"Stop talking that silly guff," Cookie told him. "Moe Brimstine isn't interested in any kind of mystical crud or anything else, for that matter, except the do-re-mi. And neither is Mr. Billig. And Moe Brimstine wouldn't be working for anyone but himself or Mr. Billig—probably both. That's true, isn't it, Jack?"
The kingman didn't seem at all inclined to be talkative, but at this question he did nod his head with conviction.
Juno put a glass in Phil's hand. "Here, drink this," she told him. Phil looked at the brown stuff. "What is it?" he asked.
"Not soybean milk," she assured him. "Drink it up!"
The whiskey, which tasted as if it were laced with something bitter, burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes, but almost immediately his head began to feel clearer. He surveyed the room. Outside of Mary's work table, none of the mess had been cleaned up, though someone had taped the Moslem prayer rug over the broken window.
"And what's more," Cookie was saying dogmatically, "your idea about that cat being mystical is crud too."
Sacheverell looked at him and Jack with exquisite blankness. "But didn't you feel it?" he asked. "Didn't you feel what it did to all of us?"
Jack shifted uneasily and didn't meet his gaze, but Cookie shrugged his shoulders and said nervously, "Oh, that! We were just all of us worked up, between your mumbo-jumbo and the fighting. We'd have believed anything."
"But didn't you feel your whole being change?" Sacheverell insisted. "Didn't you feel universal love and understanding burgeon?"
"Universal sky-pie!" Cookie said rudely. "I didn't feel a thing that meant anything. Did you, Jackie?"