It flashed across the distance, approaching rapidly. Would it reach a spot shortly where its cunning would become a treadmill operation — or had that effect only applied to me on trying to get away from this place?

The segments of its body slid from side to side, it hissed like a leaky pressure cooker, and steaming slaver marked its trail from the fiction of paint. Rather than slowing, its speed seemed to increase.

My left hand jerked forward of its own volition and a series of words rose unbidden to my lips. I spoke them just as the creature crossed the interface I had been unable to pierce earlier, rearing as it upset a vacant table and bunching its members as if about to spring.

“A Bandersnatch!” someone cried.

“A frumious Bandersnatch!” Humpty corrected.

As I spoke the final word and performed the ultimate gesture, the image of the Logrus swam before my inner vision. The dark creature, having just extended its foremost talons, suddenly drew them back, clutched with them against the upper left quadrant of its breast, rolled its eyes, emitted a soft moaning sound, exhaled heavily, collapsed, fell to the floor, and rolled over onto its back, its many feet extended upward into the air.

The Cat’s grin appeared above the creature. The mouth moved.

“A dead frumious Bandersnatch,” it stated.

The grin drifted toward me, the rest of the Cat occurring about it like an afterthought.

“That was a cardiac arrest spell, wasn’t it?” it inquired.

“I guess so,” I said. “It was sort of a reflex. Yeah, I remember now. I did still have that spell hanging around.”

“I thought so,” it observed. “I was sure that there was magic involved in this party.”

The image of the Logrus which had appeared to me during the spell’s operation had also served the purpose of switching on a small light in the musty attic of my mind. Sorcery. Of course.