"Oh, so I'm just a dumb stooge, am I? Well let me tell you, Jackie, Juno's right about one thing and I wish I'd admitted I agreed with her long ago. These Akeleys have turned your head. They've dazzled you."
At that moment Sacheverell came popping back into the room, his brilliant silk robes fairly hissing against the black velvet. "Stop, at once!" he commanded, raising his arm. "You will disturb his awakening. Rise above hate. Do you realize I can't see anything of you but ink blobs, your auras are so black? Even he will be unable to reach you."
"Shut up that silly talk about he," Cookie snarled. "I don't want to hear the word again or anything more about your stupid cults that I had to pretend to be interested in. You've done Jackie quite enough damage as it is. Do you know we could have got ten thousand dollars for that cat you're using for your idiotic mumbo-jumbo? Jack had just stun-gunned it and was all ready to hand it over to Moe Brimstine and collect ten thousand dollars, when you have to prance in with that ugly witch of a wife of yours and make like a wizard and flatter Jackie into thinking he was starting a new religion or something and soft talk him into giving you the cat. I hate you. I want to hurt you." And he started toward Sacheverell, walking on his toes and puffing out his sweatered chest like a bright blue fighting cock.
Once again to Phil's surprise, Sacheverell's horrified and reproachful gaze was turned not on Cookie, but Jack.
"Jack," he gasped, "do you mean to tell me you shot him with a stun-gun, that you even dreamed of selling him for money? Judas!"
"Now see what you've done," Jack moaned, not at Cookie, but at Juno. "You've spoiled everything."
"I'll spoil you, you rancid little intelleckchul-lover," she roared and ran at him blindly like a novice. Jack's face set itself in a shrewd grimace and he stepped lightly to one side and slipped out a hand for a hold. But just then Juno's professional training seemed to come back to her and she checked herself, smoothly grabbed the wrist of the hand snaking toward her, bent, spun, and sent Jack sailing over her hip in a flying mare that landed him on the silver pentacled table. It toppled with a crash and various religious objects fell from the wall.
Meanwhile, Mary Akeley had picked up a small vise that had broken from her upset work table, and hurled it with great accuracy at Cookie's head, but then Cookie suddenly hurled himself at Sacheverell's throat and the vise passed through the space where Cookie's head had been.
While all this was going on, Phil, completely to his surprise, walked coolly over to the shelves of figurines, carefully picked up that of Mitzie, and put it in his jacket pocket.
When he turned around, Jack had selected a black glass Aztec sacrificial knife from the fallen religious objects and writhed to his knees like a cobra. Juno picked up a rather small, but very solid, brass Buddha.