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, at any rate she darted towards the nearest open gateway. 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?"