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.