very uneasy. He looked
nervously back along the corridor he'd traveled and ahead along its
darker and straighter continuation that, also this side of the panel,
led out of the room. He asked himself why Billig should have the setup
arranged and the sound turned on so that he and Brimstine and Dora
could be spied on. It didn't make sense. Although he was protected,
Phil felt a shiver legging it up his spine.
He might have left the spy chamber but at that moment Moe Brimstine put
down a phone and said excitedly, "He's coming!" whereupon Billig at
once stopped pacing and became as cool and unworried as dark tranquil
water. He pointedly did not look at the archway beyond him, though
Brimstine did.
A man came through the archway and stopped. He held his spine and the
expression of his face very straight. His hair was touched with gray
and his face showed years of worry--but not Billig's kind.
Billig looked at him with a questioning smile that barely stopped
short of a smirk. He waited a moment and said softly, "Under the
circumstances, I suppose you do not care to use your name, but--"
"It's Dave Greeley," the other said bluntly.
"--but I do suppose that you come from the Federal Bureau of Loyalty
and that you are fully empowered to deal for the services and the
president?"
The other nodded once.
"Mr. Greeley, Mr. Brimstine," Billig said with a gracious wave of
his arm that reminded Phil of the swaying of a snake. "Mr. Greeley,
Dora ... er, Dora Pannes."
The government man barely acknowledged the introductions.
"Mr. Billig," he said, "you tell us you have the green cat. If you
have, we'll buy it."
"And what will you pay?" Billig murmured.
"The Moreland-McCartney letters, proving the graft those senators
received from Fun Incorporated, plus all related recording and
microwave taps. Similar material in sixty-odd other cases, which I
hardly need enumerate to you in detail."
"Not enough," Billig said softly.
Greeley hesitated. "Of course, I could appeal to you," he said in a
different voice; "simply as Americans, as citizens of this hemisphere
facing a deadly danger--"
"Please, Mr. Greeley," Billig said with a chuckle.
Greeley shut his lips tight. When he opened them, his earlier voice
spoke.
"Letters of confidence on all the indicted officials, dated today and
signed and thumbprinted by the president and all the service heads,
with confirming vocal recordings and pictures of the recordings being
made. Naturally our experts will have to examine the cat before the
exchange is made. They can be here in twenty minutes."
"That is better," Billig murmured, "quite a bit better. But not enough."
"What else do you want?" Greeley demanded angrily, but it seemed to
Phil that he knew.
"The witnesses, delivered into our hands," Billig said. "O'Malley,
Fattori, Madelin Luszcak, and the thirty-odd--no, I'll be
precise--thirty-four others."
"That's out," Greeley said sharply. "I can't offer to pay you in human
lives."
"Who mentioned anything like that?" Billig asked mildly. "I didn't,
did I, Moe? It's just that we'd feel safer with the witnesses in our
protective custody rather than yours."
"You know what you'd do to them," Greeley said.
Billig shrugged. "You wouldn't have to think about it. In any case,
there are ways to forget." And he glanced at Dora, who flashed the FBL
man a lazy, provocative smile.
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 corner 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 it at Phil, he held
carefully out from his side.
"All right," Billig said, "what have you done with the green cat?"