The towers of the Wynant Hotel, a snobbish establishment whose austere
front hulked over the general public with stoney aloofness, marked the
center of the city.
Within, the Wynant shed upon its cowed clientele all the warmth and
home-like comfort of a walk-in freezing unit. The personnel had
obviously been trained to regard the paying guest as a fraud, a vandal
and a momentary fugitive from social and moral levels so low as to be
mainly inhabited by gophers.
As to decor, the Wynant had permitted itself only a single divergence
from the completely austere. In the center of its vast foyer there
was a fountain and pool, topped with the marble figure of a woman in
the final stages of dishabille. The lady in question, however, was
of a classic pedigree and, therefore, her condition of undress was
permissible; one was allowed to look upon her classic charms without
fear of suspicion from the bellhops. If the guests of the Wynant,
who stayed there mainly for the dubious purposes of prestige, felt a
certain affection for the lady of the fountain, it was because she,
in her classic security, was accomplishing for them the very thing
they had always longed to do themselves; she had presented herself
solidly in the very center of the Wynant and caused an area of dampness
thereupon. It did not matter that the lady clutched her nakedness to
her in a fit of modesty; the guests of the Wynant knew what she really
had on her mind and loved her for it with a devout intensity.
Marc had always considered the Wynant a veritable bully of a place, and
this opinion was generally shared by a multitude of others. On the one
occasion when he had gone to the Wynant to attend what was unanimously
conceded to be the most stultifying businessmen's luncheon in the
annals of human commerce, he had vowed never to set foot in the place
again. However, there always comes a time to break even the most solemn
of vows.
It was logic of a sort that caused Marc to bring Toffee to the Wynant;
if there was any atmosphere chill enough to conquer the irrepressible
redhead's wayward disposition, the Wynant had just such an atmosphere
to offer in aces and spades. It was Marc's rather naive thought to
banish Toffee to the more elevated regions of this spiritual salt mine
and leave her there until, out of sheer, screaming boredom, she made up
her mind to disappear to the place from whence she had come. Thus he
would be free to make his peace with Julie and set his house in order
in the several ways that it now required.
Noting the doorman's glance of disapproval as they entered, Marc
carefully jockeyed himself into a position in front of Toffee so that
she might be hidden from view. The top coat, several cuts too long both
in the sleeves and the skirt, did little to give the girl an air of
refinement. As rapidly as he could, Marc led her across the broad foyer
to the desk at the opposite side of the room. Toffee flapped obediently
along behind him, but her gaze moved curiously toward the fountain and
its unclad mistress.
"Is that one of the guests taking a bath?" she asked innocently.
"Certainly not," Marc said. "It's a statue. That fact is quite
evident."
Toffee's eyes narrowed suspiciously on the statue. "She looks awfully
lifelike to me."
"Don't worry," Marc said. "You won't have to take your bath in public."
"I wasn't worried," Toffee said absently.
* * * * *
They proceeded to the desk and were instantly greeted by a clerk of a
precise black-and-white perfection. Though the man was shorter than
Marc he still seemed to look down on him from a great height.
"Yes?" he asked with a slight reptilian hiss.
Marc had prepared his story in advance. "I'd like a suite for my
niece," he said.
The clerk regarded Marc's "niece" and her costume and notched up the
last small measure of slack in his eyebrows.
"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc said hopefully, "of the Pillsworth
Advertising Agency."
The clerk regarded Marc with a cool steadiness that indicated all too
plainly that anyone engaged in advertising, in the opinion of the
Wynant, was nothing more than a not-so-high-class ballyhoo artist.
Then he glanced down at the polished surface of the counter As though
expecting to see three shells and a pea suddenly appear there.
"And your niece's luggage?" he asked.
"My niece was in an accident," Marc said quickly. "Her luggage was
lost, burned. She's in town to replace the things that were destroyed."
"I see," the clerk said, obviously mulling over the very interesting
fact that Toffee had managed to be caught in the accident in nothing
but a genleman's topcoat.
"It was so embarrassing," Toffee put in tragically.
"I daresay," the clerk said sourly. He turned back to Marc. "I'm afraid
the hotel is completely filled."
Marc sighed. Now he would have to discover some other disposition for
Toffee. But suddenly he was too tired to even think. All at once he was
overcome with such a feeling of fatigue that he could hardly restrain
himself from leaning down to rest his head on the desk counter. He was
exhausted beyond belief. He tried to turn away, but he hadn't even the
strength for that. And then his eyes began to play tricks. As he looked
at them, the clerk, Toffee, the desk blurred and became hazy. He felt
that he was slipping into unconsciousness but he had no sensation of
falling. Rather, it was as though he were simply floating away from
reality. Reality dimmed, faded away and was gone.... Then suddenly
everything jumped back into place with startling clarity. It was as
though he had traveled a long, long journey in a space of seconds.
"Marc!" Frightenedly.
It was Toffee who had screamed, and Marc turned quickly toward her.
Then he came close to screaming himself. Something had happened to the
She had grown so terribly short all of a sudden! And the clerk too.
Neither of them rose to a height quite even with his waist. They were
both staring up at him in open-mouthed horror.
"What's happened to you?" Marc gasped.
"To us!" Toffee cried. "It's you! What are you doing up there?"
"Up where?" Marc asked. Then suddenly he glanced about him, and his
breath made a startled rattling sound at the back of his throat.
At once, Marc could neither deny nor believe what he saw. A dreadful
confusion crowded his senses as he regarded the space of thin air that
stretched between his feet and the floor. Impossibly he had elevated to
a height of about three feet. And he was still rising!
"Oh, Lord!" he yelled.
"Please keep your voice down," the clerk said desperately. "It's bad
enough what you're doing, without yelling about it. If this is some
advertising stunt...."
"Keep my voice down?" Marc said unhappily. "I can't even keep myself
down!"
"It's the explosion!" Toffee cried with sudden realization. "All that
stuff floating around in the basement! Now you're doing it, too!"
"Oh, my God!" Marc cried. The exclamation was prompted simultaneously
by the terrible realization of his condition and the fact that even
while they had been talking he had risen an additional foot into the
air.
"I'm going higher!"
* * * * *
The clerk steadied himself uncertainly against the counter. "Please,
sir!" he quavered. "You'll have to stop that at once. I'll give you a
room, a whole floor, if you'll only stop!"
"You shut up, you quivering ninny," Marc gritted. "Do you think I
actually want to do this sort of thing?"
"I don't know," the clerk said uncertainly. "I can't think why you
should. I'm sure I'd hate it myself."
"Here!" Toffee yelled. "Take my hand! I'll pull you down!"
Marc reached out to Toffee, but too quickly; the sudden movement
caused him to veer away from her. He drifted to one side, revolved
helplessly, then moved away.
"Help!" he yelled. "For Pete's sake, help!"
Toffee stood staring at him, too terror stricken to move. She watched,
transfixed, as he soared drunkenly across the broad foyer, apparently
marking the tide of the air conditioning.
"Oh, Mona!" she murmured. "He's sailing like a kite in an autumn wind!"
Up till this time the foyer had remained blissfully deserted, but this
was not a condition destined to endure. At the worst possible moment,
just as Marc drifted wordlessly past the doorway, a company of diners
entered from the dining room. Four in all, two men and two women, they
walked into the room, stopped, observed a figure going past overhead,
floating lazily in mid-air like an agonized leaf on the tide, and fell
into a tense silence. All four of them stared hauntedly into space for
a time. Then one of the ladies, of a lesser fortitude than the others,
reached out and took her companion's arm in a death grip.
"I could have sworn I saw...!"
The man, a portly individual with a grey, senatorial mane, reached out
and, without hesitation, clapped a hand over the lady's mouth.
"No, you didn't, dear," he said quietly, "we just won't speak of it."
Together, the four turned and silently filed back into the dining room.
"I'd like to enquire about the brandy sauce," the old gentleman said
through clenched teeth. "I may sue this place before I'm through."
In the meantime, Toffee had taken out in hot pursuit of Marc. "Grab
something!" she panted, running along beneath him. "Grab something and
hold on!"
The words came dimly to Marc through the pounding panic in his mind,
but he obeyed them automatically. He reached out and felt frantically
for something to take hold of. He had risen by now to a height of about
eight feet and was circling toward the fountain. It was destiny that
guided him to the statue.
He caught hold of the stone lady and grappled to make his grasp firm.
If at this point in the proceedings the mistress of the fountain did
not reach out and slap Marc it was more because she was made of stone
than because of the place where he grabbed her. The effect bordered
narrowly on the obscene and became even more questionable as Marc took
a toe hold on the lady's mid-section. It was precisely at this moment
that the elevator doors directly across from the fountain slid open and
a delegation of conventioning club ladies arrived.
As a unit the ladies quitted the car, started forward, then stopped
short. Twenty-two well-padded bosoms rose and fell sharply and
twenty-two discreetly tinted mouths opened on a single gasp of horror.
"Would you look at that!" one of the ladies blurted.
"I'm trying not to," another answered in a shocked whisper. "What is he
trying to do to her?"
"I shudder to think. But look where he's got hold of her!"
"I can't," another moaned, closing her eyes tight. "It's too awful! If
anyone ever grabbed me like that...!" Her voice shuddered away into
silence.
"Police!"
* * * * *
So soon did the others pick up the cry, there was no way of telling
which of the ladies had started it. Suddenly, the foyer shrieked from
end to end and top to bottom with a call to all officialdom to come
and defend the honor of the besieged statue. The ladies, milling
frantically among themselves, were screaming themselves into a fair
frenzy.
At the fountain Toffee was lending her voice to the general confusion.
The sight of Marc clinging to another woman, whether of stone or flesh,
did not set well with the redhead.
"You stop that!" she snapped, from the edge of the pool. "You let go of
that marble huzzy before I come up there and knock her block off!"
"Don't be silly!" Marc called back unhappily. "She's not real. Besides,
I can't let go!"
"I don't care about that," Toffee said. "What burns me up is what
you're probably thinking up there."
"Good grief!" Marc cried. "I'm not thinking anything!"
"Oh, no?" Toffee sneered. "No man on earth could grab a woman the way
you've grabbed that one and not be thinking something."
"Stop blathering nonsense," Marc said furiously, "and do something.
Help me get down from here."
"You bet I will," Toffee said grimly. And with that she stepped lightly
to the wall of the pool, peeled off her coat and stepped down into the
water.
"No!" Marc yelled. "No!"
"Oh, my land!" one of the club ladies shrieked above the others. "Now
there's a naked woman swimming around in the pool!"
"It's probably that poor statue trying to get away!" one of her sisters
replied.
As Toffee swam toward the pedestal and the statue, the doors of the
Wynant became crowded with shoving spectators who had been attracted
by the din inside. The foyer began to fill rapidly. Behind the desk,
a door opened and the manager of the Wynant ran to the desk clerk. He
was a plum-cheeked, small man with dark hair and, at the moment, an
extremely florid complexion. He grabbed the clerk by the shoulder and
swung him around.
"What's going on here?" he demanded. He glanced toward the statue. "Who
is that man up there? What is he doing? And that woman?"
The clerk trembled under his grasp. "I don't know," he said weakly. "I
told them they couldn't stay here."
"Do something!" the manager piped. "This isn't a fun house!"
"Would you swear to it?" the clerk pleaded.
It was just as Toffee had reached the pedestal and was starting upward
toward Marc and the statue that the elevator door slid open for a
second time, and Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright, a small invalid of advanced
years and means, manoeuvered her wheelchair into the tumultuous foyer.
Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright had occupied the Wynant penthouse suite for
almost twenty years now. Starting across the foyer, she braked her
chair to a sudden stop and observed the activity at the fountain with
an interested but unperturbed eye. She turned to the manager.
"Well, I'll be damned," she commented dryly. "It's about time this
place got a floor show." She looked back at the statue. "You've got to
give him credit for spunk. But I'll lay odds on the statue."
But the manager did not hear her. He only knew that the impossible had
happened; the reputation of the Wynant had been placed in jeopardy. It
had to be stopped at any cost. Shoving the trembling clerk aside, he
dodged around the end of the desk and forced his way through the crowd
to the brink of the pool. He climbed quickly to the wall of the pool
just as Toffee reached Marc and went determinedly about the business of
trying to dislodge him from his curvesome anchorage.
"There's no cause for excitement!" the manager yelled, turning to face
the crowd. "It's really nothing!"
"Maybe you call it nothing," one of the club ladies snorted with fiery
indignation.
"No! No!" the manager yelled. He held up his hands for quiet. "Listen
to me! You don't understand! Nothing wrong is going on here!" It was
better to defend these demented vandals than have the good name of the
Wynant soiled. "These people are only cleaning the statue!"
"Oh, yeah!" a small, shabby-looking man sneered. "That statue'll never
be clean again as long as she lives!"
* * * * *
The manager glanced wretchedly behind him and shuddered as he realized
that current activities did nothing to substantiate the lie he had
just told; never had so many pairs of grappling arms and legs combined
themselves in one place to give such a glaring picture of pure, wanton
abandon. With Marc clutching the statue, and Toffee clutching Marc, the
statue seemed to be clutching herself with a new desperation that could
never possibly have been achieved by mere chiseled stone; the poor dumb
thing seemed suddenly to realize that not only her modesty but also her
honor was at stake.
"Let go of her, you debauched floater!" Toffee hissed in Marc's ear.
"Let go of her before I tear you apart!"
"I can't!" Marc panted, hanging on for dear life. "Do you want me to
get spiked on the chandelier?"
"Better that than atrophied to this naked trollop!" Toffee said.
"If I were that statue," one of the club ladies whispered, "I'd never
be able to face my friends again."
"Oh, I don't know, lady," said a rather dapper but vague-looking
gentleman. "You know how statues are. They're always standing around
without any clothes on and leering at each other. In that statue's
crowd this sort of thing is just child's play."
"What kind of children play like that?" the woman snapped.
"What kind of children? Do I look like the kind of a man who goes
around prying into the affairs of children?" He drew himself up. "Lady,
are you trying to trap me into an argument about children?"
In the meantime the manager had turned his efforts from the outraged
crowd to the entangled couple clinging to the statue.
"Come down from there!" he bawled, "Come down this instant!"
Almost as though at his command, the struggle on the statue came to an
abrupt end. Marc, with a cry of warning, suddenly lost his grip and
lurched to one side. Toffee tightened her hold on his neck and clung
fast. In the next instant, entirely under the pull of Toffee's weight,
they plunged together downward and into the pool below. There was a
murmur from the crowd. Then there was a brief scream from the manager
as, in jumping to avoid the splash, he lost his footing and joined the
pair in the water.
The crowd watched tensely as the three heads disappeared beneath the
surface of the pool, then soggily reappeared. A murmur of comment rose
throughout the room, then suddenly silenced with a gasp.
One of the heads was not behaving at all as it should; it not only
reappeared, but continued to move higher and higher into the air,
dragging its lank and dripping body after it.
Slowly, Marc rose entirely out of the pool, hovered for a moment, and
then came to rest, his feet resting lightly and exactly on the surface
of the water. The soaking he had just received had provided him with
enough extra poundage that his buoyancy had been somewhat tempered but
not entirely destroyed. A smothered cry of dismay echoed around him
as he stood blandly on the surface of the pool, then leaned forward to
knock the water out of his ears.
The other two heads swiveled about to regard him with contrasting
degrees of interest. For a moment the manager stared at Marc, then
slowly sank out of sight again beneath the green obscurity of a lily
pad.
Toffee turned graciously to the sea of gaping faces around her.
"Give me a hand someone," she said.
"Not me, lady," a man near the edge said. "With the company you keep, I
wouldn't give you so much as a clipping off my fingernail."
Toffee glanced around for a volunteer, then suddenly dived down to join
the manager beneath the lily pad.
Help was on its way at last and it wore a dark blue uniform. For the
first time since its erection the lofty ceiling of the Wynant echoed
back the firm and hurried tread of flat feet.
Across the room Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright wheeled her chair back into the
elevator and smilingly plucked at the operator's sleeve.
"Remind me to renew my lease on the penthouse this week, Joe," she
said. "After twenty years this place is beginning to be interesting."