Marc Pillsworth decided he needed a
vacation--so he went on a trip. But where
Marc went, Toffee followed--with trouble.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures July 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Glumly, situated in sandy discomfort, Marc Pillsworth watched as
another blustering wave tripped, fell flat on its watery face, and
embarrassedly dissolved into a foolish fringe of giggling froth. It
was the sameness of the thing that was getting him down, the business
of being constantly sold short on a promise of something interesting.
He rolled carefully over, onto his stomach, which had, by now, become
a bloody shade of vermillion, and transferred the sunny torture to his
back, which had only reached a color, approximately that of tomato
soup. Taken either way, front or back, and considering his bright
yellow trunks, he was, as the biographers always say, a pretty colorful
citizen. Also, as the biographers never say, he was a pretty dejected
one.
With one slender finger he traced a circle in the gritty surface
before him, then jabbed viciously into its center. There was something
frightening, deliberate in the action, especially when it was known
that, to Marc, the circle represented the eye of a rascally unknown
writer of magazine articles. It seemed only a matter of time before he
entered into the refreshing pastime of sticking pins into wax effigies.
He didn't really wish the fellow any harm; only that he'd break his
treacherous neck by next Saturday at the latest.
Marc was certain that on the eve of his last earthly day he would be
able to point an enfeebled finger squarely at the present day and the
three preceding it, and assuredly say, "That was the darkest period
of my life." He didn't know which magazine article had planted the
hideous idea of separate vacations in Julie's golden head, but he
had already sworn violence, bloodshed, and even sudden death to its
author if ever he found out. That a man should spend two weeks in a
beach house without his wife was plainly, to him, a new and outstanding
high in sheerest idiocy. He was only surprised that in a country so
nearly glutted with legislation of all descriptions, there should be no
laws to protect an unwary husband against the published oozings of so
loathsomely promiscuous a mind as would endorse, and even encourage,
the diabolical arrangement of separate vacations.
Ennui was setting in like a sort of spiritual rigor mortis. The first
day, he had golfed and gotten sunburned, the second, he had ridden and
gotten sunburned, and the third, he had fished and gotten sunburned.
Now, in desperation, he was reducing the whole tortuous process to its
primary element, and simply getting roasted to a flaming crisp with as
little exertion as possible.
* * * * *
With eyes that were as optimistic as a slab in the morgue, he gazed
up the face of the cliff, beyond the highway running along its edge,
and to the beach house on the hill at the other side. It was just as
he had supposed. There was no car out front ... no jaunty blue
convertible ... and more to the point, no Julie. She hadn't changed her
mind. He didn't know why he should think she would. It would serve her
right, he thought spitefully, if Toffee chose this precise time to make
a new entrance into his life.
He folded his hands before him and muzzled his chin into their hollow.
He'd been too busy to give Toffee much thought lately, but now that
she'd slipped into his consciousness, he found that he recalled her
with curiously mixed feelings. Pleasure finally proved to be the
strongest, however, and he began to smile for the first time in
several days.
Lord knows there was proof enough of Toffee's existence ... almost
too much ... but still it took an effort to realize that such a
phenomenon could actually be. And Toffee was a phenomenon in every
sense of the word ... even a few that wouldn't bear repeating. With
her, it was a matter of "Out of sight, _IN_ mind," and vice versa. A
creation of Marc's imagination ... a lovely, vivacious phantom of his
dreams ... she had seen fit on various occasions to materialize from
his subconscious and uninvitedly play an active role in his everyday
affairs. During the duller stretches of his life, she was apparently
content to bide her time in the tranquil valley of his mind, but given
a moment of high excitement, she was sure to materialize and gleefully
build it into a full fledged crisis with free wheeling.
At first, Marc had found it difficult to believe he would ever become
accustomed to this peculiar arrangement, but apparently he had, for
now, as he thought of Toffee, it was not with awe of the curious
circumstance under which she existed, but rather with an almost wistful
loneliness for the girl, herself. It was true, he realized, that
pandemonium could not be far behind with Toffee on the threshold, but
he couldn't help the feeling that his current doldrums could do with a
dash of her particular brand of redheaded chaos like a man in a death
chamber could do with a shiny new, cross-cut file. It was just as he
had come to this decision that alien voices broke through the delicate
wall of his quiet, introspective mood, and left it shattered beyond
recall.
* * * * *
His head darted up, and his hand raked back a disordered shock of
hair that had fallen over his brow. Thus uncovered, his eyes, two
charred embers projected through the throbbing sheet of flame that was
his face, strained upward, to the top of the cliff, in search of the
noisy intruders. Usually no one ever came to this particular beach,
except himself, and he had come to think of it as exclusively his
own. But if he were preparing to relinquish his solitude to a band of
vapid, would-be bathers, he was quite, quite mistaken, for much to the
contrary, at the head of the crude board stairway leading down to the
tiny beach, there stood two of the most unlikely homo sapiens he had
ever seen. They looked like the culls of a dyspeptic nightmare.
The man was short, stocky, mostly bald, and at the moment, extremely
animated. But the woman at his side was another matter entirely. Nearly
six feet tall, an almost ghostly figure without a trace of color, she
was a cruel and unconditional triumph of plainness. Worse than a horse
of another color, she was a horse without any color at all. It was hard
to believe that blood, rather than water--or perhaps acid--ran in her
veins. She was listening intently to what the little man was saying,
but there was something clearly argumentative in the inclination of her
raw-boned, equine body.
"But I tell you he's done it!" the little man wailed.
"But I tell _you_," the woman trumpeted authoritatively, "It just isn't
possible. The old fool couldn't! It won't work!"
"You'll see! You'll see!" the little man piped in a voice that was
becoming increasingly mindful of an amusement pier calliope. "He's done
it!"
And suddenly turning, he started down the rickety flight of steps
as fast as his hammy little legs could carry him. He seemed almost
to jitter along them as he sped downward, his bald pate glistening
nervously in the bright afternoon sun. The faded woman, apparently
still partially unconvinced, hung back for a moment, gazing icily after
him. Then suddenly, with a for-better-or-worse but I bet it'll-be-worse
shrug of her mammoth shoulders, she decided to follow. Awkwardly, like
a runaway beer wagon, she began jolting down the steps, two at a time.
The ancient board creaked a feeble threat, but didn't make it good.
Marc, watching this baffling performance with open-faced curiosity,
rolled over and boosted himself into an upright position, so as to have
a better view of it. Whoever these newcomers were, and whatever they
had come there for, he was inclined to regard them as a blessing, no
matter how shabbily disguised. Anything that happened now was bound to
be a relief from the endless monotony of the last few days. After all,
the newcomers might be members of some wayward, secret cult, come here
for a sort of pagan ritual. It was a good deal to hope for, and hardly
likely, but his jaded mind clutched hungrily at the idea.
Now on the beach, the two principal actors in whatever drama was about
to be performed, moved swiftly past the rock behind which Marc rested
and raced purposefully to the left. This only lent further intrigue to
the affair since such a course, if followed to it's ultimate end, could
only lead them crashingly against a further wall of the cliff. And
considering the rate at which the pair were traveling, such a collision
seemed altogether probable ... even imminent. Eagerly, Marc jack-knifed
forward to keep them in sight.
* * * * *
But about half way to the wall, the little man skidded to a disordered
stop and pointed a chubby finger toward a large rock that jutted
straight and tall from the sands, like a staunch sentinel standing
guard. "That one'll do," she shrilled, and to Marc's bitter
disappointment, disappeared behind the boulder's shielding bulk. The
woman, still reluctant, paused at the rock's edge.
"It won't work," she insisted. But her voice had now lost some of its
authority. She followed her companion into the obscurity behind the
rock.
Marc would have given his immortal soul, along with his only copy
of Forever Amber, to have known what it was that was not going to
work behind that boulder. He felt meanly cheated. He felt that the
intruders, like the waves, had led him to expect great things, then
deliberately let him down. For a moment he knew what it was to be a
trusting chorus girl who had been promised jewels, only to find, by the
morning's depressing light, that she had received only a hangover and a
pair of cheap stockings. He knew what it was to--
Then, suddenly, he only knew panic as a tremendous explosion grasped
the little beach and shook it like a limp dishrag. Rocks, dislodged
from the face of the cliff, began to fall everywhere through churning,
sand-laden air. Marc wasn't bored any more. He clutched the rock at
his side with all the zeal of an impassioned suitor back home after a
three-year absence on a desert island. His attitude clearly intimated
that he loved that rock dearly and nothing would ever part him from it.
Something that was not a rock landed thuddingly at his side, but he was
too distracted to notice.
"Earthquake!" he gasped.
[Illustration: The sudden, nerve-shattering blast turned the world
upside down, and the woman along with it.]
"Earthquake, my left eye!" a voice grunted thickly. And Marc's head
snapped about to find the ghostly woman looking up at him with startled
eyes. She had exchanged locations with amazing rapidity. Lying on her
stomach, arms, legs, and hair in a distressing state of disarray, she
looked like nothing so much as a bloodless witch who had suffered a
rather devastating crash landing. Certainly, she had descended as from
the heavens, and yet, one glance told you that her association was
certainly not with things astral. With stunning directness, she parted
bluish lips and spat an impossible quantity of sand onto the beach
where it looked much more natural.
Marc shrank back suspiciously. Perhaps it wasn't the gallant thing to
do, but it seemed prudent. "What ... what happened?" he asked timidly.
"How should I know?" the woman asked bitterly, beginning an unconcerned
inventory of her various parts. "I was too busy getting away from it
to notice." Then, pummeling an embarrassingly intimate region with
vigorous enthusiasm, she seemed to come to the comforting conclusion
that she had passed through her ordeal still in possession of all she
had started out with. Just why this should mean anything to her, Marc
could not fathom. It seemed to him that any change, willy-nilly, could
hardly miss being an improvement. No matter what ever happened to
the woman, it could never be any worse than the awful trouncing that
nature had already given her. She got stiffly to her feet and peered
cautiously over the rock.
"Holy mother!" she breathed. "They're gone like a maiden's illusions!"
"What?" Marc asked. "What's gone?"
"The rock," the woman replied with dismaying heartiness, "and Mr.
Epperson. He's gone too." Obviously, these missing items had been
listed in the order of their importance.
"You ... you mean the little fellow? He's dead?" Marc asked shakily.
"Exceptionally so, I should say," the woman replied almost gleefully.
"Look for yourself."
* * * * *
Marc accepted the invitation reluctantly, and peered around the edge
of the rock with eyes that were only partly open. Then he gasped with
amazement. It wasn't that there was so much to see, but rather that
there was so little. Certainly, there was no sign of the rock or the
little man. In the spot where they should have been, however, there was
a deep hole in the sand that looked much like the work of a sizable
dredger. Around this, there seemed to linger a sort of undefined
gaseous body.
"Where ... where is he ... the little man, I mean!" he asked hesitantly.
"I told you," the woman replied impatiently. "He's gone."
"But his ... his remains? Where are they?"
"Vaporized, most likely," the woman answered airily, as though
explaining a self-evident mathematical rule to a not-too-bright child.
"Vaporized?" The word seemed meaningless when applied to human bodies.
"Certainly. Those gases you see out there are all that's left of him."
Marc stared at the illusive last remains of Mr. Epperson, and shuddered.
"A noisy way to go," the woman reflected philosophically, "but nice and
clean." She seemed to be speaking of an experiment that had turned out
with surprising success. "He was a dirty little pest anyway. I never
did like having him around." She smiled and it was no improvement.
"I'll bet it's the first time anyone's ever gone to heaven with a
rock ... if he went there at all."
"What happened to him? What did it?"
The woman regarded Marc thoughtfully for a time and seemed to come to
a decision. She reached into the pocket of her grimy skirt and drew
forth a minute, white capsule. She held it out for his inspection. "See
that?" she asked.
"Just barely," Marc answered truthfully. "It's awfully small."
"And awfully powerful," the woman went on with dramatic emphasis.
"That's what did it. Anyway, it was one just like that."
"What is it? What's it made of?"
"I don't know for sure," the woman replied. "It might be anything ...
even common dirt. It doesn't matter. The point is that whatever it is,
it's been charged so that when it's exposed to air, it just naturally
blows everything around it all to hell and gone. Mr. Epperson opened
the other one, and I guess that's why he was vaporized. I ducked around
the rock just in time."
"But that's impossible!" Marc protested.
"I know it," the woman said flatly. "It's as impossible as a three
dollar bill. But it works, just the same. Look what it did to old Eppy!"
Marc winced. He couldn't help the feeling that nothing good could come
from such blatant familiarity with the dead. "Where did you get those
things?" he asked, changing the subject.
"They're the brain child of a certain Dr. Herrigg," the woman replied.
"I always thought there was something offside about the old crow, and
now that I know it, I'm going...."
Suddenly, she was interrupted by a nasty cracking sound, and Marc
quickly took up his old courtship with the rock, lest it be the
overture to another explosion. He sensed, rather than saw or heard, the
woman dropping to his side.
"What was that?" he whispered. Then he turned to the woman and started
back in horror. She was lying face-down in the sand, and the hole at
the base of her skull was clearly visible. The matter of the fluid
running in her veins was settled beyond all argument; it was blood.
* * * * *
Blindly following a first impulse, Marc leaped to his feet to see where
the shot had come from. He regretted it almost instantly. No sooner
had he gotten on eye level with the top of the rock, than there was a
second cracking sound and a bullet whined viciously past his ear, like
a great, lethal gnat. He hugged the rock again, wondering incongruously
if he were to spend the rest of his life in a crouching position. It
seemed such a vulgar position in which to die. In the brief moment of
his exposure, he had seen a small, grey-haired figure, with a pointed,
sharp-featured face, and a gun to match. The sight had done much to
shake Marc's confidence in his own future. Indeed, he imagined that
this, approximately, was what the mystery writers were referring
to when they mentioned a "tight spot." And the sound of footsteps
descending the stairway convinced him that his own personal spot was
swiftly becoming downright constricting. His eyes, wide and wild,
frantically ran the length of the beach.
There was only one choice, and it was a dismally unknown quantity. Cut
off from the stairway, he would have to crawl along the base of the
bluff in the opposite direction, keeping down behind the covering rocks
as well as he could. He wasn't sure just where such a path might lead,
but it held one feature that appealed to him over-whelmingly; it would
at least put a distance between himself and the man with the gun,
who's deadly acquaintance he was reticent to make.
By the time Marc had come to the end ... the dead end ... of his
tortuous path, his knees, with a trim of parsley, would easily have
made an attractive addition to even the best butcher's display. Still
crouching, he drew himself stiffly up, and sat down on a flat rock to
inspect his damaged joints. Finally satisfied that they had not been
worn all the way through, no matter how much they felt like it, he gave
his attention over to the situation at hand. It looked hopeless.
To his left, and in front of him, there was nothing but ocean; to his
right, a grey-haired killer; and directly behind him, the sheer, stony
face of the cliff. There was nothing to do but hope for the best ... in
spite of an insistent feeling that the best would be none too good. He
picked up a loose stone and regarded it bleakly. Compared to the gun
he'd glimpsed on the beach, it looked loathsomely harmless.
* * * * *
Marc couldn't have said exactly how long he'd been sitting there,
looking like an unhappy throw-back to the stone age, but the afternoon
light had already begun to fade from the sky, and the rock in his hand
had become heavy. He guessed it was about an hour. Why hadn't the man
followed him? He gazed toward the darkening sea, and fished vainly
for some meaning, some key, to the afternoon's events. In them there
had been surprise and danger, but over it all, there had also been
the discoloring shadow of unreality. He began to wonder if it hadn't
all been just a delusion born of over-exposure to the sun. After all,
during the summer months, fried brains weren't the exclusive property
of the local restaurant owner. They were anybody's, just for the
basking.
Somewhat bolstered by this possibility, but still wary, Marc stood up
and peered apprehensively over the shielding barrier of rocks. There
was no sound, no movement, anywhere. Hesitantly, still crouching, but
not on his hands and knees this time, he started back. In spite of a
halting, stop-and-go progress, it was only a matter of five minutes
before he was back on the beach proper. Just before he reached the
point where he had abandoned the body of the nameless woman, he stopped
again, longer this time. Finally, like a man about to plunge into a
pool of iced water, he sucked in his breath and stepped resolutely
around the side of the rock. Then he stopped short. The body was gone.
When he'd recovered sufficiently from this surprise, he gazed uneasily
over the top of the rock to the main part of the beach. It was utterly
deserted. Outside of the still missing stone, it was just as he had
first seen it that day. He shrugged and started toward the stairway.
Sun-stroke or whatever, forces had obviously been at work that were
hopelessly beyond his comprehension.
He climbed the complaining stairs, crossed the deserted road, and made
his way up the path to the beach house.
For a moment, as he looked at the small, streamlined dwelling, his
earlier mood of loneliness was sharply recalled to him. It was a place
meant for parties and gaiety and carefree companionship. Without these
things, it seemed rejected and forlorn; like a lovely, giddy girl
dressed for a ball and left waiting by a heartlessly indifferent beau.
He forced the feeling aside and hurried on.
Finding the door open, just as he had left it, he stepped inside and
started to close it against the growing chill of the evening. His hand
started forward, then froze in mid-air. Behind him, in the dimness of
the tiny reception hall, he'd heard a faint rustling sound, and swung
quickly about. But not soon enough. Instantly, something cold, hard,
and as decisive as a tombstone, struck him across the side of the head.
The room began to spin deliriously.
'Round and 'round the little room traveled, until it had become nothing
more than a dizzy, churning whirlpool. For a moment Marc teetered
precariously on its brink, then suddenly caught in its expanding tide,
lost his footing and plunged downward.
Spiraling helplessly toward the center of the whirling, fluid cylinder,
he could see that its center was dark, and he was frightened. He tried
to fight the dragging current, but it was no use. Next, he was caught
in that darkness, and was spinning dizzily downward, faster and faster,
like a great, human pinwheel.
Marc had lost all sense of time before his frantic journey was ended.
It might have lasted a split second or an hour. He didn't know. But
when it was over, he was grateful. Landing flat on his stomach, he lay
perfectly still for a time, his eyes closed. Curiously, now that he had
come to rest, a strange feeling of contentment was slowly creeping over
him. He didn't know where he was, but he was glad to be there.
* * * * *
Turning slowly over, swinging his long legs before him, he opened
his eyes and gazed about. At first he was blinded by a bright light
that seemed to come from everywhere. A bit at a time, however, his
surroundings began to swim into view. He discovered, piece-meal,
that he was in an immense room; apparently some sort of filing room,
for the walls, on every side, were lined to a distant ceiling with
business-like filing cabinets. Against the opposite wall stood a metal
ladder that was fastened at its base to a track that stretched evenly
around the room. He still couldn't discover where the light was coming
from, but it was bluish and very bright.
"Hello," a voice said softly above him, and Marc, glancing up, thought
it sounded vaguely familiar. He was right. Perched on the uppermost
rung of the ladder, and dangling a pair of scandalously perfect legs,
sat Toffee. Clothed, as always before, only in a scrap of transparent,
emerald colored material, her figure was being shockingly frank
about its own perfection. It seemed almost conceited in its exciting
loveliness. She smiled roguishly and her green eyes sparkled through
the distance. There was a quick flash of red hair as she swung about
and started down the ladder.
"You would come just when I'm busiest," she scolded happily, swinging
easily from step to step. "I should have known it. When could I ever
expect any consideration from the likes of you?"
Rather than enter into preposterous argument with his own senses, Marc
admitted that she was actually there, before him. He knew by now that
he would have to sooner or later, anyway. "Busy?" he asked with as
matter-of-fact a voice as he could manage. "Busy with what?"
"Your files, of course," Toffee replied lightly, jumping with kittenish
softness to the floor, disdainful of the last three steps. "This is the
end of the year for you, mentally."
"What files?"
"Didn't you see the sign when you came in?"
"The way I came in," Marc replied sourly, "I didn't see anything."
"Oh, of course not," Toffee agreed. "Just looking down that way and
seeing you here all of a sudden, I forgot for a moment that you were
from outside. Well, just so you'll know, this is the Miscellaneous
Information chamber of your mind. You've never been here before. You've
only seen the valley of your mind." She smiled demurely. "I guess
you're just naturally drawn to wherever I happen to be. But I do wish
you'd seen the sign. It's an idea I got from outside, in your world.
It's all lit up with mental impulses ... just like neon. It's really
beautiful."
Marc winced. That his mind might someday become a mental replica of
Broadway was the most repulsive idea he'd had to face in weeks. Toffee
would be setting up a chain of "Grey Matter" hot dog stands next.
"Miscellaneous Information?" he asked, uncertainly.
"Yes," Toffee said, with the professional air of a paid guide giving
a fifty cent tour. "In a year's time, you pick up more odd facts and
figures than you think. If they were left lying around, your mind would
look like a city dump. So at the end of every fiscal year, it's my job
to gather them all together and file them alphabetically under topic
headings. Then, it's always here when you need it, unless it's too out
of date. See what I mean?"
Marc nodded slowly. "I guess so," he said, and his voice was laden with
uncertainty. "But don't you think it's a little creepy?"
"Nonsense!" Toffee cried, dismissing the idea. Then her smile suddenly
faded and her eyes became hard. "And while we're on the subject," she
said menacingly, "there's something I'd like to ask you."
"What's that?"
* * * * *
Turning to a small table nearby, she picked up a stiff white card, and
flipped it angrily under his nose. "Just you tell me," she demanded
hotly, "How you happened to pick up the bust measurements of the entire
Gaities chorus!"
Marc's expression was one of utter stupification for a moment, then it
relaxed. "Oh, that!" he exclaimed with false heartiness.
"Yes, that!" Toffee echoed ruthlessly, placing one hand on a smooth hip.
"That's easy to explain," Marc went on quickly. "It all had to do with
the advertising agency. We handled some ads for the Gaities."
"Ads?" Toffee sneered. "You mean they advertise things like _that_!"
"Well, no. Not exactly. It was really the show that we advertised."
"What a show it must be!" Toffee exclaimed sarcastically. "That Miss
Flare La Greer must be a fair sensation every time she sets foot on a
runway. With measurements like that, I wonder that there's any room
left for the rest of them."
"Don't be vulgar," Marc put in without hope.
"If you ask me," Toffee said icily, "it's that La Greer moll that's
being vulgar. She was born vulgar." Then her smile suddenly appeared as
unexpectedly as a sunburst in the middle of a rain storm. "But if it's
the way you say," she cooed, "I guess I'll just have to forgive you.
Now let's say hello properly." She stretched her arms out toward Marc,
and made quick, beckoning motions with her hands.
Marc was instantly on his feet. Of all the censorable things in the
world, experience had taught him that Toffee's interpretation of a
proper greeting would probably head the list. "Get away from me!" he
yelped, backing into a filing case. "Stay mad! Hate me! Don't start
that old stuff, or I'll...."
"Or you'll what?" Toffee asked wickedly, sliding her slender arms
smoothly around his neck.
It may have been Toffee's kiss that started the room spinning. Marc
didn't know, and somehow, try as he would, he couldn't seem to make
himself care. At any rate, it _was_ spinning, and gaining speed at
every turn. In a moment, it was whirling like a thing possessed, and
Marc could feel himself being lifted easily upward. He opened his eyes
and looked out with dismay. It was as though they had been caught in
the very center of a gigantic tornado. Caught, just as he had been in
the whirlpool only a moment before.
"Wow!" Toffee cried gleefully, her arms clasped tenaciously about his
neck. "What a kiss!"
* * * * *
Marc groaned and rolled over. Then, lest it fall off, he clutched his
head in his hands, and sat up. Instantly, he experienced a feeling
that was like having several gross of heavy-duty ice picks driven into
the base of the skull, just behind the left ear. He groaned again and
tried to guess where he might be, but his mind, still in a state of
churning confusion, would not be prodded into an answer. It was as
limp and uninterested as an old, worn glove. He was surrounded by a
brooding, unbroken darkness, and for a moment thoughts of coffins and
coal bins chased each other unrelentingly over his tired brain. Then,
experimentally, he reached a cautious hand into the blackness, and then
quickly shrank back.
The touch of soft, cool flesh was not precisely what he had expected.
Neither was he expecting the slap that was soundly administered across
the bridge of his nose only a split second later.
"And don't tell me you were just looking for a match, either!" an irate
feminine voice rasped. "I'll teach you to come pawing around me!"
"Toffee!"
"Marc!"
Immediately, two slender arms were about his neck, and Toffee was
contritely saying, "I'm sorry Marc. I didn't know it was you. It didn't
feel like you."
"How should you know how I feel?" Marc asked annoyedly, trying to
disentangle himself from her insistent embrace. "Do you always have to
say a thing so it sounds lecherous? Where did you come from, anyway?"
"I've materialized from your mind again," Toffee replied gaily, happy
at the achievement. "You submerged into your subconscious and dreamed
me up a moment ago, so naturally I just dropped everything and returned
to consciousness with you. What kind of a mess have you gotten into
this time?"
"Mess?"
"Yes. There must be something wrong or you wouldn't have been around
bothering me. You never do come around," she added fretfully, "unless
something's gone wrong." She patted his hand. "It's because you're such
a low type, I guess."
"Holy smoke!" Marc cried, suddenly remembering the day's odd
adventures. "You're right. Things are plenty wrong. I was ambushed!"
"Oh, no!" Toffee cried. "How terrible! You're so young!"
"I was hit over the head," Marc added flatly.
"Oh," Toffee breathed with relief. "Where are we?"
Marc had already gotten to his feet and was fumbling along the wall.
"I'm on vacation," he said through a dark distance. "We're at the beach
house."
"Where's Julie?" Toffee asked with a tinge of apprehension, remembering
that Julie, on other occasions, hadn't been precisely cordial.
"She's visiting her mother at the farm," Marc replied shortly. "She
read an article about separate vacations."
"Craziest thing I ever heard," Toffee pronounced bluntly. "What are you
doing, sanding that wall?"
"I'm looking for the light switch," Marc explained. "It's right by the
stairway closet as I remember."
* * * * *
His hand, running out of wall, began fishing absently about in a narrow
open space. "I think I've found the closet," he called reassuringly.
Then, strangely, he was aware that the space had begun to widen, almost
automatically it seemed. He guessed that the door was swinging open of
its own volition, and attributed the phenomenon to faulty construction.
He made a mental note to check the door in the morning. But what
happened a second later could hardly have been explained by structural
discrepancies. With truly alarming ferocity, two unidentified arms were
flung about his waist, and caught off guard, he was carried crashingly
to the floor. The darkness became alive with the sounds of conflict.
"Cut it out, Toffee!" Marc yelled, struggling wildly to free himself,
and getting hopelessly entangled. "Try to restrain yourself! This is no
time for playing games!"
"I'm perfectly restrained," Toffee called back suspiciously. "And who's
playing games ... and what kind of games? I'm just waiting for the
lights."
"Then who's this on top of me?" Marc wailed, cagily fighting his way
into a position that left him completely impotent against his unseen
attacker.
"Why don't you ask him?" Toffee suggested helpfully through a jumble
of scuffling, gasping sounds. "I'm sure I don't know." Swiftly, she
started in search of the illusive light switch herself.
"I don't think he's interested in formal introductions," Marc wheezed
with what sounded like a dying gasp. "Hurry and get those lights on
before he kills me. He's strangling me!"
As though in instant answer to his command, the room suddenly blazed
with light, and Marc, seeing his assailant, almost nose to nose, turned
deathly pale. His eyes snapped lightly shut, and turning his head to
one side, his lips began to move feverishly, although his voice seemed
to have deserted him. On his chest, face down, and in an immodest state
of disorder, lay the lifeless figure of the woman on the beach.
Toffee gazed wrathfully on this grotesque display, and the usual hand
moved threateningly to the usual hip. "Well, you might at least have
the decency to stop whispering to her!" she hissed contemptuously. "The
lights are on, you know! I can see you! I'm not blind!" She paused for
a moment, and seeing no change in the distressing tableau, went on.
"Tell that shameless wench to get up and get out of here! You never
miss a chance do you? The minute the lights go out, you've got to be
frisking about on the carpet!"
With a tremendous effort, Marc partly opened one eye and looked
pleadingly up at her. He managed to force out a few wretched
words. "She's ... she's not a ... a shameless wench," he whispered
half-hysterically. "She's ... she's a ... a ... a body!"
"I can see that for myself!" Toffee retorted hotly. "And not such a hot
one, either, if you ask me. Now, tell her to gather up her flabby old
body and drag it out that door, before I practice violence on it. Don't
just lie there staring up at me like a wall-eyed clam!"
"But ... but she can't!"
"Sodden drunk, eh?"
"No. She ... she's a dead body." Marc's voice suddenly broke through
its bonds and came back with unexpected force. "She's been shot!" he
roared. "Get her off me before I lose my mind!"
The angry fire of suspicion flickered one last time in Toffee's eyes,
then went out. She leaned down for a better look at the smothering
figure. "How sinister!" she breathed.
"Don't waste time on adjectives!" Marc entreated. "Just get the
horrible thing off me!"
* * * * *
Toffee forced a slender hand to the woman's shoulder, and with an
incongruously dainty gesture rolled it from the distraught Marc. "It
makes my spine fairly tingle," she said.
"What do you think it's done to mine?" Marc asked reproachfully,
getting to his feet and rubbing the injured section.
Toffee continued to stare at the discarded body. "I do think you could
have shown better taste in your choice of victims," she mused. "It
couldn't have been a crime of passion, or passion isn't everything
I've heard it is." Having satisfied herself on this point, she turned
brightly to Marc. "Why did you shoot her?" she asked with honest
curiosity.
"I didn't shoot her," Marc denied stoutly. "I only saw it done ... down
on the beach."
"Then what's that gun doing here?" Toffee asked, pointing to the corner.
Marc forced himself to pick up the revolver. It looked like the one
he'd seen on the beach. Obviously, whoever had hit him, hadn't meant
to kill him. It would have been so much easier to have shot him.
"Someone's trying to frame me," he said, as though trying to explain
this fact to himself.
"I don't blame them," was Toffee's prompt reply. "You're quite a
picture in those yellow trunks. They set your sunburn off like a keg
of dynamite."
"But what am I going to do with that body?" Marc asked, ignoring the
irrelevant criticism. "If it's found here, they'll lock me up forever."
Toffee thoughtfully chewed a thumbnail. "You might try giving it to
someone," she said pensively. "There must be just lots of people
who are simply dying to have a body all their own. A person with an
ingenuity at all could probably find all kinds of uses for it."
"Stop driveling," Marc broke in curtly. "And try to think of something
useful. I'll try to get it back in the closet, then I'll have to change
clothes. We'll decide what to do about it afterwards."
"You asked me," Toffee reminded him. "I don't suppose the woman really
cares much what you do with her body. After all, she hasn't much use
for it any more. And it wasn't really such a good one to begin with.
I'm sure I wouldn't care what people did with mine."
"You never did," Marc snapped, and summoning the courage born of
necessity, he lifted the figure reluctantly to his shoulder. "You
have no modesty. And please don't go on like that about bodies. It's
indecent."
"It's no more indecent than you in those trunks," Toffee retorted.
Marc propped the body in the closet and quickly closed the door.
"With legs like yours," Toffee went on, "I wouldn't even take a bath
for consideration of the poor peeping Toms, much less go out on the
beach where innocent women and children might see the things. They're
horrible."
Marc had ignored the insult as long as he could. "What's wrong with my
legs?" he asked woundedly.
"They're skinny," Toffee said, thoughtfully taking stock, "and hairy.
They look like a couple of twisted pipe cleaners ... dirty pipe
cleaners. They also turn the stomach and wither the soul."
"That's enough!" Marc yelled reddening. "Hereafter, I'll thank you to
leave my pipe clean ... my legs out of this. Just try to forget that I
even have legs at all."
"Gladly," was the obliging reply. "I'll just pretend to myself that
you're staggering about on hooks."
Blanching, Marc strove to restore his sense of dignity. He drew himself
up to his full height, some six feet, two inches, and started regally
up the stairs. With the gun still in his hand, he looked like a noble
suicider. "I'll return," he said frigidly, "after I've put on some
trousers." Then he stopped and regarded Toffee's transparent tunic with
slow deliberation. "And while we're on the subject," he added quietly.
"You might just try to do something about your own nakedness. It's
revolting!"
* * * * *
Marc pulled on a discreetly colorful sport jacket and glanced at
himself in the mirror. With the exception of a worried expression,
everything he wore was in neat, conservative good taste. He sighed,
left the room.
Downstairs, he crossed the reception hall, careful to give the closet a
wide berth, and made his way into the darkened living room. He felt his
way to a floor lamp and turned it on. Immediately, a bright circle of
light spread over the thick carpet like ink through a blotter. Noting
this common phenomenon without interest, he turned away, then stopped
as the door at the opposite end of the room opened. Toffee, resplendent
in a cunning arrangement of the dining room drapes, moved sinuously
into the room with all the unconscious grace of a stalking panther.
The drapes, a bold flowery design on a background of white, had been
fashioned into a bare midriff evening gown of truly provocative
design. The two parts, obviously disdainful of each other, contrived
to leave a maximum of midriff, while doing little or nothing toward
covering their assigned portions. The skirt was widely split at one
side, exposing an exquisite leg, like a diamond in a show case.
Toffee's nod to decency had been most perfunctory indeed.
"Like it?" she asked, smiling radiantly. "You'd never dream that it
used to cover windows, would you?"
"I'd never dream it ever covered anything," Marc replied amazedly. "And
if it ever had any ambitions along those lines, they're certainly shot
now."
"It was just an idea I had," Toffee replied proudly.
"In night clubs all over the country," Marc commented dryly. "Thousands
of girls have that same idea three times nightly, only they get paid
for their nakedness ... or hauled into night court by the decency
squad."
Fortunately, any further discussion of Toffee's "creation" was suddenly
forestalled by the unexpected sound, from outside, of tires leaving
pavement and turning grindingly onto gravel. Marc and Toffee ran
swiftly to the window, where they vied athletically for a view of the
drive; each for his own separate reason. Marc was having nightmarish
visions of Julie, returned with a changed mind to share the remainder
of his vacation. Toffee only knew that any addition, at this moment,
was bound to be an interesting one.
"It's a man!" she breathed happily.
"Thank heaven," Marc sighed relievedly, then on second thought added,
"Good grief!"
An instant later, a knock sounded at the front door and Toffee started
eagerly toward the hall. "I'll let him in," she said over her shoulder.
"Don't!" cried Marc. "What about the thing in the closet?"
"Oh, that!" Toffee called back airily. "We'll have him hang his hat on
a lamp or something." She continued toward the door.
"Stop!" Marc yelled commandingly.
And Toffee opened the door.
* * * * *
A lanky rustic, replete with drooping mustache and high heeled boots
gazed unbelievingly at the dream-like creature that had opened the
door to him. And a great, wistful sadness came into his eyes. "I'm
Morton Miller," he drawled with a voice that so perfectly completed
the homespun picture it was hard to believe he hadn't arrived by stage
coach.
"It could be worse," Toffee consoled, obviously in serious doubt of her
own statement.
"I'm the sheriff," the fellow elaborated.
Marc and Toffee exchanged a glance that was a silent, two-way scream.
"You got a body, lady?"
"You ought to know," Toffee replied, snatching furtively after her
retreating composure. "You've hardly taken your eyes off it."
The sheriff cleared his throat and his voice dug its toe awkwardly into
a hay stack. "No, lady," he said nervously. "That ain't what I mean.
I'm lookin' fer a dead body."
"We don't have any," Toffee lied promptly, as though speaking of
termites.
"That's funny," the sheriff mused chattily, now on firmer ground. "A
fella called me on the phone and said a woman'd been shot out here."
Marc swiftly joined them. He knew that the wheels of calamity had
inexorably begun to turn. He could almost hear them grinding.
"What fellow?" Toffee was asking.
"Don't rightly know. Wouldn't give his name. Had a sort of whiney
voice, as I recollect. Sounded kinda goofy."
"He was goofy," Marc put in flatly. "Goofy as they come. No one's been
shot here yet." Then, starting toward the door, he added, "Goodnight."
"Just a minute," the sheriff said, placing a mammoth foot firmly
on the doorsill. "I gotta look around. It's my duty." He eyed Marc
suspiciously. "And just who are you?"
"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc said almost ashamedly. "This is my place."
The sheriff nodded, pushed the door open, and stepped authoritatively
inside. Obviously, this was one arm of the law that had a well
developed muscle, if not much else. "Always like to have the owner
around, when I'm ransackin' fer a body," he said cryptically. "Usually
find that's the bird that hid 'er there."
"You're making a mistake," Toffee objected weakly.
"Maybe," the sheriff replied composedly. Then he pointed to the closet.
"First things first," he said with thread-bare philosophy. "What's in
there?"
"Nothing," Toffee replied with desperate casualness. "It's just an
empty closet."
In an attempt at simulated innocence, Toffee had managed to look
completely like a Borgia, caught with her cyanide showing. Morton
Miller gazed briefly on this laughable performance, and started
wordlessly toward the closet. Toffee followed quickly after him.
"Maybe you're right," she said with a surprising reversal of
attitude. "You really ought to look around, and satisfy yourself
that everything's all right. We wouldn't want you to go away feeling
frustrated you know."
She stepped lightly in front of him and opened the closet door.
"It's pretty dark in there," the sheriff complained. "Ain't there a
light?"
Toffee nodded. "It's loose," she explained. "I couldn't reach it to
tighten it. But I'll bet you can. You're so tall, and all." She pointed
to one of the closet's darkest corners. "It's back there."
The sheriff, a determined man if anything, followed the suggestion
blindly, and moved into the inner darkness of the tiny compartment.
Never had a man looked so much like a lamb going trustingly to
slaughter.
* * * * *
It happened just as Toffee had hoped it would. No sooner was the
sheriff in the closet than she slammed the door and turned the key
standing ready in its lock. It may even be that she closed the door
a bit before the sheriff was fully inside, for there had been an
undignified slapping sound that implied as much. Either way, however,
the deed done, she turned breathlessly to Marc.
"Let's get out of here!" she cried. "You've been framed like a museum
masterpiece."
Marc, too stunned to quite grasp the situation, stared at her blankly.
"What did you do with the gun?" Toffee went on.
"It's upstairs, on my bed," he murmured, gazing unbelievingly at the
closet door.
The atmosphere within the closet was swiftly becoming agitated. A
series of formidable thudding sounds was suddenly followed by a shriek
that sounded like a fast freight going through a rural junction at
midnight.
"I think the sheriff's found the body," Toffee commented dryly. "Well,
it's what he was after, and he can't say we didn't do our best to help
him. Let's get out of here. If he keeps that up, he'll wake the dead."
To Marc the remark seemed singularly ill-timed. Shudderingly, as
he followed Toffee out the door, he tried not to think of the grim
goings-on inside the darkened closet.
* * * * *
The car swerved crazily, missed the oncoming truck by a sickeningly
narrow margin, and sped on down the highway, followed by a shower of
rare and salty expletives, recited with great sincerity by a truck
driver who was undisputedly a master of spicy invective.
"I thought you knew how to drive," Marc moaned, moving his hands slowly
away from his eyes.
"There's nothing to it," Toffee bragged, pressing the accelerator to
the floor.
"There certainly isn't, the way you do it," Marc replied coldly. "You
just step on the starter and, zoom!, before you know it, you're resting
quietly in the morgue. It's a dandy arrangement if you have a passion
for morgues. It just happens that I haven't."
"Nonsense!" Toffee cried. "You worry too much. A child could do it!"
"I'd rather a child did," Marc sighed defeatedly. "I'd feel safer."
"Watch this!" Toffee cried happily. And she started swinging the wheel
recklessly from side to side so that the car careened deliriously back
and forth, across the road. "There's no end to the fun you can have in
a car!"
"Oh, yes there is!" Marc cried, clinging desperately to the door
handle. "And ours should take place within the next ten seconds, if I'm
any judge!"
"You're so morbid minded," Toffee complained.
Then, at the last possible moment, she swung the car sharply into a
side road, and the evening stillness was hastily dispatched to the
realm of memory by a shrieking protest from the tortured tires.
"Holy smoke!" yelled Marc. "If the sheriff isn't after us by now, the
highway patrol must be."
Toffee didn't answer. She was too busy regaining a lost foothold on the
accelerator. Marc noted with relief that the new road was deserted. At
least she couldn't kill any innocent bystanders here. There was still a
chance that manslaughter wouldn't be added to the list of their crimes.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"How should I know?" Toffee replied toughly, from the side of her
mouth. "Where _do_ people go when they're making a getaway?"
"You don't have to talk like a gun moll," Marc admonished, and suddenly
he was overcome with the hopelessness of the situation. It seemed that
fate had gone out of its way to find new confusions for complicating
his life. If things had been too monotonously simple only a few hours
before, now they were too hecticly complex. They had gone far beyond
his capacity for such things. Through it all, Marc was wishing that
Julie were there to console and advise him, as she had so often in the
past. It was only a matter of a moment before he was lost deep in a
reverie in which only the stillness of the night, his wife and himself
existed. The car began to lose its speed.
"Stop that!" Toffee's voice said with unnatural faintness. "You're
making me fade!"
"Huh?" Marc turned toward her, and his eyes widened with alarm. Toffee
was almost transparent.
"You were day dreaming again, weren't you?" she accused, becoming more
visible. "I've warned you about that before. I can't exist unless I'm
projected through your full consciousness. Now stay awake unless you
want to be wrecked."
"I'm sorry," Marc said, relieved that she had already become almost
completely materialized once more. But Toffee, obviously concerned
with other matters, seemed to forget the incident instantly.
"I think we're being followed," she said gravely.
"What!"
"A car turned off the highway just after we did, and has been gaining
on us ever since. I've been watching it in the mirror."
* * * * *
Marc shifted quickly in the seat, and thrusting his head out the
window, peered into the darkness, behind. Two headlights, like the eyes
of a nightmare demon, stared malevolently back at him, and crept closer.
"Step on it!" he yelled. "It's probably the sheriff!" Then, suddenly,
like a turtle retreating into the safety of its shell, he jerked his
head back inside as a shot rang out through the still night.
"He's shooting at us!" he cried.
"Don't you think I know it?" Toffee moaned, bending low over the wheel.
Then she screamed as another barking sound announced a second shot. The
car began to skid drunkenly sideways.
"They've hit a tire!" she screamed. "We're out of control!"
Instantly the darkness was filled with scraping, rending sounds as the
car swung crazily across the road, fell into a shallow ravine, and
imbedded itself, nose-first, in the opposite embankment.
Following the musical aftermath of glass and metal showered on
pavement, the ensuing stillness inside the car was almost deafening.
Then, Toffee, dropping a broken steering gear daintily out of the
window, turned to Marc.
"Are you all right?"
"I think so," Marc replied, without a trace of conviction.
"I don't think your car will go any more," Toffee said regretfully.
"We'd better make a run for it. You'll have to get out first. My door
is jammed."
Simultaneously, as though repeating a well rehearsed routine, they
turned toward the door at Marc's side, then froze. Framed in the
window, neither the gun nor the hand that held it looked in the least
way friendly.
"I ... I can explain everything, Sheriff," Marc stammered.
"You won't have to explain a thing," a strange voice said softly,
and the hand and gun were disconcertingly joined by the pointed,
sharp-featured face that Marc had seen on the beach. "All you have to
do is get out and follow my instructions as I give them. It's very
simple."
The face disappeared and the gun waved them out of the car.
"What...?" Marc began.
"We'll talk later," the man broke in. "Right now, I'll have to ask you
to blindfold each other."
His hand held out two crude, white bandages.
"Gee," Toffee giggled delightedly, accepting one of the strips. "It's
just like a game isn't it?"
Marc's answering glance effortlessly hurdled years of scientific
research and rendered the death ray hopelessly obsolete. His emotions,
translated into words, would have required a brief but highly
specialized vocabulary which he did not possess.
"You may remove your blindfolds now," the man said, and Marc and
Toffee lost no time in doing so. For a moment both of them stood
gaping incredulously at their new surroundings. They were standing
in the center of an enormous dome-shaped room that seemed to be
walled entirely with highly polished, unbroken rock; as though a
small mountain had somehow been hollowed out. Except for two curved,
slit-like doorways, the monotonous smoothness went endlessly on like
perpetual motion. One door was directly before them; the other, through
which they had obviously come, directly behind. Both were closed with
a knobless, metallic panel. A few bits of austere, metal furniture
stood here and there, looking lost in the vastness of the place. But
the most unusual particular of the room was the way in which it was
lighted. High in its ceiling, a fiery, sun-like ball revolved lazily,
impossibly held aloft by what appeared to be two rays of strong, white
light. The resulting brightness was like that one might expect to find
in an unshaded meadow at high noon. Marc glanced at the contrivance and
turned away blinking. It was too bright for steady scrutiny.
"You like my place?" the man asked, and his voice was the kind that
crept up from behind and tapped you quietly on the shoulder. Listening
to him, Marc wondered absently why Hollywood should bother with men
like Peter Lorre when there were others, like the grey-haired little
man, around.
* * * * *
Toffee, however, not so much interested in voices as what they were
saying, gave the room a second appraising glance. "I don't think it's
so screaming wonderful," she said with sledge hammer bluntness. "It
might make a pretty fair dance hall, though, if you'd just tone down
that silly light fixture up there."
The prideful glint in the little man's eyes went cold to be surplanted
by the colorless ash of disappointment. Obviously, he had expected this
to be an impressive moment.
"This," he said with battered dignity, "is a citadel of science."
"This," Toffee corrected ruthlessly, "is as nutty as a peanut stand at
a county fair."
"And yet, there may be things here that will interest you intensely."