path: root/71973-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADES OF TOFFEE ***





                         The SHADES of TOFFEE

                          By Charles F. Myers

                 Marc Pillsworth thought that certain
             laws were futile and should be repealed--such
                   as gravity--which he annihilated!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Fantastic Adventures June 1950.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Standing in the center of the basement laboratory, Marc Pillsworth held
the vial up to the light and carefully poured out a small portion of
the liquid so that the measure would be exact to the final degree.

Certainly, if he had known that the thing he measured was destruction,
intrigue and madness, he would have hurled the container and its
greenish contents to the floor. But he did not know, or even dream....

Assured that the amount was correct beyond question, he turned with the
vial, poised it over the small vat on the work table, and poured.

_Chaos!_

The room screamed with brilliant light as the vat erupted and
vengefully spat its contents to the four walls. The wall at the end
of the room shuddered and shrugged away a great, irregular section of
concrete so that the night gushed inside and swallowed up the light.
Caught in the tide of the rushing darkness, Marc felt himself lifted
helplessly from his feet, hurled upward to a great height, then plunged
downward headfirst.

He fell endlessly, it seemed, down and down. And the darkness droned in
his ears and in the pit of his stomach as he fell--deeper and deeper
into a region of black strangeness. Fear grew inside him, writhing,
coiling and recoiling like a great venomous snake in the depths of
his stomach. He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound died in his
throat as the darkness rushed inside him and caused the metallic taste
of panic.

And then it was over.

He had arrived, but how and where and for what precise reason he
couldn't imagine. But, oddly, it didn't seem to matter. There was no
reason for it to matter now. None that he could think of at the moment.
His thoughts moved so slowly, it seemed.

It was as though he had lain down to rest, limply and gently, in a
soft coolness. A languor seeped through him, and he fell easily under
the spell of a dreamy quietude. What could any man conceivably have to
worry about when he felt like this?

Marc stretched his arms up over his head, then brought them down and
clasped his hands at the back of his neck. He was suddenly swept with
a mood of utmost felicity. Everything was so unreasonably wonderful!
Mother, he thought, pin a rose on me! He grinned happily at his own
urbanity.

And then the darkness began to pulse with a faint light which grew
steadily stronger with each successive impulse. Slowly, vague outlines
began to rise out of the dimness and form a horizon. And then the light
became a steady glow, and the forms moved in closer and were distinct.
Marc sat up and looked about him with astonished eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

A soft emerald greenness stretched beneath him in all directions,
lifting softly from rise to rise in the distance, gently sloping into
cool shadows. Behind him a knoll rose above the others, and along its
side stretched a grove of tall feathery trees which were graceful
beyond description. A soft breeze coiled through the trees trailing
a shimmering blue mist, like a scarf, capriciously upward and out of
sight beyond the rise.

Everywhere was a muted beauty that did not trade in harsh contrasts.
Strangely, Marc could not bring himself to wonder at his being here in
this impossible region; it was enough that he simply _was_ here.
He lay back again and gazed into the sky, noting without surprise that
the clear blueness was unmarked by any brash and orthodox ball of sun.

His mind wandered free, along heretofore untrodden paths of melody,
color and form. Had there ever been a time for making worrisome
decisions, for seeking the multi-sided answer to the human equation?
It didn't seem likely. This is Eternity, Marc thought, Eternity is
like this. Throwing his arms free, he stretched his lean length to its
utmost.

Eternity ended abruptly.

"Well, I'll be damned!" a voice said distinctly. "I'll be damned and
broiled over a slow flame!"

Marc swung up into a sitting position, and his eyes raked the scene
behind him. He froze.

[Illustration: His mouth formed a soundless whistle as he looked up to
see the scantily clad Toffee smiling down at him.]

Even in that first moment of confused surprise, Marc was quite well
aware that no girl had ever eyed him with such undisguised pleasure--or
such frank intent. Certainly no girl as beautiful as this one, at any
rate. Perhaps, if she'd just done something about getting dressed....
He'd never seen a more top notch pair of legs.

Disconcertingly, the girl had chosen to place between herself and the
raw elements only a slight green tunic of a consistency comparable to
that of the airy mists on the slope. Considering this, Marc felt keenly
that the situation called for, in full voice, a hasty apology and the
quick slam of a door; he was terribly aware that there wasn't much
more between him and this alarming newcomer than the atmosphere and a
very pregnant silence. He couldn't understand how the girl could be so
unconcerned about it.

"I'm sorry...!" Marc said quickly. "I...."

"I'm delighted," the girl said. She smiled softly, in a way that
suggested great intimacy.

"I think I'll scream," Marc said weakly, "if you're not going to."

"I'm not going to," the girl said. "Not a chance."

Marc reflected erratically that this creature, in spite of her
loveliness, was surely a traveler from hell; the fires of that region
danced unmistakably on the surface of her soft red hair and in the
depths of her vivid green eyes. His unbelieving gaze left her pert
young face and helplessly traveled the course of her supple body.
It was a disturbing trip; unhurried curves moved indolently outward
and took their time about coming back. And then, as the girl started
forward, Marc glanced up to discover that her gaze had followed his
own. He looked away sharply and was aware of a feverish sensation about
the neck and cheeks.

"There's no need to blush," the girl laughed.

"There's every need in the world," Marc said uneasily. "A crying need."

"If you're embarrassed," the girl said, "you've no one to blame but
yourself."

Marc turned back, careful that his gaze went directly to her face and
remained there. "Are you trying to suggest that it's my fault that
you're naked?"

"Of course it is," the girl said. "It's all your fault, now that you
bring it up. After all, I'm your exclusive creation. You dreamed me
up, curve for curve, line for line, and if the job seems a little
immoderate, you should have thought of that sooner." She moved
lightly to where he was sitting and lowered herself to the ground
beside him. She crossed one slender leg over the other in the manner
of a gem broker displaying a stock of crown emeralds on a length of
black velvet. "Not that I'm complaining, you understand. Personally,
especially after your bug-eyed reaction, I regard myself as a pretty
piece of merchandise."

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc flinched slightly at the directness of this self-appraisal, but
found it hard to find a point of disagreement. Though the girl's
nearness had done much to impair his mental processes, he was all too
aware of the merchandise at hand and an unspoken invitation to feel the
superior quality of the goods. He breathed deeply and edged away.

"What do you mean, I dreamed you up?" he asked.

The girl sighed despairingly. "I had hoped," she murmured, "that we
wouldn't have to waste time on anything so dull as pedigrees. However,
I can see that you're the fretful type." She shrugged. "I'm Toffee."
She leaned back and gazed at Marc from the corner of her eye with an
expression that plainly indicated that she had revealed "all."

Marc tried to think. He repeated the name several times to himself.
Toffee.... Toffee.... Toffee.... It didn't mean a thing to him....

"Well?" the girl said.

"Well?" Marc echoed faintly. The look in her eyes made him warmly
uncomfortable.

"If you're going to start making passes at me," the girl said, propping
herself up on one elbow, "I think I ought to say right now that there
will be the usual hollow pretense of resistance." She smiled slowly.
"But my heart won't be half in it, and that's a fact." She reached down
and smoothed the tunic over the curve of her perfectly formed hip. "I
just thought I'd mention it."

"Oh, my gosh!" Marc gasped. "Do I understand you correctly?"

"If you don't," the girl said with a twinge of impatience, "I might as
well pick up my drawing pencils and go home. Why are we wasting all
this time and energy?"

"Don't you have any repressions at all?" Marc asked.

"Of course not," the girl answered. "That's the way you made me."

"The way I made you?"

The girl nodded and leaned toward him. "I told you, I'm Toffee." She
studied his face for a moment, then sat up. "Say, don't you recognize
me?"

"I've never set eyes on you before in my life," Marc said emphatically.
"Maybe that's because I don't habitually frequent burlesque theatres."

"Now, look here, you withered old goat!" A flame of annoyance
flickered brightly in the green eyes. "Just where do you get off,
making cracks like that? I've been in the back of your mind for years.
You've dreamed me up, hip, thigh and shoulder, just the way I am. Don't
think you're going to get away with pretending you're above it all now."

Realization blanked Marc's expression. "You mean you're a product of my
subconscious mind?"

"Now you're getting it," the girl said. She swept a hand at the slopes
behind them. "This is the valley of your mind. I've been languishing in
this trap for years. If I've grown a little eager in the meantime, it's
only natural. It puts an awful strain on a girl to have what I've got
with no market for outlet. I'm just a bundle of frozen assets."

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc smiled, and his manner became a bit less constrained. "Then all
this is only a dream, and you're strictly an imaginary figure."

"You could put it that way," the girl nodded. However, there was a note
of reservation in her voice. "Of course, it works two ways really. You
might say that you're only in my imagination too. Up till now, that
is." She surveyed his sprawled length with critical interest. "And,
believe me, you're getting all the best of the bargain. If I'm a dream
come true, you're a moaning nightmare. I'll bet you're nothing but a
mess of knobs and angles under those baggy clothes of yours."

"We'll just skip my knobs and angles," Marc said distantly, "if you
don't mind."

"I do mind," the girl said, looking a trifle alarmed. "I mind like all
get-out. Why should I want to skip the awful things? Do you mean I'm
to pick them up all in a string and play jump rope with them?" She
shuddered delicately. "Is that what you have in mind?"

"Of course not," Marc said. "I merely mean to say that my knobs and
angles do not constitute a matter for your concern in the least.
I'll be more than happy if you'll just ignore my knobs and angles
altogether. Just pretend they aren't there."

"What an awful picture that brings to mind," the girl said. "Without
your knobs and angles you'd be even worse than you are already.
Besides, they're of utmost concern to me. Heaven knows they're nothing
to boast about, or even mention, for that matter, but they're the
only ones handy, and I've been waiting for years to get my hands on a
working set of knobs and...."

"That's enough," Marc broke in. "I wish you'd stop going on about your
sordid-minded desires. I don't want to hear about them. And get away
from me!" He started violently. "Leave my knobs and angles alone!"

But it was too late to protest. Already the girl had twined her arms
tightly about his neck and was drawing him toward her.

"This," she whispered with soft intensity, "is an angle of my own."

Marc struggled for a moment under the knowing pressure of her lips,
but the period of resistance was short lived. He yielded quickly to
the coolness of her arms about his neck and the warm brush of her hair
against his cheek. He had actually begun to aid and abet the effort
before it was over. Toffee released him and leaned back.

"That," she said, "is the introductory offer, merely a sample to bring
the product to your attention. The objective, in case you're somewhat
hazy, is to create a large and steady demand for the brand."

Marc was more than hazy. "Oh, my gosh!" he breathed. "I feel completely
demoralized!"

"Fine," Toffee said blandly. "It takes a heap of demoralizing to make a
man a man. We're on the right track and proceeding with a steady speed.
We'll build up steam as we go along."

"Oh, no we won't!" Marc said getting uncertainly to his feet. "We won't
build up anything, you and I. We'll put an end to this dream before we
both have something to regret. If I dreamed you up, I can get rid of
you too."

       *       *       *       *       *

Instantly the girl was on her feet beside him. "Of all the gall!" she
said. "Of all the slithering, dripping gall!"

Marc winced. "You're affecting my stomach," he said.

"And that's not all I'm going to affect before I'm through with you!
I'm going to affect you from end to end and border to border! You leave
me stumping it around in this air tunnel head of yours all these years,
and then dream me up just to throw me over!"

"Wait a second...!"

"Be quiet," Toffee snapped. "Wait till I'm through. This goes on for
some time." She gazed tragically into the distance and resumed in a
mellowed tone: "That's all I ever was to you, a plaything to be used
and cast aside when you've grown tired of me." Her voice broke with
emotion. "Now that I'm old and ugly, you're ashamed of me.... This is
even better with violins."

"Stop that," Marc said. "Don't be ridiculous. There's no need for
dramatics. You're far from old and ugly, and as for...."

But suddenly the girl had fastened herself to him for the second time.
"Then you really do think I'm a little sensational after all?" she
cried ecstatically. "Kiss me! I'm yours!"

"No!" Marc cried. "I didn't say that! I didn't even mention...!"

"Yes, you did," the girl breathed in his ear, and drew her mouth
quickly to his.

"Wait a minute!" Marc objected, forcing her from him. "This sort of
thing has got to stop!"

"Why, for heaven's sake? I think it's perfectly divine."

Marc stopped to consider her question. Actually, why did it have to
stop? There was a reason, a good reason, if only he could think of it.
And then something stirred in the far reaches of his mind and drifted
slowly forward.

_Julie!_

"Holy smoke!" Marc cried. "Julie. I have a wife!"

"Of course," the girl said. "But what difference does that make? I
don't mind in the least. I'm terribly broad-minded. Besides, it happens
that your wife isn't in this dream. Why drag her into it and spoil
everything?"


"No!" Marc said excitedly. "No. You don't understand. I just
remembered. There was an explosion. Julie was in the house--and a lot
of her friends. Heaven only knows what happened. Oh, my gosh!" He drew
away from the girl and glanced desperately around. "I've got to get out
of here!"

But even as he spoke another matter rose for his immediate attention.
All of a sudden the little valley had been seized with a shuddering
convulsion. The greenness underfoot began to tremble violently. As Marc
looked frightenedly about, the trees on the knoll commenced a weird
seesawing, weaving back and forth in mad counter rhythm. Then, with a
great roar of agony, the quiet valley began to crumble apart beneath
their very feet. Everything dropped away into blackness....

Falling, Marc was only incidentally aware of the tightening pressure
of the girl's arms about his neck. And then the frightened words came
breathlessly, close to his ear: "Marc! Marc! Don't leave!"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Please, Marc! Open your eyes!"

The imperative note of command sang hollowly in the depths of his
subconscious, echoed back in some small chamber of his awareness. He
stirred.

"Open your eyes, darling. Look at me."

Marc clawed at the edge of darkness, caught hold, and pulled himself
upward toward the lighter region of consciousness. He struggled to the
brink, caught a measure of leverage, and opened his eyes....

Julie's face peered down at him duskily, her blue eyes bright with
fear even in the dim moonlight. A whisp of blonde hair had gone astray
across her forehead.

"Marc!" she cried. "Marc!"

Marc tried his reflexes and sat up. "Julie," he murmured. "What
happened?"

"Never mind, dear," Julie said. "Are you all right?"

Marc considered the matter of his all-rightness. He let his enfeebled
concentration travel the circuit of his body. There were no sharp pains
or ominous numbnesses.

"I think so," he said. "I think I'm all right. I had a dream...."

"Here," Julie said, with a sigh of relief. "Let me help you up." On
his feet, Marc tested the working parts of his rangey anatomy and
found them all in an operative condition. He glanced around and for
the first time since his awakening realized that he was still in the
basement laboratory. In the dim moonlight that filtered through the
hole in the wall, it was evident that the place had been ruined. The
upper end, however, leading away into the wine bins had apparently been
spared. The explosion rose and happened again in his memory.

"Well," he sighed, turning to Julie, "it turned out a real bust, didn't
it?"

Julie gazed at him for a long moment and suffered a nasty
transformation. Her eyes no longer reflected concern, solicitude
or even slight affection. To the contrary, they expressed extreme
annoyance. Evidently, now that she was certain he was all right, she
was prepared to blame him for all the foul acts of man since the first
dawn of time.

"Just what went on down here?" she inquired with tense hostility. "Do
you realize, Marconi, that you nearly blew the Daughters of the Golden
Gardenia right out the front door?"

Marc's thoughts turned to a picture of the Daughters of the Golden
Gardenia being blown out his front door, and he experienced a sudden
glow of inner warmth.

"And what were the old hens banded together on the same roost for this
time?" he asked acidly. "Getting up funds to lay linoleum in the huts
of African bushwhackers?"

Julie's blue eyes grew wide with surprise. That Marc had any feeling
except awe for her club ladies had not occurred to her. "Marc
Pillsworth!" she exclaimed. "The coffee urn upset on Mrs. Beemer and
ruined her dress!"

"The old trull's figure did more to ruin that dress than any dozen
coffee urns ever could," Marc said levelly. "As a matter of fact, I'm
enormously pleased it happened. It's my fondest dream come true. I've
been longing to hit Mrs. Beemer with a coffee urn ever since I first
set eyes on her. Right now I'm going upstairs to bed and I don't want
to hear any more about it. My head hurts."

For a moment Julie stood still before him, transfixed with
astonishment. Then suddenly, drawing her hand tremblingly to her mouth,
she made a small whimpering sound, turned, and fled up the steps.

Marc remained where he was, listening to her hurried footsteps as they
sounded through the upper hallway, and on the stairs leading to the
second floor. There was a moment of silence, then the slam of a door.
Marc shrugged.

He glanced at the ruins. The floor was littered heavily with rubble.
None of the equipment had survived, that was obvious even in the dark.
Well, he'd have to start all over again. He turned and started toward
the steps. Then he stopped short and glanced sharply in the direction
of the wine bins.

He could have sworn he'd caught a flash of movement there from the
corner of his eye. He waited, peering into the darkness, but there was
nothing. He smiled wryly and turned back again to the steps.

"Just nerves," he murmured to himself. And then his thoughts reverted
momentarily to the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia. "Wish I'd blown
the old dragons out the front door and into the gates of Hell," he said.

With that warm thought he drew a deep breath and started up the
stairs. Curiously, the explosion had left him with a great sense of
exhilaration....




                              CHAPTER II


Marc awoke.

A drift of silver moonlight spilled through the window to the carpet
and across the foot of the bed. Marc lay still and let his thoughts
shift effortlessly with the warm breeze that riffled the curtains. He
was curiously alert to the night, its mood and quality. There was a
strange clarity here, and he had a feeling he'd been awakened to it for
a definite purpose, though he couldn't imagine at the moment what that
purpose might be. He listened for a sound from Julie's room across the
hall, but there was none.

He pondered his exuberance at having spoken harshly to Julie after the
accident. After all, he didn't really want to hurt her. They did love
each other, he and Julie, and that was the plain fact of the matter.
But now that he thought of it, perhaps that was just the trouble;
perhaps the fact was so terribly plain that it wasn't even of interest
any more.

Certainly, it had never occurred to Marc to be jealous of Julie. Never
once had he been distressed at the thought that she might be flirting a
hip at the stable boy while he was away at his office in town. Indeed,
if the idea had occurred to him at all, he'd have laughed at it. It was
true that there was a certain amount of comfort in this, but not one
iota of excitement.

Most depressing, though, was the thought that Julie, in her turn, was
not jealous of him. It didn't seem to distress her in the least that,
as owner and head of one of the most successful advertising agencies
in the nation, he was daily in close contact with the most deadly and
devastating models in the business.

Of course Julie had every reason to take confidence in her own
cool blonde beauty, but on the other hand there was the thoroughly
distressing thought that perhaps she felt Marc could be trusted with
these gilt-edged females simply because they could be trusted with him.
No man likes to feel that his wife is sure of him not because of his
own sterling qualities, but because no other woman could conceivably
be so desperate as to find him attractive. Julie's bland confidence in
his fidelity, Marc felt, tended to make things terribly dull in the
neighborhood of the parlor, bedroom and bath.

Marc looked to himself for the cause of his unhappy state of affairs.
The decision was neither for nor against. Perhaps he wasn't handsome,
but then he wasn't hideous either. His face actually had a rather nice
angular plainness about it, and his grey eyes were undeniably kind and
could, on occasion, be extremely humorous.

He was a bit too thin for so tall a man, but there was a suggestion, at
thirty-three, of a litheness and youth about his figure that was not
unattractive. His sandy hair at least had the virtue of unobtrusiveness
without any such vulgar ostentations as polished slickness or gleaming
ringlets. On careful and unprejudiced analysis, Marc felt that as an
example of his sex he was neither such a one as to send a woman wilting
to the carpet with palpitations or screaming to the medicine chest for
the salts. The clue to the rising becalmment of his marriage, then,
had to lie in another quarter. But Marc was at a loss to determine its
direction. What he did not realize was that, from the outset, he had
allowed Julie the exclusive management of their life together without
reserving for himself even the right to veto.

       *       *       *       *       *

The truth was that Marc was shy with women to the point of reticence.
Too busy and too earnest in the struggle to establish the agency in
the early, salty days of his youth, he had simply missed all of the
ordinary experiences, the fretful trials and errors, due the average
young man bent on gaining a solid footing in life's more fundamental
departments. In effect, Marc had never taken the time to brace himself
against the Indian hand wrestle that sex can often become in this
civilized world. He could never be a rake, either at home or abroad,
simply because he hadn't had time to practice.

Not that Marc didn't have the impulse for rakishness. It had merely
come too late. He had always suspected that there was a more
satisfactory and satisfying way of life than his, but only vaguely.
There were even moments when he yearned for it desperately, without
ever rightly knowing precisely what it was he yearned for.

At the time when he asked Julie to be his wife, he believed that he
was at last making the proper step towards a new kind of life. After
all, in spite of all the tons of fiction to the contrary, it is still
not considered entirely orthodox for a business executive to marry his
secretary. Marriage with Julie had seemed, to Marc, to offer the sort
of life he coveted. Then, she had been as casual and convention-free a
girl as any man would care to split a pint of gin with in a butler's
pantry. Not that Marc ever had, however.

Even then, though, had Marc been better schooled in matters of maids,
mates and matrimony, he might have recognized in the cool blue of
Julie's eyes, in the precise way she carried her statuesque body, the
seeds of wedded woodenness. As it was, the revelation did not occur
until after that fatal moment at the altar.

The wedding ceremony had worked a magic in Julie that, to Marc's mind,
was as black as pure onyx. Instantly, she had become a rigid suburban
matron, corseted tightly in all the whale-boned dictates of suburban
respectability. Under Julie's efficient supervision Marc had found
himself settled down with a thud that was almost audible.

Julie took up club work with a fire and fervor that was truly
frightening. She ran for election to committees and officerships
with a wind and stamina that would have been admirable in an Olympic
torchbearer. She sat on more boards than a lumber mill laborer at lunch
time. Every book of etiquette written by man, woman or child found its
way into her library, and she stuck to the rules with all the tenacity
of an umpire on a World Series game. Worst of all, though, she took to
brewing weak tea and making watercress sandwiches. Briefly, Julie had
become that odious thing: the perfectly terrible perfect wife.

If Marc grew sallow and sullen under this regime, Julie's smiling and
well-modulated suggestion was that he take up a hobby and turn his mind
to something constructive. To her own purposes, as well as everyone
else's, she might have done better to keep her pretty mouth shut. It
was this suggestion that gave birth to the basement laboratory and the
madness that followed....

It is difficult to believe that any man of so steady a nature as Marc
Pillsworth would seriously conceive the idea of chemically treating
metals and other weighted materials in such a way as to make them
lighter than air. Yet, that precisely is the madness that wormed its
way into Marc's mind.

The idea had developed slowly. For almost a month, from his office
window, Marc had watched the construction of the building across the
street. The main difficulty, as the building stretched lazily upward,
obviously was the transportation of the heavier materials. That was the
thing that made the work so slow.

       *       *       *       *       *

A bit at a time, the idea took hold of Marc that the job could be
immensely facilitated if only the steel girders, the sections of
concrete, could be made buoyant ... at least temporarily ... so that
they might be floated into position rather than lifted. Eventually
came the time when the idea had lain long enough in Marc's mind that
it seemed to make sense. Of course it was a fantastic idea, but the
really fantastic thing about it was that no little men in white jackets
arrived on the scene to carry its originator gently but firmly away to
some quiet institution.

And yet time proved Marc to be not quite so mad as he seemed.
Subsequent experiments testified to his rather extraordinary if
distorted vision. In a year's time, hit and miss, he had managed to
reduce the weight of scraps of iron and steel by actual test ...
and this without diminishing their bulk by so much as a fraction of
an inch. Of course, Marc had to admit, both of these materials had
clung doggedly to a nasty disinclination to actually defy the laws of
gravity, but he was convinced that he was well on the way to breaking
their will in the matter.

Months of paper work followed, tedious calculations, corrected formula.
At last he was ready to prepare what he was positive would be his
final and conclusive experiment. Ingredients were carefully distilled
and combined, in exact amounts and weights. And then, on the very
night that Julie had manoeuvered the exclusive Daughters of the Golden
Gardenia into her living room with an eye to arranging a society
bazaar, Marc retired to his basement sanctuary, carefully closed the
door, added the final chemical to the growing mixture, and blew the
bejesus out of everything. If the laws of gravity had finally been
broken it was only by virtue of rude detonation. The experiment, in its
major aspect, was a dud.

All these things passed fluidly through Marc's mind as he lay awake
gazing into the silver clarity of the night. He wondered at his own
serenity in the face of so much disappointment and could not account
for it. A strange faith in the future, unnourished by tangible fact,
had begun to grow within him, a definite, thriving growth sustained by
the night and the moonlight.

How could he know it was the weed growth of violence?

Then Marc stirred and turned his head at a listening angle. The night
was no longer silent; the stillness had been broken by a strand of
distant melody. Faintly, a voice had begun to sing, weaving a curious,
indistinct thread of song into the illusive fabric of the night. For a
moment Marc wondered if he only imagined it, but when he covered his
ears with his hands, the melody stopped. He listened again. Slowly, the
song grew louder, more distinct.

Marc sat bolt upright in bed. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said.

He was sure of it; the singing was actually coming from somewhere
inside the house. And if the voice had a strange, illusive quality it
was only because it was patently alcoholic. Obviously some drunken
woman was lurching about below stairs singing her vaporish head off.
Marc threw back the covers and swung out of bed. What if his harshness
had driven Julie to drink!

In the hallway outside his room, Marc paused to listen. The voice
was gaining wind and growing louder by the second. Marc started
indignantly; the song, if he wasn't mistaken, was at least badly
soiled if not downright filthy. It had something to do with the lurid
misadventures of a loose moraled sturgeon named Gussie during the
spawning season. At least it couldn't be Julie. Fumbling with the sash
of his robe, Marc went to the stairs and marched determinedly downward.

In the lower hall he paused by the door to the living room to take a
sounding. Sighting on a distant burp, he started toward the rear of the
house. He had just passed the study when the singing suddenly stopped.
Marc stopped also, waiting for the voice to continue. He moved slowly
in the direction of the kitchen, careful that his own footfall did
not disturb the silence. The kitchen, brilliant with moonlight, was
uninhabited. Marc slipped back to the hallways and waited. Suddenly
a new series of sounds were unleashed on the night; the clinking of
bottles, a light giggle and a subdued hiccough.

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc, certain now of his destination, whirled about, went to the
basement door and threw it open. No longer cautious, he stepped into
the darkness and started down the steps with a tread that bespoke his
outrage.

There was no question in his mind; some neighborhood swain, in an
amorous mood, had enticed the giggling and subnormal object of his
sordid affections to the wine cellar. No doubt the pair were fairly
wallowing in depravity amongst the bins at this very moment. The cheek
of the young devil! And the girl! Getting drunk on wine that was not
hers and singing about it! Certainly she was no better than she should
be, and probably so much worse as to be beyond conception.

Marc quitted the steps, picked his way over a heap of rubble and
presented himself solidly in the ragged patch of moonlight that
described the hole left in the wall by the explosion. He planted his
feet ominously apart and doubled his fists.

"All right, you two," he said in a level, distinct voice. "Show
yourselves. If you're in any condition."

The silence filled in quickly in the wake of his voice. Marc pursed his
lips and peered into the deep shadows of the wine cellar.

"If you don't come out," he said, "I'll damn well come in here and drag
you out. How would you like that?"

Then he started as his question was answered with a muffled giggle.

Marc bristled. "Very well," he announced, "here I come!"

He strode to the wine cellar and presented himself firmly in the
doorway. "One last chance," he said. "Are you coming out?"

He waited in the ensuing silence, suddenly assailed by a strange
feeling of indecision. Then he cried out with dismay as a slender arm
suddenly darted out into the moonlight and coiled gracefully about his
neck.

"Now, just a minute!" Marc gasped.

But the arm did not hesitate. Tightening about his neck, it drew him
toward the darkness. Instantly, a pair of warm lips pressed down on his
own.

Marc struggled to free himself, but the mouth was extraordinarily
tenacious. And another arm had joined the other about his neck. Then
Marc freed his mouth and sputtered with objections.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

A winey breath impressed itself on Marc's nostrils. "Don't you know?" a
voice murmured softly. "You should."

"Let go of me," Marc said stiffly.

"Not in a million years," the voice replied huskily. "I'm going to
stick to you like skin. Forever and ever and ever and...."

"We'll see about that," Marc grated. "Whoever you are, you're
trespassing. In more ways than one."

Reaching up he grasped the arms about his neck and attempted to
disentangle them. They only tightened their hold. He tried to duck
under the arms, but they moved downward as he did. For a moment Marc
and his amorous captor crouched together in the dark, literally cheek
by jowl. The other giggled.

"I'll bet we look terribly funny," she said.

"Stop that damned giggling," Marc fumed. "Things are bad enough without
that."

He had decided on a strategy to free himself. In one quick movement he
straightened up and stepped backwards. It might have worked perfectly
if he hadn't stumbled over a piece of wreckage. As it was he suddenly
sprawled backwards and fell to the floor in the exact center of
the patch of moonlight. His winey companion, true to her promise,
accompanied him in his downward plunge with skin-like precision. She
landed against Marc's chest with a sigh of satisfaction.

"May I take this as capitulation?" she asked. "Or was it only an
accident?"

"Don't be so disgusting," Marc said. Then, gazing upward, he suddenly
blanched. His mouth fell slack. The girl had loosened her hold on his
neck and was sitting up, gazing down at him. In his confusion Marc
didn't even notice that the thing she was sitting on was his stomach.
The girl was the same one in the dream. The girl was Toffee!

"Oh, Lord!" he moaned. "You're...!"

"Of course," Toffee said brightly. "I made it. I'm here."

"Then this is really a dream," Marc said dazedly. "I'm still in bed
asleep. I only dreamed I woke up and came down here."

"Wrong, son," Toffee said briefly. "This is no dream. This is for real."

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc stared at her in disbelief. "Wait a minute ..." he breathed. Then
he reached out a hand, touched her, and quickly drew it away.

"That's the general idea," Toffee said.

Marc drew back with a gasp. "You're really here!"

"I have other ways of proving it," Toffee said. She leaned toward him.

"No!" Marc cried. "But ... but ... how...!"

Toffee smiled. "It's very simple. You've projected me through your
awareness. I guess I must have made quite an impression on you in that
dream. Heavens knows I tried, but I didn't think I was really getting
any psychic cooperation. Anyway, I managed to stick to the conscious
part of your mind instead of the subconscious, and you projected me
into reality."

"Oh, no!" Marc gasped. "No! This can't happen! I didn't mean it! You've
got to go back!"

"Too late now," Toffee said. She removed herself from Marc's middle and
plumped herself down beside him. "There's no use fighting it. You can't
control it. Of course I'll disappear and return to your mind whenever
you go to sleep. You'll stop projecting me then. But I'll be right back
again the moment you wake up." She sighed happily. "I'm so tickled I
could pop."

"Don't!" Marc cried. Anything was easily within the realm of
possibility now. "What am I going to do with you?"

Toffee cast him a sidelong glance. "I could make a list of
suggestions," she murmured, "and we could run through them in the order
named. And if there are any terms you don't understand I'll explain
them."

"Holy smoke!" Marc said, staring at her. "Haven't you any sense of
decency at all?"

"None worth mentioning," Toffee answered. "Should I have?"

"No one ever needed anything worse," Marc said emphatically.

Toffee glanced curiously about her. "This place is a mess," she
commented. "Is your whole world as shabby as this?"

Marc shook his head, explained briefly about the explosion.

"I don't understand about human beings," Toffee said. "The minute they
get their hands on anything they have to start changing it so that it
serves a purpose exactly opposite what it was intended for. What goes
up must come down, what goes down must come up. You're all perfectly
mad, all of you. Are you happy that you've managed to make heavy things
light?"

"What?" Marc asked absently.

"I asked you if you were happy now that you've managed to make all that
stuff behave contrary to its nature, rather indecently I might add."

"What are you talking about?" Marc asked.

"All that stuff floating around on the ceiling," Toffee said. She
pointed.

Marc whirled about to gaze in the direction she indicated. Then he
sucked in his breath with a sharp gasp. Toffee had spoken the truth.
Slowly, the rubble was rising from the floor of the basement to the
ceiling. Some of it had already described the full journey and was
hovering about the ceiling. Chairs, pieces of desk, desk drawers,
fragments of equipment, scraps of metal were bobbing about next to the
ceiling like apples in a washtub on Hallowe'en. Marc suddenly felt very
lightheaded. In a matter of minutes the world had become an unfamiliar
place; reality quickly slipped away from him and he was caught for a
moment in a spell of moon-splashed madness.

"My God!" he whispered. "I did it!"

"You certainly did," Toffee said. "Now how are you going to get all
that stuff down again?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Unexpectedly, Marc jumped to his feet, made a quick lunge toward a
small black book that was rising rapidly toward the ceiling. But he was
too late; it moved beyond his reach and came to a solid rest against
the ceiling.

"Damn!" Marc said.

"What is it?" Toffee asked.

"The book that I recorded my formulas in," Marc said. "I have to have
it. When this gets out...."

Toffee rose to his side and placed her arms around his neck.

"For heaven's sake!" Marc said. "Can't you think of anything else?"

"It's difficult," Toffee said. "But at the moment I'm trying to help
you. Lift me up and I'll reach the book for you."

"Oh," Marc said. He held his hands down for her to step into, then
boosted her up. As she rose above him he was surprised at how light she
was. He glanced up. One hand on his shoulder, Toffee was stretching the
other toward the wayward book. She didn't quite make it. She glanced
down at Marc.

"Hold steady," she said. Then she let go of his shoulder and stood
upright, depending entirely on his hands for support. She reached out,
caught hold of the book, and smiled down at him. It was just as she was
bending down again that she lost her balance.

In the next instant Marc's head and shoulders became the center of what
seemed to be a dozen flailing arms and legs.

In an effort to save the situation, Marc stepped back and held out
his arms, just in time for Toffee to strike him solidly on the chest.
In the tangle that followed they both tumbled to the floor. When Marc
looked up Toffee was once more seated comfortably and safely on his
stomach. She looked down at him and laughed.

"Does it strike you that a certain monotony has come into our
relationship?" she asked.

"It strikes me that a certain pain has come into my stomach," Marc
wheezed. "Would you be kind enough, I wonder, to take a seat elsewhere
for a change? Or am I going to have to wear you like a watch fob from
now on?"

Toffee eyed his mid-section with scorn. "If you think that shriveled
bladder of yours is so comfortable, you just ought to try sitting on it
sometime."

"That would make an interesting spectacle," Marc commented acidly. "If
I'm not comfortable to sit on it's probably because you landed on me
so hard you're on my spine. Get off."

"A pleasure," Toffee said and slid to the floor beside him. "Here's
that silly book of yours." Without thinking, except to express her
contempt for Marc's central region as a seating arrangement, she tossed
the book in his direction. The book described a small arc toward Marc,
then promptly swooped upward in rapid ascent.

"Oh, my gosh!" Marc said. He sat up and grabbed just in time. "Let's
not...!"

Suddenly he stopped as a series of footsteps sounded on the floor above.

"Julie!" he hissed in a stage whisper. "My wife!"

"Marc!" Julie's voice called distinctly. "Marc! Where are you? What was
all that noise?"

Marc turned to Toffee. "Go!" he said. "Vanish!"

Toffee gazed blandly on his distress. "I can't," she said, "unless you
go to sleep, of course. I couldn't if I wanted to. Which I don't."

"Oh, Lord!" Marc groaned. He stood for a moment, torn.

"Marc!"

Julie was approaching the basement doorway now.

"I've got to go," Marc rasped. "You stay here. Promise?"

Toffee smiled and nodded. "Sure," she said. "But you'll come back,
won't you? Because if you don't I'll stir up enough hell down here to
raise the dead."

"I'll come back," Marc promised desperately, and started rapidly toward
the steps.

"Just a minute," Toffee said. She held her arms out to him. "Kiss me
goodbye."

"No," Marc said.

"I'll scream," Toffee said coolly. "I'll yowl like a banshee."

Marc went quickly back to her. "It's not as though I won't be right
back. Just a little while...."

"That's all right," Toffee murmured. She slid her arms smoothly around
his neck. "This is just so you won't forget."

"Marc!" Julie called from upstairs. "Where are you? What are you doing?
Answer me!"




                              CHAPTER III


Marc stepped into his room and closed the door, but gently, leaving it
still open just a crack. He listened. Across the hall, Julie went into
her room, closed the door. There was an interval of silence, then the
sound of restless movement inside.

Julie's manner downstairs had been tentative, apprehensive and almost
frighteningly gentle. She had seemed to believe Marc's story about
investigating noises but she had asked once too often if he was feeling
well, if the explosion hadn't left him with a terrible headache.

Marc closed the door all the way, went over to the bed, and sat down
to wait; she'd settle down in time and then he could return to the
basement. He looked around absently and as his gaze passed the window
he noticed that the first faint wash of day had come into the sky
outside. He reached to the nightstand, picked up a cigarette and lit
it. He took a deep draft and blew the smoke out thinly, thoughtfully.
With worried bewilderment he considered the fading night's absurdities.

It was as though, in creating the explosion and upsetting the laws
of gravity, he had thrown all the processes of the universe out of
kilter--as though all the natural laws were balanced precariously one
atop the other, so that when one was broken or removed, all the others
came tumbling down to shatter at your feet in consequence. A redheaded
dream could come to life and laugh and sing and guzzle your wine and
raise hell in general all over the lot. Things that were never meant to
could begin to float through the air. It was a disconcerting state of
affairs just to contemplate, let alone experience. Nature had certainly
gone on a bender tonight and no mistake. If these things could happen
what else might not be possible? Marc dreaded to think.

If Marc had been able to look into the unknown regions beyond the
universe he might have had a quick answer to his question. But not a
reassuring one....

       *       *       *       *       *

In a timeless, unboundaried place, an entity sat cross-legged on a
drifting piece of atmosphere and gazed with jaundiced and disconsolate
eye toward the regions of Eternity. He looked unhappily on the
undiscovered planets whirling and drifting in the distance and said an
extremely vulgar and basic word. He plucked a handful of atmosphere
from the piece on which he sat, untangled his long legs from beneath
his misted robes, and, in a modified way, drop-kicked it into the
hereafter. He repeated the word.

George Pillsworth, the spirit of Marc Pillsworth, was bored to
the socks with the world beyond. He frowned, and the face of Marc
Pillsworth expressed disfavor. He leaned forward and dangled his hands
between his knees, and it was the lean body of Marc Pillsworth that
leaned and the thin hands of Marc Pillsworth that dangled. There,
however, the resemblance rocked to a jarring stop.

The message vibrations came trembling across space again, but George
didn't bother to listen to them. It was probably just the message
center at its eternal business; probably another relay broadcast
forwarding the same old answers to the same old mediums down on earth.
The question came constantly for the upper level spirits: Are you
happy, Uncle Howard? Are you happy, Sister Martha? Always the same
silly question. The devil of it was that no one was ever allowed to
give them a truthful answer; the News Control Board took care of that.
The answer was always the same ... probably recorded, George
suspected ... transmitted from the message center: I am in a beautiful
place. I am very happy.

Very happy, indeed. In this place? George didn't know about the
Kingdoms; maybe they were all right, but this place was.... Well, no,
it couldn't be that. But why didn't they tell the truth for once: I'm
in the dullest place in time, and if I had any blood I'd open my veins.

       *       *       *       *       *

The thought of transmitting such a message to those bothersome earthly
mediums pleased George immensely. That would rock them back on their
heels and stop their silly questions. He leaned back on his atmosphere
ledge and smiled for the first time in several days. Then suddenly he
sat up as the transmitted vibrations grew more intense, and his own
name sounded across time.

"_George Pillsworth! George Pillsworth! Report instantly to the High
Council! Instantly! Shake a leg, you shabby spook!_"

George's expression was instantly troubled. "Now what have they found
out about?" he sighed.

George paused to recount in his mind his more recent sins. Last week
he had heard that humans often became quite rich by distilling spirits
and had tried the process on a few of his friends. He had come close
to narrowing the circle of his acquaintances to a positive noose. But
they'd already had him on the carpet for that. All in all, a muggy
affair. He shrugged resignedly, dissolved and concentrated his impulses
toward the ...

Council Chambers....

An instant later George rose through the grey mists of the Chamber. He
looked tentatively at the Council and quickly averted his gaze; to an
entity, the Council stared back at him without affection or beauty.
George cleared his throat nervously.

"George Pillsworth, spiritual part to the mortal Marc Pillsworth,
reporting as instructed," he said.

"And not a moment too soon," the Head commented bleakly. "Face the
Council, please. If you've the gall."

Guardedly, George raised his eyes to the Council. The sight was not
heart-warming. The Council, under the very best circumstances, was not
attractive. In a nasty mood it could be inconceivably ugly. Comprised
of five members who prided themselves on being only concerned with
the most profound matters of Eternity, the Council was not given to
pursuits of vanity. It looked like hell and was proud of it.

The Head had not been misnamed. An entity who functioned entirely on
an intellectual plane, his body had dwindled through the years while
his head had become enlarged. Now he was the proud possessor of the
biggest, shaggiest, most formidable top-piece extant. The others were
of a similar stamp, but to a lesser degree. Two of them had fairly
well developed arms and shoulders but they did their best to hide the
fact beneath their robes since it was a clear indication of inferior
mentality. The one who was unfortunate enough to be cursed with rather
a good set of legs was obviously to be regarded as not much of an
intellect at all, a mere messenger boy or literally a leg man. To face
the Council, then, was quite a lot to ask. Almost too much, as far as
George was concerned.

"He's got the gall for anything," one of the armed intellects commented
nastily. "Remember when he was caught selling bogus passports to
ascending spirits?"

George blanched. He wished they would concentrate on the present and
stop dragging up the past.

The Head cleared his throat with a formidable rattle. "I think we can
adhere to the matter at hand without involving personalities," he
said. "The fact that the Pillsworth entity is a spirit of the utmost
depravity has already been established in this Council so often that
the whole subject begins to take on the aspect of a broken record.
We'll come to that later if we must." There was another clearing of
the throat. "The entity will approach the Council."

"Forgive me, your honor," one of the minor members of the Council
intercepted. "But do you think that's really wise? I know it's part of
the prescribed procedure, but mightn't we leave it out, just this once?
I don't trust him a step nearer than he is already."

"I don't trust him that close," another of the members put in.
"Couldn't we reverse the procedure and have him go away from the
Council?"

The Head nodded. "You have a point there," he said. He looked at
George. "Pillsworth, retreat three steps backwards and stand at
attention."

"I meant go away altogether," the member murmured disappointedly. "I
was hoping we could forget the whole thing."

       *       *       *       *       *

George took three steps backwards and assumed what he supposed could
pass for a position of attention. He tried to look alert.

"Is this correct, sir?" he asked.

"The entity will remain silent until requested to speak!" the Head
thundered. "We'll tell you when you're wrong. Oh, brother!"

"Yes," said one of the others. "For heaven's sake don't let him get
started. He'll be talking us into giving him a down payment on the
acres of Heaven."

"Yes," the Head agreed. "And now to the business at hand." He regarded
George with even less approval than before. "It is the custom of
the Council to advise and instruct every entity before he or she
is released to the world below. He is to be charged here with his
allotment of ectoplasm and called upon to swear from memory to the ten
fundamental oaths as set down in the Haunter's Handbook and Guide. Do
you feel that you are prepared for the ceremony, Pillsworth, or would
you like to request a delay for study and contemplation?"

George shifted excitedly. He could hardly contain himself. This was the
moment for which he had been waiting through all these eternal years.
At last he was to be released to Earth. His heart fairly sang. From
all he'd heard, Earth was precisely the place where his talents and
aptitudes would find their proper market. He was so choked with emotion
he could hardly answer.

"I am prepared," he said weakly.

"However," the Head continued with new emphasis, "there is considerable
doubt as to the status under which you shall be released to the
Earth ... that, not going into the Earth's fitness to rise to the
occasion of your arrival. It appears that your earthly past, Marc
Pillsworth, has departed life, but there is a small degree of
uncertainty about the whole affair. It is known that Marc Pillsworth
was caught in a violent explosion in the basement of his home,
and since then his cosmic radiations have broken. It is possible,
considering the nature of the explosion, that there may be a chemical
interference involved here if the chemical processes of Pillsworth
himself have undergone some sort of change. However, it's not likely.

"At any rate, no request for reservations has been received under the
name of Pillsworth in any of the upper planes, and this has caused us
to be uncertain. Still, we cannot risk the possibility of a slip-up.
When a mortal dies his haunt must be dispatched instantly to his
friends and loved ones. It's always been that way." The Head eyed
George and suddenly looked sad. "It just happens that the Pillsworth's
are unlucky."

"I will endeavor ..." George began earnestly.

"Silence!" The Head bellowed. "We know what you'll endeavor to do,
you devil. Anyway, it has been decided, against all reason and better
judgment, that you shall be dispatched to Earth as per schedule. But
only on a probationary and exploratory basis. In other words, it will
be your mission to go to earth and determine whether Marc Pillsworth is
really dead or not. If he is, you will remain and perform your duties
according to the code. If, however, he proves still to be alive--and
let me emphasize this--you will depart the earth and return instanter.
And not a moment later. Do you understand?"

[Illustration: George stood meekly in the cloud-mists while the Council
discussed his case....]

"Yes, sir," George offered timidly.

"And now," the Head continued, "there is the matter of your character.
If it deserves the name. Actually, you are the most characterless
spirit I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. In you are
combined all the base qualities which we strive so hard to fight in
this region. Sometimes I find myself looking on you as a sort of trash
dump in which are collected all the vile qualities which we have
managed to cleanse from the other spirits. But that's only desperate
rationalization. How you happen to be as you are I have never been able
to figure out. It appears that for every virtue your earthly part has
acquired you have embraced an additional evil. At any rate, you are no
angel, and that's the very least I have to say on the matter.

"The point is that we do not dare to hope that you will stick to the
accepted and orthodox procedures of haunting, let alone be even the
least bit of consolation to Pillsworth's survivors. We only ask--no, we
demand--that you do not disgrace the fine traditions of haunting. It
will be plainly understood that you may be recalled and punished at any
time should you get so far out of line as to be an embarrassment to us.
In other words, Pillsworth, watch your step. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," George said mildly. He gazed down at his toes, dissolved
them nervously. "Yes, indeed, sir."

"Very well, then," the Head said. "You will prepare to take the oath
by swearing from memory to the ten rules. Raise your right hand." He
turned to one of his colleagues on the bench. "If this isn't a hollow
mockery, I've never seen one," he muttered.

The favored entity nodded. "As hollow as Aunt Maggie's bustle," he
said. "And twice as tacky."

George raised his right hand and solemnly lifted his eyes in a
heavenward direction. The ten rules, transcribed there sometime before
in hopeful anticipation of this moment, had remained quite legible on
the sleeve of his atmospheric robe.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fully dressed now and returned to the edge of his bed, Marc watched
the first faint beginnings of night's evolution into day. Since he had
kindly been spared any knowledge of the other force which had been
released by the explosion in the basement, his thoughts concerned
themselves with the staggering circumstance of Toffee and the buoyant
debris. He rose, crossed to the door, and listened for any sound from
across the hall. It was quiet there now.

Leaving the door, he went to the bureau at the far side of the room,
cautiously opened the top drawer, careful to keep his hand over the
opening, and caught the little black book as it gained freedom and shot
upward. He put it in the breast pocket of his jacket and fastened
it there by clasping his pen over it. Then he crossed quickly to
the wardrobe, took out a light topcoat, draped it over his arm, and
returned to the door. He paused again to listen, then shoved the door
open and stepped silently out into the hallway.

In the basement, at the bottom of the steps, he paused and glanced
tentatively about, braced himself against an attack from the redhead.
He waited a moment, then called Toffee's name.

There was a moment of quiet, then a slight rustling as Toffee appeared
from the shadows of the wine bins. She raised her arms above her head
and stretched with a languorous yawn. In the grey light of early
morning her apparel, or rather the lack of apparel, was even more
startling than it had been during the night. Marc glanced quickly away
and held out the coat.

"Here," he said distractedly. "Put this on. And button it up all the
way down."

Toffee looked at the coat without interest. "What for?" she asked with
bland innocence. "And, besides, how can I button it up and down at the
same time?"

"Never mind," Marc said. "Just cover your nakedness."

"My nakedness?" Toffee said. "Why in the world would I want to cover
it? What's wrong with it? I have a perfectly divine nakedness. I'll
match my nakedness with yours any time...."

"No!" Marc broke in. "Don't go on."

"Well, with anyone's nakedness, then, if you're going to be edgey. I
haven't anything to be ashamed of."

"If you did," Marc said bitterly, "you wouldn't have the decency to be
ashamed of it. Put the coat on and stop wasting time."

Toffee shrugged bewilderedly and took the coat from his outstretched
hand. "Oh, well," she said, slipping it on, "if you're going to make a
scene about anything so silly. Where are we going?"

"T wish I knew," Marc said wearily. "Anywhere away from here.
Obviously, you can't hang around here where Julie will run into you."

"No," Toffee said mildly. "I suppose not. Though it would be fun to see
her reaction. Might do her a world of good." She waved a hand at the
wreckage clustered on the ceiling. "What about that? What are you going
to do about your experiment?"

Marc shrugged. "I have to think about that later, when I've got you out
of my hair."

Together, they proceeded to the hole in the wall. Marc lifted Toffee
out, then boosted himself after. Toffee reached down to give him a hand.

"Don't look so glum," she said. "Nothing really awful has happened. Not
yet."

"Be quiet," Marc said.

He led her to the garage at the back of the house, cautiously lifted
the door and indicated a large green convertible. "Get in," he
instructed.

"I am your slave," Toffee said with mock subservience. "Take me where
you will." She got into the car.

Mincing slightly, Marc slid into the seat beside her. "Be quiet," he
said. "Let's try to get out of here without waking up Julie."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was unfortunate that Marc, in his haste to remove Toffee from
the premises, did not have the foresight to raise the top of the
convertible. With that one small act of protection he might have
secured a clean getaway. As it was, with him and Toffee exposed and
plain to the eyes of the world, he threw the convertible into gear and
backed out of the garage toward just about the most slipshod escape
ever enacted by man.

As the car slid smoothly down the drive, Marc switched off the ignition
so that it might coast soundlessly past that part of the house which
held the window to Julie's room. It was precisely at this point, of
course, that tragedy befell. The black book twisted itself lose in
Marc's pocket and suddenly shot upward.

"Oh, good grief!" Marc said. He put on the brakes.

As he and Toffee watched, the book sailed higher, flitted a bit to one
side and lodged itself in a cross-section of trellis precisely next to
Julie's window.

"What are you going to do?" Toffee whispered.

"Climb up and get it, I suppose," Marc said wretchedly. "I can't leave
it there." He got out of the car, then turned back. "Don't you make a
move while I'm gone."

Toffee nodded vigorously and pulled the collar of her coat up around
her face. "I'll be positively furtive," she giggled.

Marc made his way to the trellis, tested it with his foot, and started
up. Several feet up, he paused to listen. Then, reassured, he continued
upward. A moment later he was within reaching distance of the book. He
sighed with relief.

Down in the car Toffee watched without great concern. However, she was
anxious to be away; it was dull just sitting there. She looked around
for some way to hasten matters. It was then that she conceived the idea
of starting the car so that they could continue their flight the moment
Marc returned to the ground. She glanced at the profusion of knobs
on the elaborate dash board, thoughtfully selected the prettiest, and
twisted....

It was in the same moment that Marc reached for the little book and
caught hold of it, that the early morning suddenly thundered with a
booming rendition of "Anchors Aweigh!" performed by a marine band. All
at once, drums throbbed, cymbals clanged and bugles blared with all the
crashing enthusiasm that a hundred healthy seagoing men could muster.

Marc whirled about, clinging to the trellis, and stared down at Toffee
in horror. But Toffee was too busy frantically twisting knobs to
notice. The music swelled and became louder as windows began to fly
open all over the neighborhood. On the trellis, Marc was assailed with
a chill feeling that there were eyes on the back of his neck. As he
turned about, his nose came within a fraction of brushing Julie's.

"Oh, Lord!" he moaned in belated prayer.

"Marc Pillsworth!" Julie shrieked, leaning further out the window.
"What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?" Then her astonished gaze
moved to the car and Toffee. "Who is that woman?"

Marc glanced distractedly down at Toffee, as though seeing her there
for the first time. "That's nobody," he murmured feebly.

And the next instant it seemed that he had almost spoken the truth,
that indeed the car, Toffee and the pounding radio had never actually
been there at all. As a unit, as Toffee's frantic hand quickly selected
another button and pressed it, they all shot backwards out of the drive
and out of sight. Toffee's shriek of dismay was added discordantly to
the moan of a naval tuba and the scream of racing tires. Marc glanced
desperately at the stunned, sleep-stained faces peering from the houses
across the street and shudderingly closed his eyes. With the others, he
waited for the sound of the crash. But it did not come.

"Marc Pillsworth...!" Julie began, then stopped as Toffee and the
green convertible suddenly reappeared as swiftly and sensationally as
they had departed. Still travelling backwards, the car shot into the
drive with a spray of gravel and headed toward the house like a thing
possessed. Toffee was wildly manipulating the wheel on a hit or miss
basis.

"Help!" she screamed.

"Turn right!" Marc yelled from the trellis. "Turn right!"

Automatically, Toffee followed instructions. She grasped the wheel with
both hands and pulled to the right. The car swerved, crashed over a
flower bed and headed for the lawns. There, pawing turf like a reversed
bull, it described a wide circle and started back for the drive.

Toffee waved elatedly to Marc over her shoulder. "Now I've got it!"
she cried. "It's easy!" Apparently, she did not realize that she had
learned to drive backwards, that there was another way of directing the
mechanism.

Racing the car to the area in front of the garage, she whipped it
around down the drive again. She looked up at Marc.

"Jump as I come past!" she yelled.

"Who is that?" Julie shrieked, finally recovering her voice. "Answer
me! Marc Pillsworth, stay right where you are!"

"Jump!" Toffee yelled. "Now!"

Marc landed on the seat beside Toffee and felt himself borne, as if by
the wind itself, down the drive.

The band swung into a booming arrangement of "Don't Give Up The Ship!"
as, hind bumper first, they skidded into the street and sped away....




                              CHAPTER IV


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."




                               CHAPTER V


Meanwhile, Julie Pillsworth had not only lost her poise, but a shocking
amount of bodily moisture; a good full-lunged cry in the private
confines of her bed had done nothing to erase the memory of her husband
disporting himself loosely about the landscape with a strange redhead
under the very noses of their neighbors.

Julie dared not draw any conclusions concerning the affair of the
trellis; there were too many emotions involved, and she, having
formed her marriage on what she firmly believed to be a solid
foundation of logic and sound theory, was not practiced in the ways of
emotion. Suddenly, emotionally, Julie was in a strange land without a
guide, at a ball game without a program, up a creek without a paddle.
Briefly, she was no end confused and upset.

Perhaps Julie might have eventually reached the right conclusion and
even done the right thing, for in the back of her mind was the vague
feeling that Marc's sudden burst of misbehavior was the result of some
obscure failing in herself. She might have, that is, if May Springer
and Jewel Drummer hadn't appeared on the scene just as her thoughts
were turning in that direction.

May was a small, bird-boned, heron-faced woman with a voice as slight
and chirping as the mentality which it served. Jewel was the other
side of the picture: dog-jawed, thunder voiced and overwhelmingly
double-breasted. These two had long since elected themselves to be
Julie's "best friends," and now that Julie was in trouble they had come
to help. In short, this was just the chance they had been waiting for.

The three women watched tensely as the maid left the tea things on
the table and departed from the living room through the hall. Julie
instantly returned her tear-stained face to her handkerchief. May and
Jewel exchanged a look and hitched themselves forward in their chairs
in the manner of a pair of ditch diggers rolling up their sleeves to go
to work.

"I wouldn't hesitate a second," May piped. "I'd start divorcing the bum
right now. The time to let him have it is the first minute you hear
about the other woman. And, honey, you _saw_ her! I did too for
that matter. When that awful clatter started, and I looked out of my
window and saw your husband with that woman...! Well! I'll testify,
honey! They'll never shut me up."

"Me too, dear," Jewel put in heavily from beyond the rolling hills of
her bosom. "Of course I didn't actually see anything, but I heard it
all. The only thing for you to do is just close up the house and go
to Reno while it's all fresh in your mind. And let your lawyer do the
talking. Remember that."

"I know you feel better, now that you've decided," May said. "Jewel and
I will help you get your affairs with the house straightened up." She
leaned forward and tapped Jewel lightly on the knee. "Won't we, Jewel?"

Julie looked up moistly from her handkerchief. "But I _haven't_
decided," she wailed. "That's just it; I can't seem to decide anything.
Marc has never done anything like this before. All of a sudden he just
blew up the basement and started acting strange. I just can't get over
the feeling that maybe it's partly my fault somehow...."

"Ridiculous!" Jewel snorted.

"Of course!" May chimed.

"Oh, I don't know," Julie said hopelessly. "I just have a feeling that
Marc isn't to blame, that something strange is happening to him, and he
can't help himself. Maybe he needs me very badly right now."

"What's happened to him isn't so strange," Jewel pronounced. "It's just
that lousy male chemistry at work. The devils all get that way sooner
or later. Men are just a bunch of brutes, all of them. If there's
anything mysterious about all this it's only how you manage to feel so
damned charitable about it."

Albeit unwittingly on this occasion, Jewel, in all her history of
premeditated lies, had never spoken a greater untruth. There was
something far more mysterious going on than just Julie's feeling of
charity. It wanted only a trip to the basement to be discovered.

The thing that was taking place in the subterranean regions of the
house was stranger than either truth or fiction and twice as paralyzing.

       *       *       *       *       *

The fact of the matter was that George had finally arrived on earth.
Starting logically at the beginning, with the first principle of
haunting as set down in the Guide, George had descended to the place of
his earthly part's untimely demise. Here, according to the rules, there
were certain procedures of investigation to be followed; but George was
far too excited with his sudden condition of release to be bothered
with those. Like a giddy school girl with her first party dress, he
could hardly wait to try on his ectoplasm. Even in this, however, there
were difficulties involved.

Unfortunately, as George saw it, the process of ectoplasmic
materialization depended largely upon the concentration of the entity
involved; first he had to thoroughly picture in his mind the earthly
form that he was to assume, and then, from that mental image, shape
his earthly manifestation. The trouble was that George's powers of
concentration had never been anything to brag about.

George's observance of the human form had always been extremely sketchy
at best. Faced with the problem of shaping such a form for himself,
he was somewhat at a loss. Pressing his memory to the limit he could
only recall that there were such things as arms, legs, head and torsos,
but the exact number and arrangement of these appointments completely
escaped him. Try as he would to think, nothing very clear came to
mind. Finally, in desperation, he decided just to give it the old
trial-and-error and make it up as he went along. He might have done
better to find himself an anatomy chart.

George decided on an arm and a hand to begin with; they seemed a rather
utilitarian item to have in the event that you wanted to go around
picking things up. He gave his thoughts over to that appendage.

The process worked with surprising facility. In the very next moment an
arm, neatly tapering off to a hand, promptly appeared, balanced on the
elbow, on the basement floor. George looked at it and felt a thrill of
pride at the accomplishment; it didn't matter that the thing was rather
starkly at loose ends with itself.

Glowing with the success of his first venture, George decided on a head
as the subject of his next efforts. Without a moment's hesitation,
but several feet above the arm, a head appeared in thin air, bearing
a duplicate face to the one of Marc Pillsworth. It was wonderfully
lifelike. It turned, looked down at the arm, and frowned.

Now George wasn't so sure; somehow things didn't seem to be shaping up
quite as he'd expected. He shrugged. Probably matters would be improved
when everything was more connected together. He thought for a moment
and remembered the matter of legs.

A moment later a leg and accompanying foot popped into being, but oddly
it appeared in a position near the head, a bit to one side with the
foot leading off rakishly toward the ceiling.

The head turned and regarded this phenomenon with worried interest.
Definitely, things weren't balancing out at all well. But what was
there to do but to go on with it now that it had gotten this far? And
then the head smiled; George had remembered. There should be two arms
and two legs in place of just one. In the grisly moment that followed,
the arm on the floor was joined by a mate, as was the leg hovering in
the air by the head.

The head peered with unwarranted pride from between the floating legs
and smiled on its accomplishments. Now George felt he was really
getting somewhere. There remained only the torso to be materialized.
George thought about this and wished it into being.

       *       *       *       *       *

The picture that followed was lurching madness. Somehow a body had
appeared, balanced upside down on its elbows, in the very center of the
basement floor. And if that wasn't enough, the head had apparently been
severed and placed, for the sake of pure frightfulness, between the
knees.

George, now that the body was complete, recognized the error at
once. With a blush, he dissolved the head from between the knees and
concentrated it down towards the shoulders. The scene instantly became
more sane. Now there was a complete and perfectly formed man standing
on his elbows in the center of the basement. For a moment he remained
rigidly upright, then he wavered and fell flat on his back.

George gazed elatedly down his long length for a moment, then laughed
and sat up. Of course! Now everything was just as it should be. He
didn't know how he had come to be clothed, and he had no idea that he
was wearing an exact duplicate of the suit Marc was wearing, but he
considered himself to be a rather natty specimen. All in all, George
couldn't have been more pleased. He got to his feet, saluted his
new existence with a rather expertly executed jig step, and looked
about....

After a casual search of the basement, just to make sure that the
corpse of Marc Pillsworth was no longer kicking around anywhere, George
directed his attention to the wine bins. If he noticed the floating
debris on the ceiling he didn't know that it constituted a condition
that was in any way unnatural. He selected a bottle from one of the
shelves, opened it, and took a swallow. Immediately, he was overcome
with a feeling of enormous disappointment; this couldn't possibly be
that whiskey stuff that mortals seemed to miss so much in the upper
world. Whiskey, according to report, could cause a poor man to be rich,
a peasant to be king. Certainly this drab liquid was far too pallid for
that kind of magic. George replaced the bottle and wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand. He glanced around at the stairs across from the
bins and went over to investigate.

He stopped at the foot of the steps and listened. Distantly, there were
voices above--and, therefore, mortals. George decided that now was as
good as any other time to plunge into things; perhaps he could pick up
a few pointers. He started up the steps, then stopped thoughtfully.

Perhaps it would be better not to burst in upon these mortals in
a state of complete materialization; it might just a bit too much
for them. Maybe it would be better to break the news of his arrival
gradually, let them just suspect for awhile and give himself time to
grow on them. That was the ticket; he was sure that even the High
Council couldn't find anything wrong with that idea.

George held one foot out before him and dissolved it. Then taking the
next step, he repeated the process with the other foot.

Causing himself to disappear a bit at a time he rose slowly toward the
world of the mortals....

       *       *       *       *       *

"There's no use hiding in your handkerchief," May Springer said. "The
sooner you talk to your lawyer, the sooner you'll stop crying."

Julie looked up uncertainly. "Maybe you're right," she said. "But I
don't know. Oh, I don't know anything!"

"What you need," Jewel said emphatically, "is a drink to give you
courage. We all do." She turned to May. "Run out to the bar, pet, and
bring us a bottle. This damned tea isn't doing any of us any good."

May, accustomed to acting on Jewel's command, followed instructions.
She left the room in the direction of the study and in a moment was
back with a bottle and three glasses.

"That's the stuff," Jewel said heartily. "Clear out those tea things
and put 'er down. I'll pour."

With everything arranged to her satisfaction, Jewel filled the glasses
with a quick and lavish hand. She handed brimming glasses to May and
Julie, then raised her own glass to propose a toast.

"To divorce!" she boomed. "And the damnation of husbands!"

Julie raised her glass, but only half-heartedly. Then without even
tasting the drink, she placed it on the table in front of her.

"There's nothing like whiskey to open the mind and the pores so that
the poison can get out," Jewel announced loudly. "It's wonderful stuff."

It was just at this moment that the invisible George drifted
expectantly into the room. He stopped short and pricked up his ears.
Whiskey! The very thing he was looking for, and here were mortals
fairly wallowing in the stuff. He observed the ladies with an eye
mainly to the glasses in their hands. Then he noticed Julie's glass,
languishing on the table. It was a circumstance that plainly wanted
mending. George drifted quickly forward.

For a moment George only stood regarding the drink covetously. Then
he turned to observe the ladies. Since this was to be his first
manifestation before an audience he felt he should make the most of
the materials at hand. Considering the ladies in turn, he decided that
he disliked Jewel Drummer the most. He waited carefully until that
turret-faced matron was looking in his direction, then lifted the glass
with a broad flourish. Even to George the effect of the drink suddenly
flying from the table and into the air seemed rather arresting.

To Jewel the effect was downright terrifying. Her glass raised to her
lips, she suddenly started, misdirected her aim and poured the entire
drink into her yawning bodice. With horrified reflex she jolted out of
her chair and hurled the glass from her. As the glass crashed against
the opposite wall, George tossed off his drink and replaced the glass
on the table.

In unison, Julie and May turned puzzled eyes on the palpitating Jewel.

"The glass!" Jewel blurted in tones of terror. "The glass!" Then
suddenly she gulped and sat down again as the bottle, like the glass,
leaped lightly from the table, upended itself over the glass, filled
it, then replaced itself.

"The bottle!" Jewel boomed.

"She wants the bottle!" May told Julie. "God, what a thirst that
woman's got! Did you see her knock off that drink? And now she's
yelling for the bottle. She's fairly lusting for the stuff. Give her
the bottle, dear, before she starts breaking the furniture."

Julie quickly snatched up the bottle from the table and held it out to
Jewel.

"Here, dear," she said, "take it."

Jewel pressed herself frightenedly against the back of her seat.

"Take it easy!" she screamed. "Don't bring it near me!"

"She fights the stuff all the time," May told Julie confidentially.
"Of course I've never really been sure before, but I've suspected all
along."

"I must cling to my reason," Jewel babbled desperately to herself. "I
mustn't give way!"

"What's that, dear?" May asked soothingly.

"Maybe we should pretend nothing's happened," Julie suggested
anxiously. "You know, just go on talking and pay no attention to her."

"It might help," May agreed.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment the two ladies engaged in frenzied and meaningless
conversation, cautiously watching Jewel from the corners of their eyes.
Jewel, her eyes riveted with terrible fascination on the table, seemed
to have gone into a trance.

In the meantime, George, for his part, was suffering the pangs of
disappointment. To all intents and purposes, except for a certain
feeling of inner warmth, he was feeling much the same as always. The
liquor had failed to perform the miracle he had expected. But perhaps
that was only because he hadn't had enough. Once more he reached out
toward the glass and lifted it from the table.

With a final bellow of madness Jewel heaved her bulk from the chair and
bolted from the room.

"God in heaven!" she roared from the hallway. "Let me out of here!"

May rose unhurriedly. "I guess the struggle was too much for her," she
said mildly. "You just stay where you are, dear. I'll take her home.
Poor Jewel. She'll need someone to talk to, to confide in, and I'm her
best friend." Then in an undertone: "I've always thought she belonged
in an institution anyway. I'll call you later."

When they had gone, Julie relinquished her spirit to the quiet
atmosphere of the room. She had worried and cried, she felt, until
she hadn't any emotion left in her. Now she only felt numb. Then she
started slightly as a muffled gurgling sound briefly broke the quiet.
She glanced around quickly, but there was nothing. Then the doorbell
rang. She turned her attention toward the hallway as Marie passed
through to answer the door. After a moment the maid returned to the
living room.

"There are a couple of gentlemen," she reported. "They say they're from
the government and must see you."

Julie was pensive for a moment; she couldn't imagine why anyone from
the government should want an interview with her. She shrugged.

"All right, Marie," she said. Then she glanced at the bottle and the
glasses on the table; not quite the proper fittings for a chat with the
government. "I'll see them in the study."

She rose and started from the room. Then suddenly she heard a small
scraping noise and turned back quickly. For a moment she stood still,
staring at the table. Could the bottle actually have been moving just
as she turned around? But of course that was silly.

Just nerves, she told herself, and continued into the hallway.

After introductions, Julie led the men to the study, gave them seats
and took a place opposite them. She would have known they were from the
government even if she hadn't been told; with that careful, unrevealing
look, they only needed an official stamp of certification on their
foreheads.

"Is there something I can do for you?" she asked.

"Well, we're not exactly sure," one of the men said. "However, we have
reason to believe you can." He cleared his throat. "To get directly
to the point, we are interested in an explosion which we believe took
place on these premises last night."

"Oh, dear!" Julie said. "Have the neighbors complained?"

"No, Mrs. Pillsworth, nothing like that. You see, we have mechanical
means of knowing about explosions. There is a device in existence which
records the precise time, location, magnitude and nature of even the
slightest explosion anywhere on the Earth's surface. One was recorded
here last night. The nature, however, was undetermined and that's why
we decided to investigate."

Julie nodded. She told them of Marc's basement laboratory and his
experiments to make heavy substances lighter than air. She explained
about the explosion.

"The experiment was a complete failure, I guess," she concluded.

"I see," the man said. "Would you mind, though, if we took a look
around in the basement anyway?"

"No, I don't mind," Julie said. "But judging from what I saw down there
last night you won't find anything but a lot of rubble."

"Of course," the man said. "But we can't take a chance on a possible
new type of explosive. It might be of military interest. Just in case,
Mrs. Pillsworth, do you know where your husband kept his notes on the
experiment?"

Julie thought for a moment. "In a little black book, I believe," she
said. "He just left it lying around loose down there."

The man nodded and got up. "We'll have the maid show us where it is,"
he said. "Thank you very much."

       *       *       *       *       *

When they were gone, Julie leaned back in her chair and closed her
eyes. She was so weary, just from talking to people. Then she sat up
quickly. She could have sworn she'd heard something out in the hall,
a furtive noise, as though someone had cautiously let himself in the
front door. She got up and went to the doorway of the study.

"Marc!" she called, then suddenly froze where she was.

Never had she seen two uglier customers than the ones that were now
cowering before her in the shadows of the hallway. Two very dark little
men with gross black beards, thick-lensed glasses and derby hats. They
seemed to be exact and very dreadful duplicates of each other, as
though the same awful mistake had happened twice. Their eyes shifted
nervously before Julie's horrified gaze. They looked precisely like a
pair of spies.

"Who are you two?" Julie asked uneasily. "What are you doing here?"

The two shifted uncomfortably, glanced at each other. Finally the one
closest to Julie spoke.

"I'm Gerald Blemish," he said, and nodded toward the other. "This is my
twin brother, Cecil. Of course those names are entirely fictitious, but
we haven't used our real ones for so long we've forgotten them. Then,
on the other hand, maybe those are our real names only we just don't
know it. We came with the men from the government."

"Oh," Julie said, relieved. "You're with the government too."

"Oh, no," Gerald Blemish said. "Heavens no. We just followed them in.
We're spies."

"Spies?" Julie said incredulously. "Oh, dear! With government men right
in the house?"

"Oh, we followed them everywhere," the brother called Cecil said. "We
find things out faster that way."

"I can see where you would," Julie said. "Haven't they ever caught
you?"

"Oh, yes. They catch us all the time. That's one reason they like to
have us around; we're handy in case they want to arrest someone and
don't know who to arrest." He glanced at his brother and sniggered
noisily. "They think we're harmless."

"We've been arrested in so many shake-ups," Gerald offered, "we're
known as the Double Malts to some people. We photograph very well in
the newsreels. You know, being taken into custody with our hats over
our faces. That's why we wear hats, just for pictures."

"Oh, yes," Cecil put in. "As a matter of fact, we used to be in the
movies professionally. We played spies exclusively. Because we look so
awful. In fact that's how we got started as spies. After seeing us as
spies on the screen all the time, everyone got to believe we really
were spies. No one would come near us."

Gerald nodded. "When we went to call on anyone, people refused to
answer the door."

"It sort of depressed us at first," Cecil said. "And then, on top
of that, the movies stopped using us. The vogue in spies turned to
beautiful women. They said we were old hat. That put us out of work.
But there wasn't anything else we knew how to do. No one would believe
we weren't spies so we just had to go on being them."

"I see," Julie said, feeling that she had wandered into a world of
complete madness. "What country do you spy for?"

The brothers glanced quickly at each other, then lowered their eyes to
the floor. "That's just the trouble," Gerald said in saddened tones.
"We don't work for anyone. We're unsponsored. No country will hire us
because we look so much like spies. Other spies refuse to be seen with
us."

"I don't wonder," Julie said. "With faces like yours. I wouldn't want
to be seen with you, and I'm not even a spy."

       *       *       *       *       *

The dreadful brothers looked up with unexpected happiness. They smiled
on Julie crookedly from the corners of their mouths.

"Oh, I'm so glad you said that," Cecil said. "We were afraid we were
beginning to lose our looks. Do you think we're really vile? You're not
just saying that?"

"I think you're perfectly horrible," Julie said with a feeling of
delusion. "And I mean every word of it."

"You're wonderful to say that," Cecil drooled unattractively. He
reached inside his coat and drew out a soiled piece of paper. "Would
you like the secret to the atom bomb? I know it's kind of old stuff,
but maybe you'd get a kick out of just having it to show your friends.
We've had it for years now, only no one would take it from us; they
wouldn't believe it was real. Take it as a token of our appreciation."

Julie backed sharply away. "No, thank you."

"We've stolen all kinds of plans and formulas and things," Cecil said.
"Even secret recipes. But everyone acts like you do; they won't let
us give them a thing. Our room is filled with secret papers. We could
overthrow any government in the world just like that, if someone would
just take us seriously."

"That's too bad," Julie said.

"The trouble is we've got no reputation; we've never done anything
terrible enough to get a break."

"Yeah," Gerald slurred. "That's the trouble. But we'll make it yet.
We'll do something perfectly monstrous one of these days and then we'll
be in. We've got ambition and talent."

"I'm sure you have," Julie said.

"You're very nice to encourage us like this," Cecil said. "And we won't
let you down either. We're very good at our trade. Would you like to
see us skulk?"

"Skulk?" Julie said. "How do you mean?"

"Oh, just skulk. You know, slither and sneak around and things like
that." He turned to Gerald. "Let's show her, huh?"

"All right!" Gerald said. "I'm ready."

"Now wait...!" Julie began, but before she could say anything more the
two had disappeared into the shadows, and suddenly the hallway and the
room behind her were filled with strange furtive scurrying sounds.
As she turned to look behind her in the study, she saw one of the
frightful brothers dart soundlessly from beneath the desk and disappear
behind the drapes at the window. The other peered at her momentarily
from behind a chair. They moved around the room with a rapidity and
stealth that was maddening. They were everywhere.

"Stop that!" Julie cried. "For heavens sake, stop it!"

Instantly the two brothers returned before her, grinning breathlessly.

"Isn't it sinister?" Cecil asked. "Doesn't it just make your spine
crawl?"

"I think mine has already crawled," Julie said. "I wouldn't be
surprised to see it scuttling out the door under its own power at this
very moment."

"We could skulk all day and never get tired." He held out a sheaf of
papers. "I got these out of the desk."

Julie took the papers timidly. "Don't you think you ought to spy on the
gentlemen down in the basement now?" she suggested. "They're probably
wondering what's keeping you."

"That's right," Gerald said. "Well, we'll sneak along now. It's too
bad we haven't more time. We'd show you how we lurk. Everyone says
we're the best lurkers in the business."

       *       *       *       *       *

And suddenly the two were gone, faded into the shadows. Shaking her
head, Julie turned back to the study to replace the papers in the desk.
Then she stopped as a sharp scream of terror came from the kitchen; the
awful brothers had evidently discovered Marie.

Julie was just returning from the desk when the telephone rang. Without
waiting for Marie, who was probably in no condition to talk at the
moment anyway, she continued to the hallway and answered it herself.

"Mrs. Pillsworth?" a male voice inquired heavily. "This is the police."

"Police?" Julie said. Her first thought turned instantly toward Marc.
"My husband! Has something happened to Marc?"

"I'll say, lady," the voice replied. "He's been arrested."

"Arrested? What for?"

"Well, I don't know how to tell you, lady. It sounds silly, and you
ain't going to believe it, but he was run in for attacking a statue."

"Attacking a statue!"

"That's what the description says. That an' a lot more that I can't
repeat on the telephone. It seems like him and this little redheaded
hell-cat...."

"Oh!" Julie broke in frigidly. "So she's mixed up in it, is she!"

Then suddenly the look of anger faded from Julie's face and became
one of pure astonishment. As she had been talking, her attention had
been drawn to the living room doorway by a movement there. Now, her
eyes wide, she stared at a bottle suspended in thin air. Even as she
watched, it moved a bit, tilted inquisitively, almost as though it were
eavesdropping.

Julie closed her eyes tightly and turned away. She had to get a grip on
herself before her nerves gave way completely. She tightened her hold
on the telephone.

"You tell my husband," she said, "that he can rot in jail for all I
care. I'm going to Reno."

She hung up, passed a trembling hand over her forehead. For a long
moment she stood perfectly still. Then, slowly, she turned and forced
herself to look at the doorway. As she stared, her face draining
white, the bottle tilted smartly and emptied the slight remains of
its contents into thin air. There was a moment of electric silence,
then the hallway resounded from end to end with the rumblings of an
unrestrained burp.

With a smothered cry, Julie sank limply to the floor....




                              CHAPTER VI


"Oh, my word!" the judge said, lifting haunted eyes from the report.
"Do you mean this Pillsworth fellow actually did all that to a statue?
Before witnesses? It fairly makes my hair stand on end."

"He did that and more," the prosecuting attorney said. "Pillsworth is
no ordinary man."

"Either that," the judge said, "or that statue is no ordinary statue.
Where is this fellow? I can hardly wait to get a look at him."

"No, Your Honor," the attorney said. "I didn't mean that. Actually,
nothing happened to the statue."

"Put up a good fight, did she? Good for her."

"What I mean to say," the attorney went on patiently, "is that the
statue is perfectly all right."

"Stout girl," the judge nodded. "I give that statue real credit. There
aren't many women, stone or otherwise, who could go through a siege
like that and come out on the right side of things. That statue has got
guts. If she were here now it would give me great pleasure to shake
that statue's hand."

The attorney cleared his throat dryly. "Can't we drop the statue, Your
Honor?" he suggested.

"After everything else she's been through!" the judge exclaimed. He
narrowed his eyes indignantly on the attorney. "Really, sir, do you
think that's the human thing to do?"

"I don't mean drop her literally," the attorney protested. "I mean
couldn't we just sort of lay her aside for a bit? What I'm getting at
is...."

"I know perfectly well what you're getting at," the judge broke in
hotly. "You can just forget it. I'm beginning to wonder if you're any
better than this Pillsworth fellow."

"That's what I wanted to tell you about," the attorney said quickly.
"Pillsworth claims he had to grab hold of the statue to keep from
floating away into space. He says he's lighter than air."

[Illustration: As Marc held desperately to the statue, Toffee took hold
of his leg and pulled....]

"My word!" the judge said, thoroughly scandalized. "Does he really? I'm
surprised he has the nerve to try to pull a thing like that in court.
And the girl? What about her? I understand she was swimming around
without any clothes on."

"Well, actually, she had on a sort of shift affair. But it looked like
she was naked when she was wet. At best, she's a wild citizen. Seems to
regard this whole affair as a sort of picnic. I understand she broke
out of her cell last night."

"Oh, dear!" the judge said. "I hope it doesn't leak out. How did she
manage it?"

"No one knows," the attorney said. "The girl won't tell. The door was
still locked and everything was in order. When they found her this
morning she was romping around in the wardrobe and had rigged herself
out in a dress from one of those burlesque strippers who were brought
in."

"A pretty taste in clothes, eh?"

The attorney nodded. "When the burlesque girl saw her in it, she told
her to keep it; said she looked so much better in it than she did
herself, she was throwing in the sponge."

"Sponge?" the judge said. "Throwing it in where? Do you mean this
stripper threw a sponge at her?"

"I was speaking figuratively," the attorney said patiently.

"I understand that," the judge said with an air of testiness. "You have
to speak figuratively when you're going on like this about strippers
and such." He laughed foolishly. "I get it; I'm not so old. But about
this sponge, was it wet or dry when the girl threw it?"

"I don't know," the attorney said desperately trying to cling to some
small thread of logic in the conversation. "It wasn't mentioned when I
heard about it."

"Well, I don't suppose it really matters," the judge said. "A sponge
doesn't constitute a deadly weapon either way."

       *       *       *       *       *

Just at that moment one of the doors across the room opened and Toffee
appeared before the court. She was followed at a safe distance by an
extremely harrassed-looking police matron. The redhead was a study in
glitter and pink flesh. Three sequined butterflies garishly highlighted
the strategic portions of her anatomy without running any grave danger
of obscuring them entirely. A vaporish material dusted with spangles
provided a skirt of sorts. It was a dress that fairly begged for blue
lights, slow-rhythmed music and unrestrained whistles. Toffee presented
herself to the court with a spectacular flourish, then turned
peevishly to the matron.

"You make another grab at me with those horny talons of yours," she
warned, "and I'll flatten you down even with your arch supports."

The matron backed away, afrighted. "Then you keep your hands off those
zippers," she said. "They don't allow monkeyshines in the courtroom.
And just you wait till the judge hears about you breaking out of your
cell."

Toffee smiled enigmatically. She knew the matron would be deviled
with that mystery for the rest of her days. And even if the wretched
woman ever discovered the truth, she'd never believe it, though the
explanation was simple enough. Being a product of Marc's consciousness,
Toffee naturally could not exist when he was asleep. So, as she had
promised, when Marc had finally fallen asleep, Toffee had disappeared
from her cell to return to the valley of Marc's mind. However, when
Marc awoke in the morning, she had instantly reappeared. She had simply
chosen to rematerialize in the wardrobe rather than her cell.

To Toffee's mind there was really nothing so terribly mysterious
about that. Choosing to ignore the matron altogether, she turned her
attention to the judge. She waved a hand to the august person of the
bench and started forward.

"Here, you...!" the matron began.

Toffee swung around menacingly. "Stand your ground, Bertha," she said.
"You may wind up wearing those false teeth of yours as a necklace." She
turned back to the judge and smiled. "Well, here we are," she greeted
airily, "wild-eyed and bushy-tailed!"

The judge made an indignant choking sound. "Now, look here...!" he said.

"I am looking there," Toffee said. "And it's a great disappointment to
me."

"Young lady!" the judge roared. "Do you want to be charged with
contempt of court?"

"Maybe I'd better warn you, judge," Toffee said coolly. "Don't bully
me; I may forget myself and pull a zipper. That would crab your act
something awful. Besides, if you charged me for all the contempt I've
got for this court there wouldn't be enough money to pay the bill."

"Well!" the judge snorted. "Of all the...!"

"You're turning purple, son," Toffee observed mildly. "It's not half
becoming, either."

The court audience became tensely hushed as the judge reared back in
his seat and opened his mouth. But the eruption failed to come.

Just at that moment the door at the far end of the room opened and
Marc, accompanied by a guard, stepped into view. His progress to a
position before the bench was not marked with any noticeable tendency
toward levitation. Toffee, the judge, the court spectators regarded
him with undisguised interest. Marc directed his gaze self-consciously
toward his toes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Only that morning Marc had made a remarkable discovery: that food
tempered his buoyancy and made it possible for him to remain secure to
the floor without clutching to anything for anchorage. Whether this was
a permanent condition or not, he didn't know, but still it had been a
relief to know that he would be able to make his way before the court
without appearing on the ceiling.

However, though mightily relieved, Marc was not as elated at this
development as he might have been; there were other things to plague
him. Julie's message that she was going to Reno, for instance. And
the court's probable decision; they were bound to conclude that he
was either a criminal or insane or both before they were through with
him. He felt that he might just as well drift off into eternity and
have it over with as spend the rest of his life locked up, separated
from Julie. He raised his head and glanced apprehensively at the court
audience.

Julie wasn't there. But he hadn't really expected that she would be.
However, a number of people involved in the affair at the Wynant were
in attendance, including the manager and the clerk. Also, there were
a pair of the most evil-looking male twins Marc had ever set eyes on.
Heavily bearded, wearing thick-lensed glasses, they looked to him like
nothing so much as a pair of those spies you used to see in movies.
Marc shuddered and turned back to the judge, which was no improvement
over the unattractive twins. The judge lifted his gavel.

"The court is now in session!" he thundered.

"And high time, too!" Toffee sang out in reproving agreement.

The judge leaned on the gavel and brought it down solidly on his own
hand.

"Damnation!" he bellowed.

"Such low talk for such high places," Toffee commented dryly, turning
to Marc.

Marc glanced down at her brief costume and a look of pain assailed his
already troubled features.

"Be quiet," he said, almost pleadingly.

"Yes!" the judge said, nursing his hand. "You be quiet!" Then he
turned and gazed malevolently at the gathering in general. "The air
of insanity which has crept into this court will dissipate itself
instantly or I'll clear the hall. I'll clear out the whole kit and
kaboodle of you, even the defendants." He turned back to Toffee. "I may
clear out the defendants anyway."

The court settled into a state of heavy quiet, and though the air of
madness which the judge had spoken of with such great passion had
abated, there was the feeling that it was only holding itself in
abeyance, that it might reassert itself at any moment with a vengeance.
The judge cleared his throat and settled his glasses on his nose.

"Your Honor ..." the prosecution began.

"Shut up!" the judge snapped peevishly. "I want no lengthy speeches
from you. This case is plain enough without any highfalutin' verbage
from any legal eagles."

The judge elaborated, going on at some length about the degree and
quality of the silence he wished from all concerned. No one noticed
that the door to the courtroom had quietly opened, permitted the
passage of a quantity of what appeared to be merely fresh air, then
gently closed again.

       *       *       *       *       *

It had been a cruel night for George; the ways of earthly civilization
had dealt with him without temperance or humanity. The poor ghost,
having eavesdropped on Julie's telephone conversation, had begun to
have a horrible suspicion that Marc Pillsworth was still alive and
that he, George, was on earth under false pretenses. George had been
distressed at this; here was a set of circumstances that the High
Council wouldn't even begin to approve.

Gathering that the mortal in question was in the hands of the police,
George had finally ... and with all the best intentions in the
world ... decided to check this appalling piece of information for
himself on the bare hope that there might have been some mistake.

Placing himself, rather invisibly of course, in the hands of the rapid
transit system, George had received the ride of a lifetime. He had
covered the length and breadth of the city several times over without
ever arriving at his destination. It was all too much for George's
powers of comprehension. He had been shoved, stepped on, pushed and
sat on by humans almost beyond the limits of his endurance. Now,
bruised and beaten, he had finally arrived at the place he sought. He
gazed on the courtroom without enthusiasm, sighted Marc and drifted
disconsolately forward, his hopes withering as he moved.

"Of course," the judge was saying, "this case, on the face of things,
is so silly I blush to be trying it in this court. Actually, it belongs
in an asylum." He fixed Marc with a cold stare. "Do you still contend,
Pillsworth, that you were clinging to that statue solely for reasons of
security? In other words, do you persist in the mad delusion that you
were floating through space?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Marc said earnestly. "You see, I have been engaged
in an experiment...."

"Enough!" the judge snorted. "Don't go on about it. It's too
disgusting." With a forefinger he pressed his glasses to the bridge of
his nose. "That settles it. The only thing for you to do, Pillsworth,
is to prove your point to the court. In other words, demonstrate that
you really are ... uh ... buoyant. Briefly, either you float, here
and now, for the court or you go to the pokey and wait for a mental
examination. And let me warn you against any mechanical devices."

"But, Your Honor!" Marc protested. "Only this morning I discovered
that...."

"Float!" the judge demanded. "Go on. Float!"

An expectant quiet ensued as Marc stood miserably before the bench.
Several photographers moved quietly forward, shifting fresh bulbs into
their cameras. Toffee turned to Marc anxiously.

"Go on!" she hissed. "Show the old goat!"

Marc looked at her unhappily. "I can't!" he whispered.

During this interval, looking remarkably haunted for a ghost, George
arrived at a position between Marc and Toffee. He gazed on Marc's face
and frowned; there was no question about it, his mortal part had played
him a foul trick; Marc was still alive. George was undecided as to how
to meet the situation. His inclination was to stick around just for
revenge, but there was the warning from the Council. Then, too, there
was the possibility that Marc might tick off at any moment; after all,
living in this earth world was an extremely perilous business from
all that George had seen of it. In that case, everything would be all
right. Weighing the pros and cons of the matter. George turned to
regard Toffee for the first time. Instantly his mood brightened.

There was hardly anything that George could see about Toffee that he
didn't like, and he could see virtually everything. Particularly, he
admired her taste in clothes. Clearly, here was a girl who had a bit
of flair and imagination. However, the small piece of metal sticking
out untidily at the waist offended George's sense of perfection. That
didn't belong there, he was sure of it. As George reached out to pluck
away the offending blemish he had no idea that with the mere flick of a
finger he was about to touch off a roaring panic.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the moment that followed there was a small zipping sound which
was instantly followed by a startled gasp, as Toffee, to the
electrification of all present, suddenly stood before the court bereft
of two of her most valuable butterflies and all of her skirt. There was
a bit of silence after that, followed by a sudden flash of a camera, a
sprinkling of half-hysterical applause, and one small scream.

The judge, starting from his chair to lean across the bench for a
better view of the performance, reverted to his former shade of purple.
His face bloated with rage, he was rendered incapable of anything more
coherent than a furious sputter. Amazingly, Toffee seemed to share the
judge's feelings in the matter. She whirled on Marc with eyes that
glittered.

"Of all the shabby stunts!" she stormed. "Trying to stall for time by
making a show out of me! You lousy sensationalist!"

"What...?" Marc began innocently.

But it was too late. Already Toffee had doubled her fist and wound up
for the pitch. The next thing Marc knew he had been dealt with harshly
in the vicinity of his nose. He lost his footing and sailed backwards.

Toffee watched the results of her handiwork with satisfaction. However
she was somewhat astonished at how heavy Marc had been in the felling.
The truth of the matter, though, was that she had knocked down not
one Marc Pillsworth but two. George, caught at the side of the head
by Toffee's elbow staggered backwards, tripped over a chair, and fell
sprawling on his back.

Marc landed heavily on the floor, skidded crazily out of sight under
the table, struck his head smartly against a leg and lay inert. In the
same second, the matron reached a restraining hand toward Toffee, then
started back with a cry of fright; the girl had suddenly vanished.
Simultaneously, George, in a fit of confusion and surprise, fully and
completely materialized himself.

All this happened in the flick of an eyelash.

As far as the court was concerned the incident was fairly simple:
Toffee had knocked Marc to the floor, then fled the room. All eyes
turned toward George under the misapprehension that he was Marc.

The judge beat out a deafening thunder with his gavel.

"Order!" he screamed. "Order!"

The court quieted. The matron ran forward to the bench.

"She's gone!" the harried woman cried. "She just disappeared!"

"Good!" the judge said. "And for heaven's sake don't go looking for
her. I hope I never set eyes on that girl as long as I live." He turned
to look evilly at George. "Get to your feet," he commanded.

George looked up at the judge and blanched; for a moment he was afraid
he'd been recalled to the chambers of the High Council. He got quickly
to his feet.

"All right now," the judge said with deadly steadiness. "Float!"

"Float?" George asked.

"Yes, of course, float," the judge snorted. "That's what we're all
waiting for, isn't it? Are you going to float or aren't you?"

George shrugged. There was certainly no accounting for the tastes
of these mortals. He couldn't imagine why this man was so insanely
anxious to see him float; it seemed to mean the world and all to
the poor devil. However, George supposed it would be best to humor
him. He settled himself squarely on his feet, closed his eyes, and
concentrated. Slowly he began to levitate from the courtroom floor.

When he had risen to a height of about eight feet, he stopped, opened
his eyes, and looked down. A sea of widened eyes and opened mouths
gaped up at him. An excited murmur went through the court. The judge
rose up out of his seat like a great gulping porpoise, then fell back
heavily.

"Lord love a lobster!" he gasped.

       *       *       *       *       *

George gazed on these reactions with amazed satisfaction. Obviously
these mortals were pathetically easy to please; if a simple
demonstration of levitation could cause this much concern, just think
how they'd react to some of his other accomplishments! The ham bone
popped out in George's restrained soul like an internal rash.

With a small formal bow, first fore, then aft, the self-dazzled spook
sat down with a flourish, placed his hand comfortably behind his neck,
and stretched out with suspenseful deliberation. Then, dangling one
foot lazily in space, he dissolved his head.

[Illustration: George threw the courtroom into an uproar as he suddenly
dematerialized his head....]

As a low moan issued through the courtroom, one of the photographers
nearest this dreadful scene turned to another of his kind.

"You know, Harry," he said in a controlled voice, "I've been thinking.
You and me, we've been in this racket an awful long time now."

"Yeah," said Harry. "An awful long time."

"Yeah. Maybe too long. It's no kind of a life for a man with any kind
of sensitivity, you know. It's liable to take a bad effect on a guy
after a while."

"I know what you mean," Harry said thoughtfully. "You get around too
much, see too many screwy things. It might begin to give you a sort of
distorted view like."

"Sure. It could even get so bad you could get kind of unbalanced. Maybe
it would start with you seein' things that aren't real."

"Uh-huh," Harry nodded. "Maybe like guys floatin' around in the air
without they've got their heads on. Or something like that. Not that
I've ever seen no such thing, mind you."

"Of course not. Who would see a crazy thing like that unless it was
somebody goin' bugs or somethin'?" The photographer laughed falsely.
"It's funny to think a thing like that could happen to a guy."

"Yeah," Harry said. "It's a real laugh. What say we get the hell out of
here?"

"You bet! Let's run like the devil!"

Together, the men dropped their cameras to the floor, turned, and ran
as fast as they could out of the court room.

Meanwhile, a new groan of horrified amazement had gone through the
room. George, in an effort to demonstrate to his audience the very last
measure of his paralyzing talent, had introduced a new and even more
arresting wrinkle to his performance. Alternately dematerializing and
rematerializing in rapid succession, he was blinking on and off like a
neon sign.

The judge took one look at this nerve-twisting innovation and rallied
to a final effort. He reached for his gavel and brought it down feebly
on the bench.

"Dismissed!" he whizzed. "Dismissed! I dismiss everything. For the love
of Hannah, _dismissed_!"

Suddenly the court broke into pandemonium. The traffic to the doors was
disordered and chaotic as the members of the audience trampled each
other to be out of the place. In front of the bench George perceived
regretfully that he had lost his audience, dissolved himself for one
last time and sank slowly down to the floor.

Beneath the table, Marc roused himself and sat up to rub his head. As
he did so, Toffee instantly appeared beside him.

"What happened?" he asked vaguely.

"How should I know?" Toffee asked tartly. "Just when things were
getting interesting you passed out and dissolved me." She glanced from
beneath the table. "Now it's all over."

She crawled out from beneath the table and gathered the scraps of her
costume which had remained abandoned on the floor. As she quickly
zipped everything into place, she looked around.

"The judge went away without even saying goodbye," she said injuredly.




                              CHAPTER VII


Marc and Toffee swung quickly out of the courtroom and started down
the corridor. They were not entirely certain that they were officially
allowed this break from the smothering embrace of the law, but since it
was a love that was totally unrequited they felt perfectly justified in
nipping it off as cleanly and quickly as possible. Besides, neither was
in a mood to ask questions.

Marc frowned deeply. The future, in view of past events, was not
reassuring. He wondered what night it was that he had lain awake and
felt a happy anticipation at strange and wonderful things about to
happen. It didn't seem possible that it could have been only night
before last; it must have been years and years ago in view of all
that had happened. Certainly, in a most disturbing way, the strange
and wonderful things had come to pass, but the feeling of happy
anticipation had been shot to hell in its very beginnings.

How could things possibly have gotten themselves into so
incomprehensible a snarl in just the space of a few short hours? Only
a day and a night had passed and now, here he was with a divorce,
an irresponsible redhead, a criminal record and several volumes of
unfavorable publicity on his hands. And to top it all off, though he
was subject to the laws of gravity at the moment, he had taken to
floating about in the air like a demented balloon. Also, he had the
forbidding feeling that he might revert to a condition of buoyancy at
any given moment.

Marc sighed heavily and cursed the day he conceived the idea of the
basement laboratory. If there was any small comfort remaining to
him at all it came only from a patently comfortless cliche: things
couldn't possibly get any worse. He didn't see the courtroom door swing
mysteriously open behind him, waver for a moment, then swing shut again.

Neither did Marc see the horrible Blemish twins following behind him
and Toffee in the corridor shadows. His attention, instead, had been
drawn to the two men in double-breasted suits who were shoving their
way toward him through the crowd. Though Marc was certain that the two,
regardless of what their business might be, could be the bearers of
only bad tidings, he hadn't the will left in him to try to avoid them.
One more worry, added to the multitude he already had, would hardly be
noticed. Taking Toffee's hand, he stopped and waited resignedly for the
two to catch up to them.

"Mr. Pillsworth?" the first man nodded.

"Could there be any doubt?" Toffee said dully.

The man glanced at Toffee, startled a little at her costume, then
returned his gaze firmly and resolutely to Marc.

"We are with the Federal Government," he said. He nodded toward the
courtroom from which Marc and Toffee had just departed. "I'm sorry we
didn't get here sooner; we could have saved you all that trouble."

"Now it's the Feds," Toffee murmured. "More cops ... more
courtrooms ... more judges ... more questions ... wurra, wurra."

No one paid any attention.

"We've been to your home, Mr. Pillsworth," the man went on. "We've gone
over your laboratory very thoroughly, and it's our opinion that you've
turned up something that could be of great interest to the government.
In a military way. Your wife explained to us that your intention was
to facilitate construction, and I suppose, in a way, you've succeeded.
However, in the process, you've also discovered an explosive of most
extraordinary properties."

"How was Julie when you saw her?" Marc asked.

"Mrs. Pillsworth was most cooperative," the man said, acknowledging
the interruption. "However, she was quite busy while we were there. I
gathered she was closing up the house, taking a trip somewhere."

"Did she say when she was leaving?" Marc asked anxiously.

"I believe she said this evening," the man said. "I supposed you knew
all about it. Anyway, to get on--in our opinion you have stumbled
across a new type of bomb that is so advanced as to make the A bomb
completely obsolete. Briefly, it is easily possible that a bomb
could be made of your formula and constructed in such a way as to
be detonated by the final chemical. It could be used to wipe out
whole cities, to wipe them off the face of the earth without a trace.
Every stick, stone, human being and piece of mortar could be made to
simply rise and disappear from the earth's surface within a matter of
minutes. That's rather a terrifying secret to hold entirely in your own
possession, Mr. Pillsworth."

"Yes, indeed," Marc said absently. "Terrifying."

"In other words, for the sake of national security, the government
cannot possibly allow you to have your discovery all to yourself any
longer. I'm sure you can understand that. We would like to talk to
you and go over your formula in private. Your notes are still intact,
aren't they?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc's hand went automatically to the inner pocket of his jacket where
he had secured the notebook. He nodded.

"Oh, yes," he murmured.

"Good. Then suppose we go to one of the...."

"I'd like to go home first, if I may," Marc broke in. "I have to see my
wife before she leaves. It's very important. And there are a few extra
notes in my room at the house. I could get them all together...."

The man hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded. "All right," he
said. "After all we're the only ones who know about this. Only let me
caution you not to talk to anyone."

"I won't say a word," Marc said, and nodded toward Toffee. "She
couldn't say anything; she doesn't understand any of it."

"Fine," the man said. "Then will it be all right if we come to your
house this evening?"

"That'll be fine," Marc said quickly, anxious to be free of them. "I'll
see you then."

Marc and Toffee watched the two men disappear down the corridor and up
a stairway.

"Terribly morbid pair, aren't they?" Toffee said. "It's enough to make
your flesh crawl, all this talk about wiping out cities and people and
things."

"It's their business," Marc said.

Toffee glanced behind her. "I don't like to mention it," she said in an
undertone, "but there are a pair of perfectly loathsome little men back
there, and I think they're following us. For my money they look exactly
like spies. They seem to skulk, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Marc said. "I saw them in the courtroom.
Probably they're perfectly harmless. Anyone who looked like that would
have to be. Anyway, I haven't time to worry about any skulking; I've
got to get home. Let's get out of here."

"Am I going with you?" Toffee asked.

Marc nodded. "I've decided it's the best way. We'll just sit down and
tell Julie all about you."

"She'll never believe it," Toffee said. "If she does, she's a lot
crazier than I think she is."

"She'll have to believe it," Marc said earnestly. "If worst comes to
worst, I'll knock myself out and she can see you vanish and reappear
for herself."

"We could ask the neighbors in too," Toffee observed wryly. "We could
serve punch and do it as a sort of parlor entertainment."

"Don't be silly," Marc said. "Come on."

"I'm game," Toffee murmured. "I just wonder if Julie's up to it, that's
all."

"Maybe I should call her first," Marc said, catching sight of a row
of phone booths at the end of the corridor. "Just to make sure she's
there."

"You might check on the condition of her heart, too," Toffee said.
"Just as a precaution."

They started forward and had nearly reached the booths when Marc
suddenly stopped short.

"Now what?" Toffee asked.

Marc inclined his head to listen. "Do you keep hearing footsteps?" he
asked.

"Sure," Toffee said. "All over the place. With these marble floors...."

"No, not those," Marc said. "Right behind us. I keep hearing someone
walking right behind me, but there's no one there."

"Well," Toffee said slowly, "I didn't want to be the first to mention
it, but...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly, they were both silent, their eyes intent on the floor and
a cigarette stub that had begun to behave with shocking abnormality.
Still alight, as it had been dropped, it suddenly crushed itself out
flat against the floor and ceased to smoke. It was for all the world as
though someone had stepped on it to put it out, and yet there wasn't a
human foot within yards of the thing.

"Oh, my gosh!" Toffee breathed. "Do you suppose that thing realizes
what it can do to a nervous system with a trick like that?"

"What do you suppose it is?" Marc asked.

"It's a cigarette stub," Toffee said. "And it's gone mad. It's
completely out of its head. Let's just pay it no mind, treat it with
complete contempt. Maybe it'll crawl away and do its odious little
stunt for someone who likes that sort of thing."

"You may be right," Marc said without the slightest tone of belief. He
turned away, but his gaze remained furtively on the flattened stub.
Since there was no further disturbance, he pulled himself together and
started toward one of the phone booths. Toffee watched after him with
careful intensity.

But if either of them thought they'd had the last of madness from
inanimate objects, they were woefully mistaken. The phone booth was
next to become possessed. It was as though the hulking enclosure had
been waiting in prey for Marc. No sooner did Marc stick his head inside
the booth than the doors, without any visible guidance, snapped shut,
caught him by the neck, and held him fast. Toffee started back with a
cry of pure surprise.

"Help!" Marc wheezed from inside the booth. "Help!"

It was a moment before Toffee was capable of action, but she did her
best to make up for lost time. She started forward to the attack with a
vengeance. But no sooner had she come within reaching distance of the
booth and the door than she was mysteriously and invisibly thrust back.
She renewed her efforts but was only repelled for a second time. She
paused to consider the door, the booth and her own emotions, rapidly
approaching a state of blind rage.

It was just as she had braced herself and hunched angrily forward for
the third attack that the woman came out of the booth next to the one
in which Marc was trapped. She took one look at the determined redhead
and drew her own conclusions.

"Hold off, honey!" she screamed. "You can have the booth! I'm through!"

But Toffee had already hurled herself forward in a headlong, firm-jawed
lunge. The woman screamed shrilly and departed the booth and the
vicinity with the speed of a deer in season. In the next split second
Toffee collided with Marc's invisible captor. There was a dull thud, a
small skirmishing, and then Toffee, apparently bearing her opponent
to the floor with her, went down in tangled triumph. The door of the
telephone booth flew open and Marc dropped to his knees, gasping for
air.

George, thoroughly humiliated at having been bested by a mere whisp of
a girl, became emotionally confused, lost control, as before in the
courtroom, and completely materialized. He looked up at Toffee sprawled
untidily across his chest, and flushed.

"You didn't have to knock me down," he murmured woundedly.

Toffee glanced down at her defeated adversary and started with
amazement.

"Marc!" she cried. "How did you get down there?"

At the phone booth Marc was still panting for breath. "Did you expect
me to come out of there dancing a rhumba?" he asked peevishly.

Toffee whirled about. "Marc!" she yelled.

"Stop screaming my name at me," Marc said. "All I want is...!"

       *       *       *       *       *

His voice retreated down his throat with a gurgle of surprise as he
caught sight of George.

"Wha...!"

Toffee turned from one to the other. "Which one of you is which?" she
gasped confusedly.

"I'm me," Marc murmured vaguely. "Who's he?"

Toffee sprang away from her perch on George's chest.

"Oh, mother!" she cried.

"Well," George said resignedly, getting to his feet. "I suppose that
I might as well admit it, now that you've found me out." He turned to
Marc. "I'm your ghost."

"_Ghost!_" Marc and Toffee sang it out together. As Marc sprang to
his feet, they both closed in on George, crowded him back defensively
into one of the phone booths.

During all this, the incident had attracted several innocent bystanders
who were now looking on with baffled interest.

"What have they got in there?" one official-looking gentleman asked
another. "Did you see?"

The other shook his head. "I think they said it was a goat."

"A goat? What on earth are they doing with a goat in there? Do you
suppose they have the beast talking to someone on the phone?"

"If they have," the second replied, "it had better yell for help.
They were crowding the poor thing something awful. On the other hand,
maybe they just wanted to milk it. If it's a modest goat it might be
reluctant about being milked right out here in the middle of the hall."

"I know I would," the first gentleman said, "if I were a goat. I
wouldn't blame it a bit. It's shocking, just the thought of it."

"They're doing the best they can," the second gentleman reminded. "I
can see where a reluctant goat wouldn't be the easiest thing in the
world to get along with."

"Just the same, I don't approve," the first man said. "Not even a
little bit. If the goat is shy, they shouldn't bring it out in public
to milk it like this."

"Maybe they're trying to teach it social poise," the second man
suggested.

"I don't care," the first said. "Livestock should be left at home.
Someone should speak to the Health Commissioner about this!"

The second man shook his head with mild amusement. "That shouldn't be
difficult for you," he said. "You are the Health Commissioner. Or did
they get you in the last clean-up?"

The first man looked at him sharply. "The devil you say!" he exclaimed.
He thought about it for a moment. "By heaven, you're right. Sometimes
I forget. I thought I was the Water Commissioner. Haven't been to my
office for weeks to see what it says on the door." He started away,
then turned back. "Why don't you come in and complain to me about this
goat? It wouldn't look right if I complained to myself, would it? My
secretary would think it was odd."

Meanwhile Marc and Toffee had wedged themselves into the doorway of the
telephone booth and were staring incredulously at George.

"Well," George said uneasily, "haven't you ever seen a ghost before?"

"I should hope to tell you I haven't," Toffee said fervently. She
looked at George with suspicion. "How do we know you're a ghost? Can
you prove it?"

"Do I have to?" George said unhappily.

"It would help clear things up considerably," Marc said. "Personally, I
don't believe a word of it."

George stared at them for a long moment, then sighed. "Oh, all right,"
he murmured. "If you insist. Of course this is terribly corny, and you
probably won't like it, but it should give you an idea."

       *       *       *       *       *

As Marc and Toffee watched, George carefully controlled his ectoplasm,
dissolved his head down to a grinning skull, and issued a low moaning
sound.

"Mother in heaven!" Toffee said, closing her eyes. "Stop doing that!"

George, only too happy to do so, quickly rematerialized his head. "I
told you you wouldn't like it," he said.

"But how could you be my ghost?" Marc said shakenly. "I'm not dead."

"Are you sure?" Toffee said. "Personally, I feel quite dead and gone to
hell after looking at that."

"But you're supposed to be dead," George said with sudden
self-righteousness. "If you were any good at all, you'd be mouldering
in your grave at this very moment. You were supposed to have been blown
to bits in an explosion. That's why they sent me."

"Who sent you?" Marc asked.

"I'd rather not discuss them, if it's all the same to you," George said.

"Well," Marc said, "I'm alive. So you can just go back to them, whoever
they are, and tell them they're mistaken."

"But I don't want to go back," George said unhappily. He looked at Marc
speculatively. "Couldn't you just sort of kick off?"

"I beg your pardon?" Marc asked incredulously. "Do I understand you
right? Are you asking me to kill myself just to accommodate you?"

"Oh, you wouldn't have to do it all yourself," George said. "I'd be
very happy to assist you."

"So!" Toffee cried. "So that's what you were up to! You were trying to
strangle him with that phone booth!"

George shrugged sheepishly. "I didn't think I should pass up any
opportunity. I'll admit it's not a very fancy way to die...."

"You fiend!" Marc said. "You horror!"

"Oh, please, no!" George objected woundedly. "You just aren't looking
at the thing right, that's all. Fair's fair, you know. After all, I've
been waiting years for you to pop off, and...."

"And you're going to wait a great many more years as far as I'm
concerned!" Marc said.

"I was afraid you'd be narrow about it," George said dejectedly. Tears
came to his eyes. "I've always had to take your left-overs. Your second
name, even. I couldn't call myself Marc, because that was the name you
wanted. I had to take George. It's unjust."

"Well, don't go on about it," Toffee said. "There's no use blubbering."

"You might just as well go away," Marc said firmly. "I'll be damned if
I'm going to pop off, as you so picturesquely put it, just to please a
spook with criminal tendencies." He glanced heavenward. "This, on top
of everything else!"

The tears welled larger in George's unhappy eyes. He looked at Toffee
and Marc and flushed at making such an open display of his emotions. To
hide his feelings he sadly dissolved his head. The thin air above his
shoulders echoed with a moist snuffle.

"Oh, Lord!" Toffee moaned. "He's up to his tricks again! Would you
listen to that?"

"I wouldn't if I could help it," Marc said.

"Let's get away from this snivelling shade before he drives us crazy,"
Toffee said urgently. "I'm so upset I wouldn't be surprised if I walked
out of here on my hands."

"The way he is right now," Marc agreed, "he's the most haunting ghost
I've ever seen. I'll certainly never forget him."

Together, they turned and moved away from the phone booth and quickly
down the corridor.

"He'll have to shift for himself," Marc said. "I've got other things to
worry about."

As they moved away, out of the entrance of the building, several of
the more curious spectators converged on the phone booth and glanced
cautiously inside.

It was empty.

Outside, an officer showed Marc and Toffee to the green convertible
which had been delivered there by the government men. Marc helped
Toffee in, then crossed around and slid in under the wheel. With a
look of determination, he shifted the gears and directed the car into
traffic.

The sound of the shifting gears obscured the muffled snuffling sound
that emanated briefly from the back seat.




                             CHAPTER VIII


Marc braked the convertible to a stop at the signal and glanced
worriedly in the rear-view mirror.

"They're still there," he said.

Toffee swung about in the seat and stared without subterfuge at the
black sedan and it's occupants.

"It's those filthy twins," she said. "Even their car looks subversive."

Marc turned his attention again to the mirror. "They may be with the
government," he said. "They've probably been assigned to watch us." He
shrugged a dismissal. "Anyway, they're the least of my worries."

He released the brake and started forward again on the light. He
did not mention the greatest and most immediate of his worries; an
overwhelming attack of weariness had come over him in the last few
minutes and it was alarmingly reminiscent of the one he'd suffered
yesterday just before he'd begun to float. If he was about to become
buoyant again he wanted desperately to reach home and Julie before it
happened. He narrowed his eyes on the blur of the traffic ahead and
tightened his grip on the wheel. He knew as he did it, however, that he
was never going to make it.

Marc managed the next block without incident, and the next, but in the
middle of the third, he swung the car sharply to the curb and brought
it to a quick stop. In the next instant, just as he switched off the
ignition, his head slumped heavily to the steering wheel. It happened
so suddenly that he didn't notice the irony of his location; he had
parked almost exactly in front of the Wynant. Neither did he see the
black sedan pull up behind.

Toffee swung quickly toward him and gripped his shoulder. "Marc!" she
called, shaking him. "What's wrong?"

There was a moment of tense silence and then, just as before, Marc
revived as quickly as he had succumbed. He lifted his head from the
wheel, and looked dazedly around.

"What happened?" he asked.

But Toffee was not concerned with the events of the past. "Oh, golly!"
she wailed. "Look! There you go again!"

Marc glanced quickly down at the seat and suffered a thrill of horror.
Toffee had spoken the truth; indeed, he was going again with all
anchors cast off. He had already risen, still in a sitting position, to
such a height that his knees were resting snugly against the steering
wheel.

"Grab me!" he yelled. "Pull me down!"

"I am grabbing you!" Toffee cried, renewing her efforts on his
shoulder. "Hang on to something!"

Marc bent forward and took hold of the wheel. The action threw him
into a curious doubled-up position, so that he seemed to have braced
himself against the device with his knees so that he might pull at it
with both hands. To the casual passerby on the sidewalk it presented a
rather intriguing problem in logic. A pair of shop-girls turned away
from a window, started away, then stopped to observe the activity in
the convertible with baffled interest.

"Why do you suppose he's so anxious to get that wheel off?" one asked,
turning to the other.

"I can't imagine," the second said thoughtfully. "He seems terribly mad
about something, though. I pity his girl friend."

"I should say. I wouldn't go out with a fellow with that kind of temper
for a million dollars."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile the state of affairs in the convertible was swiftly becoming
crucial. Marc was beginning to realize that the upward pull on his body
was even stronger than before.

"Don't let me go!" he told Toffee. "Out here, it'll be the end of me!"

Then suddenly both he and Toffee looked around as a cough of expectancy
issued ominously from the back seat. Before their apprehensive eyes a
heavy flashlight swiftly raised itself from the floor of the car and
darted menacingly forward. A chuckle of malevolent intent sullied the
charged silence in the car.

"Go away!" Marc yelled. "Beat it, you homicidal haunt! George!"

But the flashlight continued forward, swung upward over Marc's
clutching hands, and poised itself for a smashing blow.

"No!" Marc yelled. "No!"

Then, as the flashlight started swiftly downward, Marc closed his eyes
and let go. Instantly, he popped upward out of the car and continued
going. The flashlight shattered against the wheel and dropped dully to
the floor. George promptly went about the business of materializing
himself at Toffee's side. No sooner, however, did his face appear than
Toffee dealt it a stinging blow.

"You low-living spook!" she grated. "I ought to scramble your ectoplasm
for you!"

George blinked at her woundedly. "Why do you always blame me?" he
asked. "I'm only trying to do my job. You're being a terrible sport
about all this."

"And I'm going to get worse," Toffee said hotly. She glanced
frightenedly after Marc who had already risen beyond the elegance of
the Wynant canopy and was closing in rapidly on the second floor.

"He'll never stop!" she cried. "He'll go up into space and explode!"

The crowd, gathering quickly about the convertible, watched Marc's
ascent with stunned silence. In back of the convertible, the door of
the black sedan swung open and the Blemishes, like a pair of soiled
moles, arrived on the sidewalk. They forced their way to the front of
the crowd.

As the brothers looked upward, their unlovely faces, as nearly as they
ever would, expressed true anxiety.

Above, Marc passed the second floor and rose swiftly to the third. He
seemed to be gathering momentum on his upward journey. The fourth floor
drifted by. His thoughts churned. He wanted to scream, but somehow
there wasn't time. And then, miraculously, he was caught in a strong
draft of wind, and thrown roughly toward the face of the building. He
reached out frantically, grabbing, clutching for something to hang on
to. And then his hand slapped against a window ledge, caught, and held.

Marc brought his other hand down to the ledge, found a hold and clung.
He drew in a breath of relief and his whole body throbbed with the beat
of his heart. As he hung there, his body continued upward, however,
upending him crazily against the wall of the hotel.

Down on the sidewalk, the Blemishes were instantly inspired to action.

"Come on!" they yelled. "Let's fish him in!"

Toffee looked at the two men. She was in no mood or position to
question any source of aid at the moment, no matter how questionable
it appeared. She turned to George with cool hostility.

"You make a move out of this car," she threatened, "and you'll be only
a ghost of a ghost when I get through with you." Then, swinging the car
door open, she joined the dark Blemishes in a streaking dash toward the
entrance of the hotel.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the fifth floor of the Wynant, Mrs. Hunter Reynolds sat rigidly in
her bathtub and stared with fixed horror at the face which had just
appeared upside down at her bathroom window. An old belle of the old
South, Mrs. Hunter Reynolds had ventured into the North expecting only
the worst. Now the worst had happened.

The shaken lady gripped the sides of her tub and tried hard to prevent
herself from sinking to a watery grave. She closed her eyes and
reasoned sternly with herself; it was all a trick of the imagination;
even a damnyankee head couldn't do the disgraceful thing this crazy
head was doing. And then her eyes flew wildly open as the room suddenly
dinned with a shouted plea for help.

At this point Mrs. Hunter Reynolds had a plea of her own to shout. "God
in heaven, sir!" she said, trying desperately to maintain some last
shred of dignity now that all decency was gone. "God in heaven, stop
invadin' my privacy this way. I ask it in the name of the South."

"Help me!" Marc panted. "Come pull me in!"

Mrs. Hunter Reynolds started in her tub. "You're speakin' to a lady,
sir!" she gasped. "Please go away. My water's gettin' cold."

"I can't help your water," Marc said unhappily.

"Sir!" the southern lady cried. "I'm not askin' you to help my water.
I'm askin' you to leave my water entirely alone."

"Delighted," Marc wheezed. "I wouldn't touch your water with a ten foot
thermometer, I'll close my eyes if you'll just give me a hand."

"If I give you a hand, sir," Mrs. Hunter Reynolds said coolly, "it will
be across your insultin' damnyankee mouth. If you don't leave instantly
I'll call my husband, the Colonel."

"For heaven's sake, call him!" Marc implored. "He can help me."

"It's more likely he'll whip you within an inch of your life." Mrs.
Hunter Reynolds said stoutly. Swirling about in her suds, she faced the
doorway, prepared to scream, then turned back to Marc.

"First, sir," she said. "Would you do me the pleasure of tellin' me if
you are a whole damnyankee or only a damnyankee head?"

"I'm a whole damn ... I'm whole," Marc said.

"Thank you, sir," Mrs. Hunter Reynolds said with a slight bow. Then she
opened her mouth wide and screamed with unbelievable feeling and vigor.

"Hunter!" she shrieked. "Hunter! There's a whole damnyankee invadin' my
privacy!"

Even before she had stopped screaming the door to the bathroom burst
open and Col. Hunter Reynolds charged into view, obviously prepared to
defend southern chivalry to the end, if necessary. Needing only a julep
in his hand to complete the picture, he was a fair caricature of all
southern colonels.

"Damnyankee, did you say!" he thundered.

"There!" his wife said, agitating her bath water. She pointed
dramatically to the window.

"Gad!" the Colonel snorted. "That's the damndest damnyankee I've ever
seen. He's upside down, isn't he? Gave me quite a turn for a second
there. But it looks like he's had quite a turn himself." The Colonel
chuckled foolishly at his own pleasantry.

"I'm the one who's had the turn!" his wife snapped. "Stop that silly
gigglin' and titterin', you old fool, and do something."

The Colonel considered. "Yes, yes," he murmured. "I suppose I'll have
to shoot the dog; there isn't enough of him to flog."

"My water's getting cool," Mrs. Hunter Reynolds mentioned fretfully.

"Good," the Colonel said absently. "Good. Keep it that way." He started
from the room.

"Help!" Marc yelled.

The Colonel whirled about at the doorway.

"Not a word out of you, sir!" he said tartly. "Not a word!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He left the room and almost instantly was back bearing a pair of
ominous bone-handled dueling pistols. These he cocked carefully and
aimed in Marc's general direction.

"Make your peace, sir," he said. He turned to his wife. "Close your
eyes so you won't see this."

"No!" Marc yelled.

"Just a moment, dear," Mrs. Hunter Reynolds interrupted. "I don't like
to interfere in the affairs of menfolk, you know that, dear, but don't
you think we ought to keep in mind that we still have southern blood in
our veins even if we are in the North?"

The Colonel observed his wife scowlingly. "How do you mean?" he asked.

"It isn't southern courtesy to shoot a man when he's a sittin' target."

The Colonel turned it over in his mind. "You're quite right, dear," he
said finally. He turned to Marc. "Sir, would you mind movin' about a
bit out there so I can shoot you in honor?"

"I can't!" Marc gasped. His arms were so tired, and his head so thick
with blood, that he didn't care much at this point whether he was about
to be shot or not. "Shoot me in cold blood," he said. "To hell with
your honor."

The Colonel turned questioningly to his wife. "Should I?" he asked.
"You heard what he said about my honor."

Mrs. Hunter Reynolds was hesitant. "Suppose the news got out around
back home?" she said. "Folks would say you weren't a real southern
gentleman anymore. They'd say you'd been tainted by the North. You'd
never be able to hold up a julep in public again."

"For the love of heaven!" Marc moaned. "Either help me or shoot me,
only make it snappy."

"Better not risk it," the Colonel decided. "I've got to have a moving
target."

The bathroom became quiet with the heavy stillness of impasse. Then
there was a ripple from the bathtub as Mrs. Hunter Reynolds brightened.

"I know!" she cried. "If the target can't move, why don't you? Wouldn't
it be all right that way? You could rush about a bit and when you've
got up your speed turn and shoot him."

The Colonel was silent for a minute, seeming to picture his wife's
suggestion in his mind. Finally he nodded. He turned to Marc.

"Is it all right with you, damnyankee?" he asked.

"Anything's all right with me," Marc said hopelessly. "Go ahead. I
don't even give a damn anymore."

The scene that followed established a new and fascinating high in
sheer insanity. Girding his rusty loins against the first physical
effort they had been forced to in years, the Colonel busily began to
cavort about the room like a bloated rhino. Clumsily loping through
an obstacle course of plumbing appliances, the old boy found it rough
going at best. As for the Colonel's lady, she languished calmly in her
cooling tub, soaped her arms, and watched her laboring husband with
nodding approval. Marc, even beyond the point of mere resignation,
closed his eyes and waited.

"Well," the Colonel wheezed, rushing once more to the end of the room
and starting back again, "this is it!" As he ran, he trained the
pistols loosely in Marc's direction. "Here I come! Ready ... aim...!"

It was at this climactic point in the bathroom drama that the door
burst open and Toffee, closely followed by the two Blemishes, rushed
into view.

"Stop!" Toffee screamed.

In mid-gallop, the Colonel turned sharply to observe the intruders,
tripped over a clothes hamper, and descended to the floor in a
deafening roar of gunfire.

As a cloud of smoke billowed up around the gallant man from the South,
Mrs. Hunter Reynolds turned, looked briefly at Toffee and the Blemish
brothers and sank into the depths of her bath with only a small gurgle
to mark her departure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Toffee ran to the window, motioning the brothers to follow. She emerged
through the rising screen of smoke just in time to see Marc's fingers,
white with tension, slip from the sill and disappear out of view.

"He's gone!" she screamed. "He's gone!"

The Blemishes crowded beside her at the window and leaned forward. They
were just in time to catch the last glimpse of Marc floating serenely
out of sight beyond the rim of the building as they watched.

"Come on!" Toffee yelled. "Up to the roof!"

"What for?" Gerald Blemish said bitterly. "He's gone, now."

"Well, at least we can wave goodbye," Toffee said. She started rapidly
toward the door.

"My!" Cecil Blemish said, picking his way carefully over the prone
figure of the Colonel. "Look at all the water in here. The old gaffer
got the water pipes, two out of two."

It was barely seconds later when the skylight door at the top of the
hotel flew open and Toffee and the matching Blemishes ran out onto the
roof. They scanned the distant sky as they moved.

"He's gone!" Toffee cried despairingly. "He's clear out of sight!"

The brothers stopped and looked at each other without hope.

"Well," Cecil muttered. "There goes everything."

Then suddenly the trio straightened as a small voice called Toffee's
name. It might have come from anywhere and it might have been any
voice, it was so weak. Toffee whirled about, and instantly her gaze
darted to the flag-pole at the other end of the roof. There, like a
flag unfurled, Marc was clinging to the top ornament for dear life.

"Marc!" Toffee screamed and ran to the pole. "Grab the rope and I'll
pull you down!"

Cautiously, Marc took hold of the ropes, first one hand, then the other.

"Hold on tight!" Toffee cautioned and slowly began lowering him toward
the roof. As she did so she glanced around at the twins. The two, in
what seemed a rather pretty but confused tribute, were holding their
hats stiffly over their hearts.

Toffee turned back to the pole, renewed her efforts, and brought Marc
safely to ground. Then as he clung to the pole for security, she
removed a couple of metal weights from the ropes and slipped them into
the pockets of his jacket. Briefly, she kissed him on the forehead.

"You damned floater!" she breathed with relief and affection.

Gingerly, Marc released his hold on the pole and smilingly discovered
that he was again stationary. With Toffee's help, he made his way to
where the twins were standing, their hats still clasped to their chests.

"Retreat's over," Toffee said. "You can put the lids back on."

In unison the twins swung their hats up to their heads and held out the
revolvers they had been holding under them.

"Get 'em up!" they snarled in chorus. "You're coming with us."




                              CHAPTER IX


Even the elevators of the Wynant, and the procedures attendant thereto,
had a tone of delicate breeding about them. As the doors parted, ever
so smoothly, the mechanism emitted a sigh of unmistakable refinement,
like a great lady giving vent to a genteel yawn of boredom behind
an ivory fan. In the foreground was revealed a uniformed and finely
drilled operator who always stood at rigid attention on the occasion
of his passengers' debarkation. Thus it was, with all good taste, the
Wynant guest was given every opportunity to arrive before the general
public and the management with his best foot extended well to the fore.
It was one of those small touches that contributed so much to making
the Wynant the Wynant, and vice versa.

Now, however, the procedure of the elevators, like the best laid plans
of mice and mollusks, suddenly went amuck. Eyes turned and widened
sharply as the elevator doors flew open with an exclamatory rasp, and
not the passengers but the operator quitted the conveyance. Putting
one foot forward of the other with all the earnest haste of a scared
wombat, it was evident that the poor devil didn't know or even care
which of them was the best; he skittered across the foyer and around
the edge of the desk with the speed and directness of a well-aimed shot.

"It's him!" the wretched man jabbered, cowering beside the clerk. "He's
come back to get even with that statue!"

Meanwhile a scene of rather complex agitation had been revealed within
the narrow confines of the elevator. It seemed that Marc, still
increasing in the degree of his buoyancy, was no longer afforded any
particular measure of security from the weights in his pockets. Even
during the brief interval which had transported him from the roof to
the foyer, he had levitated to the height of about a foot and was still
inching upward.

Marc's companions were inclined to take a sour view of the whole
procedure. Indeed, the Blemishes felt called upon to express their
displeasure with firearms. Cecil Blemish aimed his gun at the small of
Marc's back and sighted tensely down the barrel.

"Come down," he threatened. "Stop doing that or I'll shoot. I will,
too."

"Stop that," Toffee said agitatedly. "Look where you're aiming. He's
risen another four inches. There's no need to be vulgar about it."

"Oh, excuse me," Cecil said, and aimed the gun higher.

"If you two don't put those guns away and stop waving them about,"
Toffee said, "I'm going to snatch them away from you and beat your
brains out with them. I'll admit it'll be something like hunting
butterflies with a sledge hammer, but I'm willing to have a go at it.
How about it?"

The twins paused in their activities and looked at each other.

"I'll bet she would at that," Cecil said.

"Those poor defenseless butterflies," Gerald nodded. "I shudder."

"And well you should shudder," Toffee put in.

Together the brothers turned to her with undisguised admiration.

"You're really mean," Cecil said. "Have you ever thought of being a
spy?"

"Have you ever thought of being a dead spy?" Toffee said waspishly.
"Now stop that nonsense and help me get him down. Find something to
weight him down with."

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc, already beginning to crouch to keep his head away from the
ceiling of the car, looked down imploringly. "Just get me something to
eat," he pleaded. "I'll be all right if you'll only feed me."

"You see," Gerald Blemish said. "He's just being stubborn. This is all
just a childish trick to get us to feed him." He raised his gun again
in Marc's direction.

"Don't be silly," Toffee said. She explained to the Blemishes that food
reacted chemically to temporarily relieve Marc's condition of buoyancy.
"Just help me get him down, and we can get him something to eat in the
hotel dining room."

The brothers were thoughtful.

"I suppose we'll have to take her word for it," Cecil said. "Anyway,
he's not much good to us up there."

"I suppose so," Gerald agreed, "but personally I think he's just the
flighty type."

Cecil went to the door of the elevator and looked out. Then he stepped
outside and called back to Gerald to come and give him a hand.

Absentmindedly, Gerald started to hand his gun to Toffee, but at the
last moment he thought better of it and put it in his pocket.

"It's hard to tell who's captured whom sometimes," he said sadly, and
went outside.

In a moment the brothers were back, progressing slowly under the weight
of a tremendous sand-filled cigarette urn. They shuffled to the center
of the car and laboriously hoisted their cumbersome burden up to Marc.

"Here," Gerald panted. "Take it."

Marc regarded the thing without enthusiasm. "Good grief!" he said.
"That thing'll break my back. Can't you just get me something to eat?"

"Take it," Toffee said shortly. "You can come and get your own food.
And don't drop it. Personally, I don't intend to go galloping up to the
top of this hotel again after you. Next time you take off, I'll just
forward your mail to the moon and let it go at that."

With a sigh of hopeless resignation, Marc took hold of the urn, and the
Blemishes let go and stepped back. Instantly Marc and the urn crashed
to the floor with a tooth-rattling thud.

"Ugh!" Marc said.

"There, you see," Toffee beamed. "It works beautifully. Now, come on,
let's eat."

And so it was that a moment later the diners in the Wynant dining
room were suddenly shocked into silence by the arrival of the most
bizarre dinner party ever to venture forth in quest of food. It was
not enough that a combustible-looking redhead, garishly clad only in
a few precarious sequins, had arrived in their midst, this had to be
followed by a tall, anguished gentleman bent double under the weight of
an enormous cigarette urn. Why either the girl or her grimacing escort
had chosen to arrive at dinner in their respective conditions was
beyond comprehension. With this mystery to brood over, hardly anyone
even noticed the duplicate, derby-hatted, bush-bearded horrors in the
background. With great unconcern the party arrived at the head of the
short stairway leading to the dining room and paused grandly in full
view of the entire room. No one was more stunned at the sight of this
questionable quartet than the _maitre d'hotel_. If the circus had
come to town this elegant and formidable gentleman had not heard of it.
He hastened forward to correct what was obviously a gross mistake.

"I'm terribly sorry ..." he began in private tones.

       *       *       *       *       *

Toffee recognized the attitude instantly. "If you think you're going
to put us out of here," she said, "you're going to be much more than
sorry." She nodded toward Marc. "This gentleman needs food. He's weak
as a kitten."

Marc looked up at the maitre de and bared his teeth in what he hoped
was a reassuring smile.

The maitre de glanced away with a pained expression. Then looked
quickly back.

"Isn't that one of our urns?" he asked sternly.

"We only borrowed it for a moment," Toffee explained. "You can have it
back when we're through with it."

"I suggest that the gentleman put it back where he found it right now,"
the maitre de said coolly.

"I can't put it back," Marc gritted breathlessly. "For the love of Mike
stop bickering and give me something to eat. I'm feeling weaker by the
second."

"If you'd put that urn back," the maitre de said with growing
hostility, "you wouldn't feel so weak." He turned to Toffee. "Does the
gentleman fancy himself as an ash tray? Is that it?"

"Of course not," Toffee snapped. "Give him a table."

"If I give him a table to carry will he put down the urn?" the maitre
de asked confusedly.

"Not to carry," Toffee said. "Give him a table to sit at. And food to
eat. Stop talking like an idiot."

The maitre de became petulant. "I won't give him a table until he gives
back that urn." He turned to Marc. "Give it back."

"I won't," Marc said. "I can't."

The maitre de stepped back a pace, then glanced wretchedly at the
silent diners behind him. All eyes were trained incredulously on him
and the unwanted foursome. He cleared his throat self-consciously.

"Please," he said, lowering his voice imploringly. "Please give back
the urn and go away. Just set it down and turn around and walk out.
You'll ruin me if you don't. I have a reputation to maintain. I've been
known to send royalty back to their rooms for neck-ties before I'd give
them service. A vice president fairly groveled before me once. These
people are expecting something from me, and I can't let them down.
Please, please go away!"

The party of four remained unmoved, either emotionally or physically.
They stayed where they were, staring at the man with stoic calm and
determination. The unhappy man turned desperately to Marc.

"For heaven's sake," he said, "have you developed some sort of fetish
for that urn? Do you imagine yourself to be in love with it? Is that
why you're hugging it in that awful way?"

"I'm not hugging it," Marc wheezed. "I'm carrying it."

"Where?" the maitre de asked bewilderedly.

"Anywhere," Marc said. "Just so long as I get something to eat. Please
give me a table and some food."

The maitre de's jaw squared with sudden determination. "No," he said.
"Flatly, no! I owe it to the Wynant dining room and these people here
to stick to my guns. I'll give you till ten to take that urn and leave
this room."

"I'd love to," Marc said weakly. "But I can't. Don't you understand?"

"Then just give the urn to me," the reluctant host said. "I'll see that
it gets back where it belongs."

"No," Marc said. "Flatly, no."

The maitre de's face turned vermilion with a flush of rage. "Then
suppose I just take it!" he said hotly. And with that he stepped boldly
forward, wrapped his arms resolutely around the urn and began to pull.
"Give it to me now," he grunted. "No use being stubborn, you know, it's
not yours."

"Oh, good grief!" Toffee cried with exasperation. "Just look at them.
Like a couple of crazy school kids with a dead mouse!" She turned to
the Blemishes. "Do something!"

       *       *       *       *       *

With dittoed expressions of perplexity, the brothers regarded Toffee,
each other, and the problem of the besieged urn. Clearly it was time
for them to take steps, but they didn't know in which direction.
Simultaneously they moved forward to opposite sides of the urn, secured
a hold on it, and began to pull against each other. The spellbound
clientele of the Wynant looked on in confused wordlessness; no one
could guess why the cigarette urn had become so furiously important to
these struggling men all of a sudden; obviously it contained nothing
more wonderful than a lot of sand and a few stubs. One gentleman,
staring in entranced rapture, carefully lifted a sizeable portion
of steak on his fork, lifted it upward, and with preoccupied care,
deposited it, complete with mushroom sauce, in the depths of his
breast pocket.

Meanwhile the insane contest at the head of the stairs had arrived at
a state of complete impasse. Four different energies pulled in four
different directions, one balanced just enough against the other to
hold the urn perfectly motionless. Other than a rapidly deepening
blueness in Marc's face, there was no evidence that the men had not
simply joined together to provide a grotesquely decorative stand for
the urn. That this constituted a condition of utter absurdity, Toffee
was the first to realize. She placed herself impatiently at Gerald
Blemish's side and raised her hands to her hips.

"Just what do you think you're doing, you nincompoop?" she hissed. "Let
go."

Gerald looked up at her unhappily, considered, then let go. The three
remaining contestants staggered drunkenly aside, still clinging
doggedly to the urn.

"Show him your gun," Toffee directed.

Gerald thought about it, then bestirred himself. He went over to the
maitre de and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The maitre de looked
around.

"Look," Gerald said, taking his gun from his pocket and shoving it
under the poor man's nose. "See?"

The maitre de knew when he was licked. Instantly, he let go of the urn
and backed away. A look of great disillusionment came into his eyes.
With a soul-searing sob he turned and sat down heavily on the steps.

"You've ruined me," he blubbered. "You've deliberately come in here
and ruined my reputation. And I know who's behind it all; Felix of the
Gaylord!"

"Oh, dear!" Toffee said. "Please don't do that. Don't cry. I just
can't stand to see a man cry."

Cecil Blemish relinquished his hold on the urn and joined his brother
at the ruined man's side. In the background, Marc sagged limply under
the sudden weight.

"What's the matter with him?" Gerald asked.

"We've ruined him," Cecil explained briefly.

The maitre de shuddered with a new convulsion of self pity.

"Now, look here," Toffee said kindly. "There's no reason to go on like
this. I'll tell you what. Why can't we all cooperate in this thing? We
want food and you want to throw us out. Why don't we just compromise?
We'll take a table and eat and then we'll let you throw us out. You
can make a terrible scene, and we won't say a word." She turned to the
Blemishes. "That's fair, isn't it?"

"Oh, very," Cecil said enthusiastically. "We're wonderful at being
thrown out. We act cowardly as anything, we snivel."

"Oh, we snivel beautifully!" Gerald confirmed.

"Fine," Toffee said. "Why don't you do a little sniveling right now?
Just show the gentleman what he can expect. It's bound to cheer him up."

       *       *       *       *       *

Together the Blemishes descended to their knees beside the sobbing
maitre de. Then, contorting their faces into expressions of despicable
self-abasement, they began to make small damp sounds of cowardly
beseechment. Tears began to course down their faces and into their
beards. Slowly, the maitre de raised his head and looked around. Then
with a cry of purest horror he leaped to his feet and bolted from the
room as though pursued by a thousand devils.

"I quit!" he screamed as he disappeared in the direction of the
kitchen. "I go back to the automat!"

"Poor man," Toffee murmured. "Definitely the ulcerous type." She turned
to the sniveling Blemishes. "Stop that awful noise and get up."

Marc struggled forward under the weight of the urn. "I can't hold out
much longer," he said.

Supremely unaffected by the horrified silence which had fallen over the
room, Toffee turned, surveyed the table accommodations, and sighted a
place in the center of the room.

"Follow me, men," she said.

As the strange party made its way to the middle of the room in sedate
silence, heads turned everywhere to follow its progress. Marc just made
it to the edge of the table. Toffee and the Blemishes seated themselves
as though their arrival had been accomplished in a completely orderly
manner. The Blemishes, in a formal mood, didn't bother removing their
hats.

"What about me?" Marc gasped. "Am I supposed to hold this thing in my
lap?"

Toffee studied his predicament through thoughtful, half-closed lids.
"No," she murmured, "you couldn't do that." She glanced around, at
the Wyman's markedly heavy silverware. She promptly picked up her own
place setting and dropped it in Marc's pockets. The Blemishes quickly
followed suit.

A moment later Marc's pockets fairly bulged with purloined silver. The
other diners looked on with awed fascination.

"Have you ever seen anything so flagrant?" a woman at an adjoining
table whispered. "I've heard of people stealing a knife or fork for a
souvenir, but ... well ... cleaning out the whole table!"

"Even the salt and peppers," her companion observed, half with
admiration. "Before they get through there'll be nothing left of this
hotel but the hollow shell."

Toffee regarded Marc with satisfaction. "That should hold you," she
said. "Unburden yourself."

Willing to risk anything by now, Marc put down the urn. He remained
stationary. With an echoing sigh of relief and a loud clattering of
silver, he seated himself at the table.

"Thank God!" he groaned.

The other diners, feeling that they were now in for a period of
respite, turned back to their cooling meals and a general buzz of
low-key conversation. It was at this moment that a waiter, just on duty
and starkly unappraised of recent developments, made his entrance into
the dining room, picked up a pitcher of water, and went to the aid of
the newcomers. He moved forward with the light step of the happy and
the innocent. Toffee saw him coming.

"May we have more silver?" she asked.

The waiter stopped short, put the pitcher of water down heavily on the
table. The dining room quieted for a second time.

"What happened to the silver that was here?" he asked. "A Wynant table
is never left without silver."

"Oh, that," Toffee said. "We used all that up."

"For what?" the waiter wanted to know. "What did you do with it?"

Toffee pointed blandly to Marc. "He has it in his pockets," she said.

Marc shifted in his chair with musical unease and refused to meet the
narrowed gaze of the waiter. There was a long moment of silence before
the waiter turned back to Toffee.

"You mean he just picked it up and put it in his pockets?"

"Oh, no," Toffee said. "Of course not. We picked it up and put it in
his pockets for him." She nodded to her dark-browed accomplices.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment the waiter stood undecided. One could almost see the
desperate churnings of his mind. Finally he bent low toward Toffee in
a manner of great confidence. "Since you're so open about the whole
thing," he murmured, "I trust you and your friends are playing some
sort of game to amuse yourselves. I assume that you intend to take the
silver back out of the gentleman's pockets and return it to the table.
Am I right?"

"Certainly not," Toffee said. "We wouldn't think of it."

"I'd be very pleased if you would," the waiter said a bit more firmly.

"Oh, you wouldn't be pleased at all," Toffee said. "You'd despise it.
Now just run along and get some more silver."

"So you can stuff this fellow's pockets with it?" the waiter said. "If
you put any more in them they'll rip off."

"We want to eat with it," Toffee said.

"How novel," the waiter said. He turned to the Blemishes and blanched
slightly. "Would you ... uh ... gentlemen please remove your hats?"

"Now look here," Toffee said. "There's no use getting petty about this
thing." She nodded toward the vacant chair on the other side of the
table. "Sit down, and I'll explain everything."

The waiter gazed on her with heavy disdain. "I can't sit down," he said.

Marc, on his side of the table, had looked away for a moment, his
attention caught by the frankly admiring glance of a dark, heavy-lidded
lady at the next table. There was about her an unmistakably continental
air, and Marc couldn't help noticing that her neckline had plunged and
crashed somewhere in the neighborhood of the _Arc de Triumph_. He
flushed and turned away.

"Oh, please," he said anxiously, to no one in particular. "Please give
me something to eat."

"Can't sit down?" Toffee said to the waiter. "For heaven's sake, why
not? Has something happened to your...?"

"Of course not!" the waiter said quickly. "It isn't allowed. Waiters
never sit with the guests at the Wynant."

"Why not?" Toffee asked. "Is there something the matter with the
waiters here?"

The waiter opened his mouth to answer, then was silent with thought. "I
don't know," he said finally. "I guess there's nothing wrong with us.
At least I think I'm all right. I don't see why I shouldn't sit down.
If I'm invited, that is."

"Then have a seat," Toffee said.

"Thank you," the waiter said with a slight bow. "I don't mind if I do."
With great deliberation he turned, regarding the other diners with a
look of scornful defiance, then crossed around the table and sat down.
"Now, about that extra silver you wanted...."

A gasp echoed through the room. At the far side a bejeweled matron
rose from her place with a snort of outrage and stiffly departed the
room. In the meanwhile Marc had turned imploring eyes to the only
quarter from which he had so far received any attention at all. The
heavy-lidded lady smiled slowly.

"Would you give me something to eat?" Marc asked weakly. "You have so
much there and.... If I don't get something soon I'll drift off into
space."

"It is such a feeling as I have often suffered myself," the woman said
in a heavy French accent. "But never for the want of food. I could not
forgive myself to turn away a man with the hunger."

"I've got the hunger something fierce," Marc said.

"Of course, monsieur will pay the bill?"

"Sure," Marc agreed eagerly. "Anything."

       *       *       *       *       *

The lady reached out a tapering hand to the table and picked up a piece
of paper covered darkly with figures. She handed it to Marc.

Marc glanced at the total and blanched.

"Champagne is so expensive in this country," the lady said regretfully.
"And to me it is like water."

"Obviously," Marc murmured. "You must wash your clothes in the stuff."
He held out his hand. "But never mind. Just give me the food."

"You have only to open the mouth," the lady smiled. "I will feed you
with my own hands." Her eyes held his own with a suggestive glint. "It
will be sweeter that way."

"Just give me the plate," Marc said.

The woman paid no attention. "You will drink the wine of my country
from the cup of my hand, like a great, thirsting beast." She laughed
throatily. "It is so that we make love with the meal."

"Doesn't it get awfully messy?" Marc asked ruefully. "Or do you wear
gloves?"

"Love is never tidy," the woman breathed, leaning close to him. "Not
when it is worthwhile. Love is always a beautiful, beautiful mess."

Marc, more embarrassed than enthralled at this invitation to amour
among the foodstuffs, was not aware that Toffee had paused in her
conversation with the waiter and fastened her eyes with brooding
hostility to the back of his neck.

"And now," the French temptress was saying, "the monsieur will part the
beautiful lips so Lisa can give him the food of love."

"Oh, yeah?" Toffee put in hotly from across the table. "If the
monsieur parts the beautiful lips Toffee will part his teeth for him!"

Marc started guiltily. "Now, Toffee...!"

"Stand back from that French pastry, you philandering gourmet!" Toffee
said, getting up from her chair. "When I get through with her there's
going to be a lot more broken than just her speech!"

"She's only feeding me!" Marc said.

"Yeah," Toffee sneered. "The food of love. I heard her." She swung
toward the woman. "I'm the dietitian around here, honey, and don't you
forget it."

"I only show the monsieur how she is done in the old country."

"Well," Toffee said, "get a load of how she's done in the new one.
Prepare yourself to get fractured, you Parisian petunia!"

And with that the turbulent redhead snatched the plate of squab that
rested in the tapering hand of the enchantress and carefully emptied
its contents into the lady's elaborate hair-do.

"_Mon dieu!_" the woman screamed as she shot out of her chair. She
swung about and eyed Toffee malevolently through a trickle of gravy.
"So! The mademoiselle would be the wildcat, eh?" She glanced quickly
about for ammunition and found it on a neighboring table. Scooping a
plate of soup from beneath the owner's very spoon, she turned furiously
and prepared to hurl it into Toffee's face. "I have never been so
insult in all my life!"

"Put that soup down, Fifi," Toffee warned, "or you're going to get
insult in places you didn't know you had."

The soggy siren did as she was told, but only by accident. As she
started toward Toffee, the plate of soup slithered out of her hand,
looped gracefully through the air and landed upside down in the lap of
a lavender-laced matron. Heaving herself from her chair, the matron
trumpeted her displeasure to the assemblage at large, armed herself
with a pitcher of water, and entered the fray. Stepping with great
dignity to the side of the besieged European, she heaved the contents
of the pitcher in the general vicinity of her mid-section. Then, with
great pleasure, she threw back her head and laughed. Just in time to
receive a plateful of oysters squarely in the face.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the next moment the entire room had entered into the spirit of the
occasion. Naturally repressed, the guests of the Wynant were quick
to seize upon this opportunity to give expression to their pent up
feelings. Pandemonium ruled the room from end to end. Trays and diners
slid across the floor together with an air of abandoned democracy. Mrs.
Jones, having long resented the upward tilt of Mrs. Smythe's nose, did
her level best to lower it with a sauce bottle. The action, for the
main part, however, gravitated frenziedly toward the center of the room
where it had started. Toffee, having applied the squab to her victim,
was now gustily engaged in massaging it into the scalp, all the way to
the bone if possible.

Marc, for his part, was busily engaged in reaping the spoils of the
battle. He picked up an abandoned roll here, an unwanted steak there,
and even occasionally caught a delicacy as it flew through the air. He
stuffed himself as ravenously as a starved road-worker at a free lunch.
The Blemishes remained seated at the table, thoroughly confused and
disillusioned at the activities of the upper classes. The waiter merely
leaned back in his chair with an enigmatic smile and enjoyed to the
fullest the spectacle of these people doing to each other what he had
been secretly tempted to do to them nightly for several years.

Marc, still concerned with the matter of dining, reached out for an
abandoned pudding and discovered new and still more alarming element in
the fracas. Just as his hand was closing in on the dessert, the dish
suddenly leaped into the air, poised itself carefully, then sailed
across the room to catch a portly gentleman neatly at the side of the
ear. In a seizure of surprise, as the gooey mess dribbled into his
collar, the man whirled about and dealt his female companion a stinging
blow across the bridge of her nose.

"Oh!" he gasped in instant regret. "I'm so terribly sorry!"

For a moment the woman only stared at him without expression. Then,
with slow calm she reached out to the table, picked up a bottle of
wine, carefully removed the cloth from around it, and belted her abject
attacker a solid blow across the crown of the head.

"Perfectly all right, lover," she murmured as she stepped over his
prone figure and started from the room. "Don't bother getting up."

Marc turned back to the table and frowned sternly.

"George," he said tentatively. "George, I know you're there, so there's
no use hiding. Show yourself."

"Of course," George's voice said out of space, with malicious levity.
"In a moment. Wonderful fight, isn't it?"

"George!" Marc said.

But there was only silence from the ghost. Marc gazed speculatively
around, peering anxiously into the ranks of the warring diners for some
sign; there was no telling what the sporadic spook might undertake in
a situation of this sort. It was only a moment before the worst of his
fears were realized.

There was only a slight disturbance around the cigarette urn at first,
a faint billowing of the table cloth. Then, as though someone had
secured a grip on the thing ... as George indeed had ... it suddenly
lifted into the air. There was a period of shifting and balancing, then
it lifted steadily upward until it was above the heads of the embroiled
diners.

"No!" Marc yelled at the top of his lungs. "George! Put it back!"

Instantly all was silence in the dining room as the warring guests
froze in various attitudes of combat and cast frightened eyes upward at
the floating urn. The enchantress from France, her hand clutching at
Toffee's hair, was somewhat more affected than the others.

"I haf loose my reason!" she wailed. "I am departed from my wits in
this land of barbarians!" Then, becoming considerably more heavy-lidded
than before, she wilted quietly to the floor.

Meanwhile the urn had continued upward, paused, sighted its course,
and started viciously in Marc's direction. George's plan was hideously
plain; he meant to dispatch his earthly part to the hereafter by means
of bombardment.

"Run, Marc!" Toffee screamed. "Run!"

Marc, however, now laden with food, silver and lead weights, was all
but incapable of flight. He started forward, but only ploddingly.
Loaded to the teeth with ballast, his progress was not only extremely
noisome, but greatly retarded.

"I can't run!" he panted.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the next moment the urn had arrived at a position almost directly
above him. It shuttled nervously back and forth, evidently adjusting
for a direct hit. Toffee dashed toward the table and the petrified
Blemishes. She bent quickly over Cecil and snatched the revolver from
his hand.

"Bombs away!" George's voice sang out jubilantly from the region of the
urn. "Fire one!"

"Oh, Lord!" Marc moaned fervently. He struggled desperately to reach
one of the tables so that he might take shelter under it.

And then, just as the urn plunged downward, three shots thundered
deafeningly through the room. Marc was suddenly caught in a rain of
sand and shattered pottery.

At the table, the Blemishes jumped to their feet and threw their hands
above their heads.

"We surrender!" they yelped in unison.

Then Cecil turned around, saw Toffee, the gun in her hand. He reached
out and took it from her.

"You're not supposed to have that," he said woundedly. "What kind of
prisoner are you, anyway?"

"Sorry," Toffee said. "It was an emergency."

Then she ran to Marc, followed by the Blemishes, and began to scrape
some of the debris from his head and shoulders. No sooner had she
arrived, however, than another crisis loomed on the horizon. The door
of the dining room flew open and the manager of the Wynant, accompanied
by two of the city's finest, ran inside.

"Arrest them all!" the manager screamed shrilly. "Arrest everybody!"

"Get down!" Toffee said quickly and dragged Marc with her to cover
beneath the nearest table. The Blemishes followed swiftly after.

In the deathly stillness that ensued, the manager and the two policeman
advanced menacingly into the room. Then suddenly they stopped as a
jangling sound broke the quiet. It was as though a handful of silver
had been dropped to the floor somewhere across the room. It was
obvious, however, that there was no one in that direction.

"Okay, Bill," one of the policemen said. "Let's round 'em up!"

In the activity that followed no one noticed the kitchen doors swing
open, quietly and slowly, to permit the curious passage of four
crawling figures.

"I don't know," Toffee said, crawling over the feet of an astonished
chef. "I don't know where everyone gets the idea this hotel is so
elegant. I've been here only twice and it's been raided both times."




                               CHAPTER X


Marc and Toffee, on their feet now and making strides as rapidly
as possible, emerged from the alley behind the Wynant and hurried
along the sidewalk, bound in the direction of the green convertible.
At a distance, the Blemishes scurried along after them with grim
determination.

Turning the corner at the end of the block, they arrived at the front
of the hotel which was now the location of considerable activity.
Toffee paused to watch the dining guests being escorted by the police
from the hotel to several official conveyances which had arrived under
the canopy.

"Come on," Marc said. "Get in the car before they see you."

Toffee nodded and followed the suggestion. Marc crossed around the car
and slid quickly under the wheel.

"There still may be time to catch Julie," he said anxiously.

Toffee favored him with a sullen stare. "I almost hope there isn't,"
she said. "For her sake. If she didn't have grounds for divorce before,
she's certainly got them now--the way you were dallying around with
that French trull...."

"I wasn't dallying," Marc said. "I was only trying to get something
to eat. Lord knows you were willing to sit there and let me starve to
death."

He switched on the ignition and started the motor.

The car was just pulling out from the curb when the Blemishes arrived
in a grim dog trot and placed restraining hands on the edge of the
door. Together they regarded Toffee and Marc with baleful hurt. And
produced their revolvers. Marc braked the car to a stop.

"Golly," Toffee said, turning to Marc. "I forgot all about them."

"What do they want?" Marc asked.

"You remember," Toffee said. "They captured us up on the roof. They
think we're their prisoners." She turned back to the pouting brothers.
"Look, boys," she smiled like a patient parent with a pair of fanciful
and rather dreadful children, "we just haven't got time to be your
prisoners right now. We'd love to, really but we've got to leave. Why
don't you call Marc up on the telephone some time and...."

The brothers shook their heads in doleful coordination.

"Now, why be difficult? We'd be just crazy to have you capture us
some other time, but right now.... It's not that you're not perfectly
sinister and all that.... Now put those guns away and go spy on someone
else for a while."

"No," said Cecil. "Huh-uh."

"Huh-uh," Gerald echoed.

Marc leaned forward impatiently. "Look here," he said firmly. "I don't
have time for any more of this nonsense. I've got to get home. Now
either you get off this car or you don't, but I'm leaving."

For a moment the brothers looked at each other in sad consultation.
Then, as though having reached a decision by telepathy, they
simultaneously quitted the side of the car and stood back a pace. Marc
threw the car into gear and prepared to leave. However, just as he
was pressing down on the accelerator the whole street suddenly boomed
with the sound of gunfire. The car jarred forward, then settled into a
lop-sided stop. The Blemishes grinned happily on their handiwork; they
had air-conditioned both tires on the right side.

       *       *       *       *       *

Attracted by the sound, one of the officers in front of the Wynant
started forward, but Cecil waved him back.

"Just a blowout!" he called. He pointed to the crippled car. "We'll see
that he gets fixed up."

The officer nodded and went back to his chores with the Wynant guests.

"Why, you little...!" Marc grated.

"Holy smoke!" Toffee broke in, staring steadily at the two brothers.
"Those kids are using real bullets and everything!"

"That's what we've been trying to tell you," Cecil said mildly. "We're
just as mean as we can be."

"You certainly are," Toffee agreed. "You're just about the most awful
little grubs I've ever run into."

"Sugary phrases aren't going to get you anywhere," Gerald said
virtuously. "Now get out of that car and come with us."

Marc and Toffee stared at each other with silent bewilderment; they
were completely nonplussed. Slowly they got out of the car and
presented themselves on the sidewalk.

"Now, just a minute, boys ..." Marc said.

"Shut up," Gerald snarled. "Our car is right behind you. Get in the
back seat and sit quietly."

Toffee turned and looked at the black sedan. "I wish that thing didn't
look so much like a hearse," she said unhappily.

"It's going to look more like a hearse if you don't shut up and do what
we say," Cecil said.

With that clammy piece of news, Marc and Toffee advanced to the
forbidding vehicle in question and deposited themselves stiffly in the
back seat. Cecil and his gun joined them in the back, while Gerald
climbed into the front and started the engine.

"It's so embarrassing," Toffee said disconsolately as they pulled away
from the curb. "That's what hurts; being shoved around like this by a
pair of subnormal pygmies."

"Where are you taking us?" Marc asked. "What do you want with us?"

"None of your business," Cecil answered promptly. "And what do you
care?"

"Oh, go on, Cecil," Gerald said from the front, guiding the cumbersome
automobile through traffic. "Tell them. They're going to find out
anyway."

"We never told in the movies," Cecil said sullenly. "It spoils the
suspense. We always said none of your business and what do you care.
You're just sore because I said your line."

"Go on," Gerald said. "Tell them."

"Oh, all right," Cecil said. He directed his attention as well as his
gun toward his waiting captives. "I think you're familiar with our
profession?"

"Profession," Toffee murmured. "That's a laugh."

Cecil ignored it. "Then you should be able to guess that our real
interest is in you, Mr. Pillsworth, and your formula. That's what we
want."

"I haven't got the formula," Marc lied. "I turned all my papers over
to the government."

"That's a lie," Cecil said flatly. "We're in the complete confidence of
the government, and we know you still have the formula yourself. You
shouldn't be so dishonest, Mr. Pillsworth; it makes a bad impression."

"Please forgive me," Marc said with heavy irony. "And what if I do have
the formula? I don't have it with me."

"You can recreate it," Cecil said with confidence. "Just so long as we
get it first, before anyone else does. That's the important thing. If
you don't recreate it, we'll kill you. Quite dead, you may be sure. We
can always find your papers. Really, the only reason we've taken you
into custody, so to speak, is to keep the formula from the government.
Otherwise, you're actually not important to us at all."

"What do you want with the formula?" Marc asked. "What in the world
would you do with it?"

"Electrify the world," Cecil said with an unexpected intensity. "This
is just the sort of thing we've always been waiting for. Your formula
will give us a chance to do something really big. Everyone will be
talking about it."

"About what?" Marc asked apprehensively.

"The bomb, of course," Gerald said from the front. "We're going to make
a bomb from your formula, like those government men talked about."

"What for?" Marc said. "What good would it be to you?"

"What good?" Cecil said. "Are you serious? We're going to make our
reputation with it. Everyone will be after us to come spy for them when
we've finished with the bomb. Won't they, Gerald?"

"Everyone," Gerald agreed. "With the possible exception of the United
States. Personally, I even anticipate a few offers to make a comeback
in the movies."

       *       *       *       *       *

A look of eager anticipation had washed unbecomingly over Cecil's awful
face. "We're going to make this mammoth bomb, you see," he said, "and
we're going to float away this whole entire city. Just like that!"

"What!" Marc started. "You mean you're actually going to...!"

Cecil nodded dreamily. "They won't be able to overlook us then," he
said. "People will stop being so friendly and treat us with proper
respect for a change. We'll just make the city disappear over night!"

"Oh, no!" Toffee said.

"Good grief!" Marc murmured. He gazed out the window at the passing
city, the people, the shops, cars, sky-scrapers. He tried to imagine
all these things torn loose from the earth, twisting and turning
into space. His mind revolted before the picture. The idea was too
terrifying for words. Marc trembled with horror. That he should be the
one to provide the instrument by which such a fantasy could be set into
motion was too awful to contemplate.

"You can't!" he breathed. "You can't be human and even think of such a
thing!"

"You see!" Cecil said, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. "You're already
impressed, and we haven't even started. Of course, if you want, we'll
cut you in on the deal. It would be worth it to get your cooperation."
He turned to Toffee who was staring at him with unguarded loathing.
"You, too."

"I'd rather die," Toffee said.

"Well," Cecil shrugged, "if you'd really rather, it can be arranged."

"It won't work!" Marc said desperately. "It's preposterous!"

"It worked with you, didn't it?" Cecil pointed out.

Marc thought back to his frenzied flight to the top of the Wynant. A
chill passed through him; anything was possible.

"But why the whole city?" he asked. "Why not just a building or a
retired battleship?"

"More spectacular," Cecil said. "It'll cause more comment."

"That's so understated," Toffee said, "it's below the level of reason."
She looked at Marc. "They're mad," she said, "raving."

"I know," Marc said in hushed tones. "They're just mad enough."

"Oh, you bet we are," Cecil said with a sudden mood of happiness.
"We're regular ogres, aren't we, Gerald?"

"Well, I wouldn't say _regular_ ogres," Gerald answered.

"Would you say _irregular_ ogres?"

"No," Gerald said with due consideration. "Irregular sort of suggests
those advertisements. You know the ones about people who are
uncomfortable because...."

"Just listen to them!" Toffee moaned. "They're planning on blowing up
the city and they go on about it as giddy as a couple of spinsters in
spring! What difference does it make what kind of ogres you are? You're
perfectly abhorrent, both of you."

Cecil smiled his crooked smile at Toffee. "Thanks," he said modestly.

"Don't mention it," Toffee said. She turned away with a little shiver.
Then suddenly she brightened. Gerald had just brought the car to a
stop at an intersection. At the center of the street a truly enormous
cop was presiding over traffic. Toffee looked back at the revolver in
Cecil's hand, then at the cop. She decided to risk it. She threw back
her head and screamed with all the sureness and tonal brilliance of an
operatic heroine saying farewell to her lover.

"Murder!" she screamed. "Arson! Blackmail! Fire! Flood! Famine."

Then, satisfied that she had covered the field of catastrophe
sufficiently to capture the attention of even the most unimaginative
cop, she stopped and settled comfortably back in her seat. Noting that
the cop was already on his way toward the car, she folded her arms
complacently and smiled at Cecil.

"Now we'll see who gets taken into custody," she said smugly.

The cop stuck his head in the window, looked bewilderedly at Marc and
Toffee, then took in the Blemishes. His face widened with a grin.

"Hello, boys," he said amiably. "What's the trouble? Read any good
plans lately?"

"No, they haven't," Toffee put in quickly. "But they're trying to.
Officer, arrest these two."

       *       *       *       *       *

The cop's smile faded into an expression of purest astonishment.
"Arrest _them_?" he asked incredulously. "What on earth for?"

"They're abducting us," Toffee said. "That's what for."

For a moment the cop just stared at her, then he threw back his head in
a roar of laughter.

"Those two?" he gasped. "Abducting you?"

"That's what I said," Toffee snapped. "What's so funny?"

"That's right, officer," Marc said. "They're trying to steal a valuable
formula from me."

"Of course they are," the cop said with amusement. "They're always
trying to steal a valuable formula from someone. And every once in a
while they actually get one. But what difference does it make? They
couldn't do anything with it if they wanted to. Now why don't you just
make them out a copy like a good fellow and hand it over? It'll make
them happy as hell, and it won't do you any harm."

"No harm, you dumb flatfoot!" Toffee said, losing control. "Just step
inside here for a minute and I'll hammer that thick skull of yours till
you can use it for a serving platter."

"There's no call to get nasty," the cop said.

"But you don't understand," Marc said earnestly. "These men mean to
use my formula to destroy the city. They're going to float it off into
space."

The cop turned and observed Marc closely. He nodded to Gerald. "Better
keep a close watch on this one," he said. "He's got some funny notions
in his head. He might do you harm."

"My God!" Toffee cried. "Now _we're_ crazy!"

"That's a good sign, lady," the cop said soothingly. "They say if you
realize your condition and are willing to fight it there's hope of a
cure."

"I'll kill him!" Toffee cried. "I'll kill him with my own two hands!
Look here, you jelly-headed gendarme, these two are dangerous
criminals!"

"Criminals?" the cop said. "Them? Why they wouldn't hurt a fly. Just
look at their faces."

Toffee looked at the Blemishes, then came close to choking. The twins
had assumed expressions of angelic innocence such as might have been
equalled only by Little Eva in the moment of her ascension.

"Why, you dirty little frauds!" she hissed.

"All right," the cop said, "you'll have to get along now; you're
blocking traffic."

As Gerald set the gear and put the car in motion once more, Toffee fell
back in her seat, weak with emotion.

"There's one guy I'll enjoy seeing blown into space," she said. "I
hope he gets air sick."

The mood in the car deepened after that, and there was silence. Gerald
made a left turn and headed the car away from the center of the city.
Marc and Toffee stared pensively at the passing scene while Cecil
hummed a soundless tune and smiled annoyingly over private thoughts;
presumably of the devastating thing he and his brother were planning
to do. Evening deepened into final night and lights began to glitter
everywhere. And then the incident of the door occurred.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was just as Gerald brought the car to a stop at an intersection that
the door promptly opened itself, wavered for a moment, then closed.
Unmistakably it marked George's arrival. Toffee looked up sharply.

"George?" she said, and her voice was almost hopeful.

There was silence. Gerald glanced around with a smile.

"Did you see the door open and close just now?" he asked without alarm.

"Uh-huh," Cecil said casually.

"A ghost, I guess," Gerald said.

"You two may think you're joking," Toffee said. "It really was a ghost."

"We know," Cecil said. "Gerald and I believe in ghosts. Always have.
We've had quite a few of them around from time to time. At least we
think we have; ghosts are hard to tell about sometimes."

Gerald turned to the empty space beside him. "Make yourself
comfortable, ghost," he said graciously. "Just knock twice when you
want to get out."

"You see," Toffee said to Marc. "They're getting crazier by the
minute." Then she paused thoughtfully. "Or are we?"

"Pretty tough getting a ride at this time of night, I imagine," Gerald
was saying chattily to thin air. "Particularly being a ghost and all."
He waited but there was no answer. He turned back to Cecil. "Doesn't
want to talk, I guess." Then, as the traffic ahead began to move, he
shifted gears and started forward. Thus occupied, he didn't notice that
his revolver had suddenly become possessed of a life of its own; he
didn't see it nose out of his pocket and take flight into the air.

Toffee nudged Marc excitedly. "Look," she whispered. "He's going to
help us."

Together they watched breathlessly as the gun moved furtively upward.
Then they started with surprise and horror as it righted itself and
pointed its muzzle purposefully in Marc's direction.

"No, George!" Toffee cried. "Don't shoot! It's those two you want!
They're planning to blow up the city and float it away. Liquor and all,
George!"

The gun faltered, then started to turn uncertainly toward Cecil. But
not fast enough. Cecil suddenly reached out and slapped it free of
George's invisible grasp. The gun described a small arc into the back
seat and landed in Toffee's lap. Marc, Toffee, Cecil and presumably,
though there was no way of proving it, also George, all reached for
the gun at once. The result was a writhing snarl of reaching arms and
clutching hands. Toffee giggled dementedly.

"Stop that!" she screamed. "I'm ticklish!"

"This is no time to indulge in mad laughter," Marc grunted sharply.
"Our lives are at stake."

"I know!" Toffee trilled light-heartedly. "I'm frightened sick! Only
get your hands out of my ribs!"

As three sets of madly working hands rose, twined together, the gun
danced wildly from the fleeting grasp of one to that of the other.

"Good grief!" Toffee said. "Even if I got hold of the thing I'd never
know it; I can't tell which hands are mine!"

The hands and the gun traveled higher in the air, then suddenly one of
the hands rose above the others and reached viciously for the errant
fire-arm. It struck it, without catching hold of it, and sent it
crashing to the back of Gerald's unsuspecting head. Gerald instantly
let go of the wheel and slumped down in his seat. The car swerved
dangerously to the wrong side of the street. Momentarily the warring
factions in the back seat, now concerned with more immediate matter of
navigation, disengaged their hands and forgot the gun as it fell to the
floor at Toffee's feet.

"George!" Toffee screamed. "Grab the wheel!"

Apparently the ghost followed the suggestion for the car suddenly
veered sharply to the left and, with a screech of the tires, darted
into a gas station. George's voice echoed worriedly out of thin air.

"How do you stop this thing?"

But there was no answer. Toffee, now certain that the car was at least
temporarily under control, reached down for the gun. So did Cecil. So
did Marc. The struggle in the back seat started afresh just as it had
left off.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the black sedan entered the station, Pat O'Brien, a young and
stalwart Irishman with red hair, viewed its arrival from within the
station house and strode forward with the simple thought of serving his
public. As the car sped past the pumps and circled back, Pat assumed
that the driver was merely bringing the vehicle in line with the pump
of his choice. However, Pat thought it somewhat queer when it continued
past the pumps the second time. As it turned back for the third time,
and he noticed that there was no driver and that the back seat was the
scene of a life and death struggle between two men and a girl, he began
to have quite a definite feeling that things were not exactly as they
ought to be.

"Faith," Pat said to himself. "There's an uncommon thing goin' on here."

Then he jumped back into his enclosure as the car turned for still
another swooping run at the pumps. Pat sat down on a stool to collect
his thoughts in his own sluggish way. The company policy dictated
clearly that the customer was always right, but Pat wasn't certain but
that this mightn't be the exception that proved the rule. Then he grew
more positive of it as he watched the black sedan plunge to a crashing
stop against one of the gas pumps and send it tilting a bit to the
leeward. Pat reached for the telephone and asked for the police.

As he waited he noted that a revolver had leaped from the back window
of the car and skidded across the pavement, that the rear door of the
car had flown open and three struggling figures had tumbled out. Then a
gruff voice, equally as Irish as his own, took his attention.

"Faith," Pat said.

"Faith, yerself," the voice said. "And who's callin'?"

"It's me," Pat said. "Pat O'Brien."

"Is it now? That movie actin' fella?"

Pat flushed modestly. "Oh, no, sir," he said. "Just plain Pat O'Brien,
down at the gas station."

"Oh," the voice said with a new note of chattiness. "There's a good
lad. And how's yer dear ma, Pat?"

"The picture of health," Pat said, "even if she is down with the gout,
poor soul." Then suddenly he turned away from the telephone, his eyes
drawn to the struggle by the pumps. Things seemed to have gotten quite
far out of hand. The girl had taken the hose loose from one of the
pumps and was swinging it determinedly at the head of the small man in
the derby. It did not help matters that she had managed to trip the
mechanism and was hurling gasoline in all direction. Worse than that,
however, was the behavior of the water hose; all by itself it had risen
in the air, like a huge, spiteful snake, and had begun adding water to
the deluge.

"Faith," Pat commented darkly. "It's a terrible thing."

"Do stop repeatin' yerself like that," the voice on the telephone
answered. "It makes you sound like a proper ninny, it does. What is it
that's a terrible thing? Is it in a professional capacity that you're
callin' me?"

"And so it is," Pat affirmed. "It's a bit of advice I crave. The
company that owns this station says that the customer is always right,
but I'm wonderin' if it's still true when the world's gone mad?"

"And in what way has the world gone mad, Pat?"

"Well," Pat said, "there's a girl here in the dooryard who's spittin'
out gasoline all over everything."

"How's that!" the voice said. "This girl, you say, she's spittin' out
gas? Do you mean to say...."

"With the aid of the pumps, to be sure," Pat explained fairly. "And, if
you'd believe it, it's butterflies she's wearin' in the place of her
clothes. They're all hollerin' and yellin' and carryin' on something
frightful. It's probably the end of the world all right."

"Patrick O'Brien!" the voice said with sudden sternness. "Shame on you!
It's a fanciful lad you've always been, and I've been of a mind to
forgive you it for bein' a comfort to yer gouty ma, but when you start
callin' up a poor tired cop like me and runnin' off at the mouth about
gassy girls and yellin' butterflies.... Shame is all I've got to say to
you."

"I didn't even mention the water hose," Pat said stubbornly. "It's the
end of the world, I'm confident."

"It's the bottom of the bottle!" the voice snapped. "My advice to you
is to soak yer head in cold water and say a prayer that the devil
doesn't take yer soul. Goodbye to you."

The telephone clicked loudly in Pat O'Brien's ear.

"Faith," Pat said sadly. "And that's the last time I'll hold
conversation with the law." He slumped back on his stool and turned his
eyes to the company rules which were pasted on the wall; there was no
mention anywhere as to proper procedures in the event of the world's
end.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside, however, the struggle at the pumps came to an abrupt end as
Cecil won possession of the revolver. He turned and aimed it at Marc.
Promptly the splatter of gasoline stopped, as did that of the water.

"All right," Cecil said, "get back in the car and wake up Gerald."

For a moment Marc and Toffee stood motionless, gazing at the fanatic
gleam in Cecil's eyes. Then slowly they turned and started toward the
car. Both of them knew very surely that the little man would hesitate
considerably less than a second at the act of murdering a man ... or a
city....




                              CHAPTER XI


Though it couldn't possibly have been more than a couple of hours, it
seemed that they had been twisting and turning through the night for
eternities. Long ago the lights of the city had slipped away into the
darkness behind them. Marc had completely lost track of where they were.

George, the unpredictable ghost, after a brief narrative about how he
had fender-hopped his way back into Marc and Toffee's company, had
drifted off into unconcerned and discordant slumber. Between snores,
made forgetful by sleep, he had fully and completely materialized. If
the Blemishes noted the exactness of the ghost's features to Marc's
they didn't bother to comment on it; apparently the brothers, in their
feverish dementia, were perfectly willing to credit anything as natural.

Gerald sped the car through a long wooded lane, then turned sharply to
the right into a private drive. At last, for better or for worse ...
with the balance heavy on the less attractive side ... Marc and Toffee
arrived at the destination chosen for them by their crazed captors.

As the car ground to a stop Marc and Toffee peered fearfully out the
window and were greeted by the sight of an enormous, turreted old house
that loomed in the night like a preposterous, rococo mountain. It
was the sort of place that the newspapers would surely describe as a
'mystery manse.' Neither Marc nor Toffee felt called upon to make any
comment as to the majesty of the structure or the loveliness of the
gardens that surrounded it. Cecil nudged his gun in their direction.

"Get out," he said. "This is it."

"Yes," Toffee said glumly. "But _what_ is it?"

In the front seat Gerald shook George and the recital of the nasal
passages snorted to a stop. Blinking, George sat up, observed his state
of materialization, then looked around.

"Eh?" he said. "Where are we?"

Toffee turned back at the door of the car. "You know, George," she
said, "next to an open grave, I think we've found the ideal place for
you to settle down. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't meet a lot of
your old friends here."

The party climbed out of the car and assembled before the old house.
Then, with Gerald leading and Cecil guarding the rear, they creaked up
a long set of wooden steps, crossed a littered veranda, and brought
up before a formidable oak door that was easily large enough to
accommodate the comfortable passage of a fat elephant with its ears
flapping. Gerald produced a key and unlocked the door. As he shoved it
open it swung back on a cavern of unbroken darkness.

"Look out for bats," Toffee said.

"Just step inside," Gerald said.

"Leaving all hope behind," Marc added in a whisper.

The company moved slowly forward into the darkness. Even George seemed
somewhat loathe to cross the threshold, but he managed it. When they
were all inside Cecil closed the door after them and relocked with a
gritting sound that fairly scraped the spine. There was the sound of
movement close by, then the click of a switch. Instantly there was
light.

"Oh!" Toffee cried in amazement. "_Oh!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

Staring dumbfoundedly at the amazing thing that had risen before them,
the three newcomers remained where they were, incapable of movement.

It was as though the hulking house had simply been scooped hollow with
an enormous spoon. Where there had once been partitions and floors,
there was now nothing but an area of great gaping space. The house had
originally been four stories high, now it was merely one; from where
Marc and Toffee and George stood gaping, the garret ceiling was clearly
visible. Within the walls of the old house there were literally acres
of unbroken space. But that was only the least of it.

The place was simply crammed with strange, incomprehensible equipment,
mechanisms whose purposes were completely unguessable. Enormous coils
writhed sinuously, twining themselves about great metal tubes that
stretched high into the air. Wheels turned smoothly within wheels that
turned within wheels. At the far end of the room a great slide shot
gleaming metal tracks upward into one of the turrets, and then on into
the night. A panel of switches ran the full length of one wall.

"Well?" Cecil said. "How do you like it?"

"If you'll pardon the vulgarism," Toffee said, "this is the damnedest
shanty I've ever seen. What is all that stuff for anyway?"

"Well," Gerald said slowly, "we're not exactly sure about all of it
ourselves. Of course our main interest is in that big machine in
the center." He pointed to a mammoth arrangement of wheels, tubes,
dynamos and levers. "We call that the production unit. With the proper
adjustments you can produce almost any mechanical or chemical device
known to man. With that machine alone, and enough raw materials, of
course, a single man could match the output of any of the nation's
largest factories. The inventor only made it just to have something to
do. Actually, he was going to destroy it. Said it would make mankind
useless." He turned to Marc. "There won't be any trouble making the
bomb ... or even a thousand bombs ... with that."

"What happened to the inventor?" Marc asked uneasily.

"Oh, him," Gerald said with a note of sadness. "Unfortunately he met
with an untimely end just after we met him." He nodded to the gleaming
track. "He was explaining that space catapult to us, telling us how a
man wearing the proper equipment could be thrown out into space, even
into regions unknown to man, and live to tell the tale. He was just
telling us how to work the lever when suddenly the thing went off with
him in it." He lowered his eyes delicately. "If ever a man went to
heaven, it must have been poor Mr. Adams. At least he was certainly
headed in that direction the last time we saw him. Anyway, Cecil and I
like to think he's just away on a little trip."

"How terribly sweet and sentimental," Toffee said acidly. "I suppose he
wasn't wearing the right equipment at the time?"

"Alas, no," Gerald said. "Anyway, Mr. Adams was a very strange man. He
had no practical sense at all. He just stayed here all alone and built
all these things just to see if they really _could_ be built. He
had no idea of ever putting them to any commercial use. He never saw
anyone or had any friends apparently. It seemed a little sad at the
time that Cecil and I, both virtual strangers, were the only ones here
to see him off."

"Still, he seemed lonesome for company," Cecil put in. "He was very
nice to us when we came here. It was only by chance that we found him,
you know. We were out this way looking for a hideout ... we thought we
ought to have one since all the other spies did ... anyway, we got lost
and stopped here. Mr. Adams took us in just like we were old friends.
I guess he wanted someone to show his inventions to. Maybe we really
shouldn't have pulled the switch on the old man that way, but he kept
saying he needed to get away somewhere...."

"The only decent thing to do, really," Toffee murmured.

"Exactly," Cecil said. "At first ... after Mr. Adams left ... Gerald
and I toyed around with the idea of making mankind useless, but we
decided that mankind would probably enjoy it too much, and things are
moving in that direction fast enough anyway. But we always knew this
stuff would come in handy someday if we just waited." He turned to
Marc. "And now you've come along with your bomb."

"May God forgive me," Marc said bitterly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cecil pointed to another catapult arrangement, smaller than the one
which had launched Mr. Adams into regions unknown to men, and aimed
considerably lower.

"We'll send the bomb out with that," he said. "That was Mr. Adams'
first experiment with the catapult. It will direct a missile accurately
anywhere in the world. In fact, at full strength, it can throw a
two-ton weight around the world three times. Non-stop."

"A two-ton weight of what?" Toffee asked.

"How should I know?" Cecil asked. "What difference does it make?"

"All the difference," Toffee said emphatically. "It would be perfectly
preposterous for anyone to want to go flinging a two-ton weight around
the world three times." She paused. "Unless, of course, it was a
two-ton weight of something you hated so much you wanted to see it
going away from you three times."

"That's neither here nor there," Cecil said shortly. "The main thing
is to get the bomb made as quickly as possible." He turned to Marc. "I
hope you're ready to go to work?"

"Right now?"

Cecil nodded. "We plan to start tonight. Fortunately, every known
chemical is on hand here. Mr. Adams was amazingly thorough. Would you
rather write the formula down for us, or call out elements as we go
along?"

"And let me warn you," Gerald put in, "you'd better be accurate. We're
planning a test bombing, just to make sure. If it doesn't work you may
have an opportunity to meet Mr. Adams in person."

Marc was hesitant. "It'll take time to scale the formula to your
needs," he said. "I don't know that I'll be able to do it tonight."

"Well, we can get started at least," Cecil said. He turned to Gerald.
"Don't you think we should tie them? Wouldn't it be more professional?"

"Oh, sure," Gerald said. "Only I think chains would be better than
ropes. More effective. You know, like the ones we used in our last
picture, _Mr. X and Madam Q_? We can chain them up and threaten
them for a while."

"We haven't got time to threaten them," Cecil said. "Do we have any
chains?"

"Oh, lots," Cecil said. "I'll go get them."

In the meantime, everyone had forgotten about George. Unobserved,
the materialized ghost had wandered interestedly in the direction of
the giant catapult. Noting the compartment provided for the human
missile, he turned back and studied Marc's lean figure with thoughtful
calculation. He stroked his chin for a moment, then nodded with
satisfaction.

In a moment Cecil returned, dragging several lengths of chain after
him. At gun point, Marc and Toffee seated themselves in chairs at
the far side of the room and submitted unhappily to an iron-clad
captivity. George, however, was permitted to move about freely; the
brothers had quite rightly reasoned that since ghosts were notorious
for romping about in chains, George would probably be quite unhampered
by them. After that, cautioning Marc to get to work immediately
thinking about the formula, they dispatched themselves to the huge
contrivance in the center of the room and began busily setting dials
and levers.

Marc and Toffee considered the current state of affairs without heart.
Toffee turned to George, who had left the catapult and had now arranged
himself lazily on a nearby scaffolding. She smiled demurely.

"Nice George," she cooed. "You're going to help us, aren't you George?
You're not going to leave us sitting here in these awful cold chains.
We might catch cold."

George crossed his arms complacently over his chest and shook his head.
"You should have been nicer to me," he said pettishly.

"If there's anything I hate," Toffee said, "it's a spoiled spook." She
turned to Marc. "What are we going to do?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc shrugged hopelessly. "Just stall, I guess," he said, "as long as
we can, anyway."

"And then what?" Toffee asked. "Are you going to give them the formula?"

Marc shook his head. "No."

"They'll kill you."

Marc sighed. "I suppose they will. I only wish I could see Julie again,
and explain everything to her."

Toffee smiled with unexpected softness. "You really do love her, don't
you?" she asked.

"I guess I must," Marc said, "or I wouldn't feel this way."

For a moment they were silent. Then Toffee suddenly brightened.

"I know what!" she cried. Marc looked up hopefully. "It's so simple I
don't know why we didn't think of it right away. All you have to do is
go to sleep!"

"Go to sleep?"

"Sure. Don't you remember? I told you. When you go to sleep, I
dematerialize. But when you wake up I'm automatically recreated through
your awareness. But I can place my shots, so to speak. You see? All you
have to do is go to sleep. I'll disappear and then, when you wake up
again, I'll materialize somewhere else and go to the police for help."

Marc thought it over. "It's worth trying," he said. "Do you know how to
get back to town?"

"No," Toffee admitted, "I don't. But the main thing is just to get out
of here, isn't it?"

"I don't see how I'll ever get to sleep, though," Marc said. "With so
much on my mind it doesn't seem possible."

Toffee nodded thoughtfully. She glanced around, looked at George.

"Hey, George!" she called. "Do you know what Marc was just telling me
about you?" The ghost looked up. "He said you were the lousiest ghost
in the racket. He said he wouldn't hire you to haunt a rabbit hutch."

An expression of dismayed hurt came over George's face.

"Well?" Toffee said. "Are you just going to sit there and take it? He
also said you wear second hand ectoplasm. If I were you I'd belt him
over the head with something."

George slowly roused himself from the scaffolding and drifted down to
earth. He confronted Marc.

"Did you say all that?" he asked woundedly.

Marc exchanged a quick glance with Toffee. "Well, not exactly," he
said. "All I said, really, was that you can't haunt worth sour apples."

"Oh, yeah?" George said. A menacing scowl came into his face.

"Yeah," Marc said. "You couldn't scare a nervous kitten."

George's face flushed with anger. "I could too," he said.

"You and how many Frankensteins?" Marc asked.

"Why, you...!" George exploded.

"Go tell your mother she wants you." Marc said. "Stop wasting my time."

George whirled about, reached down and picked up a large chunk of wood.
He waved it under Marc's nose. "Don't you talk to me like that!" he
said.

"Beat it, you phony, before you get your sheet dirty," Marc sneered.
"You're not scaring anyone."

That did it. With an unintelligible burst of wrath and hurt pride,
George lifted the block of wood and brought it down on the top of
Marc's head. Then suddenly he started back, his mouth agape. It wasn't
that Marc had slumped, unconscious, in his chair ... that was only to
be desired and expected ... but Toffee, with a slight rattle of her
chains, had mysteriously disappeared before his very eyes.

"Oh, my gosh!" George quavered. "How spooky!"

At the same moment, attracted by the noise of the chains, the Blemishes
abandoned their work and advanced rapidly onto the scene. They surveyed
the empty chair with wonder, then turned to George.

"What happened?" they chorused. "What did you do?"

George looked at them helplessly. "I don't know," he said. "I hit him
and she vanished. That's all."

"Good grief!" Cecil said. He thought quickly. "She must be somewhere
inside the building. She couldn't get out." He turned to Gerald. "Let's
hunt her out."

Just as they were turning away, Marc stirred and lifted his head from
his chest. With great effort, he opened his eyes and glanced at the
empty chair beside him. He smiled.

"What happened?" he asked with great innocence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Benny Buckingham and his partner Dippy Donahoe crept through the night
in stealthy pursuit of their careers. If the two seemed to keep late
business hours it was only because of the nocturnal nature of their
chosen profession. Plainly, Benny and Dippy were house breakers, and if
they took pride in their work and labored long to get ahead it was only
a tribute to their mothers' faith in them.

Benny and Dippy were perfect partners in that they were perfect
opposites. If Benny was large, Dippy was no bigger than a minute, or
perhaps even fifty nine seconds. Where Benny was an extremely homely
man, Dippy was terribly dapper. There was one thing, however, that this
pair held in common; neither of them was noticeably bright in the head.

Now they crept toward the Maynard mansion, burglary in their hearts,
black jacks in their hands and nothing at all in their heads. When,
upon arriving at the veranda, they were greeted by the sight of a
shapely young redhead decked out in a set of glittering butterflies,
it never occurred to them for a moment that the girl could be any
other than the mistress of the house, out for a moonlight stroll in
her negligee. Summing the situation up thusly, they promptly ducked
down behind the balustrade. But they had paused too long; the girl had
already seen them.

"Hello!" Toffee called, leaping to the conclusion that she had
discovered the occupants of the house. "Hello, there!"

Benny and Dippy peered up sheepishly over the edge of the balustrade.

"My heavens," Toffee said. "I'm glad you came along."

Benny and Dippy exchanged a puzzled glance; they weren't used to being
welcomed on occasions like this.

"You are?" Benny asked suspiciously. "How come?"

"I need someone to help me. I can't get in the house, and I've got to
use the telephone."

"Locked out?" Dippy asked politely. He proceeded warily to the veranda,
waving Benny along behind him.

Toffee nodded. "Would you let me in, please?"

Dippy glanced uncertainly at Benny, and Benny nodded. He turned back to
Toffee. "Delighted," he said. "Which door would you like opened?"

Toffee waved her hand at a long line of French windows. "Oh, any one of
them," she said. "I don't care."

With a flourish, Dippy produced a small tool kit from the inner reaches
of his jacket and went to work. In a moment the door was open.

"There you are," he said. "Bet you couldn't do it faster with a regular
key."

"Thank you," Toffee said. "Were you just coming in?" she asked.

Benny and Dippy, mistaking this for an invitation, stood back for a
moment, astonished. Then, loathe to look a gift horse in the mouth too
long, they followed after her.

"Gosh, what a dame!" Dippy whispered to Benny. "She's got more guts
than a fish cleaner. Or do you suppose we're losin' our menace?"

Toffee crossed the room, found a light switch, and turned it on. The
most beautiful dining room she had ever seen rose up out of the shadows
around her.

"Isn't it nice?" she said. "You must be very happy to have found this
place. Everything's so expensive."

"Oh, we are, lady," Benny said weakly. "We're very happy." Just then
the large suit case which he had been carrying under his coat slipped
and thudded to the floor.

"Oh," Toffee said. "Were you thinking of packing up a few things?"

"Well," Dippy said unhappily, "yes, to tell you the absolute truth,
lady, that's exactly what we had in mind."

"Well, don't let me stop you," Toffee said airily. "Go right ahead
while I use the telephone." She left in the direction of the hall.

"Holy gee, Dippy!" Benny exclaimed. "Is that broad right in the head?
She acts like she wants to be robbed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dippy glanced around the room.

"Maybe she don't like this stuff and wants to get rid of it. Or maybe
it's some sort of insurance pitch. Maybe she's been out there choppin'
up and down the front porch for nights, just waitin' for a couple of
guys like us to come along. It's screwy."

Benny shrugged. "Well, maybe we should cooperate with her. What have we
got to lose?"

Together they went to the side board to investigate. They pulled open a
drawer that fairly gleamed with expensive silver.

"Oh, boy!" Benny said. "Just look at that stuff."

"Yeah," Dippy said, and picked up a handful. But his manner was
hesitant. "You know," he said, "it don't seem fair to the profession."

"Uh-huh," Benny said. "I know. Funny, ain't it? We always been
complainin' about how people take such an uncooperative outlook on our
trade and all, but ... oh, gosh...."

"Yeah," Dippy said gloomily. "Why didn't she just go on about her own
business and leave us alone? She could have at least screamed and
carried on or somethin'. That ain't too much to ask from somebody
you're robbin'. She's just takin' an unfair advantage of us, that's
all."

"Maybe she just don't know any better," Benny suggested charitably.
"Anyway, let's take some of the silver, just a little. She might get
her feelings hurt and get sore as hell if we don't."

Just then Toffee came into the room and observed the scene at the side
board without concern.

"Oh," she said brightly, "taking the silver, I see."

With a sigh, Dippy gently replaced the silver he'd taken from the
drawer. "You see, Benny?" he said. "See what I mean? She just ruins
everything. She don't give us a chance."

Benny turned to Toffee. "We were only takin' a few pieces," he said
half-heartedly.

"That isn't going to do you any good," Toffee said. "If you're going to
take any of the silver you'd better take it all. But, of course, that's
your business, not mine."

Dippy's shoulders sagged dejectedly. "She makes me feel like bawlin',"
he said.

"Yeah," Benny said. "She went and took all the heart out of it."

"I wonder if you two would mind doing something else for me?" Toffee
asked. "The phone's dead...."

"Yeah," Benny said. "We cut the wires. I'm sorry. I wish it had been my
throat."

Toffee looked at them curiously; she couldn't imagine why anyone should
want to cut the wires to their own telephone. Then it occurred to her
that perhaps it was their way of shutting off the service. Obviously
they were packing up to leave on a trip.

"Well," Toffee said. "I wonder if you'd mind running me into town? I
have to see the police."

The shattered burglars started violently.

"You see!" Benny cried. "You see! It's a trap! She's gonna turn us
over to the police."

"Turn you over to the police?" Toffee said, thoroughly confused. "What
on earth for? You've been very nice to me. Your private lives are your
own business as far as I'm concerned. It's very urgent that I get to
the police immediately. Won't you help me?"

For a moment the two thugs just stood and stared at each other. Then
Benny heaved a great sigh.

"Come on," he said. "Let's take her in, Dippy. Let's give ourselves up.
After tonight I ain't never goin' to feel the same about the racket no
more."

"Yeah," Dippy said. "Me neither. Come on, lady. We got a car down the
road."

As they turned to leave, Toffee crossed the room to join them.

"Aren't you taking anything with you?" she asked.

The two erstwhile thieves stopped and turned to her with expressions of
overwhelming grief.

"Lay off, lady," Benny said with sad solemnity. "You just ruined our
whole careers. Ain't you never satisfied?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, back at the old house, the Blemishes and George, after
a fruitless search for Toffee, had returned to Marc's chair. The
Blemishes had fallen into a mood of dark contemplation, while George
had returned to his scaffolding and his day dreams. Then suddenly Cecil
broke the stillness with a snap of his fingers.

"I'll bet I know!" the little man said. "Hey, George!"

George roused himself. "Yeah?" he said.

"You say you hit Mr. Pillsworth and the girl disappeared? Just
vanished?"

"Uh-huh," George nodded. "So help me, that's what happened."

"Then that's it!" Cecil cried. "I've read about it, but this is the
first time I've seen it!"

"What's that?" Gerald asked.

"The girl is a thought creation! She isn't real!" He turned to Marc.
"That's true, isn't it, Pillsworth?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Marc said.

Cecil turned to Gerald. "With him awake, she's probably running around
somewhere, looking for the police. We've got to do something to bring
her back." He thought for a moment. "Do you remember where we put those
hypodermics?"

"I'm not certain," Gerald said vaguely.

"Then run along and look for them. Hurry before she goes too far."

As Gerald hurried away, Cecil turned back to Marc with a slow smile.
"This is going to work out just fine," he said. "We'll give both you
and the girl a nice long sleep. I doubt she's had time to do any harm
yet."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was only a few minutes later that Benny pulled the car to a stop in
front of the police station.

"Well," Dippy said with muted gloom, "here it is, lady."

Toffee opened the door and started to get out. "You coming along?" she
asked.

Benny shook his head. "They'd never believe it if we told 'em even.
We're goin' to open up a religious liberry instead."

"Well," Toffee said affectionately. "I certainly want to thank you two
for being so kind. I just hope I didn't interrupt anything for you."

Frantically, Benny threw the car into gear and it fairly leaped away
from the curb. Toffee stood for a moment staring after them; she could
have sworn she'd heard a strangled sobbing sound echo back from the
car as it sped away. She turned and started up the steps to the station.

She walked to the door and was just about to shove it open when her
gaze went to the stack of newspapers lying to one side of the entrance.
She looked at the headline: PILLSWORTH DISAPPEARANCE SHROUDED IN
MYSTERY! She picked up one of the papers, folded it quickly under her
arm, and continued inside.

Finding herself in a hallway, she paused uncertainly. Then a door at
the end of the hall opened and a large man in a blue uniform moved into
view. She ran forward.

"Look!" she cried. "Maybe you can help me. I want to speak to someone
about Marc Pillsworth. I know where he is."

The officer swung about abruptly. "Marc Pillsworth?" Toffee nodded.
"Come with me."

"We'd better hurry, though," Toffee said. "I may not have much time."

The officer led her rapidly down the corridor, up a flight of steps,
along another hallway, and finally stopped before an unmarked door.

"Come on in here," he said. He opened the door and held it back for her.

But suddenly Toffee had stopped and a curious look of panic came into
her eyes.

"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Oh, Marc! Not just yet!"

And then, as the officer's eyes grew wider and more frightened, she
slowly faded away....

Back at the old house, Cecil watched with satisfaction as Marc sagged
limply in his chair. He withdrew the hypodermic from Marc's arm and
turned to Gerald.

"Okay," he said, "let's go to work on him."




                              CHAPTER XII


Within the old house there was little evidence of the morning outside.
Mr. Adams had boarded over the windows and now the daylight shone
through only at the openings of the turrets where the tracks of the
catapults reached for the sky. Even these openings, however, had heavy
metal shutters which could be closed against bad weather.

For the moment everything was quiet. The Blemishes were settled at a
small table, poring over several sheets of paper. George slumbered
loudly on his scaffolding, while below him Marc drooped limply in his
chair, held there only by virtue of the chains about his shoulders.

Then, as the patches of day at the turret openings grew lighter, Marc
stirred. As he sat up, the chains made a small rattling sound. The
Blemishes glanced up sharply from their studies.

Painfully, Marc lifted his head and looked out at the world around him
with dulled eyes. A blurred vision of Toffee instantly swam into view.
She seemed to be holding a newspaper in her hand.

"There, you see!" Cecil told Gerald. "I was right. She's a thought
creation."

"Never heard of it," Gerald said.

"Very rare," Cecil commented shortly. "Particularly one that positive."

Across the room Toffee ran quickly to Marc's side.

"What have they done to you?" she cried. "What happened?"

Marc shook his head, forced awareness into his brain. He concentrated
on Toffee's words.

"Happened?" he said. Then his mind cleared a bit. "I don't know. They
doped me. With a needle. They found out about you."

Toffee whirled on the Blemishes with utmost loathing. "If I had a rat
trap, I'd offer you some cheese," she said. She turned back to Marc. "I
should have stayed away, I suppose, but I had to find out what they'd
done to you."

"Did you reach the police?" Marc asked anxiously.

Toffee shook her head.

Marc sighed. "I feel awful."

"They won't get away with it," Toffee said. She picked up the paper
from where she'd dropped it on the floor. "Look. They're searching for
you." She read the article quickly:

Foul play was suspected since Marc was known to be the inventor of a
new explosive. It was believed that he had fallen into the hands of
foreign agents and might even have been removed from the country. The
search for him extended around the world.

"You see," Toffee said. "They'll find you sooner or later."

"If they don't kill us first," Marc said. "I feel dead already."

Toffee got up and went over to the Blemishes. "Just what did you little
vultures do to him?" she asked angrily.

Cecil shrugged. "A little of this and a little of that," he said. "A
lot of truth serum."

"Yeah," Gerald sniggered unalluringly. "Enough to get the formula out
of him." He looked down significantly at the papers on the table.

Toffee stiffened. "Why, you ... you ... reptiles!"

Ignoring her, Cecil turned to Gerald. "I guess we don't need Pillsworth
any more, do we?"

"Well," Gerald said, "we'd better keep him around until after the test.
Just in case, you know. We should be able to whip out the formula
before tonight if we get right to work. We can take care of Pillsworth
tomorrow."

Cecil nodded toward Toffee. "What about her?"

"Oh, she's no problem at all. She'll go automatically when he does."

"How'll we do it?" Cecil asked.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment Gerald stared dreamily off into space. "We could starve
him for a day and just let him drift off of his own accord."

"That would be fine," Cecil said. "Sort of poetic."

"On the other hand," Gerald said, "that wouldn't leave us any corpse
to show for our trouble." He sighed. "You know very well, Cecil, that
corpses always distress me, and in any line of work but ours I'd be
definitely opposed to them. Still, for business reasons it would be a
nice thing to have one around. You know, just tossed casually over a
chair or table somewhere, where people can see it when they come to
interview us for spy work. It makes a good impression."

"That's right," Cecil said solemnly. "A dead body can be impressive as
the deuce when it's used to good advantage. Of course it should be in
good condition. But nothing ostentatious."

"Oh, my gosh!" Toffee moaned. "They talk about dead bodies as though
they were Spanish shawls!"

"Anyway," Gerald said, "let's worry about Pillsworth when we come to
him. Right now we've got to get busy with the formula."

"All right," Cecil said. "Only just remember, if we decide to keep the
corpse, there mustn't be any blood on it. I can't stand blood; it's so
common."

At that point the brothers turned to observe Toffee with expressions of
small annoyance.

"What about her?" Gerald said. "Hadn't we better chain her up again?"

Cecil nodded. "And we'd better make sure Pillsworth doesn't go to
sleep. You stick by him and keep him awake while I work on the
formula."

With that the brothers parted, in pursuit of their individual duties.
Cecil returned Toffee to her chair and her chains. Toffee told Marc
about the truth serum and the formula.

"Oh, Lord!" Marc said. "They'll destroy the city!"

"I know," Toffee said. "I know."

After that the hours wore on endlessly. Cecil busied himself with Mr.
Adams' machine, adjusting dials, turning knobs, throwing switches
with hateful diligence. Cecil stuck to Marc and Toffee as per plan.
Alternately he gave Marc food to keep him earthbound and powders to
keep him awake. In between times, he talked. He explained about the
bomb shell that he and Cecil had completed during the night while Marc
was unconscious.

A small chamber was to contain the final chemical. Through a device
to be set when the bomb was launched, the chemical would be released
into another small chamber which was adjacent to the main body of the
bomb and separated from it only by a very thin metal diaphragm. In
a predetermined period of time the diaphragm would be eaten away by
chemical reaction. In that way all the chemicals would be united at
precisely the right moment to produce the explosion.

The moment of detonation was to be timed so that it occurred in the air
directly above the target. The chemicals would be scattered in a fine
spray over the desired area. It was all very precise and exact.

"An old plan we stole a long time ago," Gerald explained modestly. "We
were just kids then."

Toffee glanced around to see what George was up to.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ghost had been curiously quiet all day. Occasionally he had
wandered over to the catapult and observed it with quiet speculation,
then returned to watch Cecil at his chores. Through it all, though, he
had kept a careful eye on Marc and Toffee and Gerald. He seemed to have
something on his mind.

It wasn't until early evening when he came over to join the group. With
the air of a kibitzer he strolled to a position behind Gerald. He stood
there for a moment or two, teetering nonchalantly on the balls of his
feet, then reached out and touched Gerald on the shoulder.

"I think Cecil needs your help, old man," he smiled. "He's getting
ready to stuff the bomb."

"Stuff it?" Gerald asked.

"Well, whatever it is."

"I can't leave," Cecil said. "He told me to stick here."

"I'll stick in your place," George offered. "I'll be positively gluey."

Gerald hesitated, but not for long. "Well," he said finally, "all
right." He got up and disappeared through the forest of apparatus.

Toffee favored George with a scathing look. "Have a seat, Judas," she
said. "I only wish it were wired."

"You misjudge me," George said, sitting down. "I'm trying to help you."

"Pass the salt," Toffee said.

"I'm hurt that you take that attitude," George said. "You don't really
believe that I'm so depraved as to let those two destroy the whole
city?"

"I haven't heard you screaming for help," Toffee said.

"I've been waiting for the right moment," George said. "When their
attention would be on the bomb and not us. Right now they think they've
got everything they want, and...."

"They have got everything they want," Marc said futilely. "Do you know
what they're planning to use for a test target?"

"Oh, that," George said. "Just the Whittle monument."

"The Whittle monument!" Marc said. "It's a landmark!"

"I think they're doing a public service getting rid of it," George
said. "With that fat politician standing on top and all."

"But it'll cause a panic!" Marc said. "It may start all kinds of
trouble. We've got to stop them."

"I'm afraid we can't," George said. "The bomb is almost ready now and
it's dark. They're waiting to catch the after theatre crowd with this
demonstration. They figure there'll be more of the international set in
that group."

"The dirty little opportunists," Toffee said.

"Anyway," George said, "we can stop them bombing the city tomorrow
night."

"Tomorrow night!" Marc gasped.

"That's what they're planning. If this test works out."

"Dear God! We've got to stop them!"

"Exactly," George smiled. "That's why I'm here to turn you two loose."

"Beautiful George!" Toffee cried. "Hurry!"

"Let me tell you my plan first," George said. "I'll unchain you, but
you've got to promise to do as I say."

"Anything, George, darling," Toffee said.

"Very well. The door is locked, as you know, and Gerald has the key
with him, so you can't get out that way. The only other way out is
through the catapult openings. Gerald and Cecil will be working by the
small one, so you'll have to climb up the large one and get out on the
roof. I'll go over and get everything ready...." He paused to eye Marc
excitedly.

"Now, wait a min...!" Marc began.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Toffee caught his eye with a glance. "Why that's wonderful,
George," she said. "Hadn't we better get started?"

"Okay," George said eagerly. He got up and began working at Toffee's
chains. "I knew you'd like the idea."

"But are you sure...?" Marc said.

"We love it," Toffee put in quickly. "I'm sorry I've misjudged you."

"That's all right," George said, releasing Marc's chains. "Now, you
stay here, and I'll be right back." He disappeared in the direction of
the catapult.

"What's the matter with you?" Marc asked. "Don't you realize that fiend
is getting ready to shoot us off into eternity?"

"Yes, I know," Toffee said. "But we don't have to wait for him to do
it, do we? We're free now. Let's get moving."

"But we haven't the key to the door. And that's the only way out."

"I know," Toffee said. "We've got to work fast. Come on."

Already she was moving toward the scaffolding, looking for something.
Presently her eyes fell on a small length of pipe. She picked it up and
brought it to Marc.

"I can't unlock the door with that," Marc said.

"Yes, you can," Toffee said. "Hang onto it."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"You'll know when the time comes," Toffee said. "Quickly! Get back in
the shadows." Then suddenly she began to scream at the top of her lungs.

"Marc!" she wailed. "You're floating again! Catch my hand!"

Marc jumped back into the shadows completely by surprise. And not a
moment too soon.

Instantly there was the sound of running footsteps and Gerald appeared
around the edge of the scaffolding. He stopped, looked at Toffee, then
glanced apprehensively upward. It was then, true to Toffee's promise,
that Marc knew what to do with the pipe. Stepping forward, he placed it
firmly on the back of Gerald's skull. With a small cry of surprise, the
little man dropped to the floor. Quickly Toffee bent over him, put her
hand in his pocket and brought out a key.

"Thank heavens we got the right one," she breathed. "Hurry!"

She and Marc sped for the door, dodging swiftly through the tangle of
apparatus as they ran. Behind them there was the sound of running,
exclamations.

Toffee reached the door first and quickly thrust the key into the lock.
Marc joined her and helped her unlock the door and shove it open. They
darted across the veranda, down the creaking steps, and out into the
night.

"Stop!" they heard Cecil yell behind them, "Come back!"

They didn't stop running until they had come to the end of the drive
and onto the tree-lined lane. And then they paused only momentarily,
to get their breath. Then they started forward again as they saw an
ancient car, some distance away, pull up at the side of the road and
park.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dalmer Boyde, a pimpled youth of negligible sophistication, switched
off the ignition, leaned back, and glanced covetously at the voluminous
charms of Floramae Davis. Inwardly he experienced a certain jolting
sensation. Haltingly he reached out and placed an arm against the back
of Floramae's neck in a sort of amorous strangle hold.

"Floramae," Dalmer said with passionate overtones, "I think you're
just every bit as pretty as a striped snake."

Floramae started in her seat with a jump that rocked the ancient auto
to its very tires. Stout of heart in the face of bulls, bison or
buffoons, the poor girl had one fatal fear which she could not control;
she had such an abhorrence of snakes that even the mention of the word
set her great frame atremble with panic.

"Snake!" she screamed. "Where?"

"There ain't no snake," Dalmer said. "I only said you was pretty."

"What a lousy time for compliments!" Floramae shrieked. "Here's this
damned snake snapping at us, and you make sweet talk! You got no
brains? Kill that snake and be snappy!"

Dalmer struggled to renew his grasp on the quivering girl. "I only try
to say something nice and all of a sudden the place is full of snakes.
Fer gosh sakes, Floramae!"

"There's more than one?" Floramae screamed. "Let go of me! Let me outa
here!" She threw the door open and prepared to heave herself to the
road. "What a fierce thing to do to a girl, Dalmer Boyde! Bringin'
snakes on a date. It'll serve you good and right if I faint right here
in the road and get squashed by a truck!"

"Aw, Floramae!" Dalmer pleaded. "Don't act so crazy about nothin'."

"You call it nothin'?" Floramae demanded to know. "I call it a dirty
trick! If you ever dast to speak to me again I'll bite you!"

"Floramae!" Dalmer said.

But Floramae was on her way. Jumping from the car, she landed solidly
in the center of the road. She started forward, then stopped as two
figures, a man and a woman, loomed vaguely before her in the night. It
was Marc and Toffee.

"Help!" Toffee cried, running forward. "Give us a lift!" She started
toward the car, but was suddenly stopped by Floramae.

"Don't get in that car, honey!" she cried. "It's spillin' over with
snakes!"

But just at this moment Dalmer came bounding out of the car.

"Now, Floramae...!"

"Git away from me, Dalmer," Floramae growled, "or I'll kick you in the
stomach!"

She started off rapidly down the road with Dalmer following plaintively
in her wake. In the next moment the pair had disappeared into the
night, and Marc and Toffee were alone with the car.

"Come on," Toffee said. "You drive." Then she glanced back toward the
lane from which they had just come. Headlights stabbed around the bend
and started toward them. "Hurry!" She got in the car. Marc followed
after, started the car, and maneouvered it onto the road.

"Can't you make it go any faster?" Toffee asked. She looked around.
"They'll be here in a minute!"

Marc pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The car coughed daintily and
continued at a steady speed of twenty five.

"For the love of heaven!" he cried. "That's its limit!"

It was then that a shot suddenly echoed through the night, and the old
car skidded across the road to a forced stop against an embankment.
Toffee looked back at the approaching lights.

"Come on!" she cried. "Run!"

They scrambled out of the car and started up the embankment. They were
just about to the top when they were suddenly caught in the blinding
glare of a spotlight. They stopped where they were. On the road there
was a squeal of brakes and the slam of a door. Cecil Blemish, his gun
in his hand, stepped into the light.

"Fun's over," he said. "Let's go home."

       *       *       *       *       *

Toffee and Marc reentered the house with an air of morose finality.
As they automatically took their places in the chairs and allowed
themselves to be imprisoned again, Gerald appeared smirkingly from the
tangled underpinnings of the small catapult. He regarded them with an
air of almost personal triumph.

"Glad you got back for the launching," he said. "You're just in time."

Marc glanced fearfully toward the catapult.

"Listen," he said earnestly. "You don't realize what you're doing. The
disappearance of that monument could easily start another war. Such
small things can sometimes."

The brothers stared at him with rapt attention. For a moment Marc
thought he had actually begun to impress them. Then Gerald turned to
Cecil.

"Just think, Cecil!" he simpered. "Another war! We'd be in great demand
as spies! Do you think it's too much to hope for?"

Cecil shook his head. "Certainly not. Now that I stop to think about
it, if this bomb doesn't do it, the one tomorrow night is sure to."

"Let's fire the bomb!" Gerald cried. "Right now!"

But Cecil hung back for a moment. "What's happened to that traitorous
spook?" he asked.

Gerald shrugged. "Dematerialized so we couldn't tell him to his face
what we think of him. He's drifting about somewhere. Anyway, forget
about him. Let's launch the bomb."

The two hurried off to the catapult. There, they argued briefly about
which of them would officiate at the switch, but finally Cecil won the
honor by drawing his gun on his brother. He stepped up to the switch
and took hold of it. A thick silence of mixed expectancy took the old
house.

"No ... no ..." Marc whispered, then watched with haunted eyes as
Cecil's hand brought the switch suddenly downward.

There was a loud hissing sound and then an indistinguishable flash
as the bomb shot up the track and out into the night. After that the
silence returned, but with a new quality now. After a long interval,
Marc and Toffee started in their chairs as a distant rumble echoed back
from the night.

Marc closed his eyes and waited for the old house to stop trembling....




                             CHAPTER XIII


Lord Asquith gazed out across Whittle Square and sighed an impeccable
sigh that brought a new thinness to his lips, a greater flare to his
aristocratic nostrils. It was evident that his Lordship had recently
been in attendance of something quite odorous.

"I have never witnessed anything so abysmal," he told Lady Asquith with
dry authority. "That play has as much chance for a prolonged engagement
as ... as...." He flicked his case at the Whittle monument and its
bronzed tenant at the top. "... as that chap up there has of flying to
the moon. Even Sir Lawrence couldn't have saved it."

"Quite," Lady Asquith affirmed. "I'd rather be struck dead than attend
another of these wretched American productions. May the fates deliver
me."

At that very moment there was a deafening roar, as all the world seemed
to explode before them. The night suddenly burned with a sullen light,
and the pavement beneath their feet shuddered. In the trembling
silence that followed, Lady Asquith, under the terrifying impression
that the fates were doing their best to oblige her in her wish to be
separated from the American theatre, emitted a small cry and promptly
fell into a swoon at her husband's feet. Lord Asquith gazed down at his
fallen lady with sad perplexity.

"Oh, dear!" he said. Then he shrugged. "But I suppose you really did
bring it on yourself, old girl." Then suddenly struck with a horrifying
thought, he glanced quickly in the direction of the monument in the
square. He started back with a cough of horror.

"Lord above!" he cried.

Across the square, though the night elsewhere was starkly clear, the
monument had become engulfed in a heavy mist. Even as Lord Asquith
watched, the fog seemed to disappear, but in a most peculiar manner.
It was as though the vapors were being absorbed into the marble of the
monument itself. And then, staggeringly, the entire structure began
almost imperceptibly to rise.

"Gad!" his lordship gasped. "The old bloater's setting sail!" He
removed his glasses and wiped them quickly. "And taking his monument
with him! Coo!" He started sharply as a hand fell to his arm.

"Hallo!"

He whirled about to find a pallid-eyed, slightly vaporish little man
staring down at Lady Asquith with baffled concern.

"She just resting?" he inquired thickly, "or did somebody hit her?"

His lordship glanced down at his wife. "She's been struck dead by the
fates," he explained pleasantly. "She rather asked for it, you know."

The small man gazed on Lord Asquith with beaming admiration. "That's
what I like about you English," he said. "You cover your emotions so
well. How do you do it?"

But Lord Asquith didn't answer. Suddenly he was too busy giving vent
to an emotion that wasn't even thinly veiled, let alone covered. As he
caught sight of the monument pulling away from the earth and bobbing
upward like a cork in water, he reached to the street lamp for support.

"Look at that thing leap about!" he gasped.

The little man looked and joined his lordship at the lamp.

"Gord!" he groaned, closing his eyes tightly. "I've had a snootfull in
my day, but never anything like this!"

       *       *       *       *       *

By this time, others along the street had begun to recover sufficiently
from the shock of the explosion to notice that something terribly
strange was going on in the vicinity of the Whittle monument. A
chorused cry of stunned surprise moved, in chain reaction, along the
street and rose to a babble of hysteria.

In this rising tide of excitement, a taxi driver, unaware that he had
gotten himself caught in anything more than an after theatre jam,
directed his vehicle into the square, proceeded to the center, then
glanced out the window to signal for a turn around the monument. He
glanced, looked away, then glanced again. He shoved the whole upper
portion of his body out the window and stared with blinking incredulity
at the rising monument. He forgot completely about the taxi and the
lady passenger in the back.

A greater scream rose through the crowd as the taxi toured complacently
across the square, over the sidewalk, and lodged itself crashingly
in the aquarium fitted window of a seafood restaurant. The driver
remained oblivious to all but the uprooted monument, even as the
windshield gave way before a deluge of salt water and flopping fish.
Not so, however, his passenger who suddenly found herself staring nose
to nose with a gimlet-eyed mackerel, who was peering up at her rather
evilly from inside the front of her dress.

With a scream that echoed to the very heavens, the lady hurled back the
door of the taxi and leaped to the sidewalk. There, before an enchanted
group of onlookers, she began to clutch at herself with all the mad
frenzy of a native dancer engaged in ceremonial rites dedicated to the
god of human fertility. Reaching low within her dress, she withdrew the
floundering fish and hurled it from her with a vengeance.

The fish looped high through the air and landed neatly on the thin
chest of the still unconscious Lady Asquith. Her ladyship, however,
had apparently been lying at her husband's feet, just waiting for a
fish to take to her bosom. No sooner did the mackerel arrive, than she
made a small whimpering sound and sat up. The fish dropped soggily to
her lap. Her ladyship looked down at the fish, and it in turn looked
up at her. Then with an exchange of horrified shudders, fish and lady
simultaneously flopped over to their sides and lay inert.

Through the babbling crowd, two officers arrived on the scene in a
manner of great haste. Running to the front of the crowd, they stopped,
observed the rising monument with a start, and exchanged looks of
complete confusion.

"Lord a'mighty!" the first cop exclaimed. "The thing's gone and pulled
itself up by the roots!"

"I can't look," the second cop said, turning away. "It fair makes my
skin crawl!"

"What can we do? We ought to take steps."

"There's a good idea," the second cop said fervently. "Let's get out of
here. Let's run!"

"In front of all these people?"

"We could pretend we were after somebody, and just happened by this
way."

The first cop nodded. "That's what we'll do! Draw your gun!"

Assuming expressions of great heroism, the two drew their pistols and
brandished them frantically over their heads.

"Stop thief!" they yelled in chorus, and ran frantically through the
crowd and away into the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

And so, the sensational affair of the Whittle monument found its
beginnings. An hour later, the news had traveled to the far corners of
the earth. Teletypes rattled, and cables hummed. The nation's thinkers
quitted their beds in the early hours of the morning to apprise the
land of their thoughts on the matter.

The morning paper, which Gerald brought back to the old house from a
nearby village, presented a fair cross-section of world opinion on the
incident. Only Russia had no thoughts to vouchsafe on the question of
buoyant monuments.

"There is more to this matter than the mere loss of a valued landmark,"
Gerald read aloud. "This may be the insult direct to every red blooded
American, the final jab at his pride and sense of independence. For a
long time our enemies have done everything possible to discredit our
American heroes, and it would appear now that they are even willing to
go to the extreme of removing their monuments. That they have chosen
to employ a hideous secret weapon to accomplish this monstrous end,
clearly indicates an intention to spread fear and panic throughout the
nation. When the UN meets tomorrow...."

"You see?" Marc said unhappily. "You see? This thing could easily touch
off a war. You fools!"

Gerald's smile, as he put down the paper, was mindful of an actor
reading his notices after a successful opening night.

"We've done it at last!" he sighed.

"I always knew we would," Cecil said complacently. "Wait 'til tonight."

Ecstatically the two got up and left, intent on the preparations for
the coming disaster.

"Those two haven't got a decent impulse to split between them," Toffee
said.

"And I invented this thing!" Marc said wretchedly. "I'm as guilty as if
I were bombing the city myself. I wish I were dead!"

"You will be," Toffee said, "if something doesn't happen. I heard them
talking last night. They've decided not to give you any food today.
After they've fired the bomb, they're going to let you float off into
space with everything else." She closed her eyes against the thought.
"We've got to get out of here and stop this thing." She looked at Marc
imploringly. "Can't you go to sleep?"

"They've been giving me all those powders."

"If only that supernatural serpent would just show himself," Toffee
said. "I'm sure we could talk George into something if we just had the
chance and enough time."

After that they fell silent, lost in a mood of black desolation.
Outside the sky failed to produce the full promise of day; the grey
dawn lingered and became a dark storm color. Gerald left his work long
enough to throw the levers that closed the metal coverings over the
turrets. A moment later rain could be heard splattering against them.
The tangled shadows of the fantastic equipment grew darker and more
formidable under the glare of the overhead worklights. Toffee looked at
Marc, and for the first time the dullness of true despair was in her
green eyes.

"We've got to get out of here, Marc," she said. "We've got to!"

"But how?"

"We could try to get our chains loose. Our fingers are free, at least.
If we moved close enough together.... We've got to try."

Marc glanced without hope at the tangles of chain that imprisoned them.
"I suppose so," he murmured. Slowly, careful lest he upset himself, he
began working his chair toward Toffee. Slowly he inched forward.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly a half an hour before they were close enough. Marc
strained his hand forward and began fumbling with the chains at
Toffee's wrists. It was difficult work, but he kept at it. At the end
of several minutes, however, his hands were stiff with pain, and he had
to rest.

"I can't even see what I'm doing," he said.

"Let me try loosening yours while you rest," Toffee said with
determination. "We'll take turns."

The hours wore on without result. There was no interruption from
the Blemishes, however. The brothers were far too absorbed in their
preparations for destruction to pay any attention to their captives.
They did not bring food.

"I'm beginning to feel hungry." Marc said.

"This is no time to think of your stomach," Toffee said.

"It's not my stomach," Marc said. "I just hope I don't start floating
away from you. It could happen, you know." He glanced at her chains.
"Do you feel any slack around your wrists at all?"

"Not yet," Toffee said. "Keep trying."


The rain outside continued with a steady monotony and grew louder. It
was impossible to judge the passage of time. Hours dragged by, enough,
it seemed, to round out several days. Toffee and Marc continued their
efforts with the chains, but with a growing sense of futility.

"It's no use," Marc said. "My fingers are raw."

"We've got to keep trying," Toffee said.

Then suddenly they both were quiet as the sound of nearby yawning
interrupted the stillness. It had the thoughtless, indolent tone of
George about it. They turned expectant eyes toward the scaffolding.

Slowly, George faded into view, materializing himself with slow luxury.
He yawned a second time and stretched his arms above his head. Then he
glanced in their direction and waved with airy insolence.

"That's a clubby picture you two make," he commented. "Spending your
last hours in romantic rapture."

"Louse!" Toffee said. "I'd like to see you spend yours in intolerable
agony."

"How can you bear me such ill will?" George asked innocently. "Didn't I
let you loose last night?"

"Stop lolling around," Toffee said, "and come down here."

"Sure," George said, and drifted blithely down to the floor. "Something
on your mind?"

"Yes," Toffee said. "Murder!"

"George!" Marc said. "You've got to help us. Regardless of your
personal feelings ... or lack of them ... you can't...."

George shrugged with great indifference. "What difference does it make
to me if they blow up the city?" he asked. "The High Council will be
recalling me at any moment now. Let the city go or stay, I won't be
around to see it."

"How do you kill a ghost?" Toffee murmured.

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc glanced in the direction of the Blemishes. It was evident that
their labors were nearly at an end. The rain was beating in a steady
roar, high on the roof above them. There couldn't be too much time
left. He turned decisively toward George.

"George!" he said. "I'll make you a proposition. What you want, is to
get rid of me forever, isn't it? So you can stay on earth?"

"That's the idea," George admitted.

"Then listen to me," Marc said, his voice level. "You have no special
liking for Cecil and Gerald, so it shouldn't matter to you if they get
hurt." He cleared his throat. "If you'll just turn me loose and give me
a chance to stop them, I'll let you send me off in the catapult."

"Marc!" Toffee cried. She turned to George. "Don't listen to...."

"Whether I win or lose, George," Marc said.

"You can't!" Toffee cried. "That's suicide!"

"Not exactly," Marc said. "If he doesn't finish me off, they will." He
turned back to George. "You'll be sure of getting rid of me. And the
city will be saved."

"Well," George hesitated. "I don't know...."

"Hurry," Marc said. "You've got to do it. They're loading the bomb
right now. This is your chance to do something decent for once."

George closed his eyes thoughtfully and rocked back on his heels. There
was a moment of tense silence as he swayed forward. "Okay!" he said.
"It's a deal. Not that I have any particular feeling one way or another
about this city of yours. Actually, I'm only doing it as a personal
favor to you. After all, I can understand why you don't want to move on
to the next world to make room for someone else. It takes time to get
adjusted to the idea that...."

"Stop orating," Toffee put in harshly. "If you're going to let us
loose, you ghoul, then do it."

"Hurry, George!" Marc said.

Happily George went about the business of releasing first Marc, and
then Toffee.

"Now don't try any funny stuff," he said to Marc. "Remember you made a
bargain."

"I won't," Marc promised gravely.

"Good!" George said. "I've been dying to use that catapult anyway." He
chuckled softly. "You'll die when I do. Isn't that funny?"

"Screaming," Toffee said, and followed Marc as he moved swiftly into
the shadows.

They crept quietly forward to a position behind an enormous dynamo.
Marc stopped and peered around. A few yards away, the Blemishes toiled
with the enormous bomb, adjusting it to the catapult, getting it ready
to be fired. They paused briefly in their activities.

"Is it time yet?" Gerald asked excitedly.

Cecil consulted his watch. "A quarter after eight," he said. "Just
fifteen minutes to go."

"I can't wait," Gerald said.

Toffee moved closer to Marc and put her hand on his arm.

"You aren't really going through with that deal, are you?" she asked.
"With George, I mean?"

"I don't see how I can avoid it," Marc said. He nodded over his
shoulder toward George, who was watching them from a close distance.
"He isn't letting me out of his sight for a second. I'm so weak now
from lack of sleep and food, I may not even be able to handle those two
out there. Then too, if it weren't for George, we'd still be helpless."

"There must be some way out of all this," Toffee said miserably.

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc turned to her for a moment, his eyes clinging worriedly to hers.
"I only hate doing this to you," he said. "I know you'll go when I
do, and I can't really believe you aren't completely real any more.
Sometimes, I feel that I've known you for years and years."

"You have," Toffee said softly. "You have." Then, boosting herself to
the tips of her toes, she reached up and kissed him lightly on the
cheek. "It's all right. Do what you have to. I'll help if I can."

"I'm sorry," Marc said.

They waited a bit longer. Marc glanced around for a weapon and found
the length of pipe Toffee had given him the night before. He picked it
up and moved cautiously to the edge of the dynamo. The rain sounded
ragingly against the metal coverings over the turrets. He watched the
demented brothers until their backs were turned toward him, then sprang
forward.

The moments that followed were covered with noisy confusion. At
Marc's first movement, the brothers left their work with a cry of
dismay. Cecil whirled about, a heavy wrench in his hand. He raised
it menacingly and Marc ran toward him. Toffee ran toward Gerald, but
her value as a combatant was negligible. Gerald quickly shoved her
aside and, as she fell to the floor, ran to the aid of his brother.
It was just as Marc raised the pipe over Cecil's head that Gerald,
in a headlong dash, butted him squarely and brutally in the pit of
the stomach and sent him doubling forward in a convulsion of agony.
Cecil was quick to seize the opportunity to use his wrench. He swung
it upward and brought it down with savage strength. But the blow was
inaccurate. It missed Marc's head and crashed dully into his shoulder.
With a cry of pain, Marc twisted to one side and fell to the floor. He
lay inert as though the blow had paralyzed him.

Toffee, from her position, had a jumbled impression of Gerald running
in another direction, toward a table upon which lay two guns. He was
going to kill Marc! She jumped quickly to her feet and ran unknowingly
to the switch panel on the wall. Something had to be done! She began
pulling switches with frenzied swiftness. It was as her hand pressed
frantically on the fourth one, that everything was suddenly plunged
into blackness. For a moment she leaned against the panel, weak with
relief.

There was stark silence in the old house for a brief moment, and then
the darkness was filled with sound; curses, a dull dragging, the clang
of equipment being tumbled over. Toffee waited breathlessly, then moved
forward to the place where Marc had fallen. She felt in the darkness
for him, but he wasn't there.

"Marc!" she called.

But her voice was drowned out by the sudden loud rumblings of
machinery. Then a great blast of cold air swept through the building,
and Toffee felt a dampness on her face. She turned and looked upward.
The turret at the top of the large catapult had been opened! Even
as she looked, a flash of lightning squirmed through the sky and
illuminated the entire building. Toffee caught a glimpse of George,
lifting Marc into the cartridge on the catapult.

"Marc!" she screamed, and ran forward.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was also a cry from the Blemishes. But she didn't stop to listen.
In the darkness she felt her way rapidly through the machinery to the
base of the catapult. As another streak of lightning writhed across
the sky, she saw George climbing down from the scaffolding and moving
toward the switch. She reached out and grabbed wildly at his sleeve.

"Stop!" she cried. "It isn't fair!"

But George moved doggedly forward. In the darkness, Toffee knew that he
was reaching toward the switch. Then, as the enormous room once again
flashed with light, she looked upward toward Marc, and almost laughed
with relief. Even in that small interval, she had seen his lank figure
rise buoyantly above the cartridge and start inching into space.

"He's floating!" she cried triumphantly. "He's getting away!"

George suddenly brushed past her in the darkness and leaped to the
scaffolding. In the next flash of light Toffee saw him climb to the top
of the cartridge and grab vainly at Marc's rising coat tails. Suddenly,
she knew what she had to do. She whirled about and reached for the
switch, found it, and pulled with all her might.

Instantly there was a terrible sucking sound and a great flash of
light. As George fell back into the cartridge, it streaked up the
track of the catapult and out into the night so fast, that it seemed,
a moment later, never to have been there at all. There was a beat of
silence, and then, frighteningly, all the heavens seemed to tremble
with an angry light. A moment later a roar of thunder rolled back
across the earth and crashed deafeningly against the walls of the old
house. It was as though the whole universe shook with a destructive
rage.

Toffee gazed weakly toward the now darkened heavens. "Bon Voyage,
George!" she murmured. Then she turned back to the darkness. "Marc!"

There was no answer, but as she waited, the beam of a flashlight knifed
the darkness in the direction of the small catapult. The Blemishes,
murmuring together, were back at work. Toffee crept forward until she
was close enough to hear what they were saying.

"I don't care what they're up to," Cecil said. "I don't care if they
all went to eternity, it's eight thirty and we're going to launch the
bomb. After that, they can live or die or sit around in their stocking
feet. It won't make any difference to us."

Gerald directed the beam of the flashlight up the track of the small
catapult, then to the face of the turret.

"There he is!" he cried.

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc, spread eagled across the face of the metal covering, was clinging
frantically to the cable that lifted the contrivance. As the light
caught him, he glanced around, but made no effort to avoid discovery.
He seemed curiously agitated.

"Fine!" Cecil said. "That's a good place for him. We'll get him with
the bomb. Put the light back here so I can see what I'm doing."

"That dame _would_ have to blow out the lights," Gerald said
sullenly.

"Never mind. We can manage. The bomb is all set now. You take the
lever that raises the turret shelter. I'll pull the switch on the
catapult. I'll give the signal and we'll pull together."

"Okay," Gerald agreed. The beam of the flash moved off at a distance,
then darted upward again to illuminate Marc's activities in the turret.
"I'm ready!"

"Marc!" Toffee screamed. "Get away! They're firing the bomb!"

Marc glanced back at her, but didn't move. He seemed to be pulling
frantically at the cable, almost as though he had somehow gotten caught
on it.

"Ready!" Cecil yelled. "Aim...!"

"Marc!" Toffee screamed. "Marc! Marc!"

"_Fire!_"

In the dreadful flash that followed, Toffee couldn't be certain of
what she saw. It seemed that Marc had darted away from the face of the
turret, but she couldn't be sure. In the same moment there was a cry of
terror from Gerald.

"It didn't open!" he screamed. "He jammed the cable!"

The tracks of the catapult gleamed red with friction, and the room was
lighted with a dull glow. And then Toffee saw that the metal covering
had remained secure, blocking the passage of the bomb. She had only a
glimpse before the crash came.

There was an awful rending as the old house groaned and screamed under
the impact of the blow. The turret tore loose from its moorings on
the roof, but the bomb had been deflected. The great metal cylinder
looped away from the track, tore through a section of the ceiling and
streaked upward into the night, traveling in a straight line. There was
a breathless silence as Toffee and the brothers watched the terrible
thing move into the sky directly above the house. It hovered for what
seemed to be minutes, then started down again in a definite course.

"My God!" Cecil screamed. "It's coming down on top of us!" He began to
run.

And then the bomb struck. The whole world glared with screaming light,
and then exploded.

In that last moment, Toffee had only a brief, horrified glimpse of
the lank figure, some distance above the house, soaring away into the
darkness, and the rain.

The world gasped and crumbled around her....




                              CHAPTER XIV


A small hum stirred at the back of the darkness, a glimmer of sound,
like a faint ray of silver white light in an area of great stillness.
Somehow sound and light had gotten themselves mixed up together, so
that one was difficult to distinguish from the other. But this was
sound and it had started with a humming smallness and grown shrill. It
screamed in Marc's head so that he had to open his eyes to let it out.

A great brightness rushed forward, stabbing at his eyes, thrusting deep
into the nerve centers at the back of his head. He blinked painfully
and looked away, but the light came at him again, nervous light
that moved toward him, then away, but always in the same direction,
jittering along with small, irregular spurts.

Marc was aware that he was lying on his back, and there was a sharp
pain in his shoulder. It didn't make sense. The last he could remember
was the night drawing him upward, squeezing the breath and the life out
of him. He lay back and gave himself over to the effort of breathing.
And then a voice spoke close by, irritably.

"Of all the perfectly insane places to wind up, this snags the prize!"

There was no question that the voice was Toffee's. Marc glanced around,
then up. The redhead was standing over him, an evil glint in her eyes.

"Toffee!" he said.

"Of course," Toffee said. "Who'd you think? Who else would be silly
enough to sit up here in this ridiculous place with you?"

"What place?" Marc asked. "Where are we?"

"What place?" Toffee said. "We're back in the city. In fact we're
right smack in the center of the city." She waved a hand at the
jittering lights that were still skittering along behind her. "That,"
she announced amusedly, "is the news sign on the face of the Dispatch
building. You know, the one that has the lights that spell out words
and keeps moving all the time? We're on the ledge right in front of it.
And a fine spectacle we make, too, I imagine."

"My gosh!" Marc exclaimed. He sat up. Now that Toffee had told him he
could see that the jittering lights did spell out letters as they moved
along.

"In fact," Toffee said, "talking about being in the news, the story of
the explosion is coming through right now. She turned to the sign and
paused to read:

    MYSTERY EXPLOSION LAYS WASTE SEVERAL MILES OF PASTURE NEAR CITY ...
    WRECKAGE ... VEGETATION ... EVERYTHING CHANGED TO BE BUOYANT....
    PILLSWORTH FORMULA BELIEVED TO HAVE PROVIDED BASIC EXPLOSIVE

Then suddenly a meaningless jumble of lights burst forth upon the
atmosphere. It appeared that the sign had been surprised into a fit of
exclamatory stuttering. Then the words began to come again.

    PILLSWORTH AND UNIDENTIFIED GIRL SIGHTED HERE ON NORTH WEST LEDGE
    OF BUILDING ... POLICE AND FIRE EQUIPMENT PREPARING RESCUE.

"Thank heavens," Toffee said. "We're not going to grow old together
up here after all." She moved away from Marc and to the brink of the
ledge. As Marc followed her progress he noticed for the first time that
it was still night, but as his gaze moved toward the horizon he saw a
growing margin of dawn.

"Golly!" Toffee said happily. "You should see all the people down
there! And there are some men with a big ladder on a truck. We'll be
down from here in no time at all." She patted her drooping butterflies
into place. "They've got a search light on the man who's climbing up.
He's terribly big. Why don't you stand up and let me lie down for a
while? I'd look more helpless."

"Any time you look helpless," Marc said, "I want to see it."

"That may be," Toffee said, "but don't be surprised if I faint
gracefully at the proper moment."

Marc moved closer to the ledge. "I wonder if Julie's down there?" he
murmured. But even as he said it, he knew she wouldn't be.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the bottom of the ladder Marc and Toffee were promptly greeted by
the two government men, ushered without delay to a limousine, whisked
across the city to a large grey building, and taken to an office with
large comfortable furniture and sound-proofed walls. While a male
secretary wrote it all down, Marc and Toffee tiredly narrated their
experiences at the hands of the Blemishes.

"It was dreadful," Toffee said, eyeing the secretary. "I feel faint."

The more talkative of the two government men told them the rest of the
story from where they left off.

"There wasn't anything left by the time we got there," he said. "Even
the grass was uprooting itself out of the ground and drifting up into
space. There was no sign of the Blemish brothers, of course. Definitely
criminally insane!"

Marc gazed out the window at the city stretching up around them, and
was taken with a tremor of horror.

"There's just one thing puzzling me, Mr. Pillsworth," the government
man said. "How is it that you returned to earth? Will all the debris
finally return to earth in a few days?"

Marc gazed at them blankly. He had been wondering the same thing
himself. He passed a trembling hand over his eyes and shook his head.

"I know," Toffee said mildly. All eyes turned curiously in her
direction. She smiled blandly. "You see," she said, charmed with the
idea of having so much male attention all at once, "you see, being
rather a creature of nature ... but I don't suppose you gentlemen would
understand that ... just let it go that I have a special understanding
of natural causes and effects that do not occur in the ordinary human
being." She nodded toward Marc. "It was the double dosage that brought
him back. The original treatment made him give off the impulses which
caused him to be buoyant, but the second one, instead of increasing
his buoyancy, merely counteracted it. It was a matter of a war between
impulses of equal strength and pull. The ones moving outward were met
by the ones forcing their way inward. It was what might be called a
condition of impasse. Eventually, the two exhausted each other, and so
he returned to earth." She smiled beguilingly. "Is that all perfectly
clear?"

The government man whistled shrilly and glanced at the ceiling. "If you
say so," he muttered.

"Of course," Toffee went on, "the thing that really saved his life
was the fact that, in being buoyant, he drifted far enough away from
the explosion so that the impulses that reached him were in exact
proportion to those he was giving off. It wouldn't happen again in a
million years."

       *       *       *       *       *

The government man gazed at her from the corner of his eyes. "No," he
said. "I'm sure it wouldn't." He turned to the secretary. "I hope you
got all that on paper."

The young man shook his head. "I was too fascinated," he said. Even as
he spoke, his eyes did not leave Toffee's well crossed leg.

The government man cleared his throat.

"Well, anyway, everything is all right now," he said.

He turned to Marc, who was showing increasing evidence of complete
collapse. "I hate to do this," he said, "but I'm afraid we'll have to
ask you for another favor. This incident, along with the one of the
monument and all the attention in the newspapers, has caused a national
panic. The people are threatening to do all sorts of things. There have
already been several suicides. Anyway, we have to reassure the public
at large that your formula is in our hands and safe. The best way to do
this, we've decided, is in a public presentation; if the people can see
you handing your formula over to us with their own eyes, then they'll
have to believe it. It's not the orthodox procedure in such matters, of
course, but this is an extreme situation and calls for extreme measures.

"Anyway, we'd like you to go with us to the stadium this afternoon and
publicly present your formula to the chief. Every precaution will be
taken and you'll have the very best of protection. Will you do it?"

Marc, too far gone for words, merely nodded. He could hold off sleep no
longer.

"Fine!" the government man said, and got up. The others followed. "Then
we'll leave you here to rest and will call for you at four o'clock.
And, you, young lady...?"

The man stopped, stared, turned to his companions. "Where did she go?"
he asked in a whisper. "What happened to her?"

"Gosh, I don't know," the secretary said. "But I wish she'd taken me
along!"

In hushed bewilderment the men went to the door and quietly left the
room. After they had gone, there was only the sound of Marc's exhausted
breathing which bore the promise of a good healthy snore.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a long time Marc lay immersed in the unbroken blackness of complete
sleep. And then the darkness lifted, gradually, and a soft light began
to glow around him. He gazed up at a sky of unbroken blue, and somehow
his spirit lightened. He sat up and looked around. He knew instantly,
by the gentle misted slopes and the strange trees, that he had returned
to the valley of his mind. He looked around expectantly.

It happened just as he had known it would, on the nearest rise. The
mists swirled aside and a shapely leg appeared, leading quickly after
it another of its kind and a perfectly formed body. Toffee smiled as
she ran toward him.

"I knew you'd turn up sooner or later, you old wretch!" she cried
happily. She dropped to the grass beside him. Marc noticed that she
once more was wearing the negligible green tunic that she'd had on the
first time he'd dreamed of her.

"I wonder how I got back here," Marc said.

"Who cares?" Toffee said happily. "Let's take advantage of it. What's
more private than your own thoughts?"

"Now, just a second...."

"Still the same old prude," Toffee said. Then she giggled. "We
certainly took the four bit tour through the mill, didn't we?"

"I don't like to think about it," Marc said grimly. "I wish it hadn't
happened."

"Nonsense," Toffee said. "You needed trouble and a good adventure.
That's what was wrong with you and your life. That's why you dreamed
me up. A good upheaval does anybody a lot of good. Even a bottle of
medicine has to have a good shaking to be worth anything. That's why it
all happened."

"I wonder about Julie," Marc said darkly. "I wonder if she's...?"

"Wait and see," Toffee said. "Don't rush things." A reminiscent look
came into her eyes as she gazed off into the distance across the
valley. Suddenly she was taken with a fit of laughter.

"What is it?" Marc asked.

"George," Toffee said. "I wonder where he is now." She began to laugh
again. "I had a glimpse of his face just before he took off. He was the
most surprised ghost that ever moaned at midnight."

"Poor George," Marc said. "I suppose he didn't have a very good time of
it. But then neither did any of the rest of us."

"Oh, well," Toffee said. "All that's over with now." She shifted closer
to Marc. "Let's get down to the important stuff."

"Hey! Wait a min...?" Marc cried.

But too late. Toffee had already twined her arms about his neck and was
kissing him. Finally, she let him go.

"You never change, do you?" Marc said shortly.

"Never," Toffee said. "Isn't it delightful? I know a game that's fun.
We take turns...."

"No!" Marc said. "No games!"

"Well, all right," Toffee sighed. "Then I guess we'll just have to go
on necking." She made a second dive at him.

"Help!" Marc yelled. "Help!"

Then suddenly both of them froze where they were. The valley had begun
to tremble and the darkness was descending rapidly.

"You'll have to go now," Toffee said.

"I know," Marc said. For a moment he just looked at her, hesitant. Then
quickly, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips.

"Thanks," he said. "Thanks for everything."

Toffee smiled gently. "Oh, hell," she said grandly, "that's all right.
Just call on me any time."

"Goodbye," Marc said, almost wistfully. "Goodbye, Toffee!"

"So long," Toffee whispered. "Happy landings."

And the little valley fell into darkness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Marc opened his eyes, fighting the pressure of sleep that still
weighted his consciousness. The government man's face, like an
affidavit of official duty, appeared over him. Marc struggled to a
sitting position and tried to shake the sleep out of his mind with a
toss of his head.

"When we were driving over, you asked me to find out about your wife,"
the man said.

Marc nodded hopefully.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pillsworth. We haven't been able to reach her. Either
here or in Reno. They're still trying, however, and they'll locate her
before long, I'm certain." He glanced at his watch. "It's three forty
five; we'd better be going to the stadium."

Wearily, Marc got to his feet. He dreaded the affair at the stadium;
there was nothing he wanted to do more than start out looking for
Julie. Even as tired as he was. It didn't matter where or how, just so
long as he was looking for her ... doing something to find her....

"We'd better go," the man said uneasily.

Marc sighed and followed him to the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

Entering into the center of the stadium, Marc glanced cursorily at the
wave upon wave of faces that rippled down the sides of the bleachers.
He walked in the center of a group of silent, armed men, the government
man at his side. Planes droned overhead, providing a protective
barricade, even in the sky. They walked to a platform in the center of
the field and mounted it. The government man led him to a seat and then
took his place beside him. Marc glanced around.

The platform was fairly bulging with important persons, politically
speaking. Every faction and party had apparently done its utmost to
get into the act. Most of the men sat in solemn silence, as though in
attendance at a funeral. Marc guessed that this was to impress the
gathering public with the immense gravity of the occasion. When a band
played the anthem, Marc could barely get to his feet, but he managed
it with a great effort.

"This won't take too long," the man from the government whispered as
they sat down again. "The President was delayed in arriving, so the
Chief will say a few words of explanation, and then you step forward
and hand him the formula. You can leave after that if you like."

Marc nodded. It did take too long; the Chief turned out to be a large
thick-necked man with a ruddy face and unlimited lung power. He
explained about the formula and its power, and assured everyone that
it was not in foreign hands and that the two persons who had seen it,
besides the inventor, of course, had destroyed themselves in its use.
The rest was largely political. Everyone yawned quietly, with the
possible exception of the Chief's wife.

Marc turned his thoughts toward the sky and a cloud that drifted lazily
overhead. It was natural enough that his thoughts turned briefly to
George, and the fate of that erstwhile haunt. He gazed far into the
heavens, though it was difficult to think of George in the upper
regions, even though he had been headed in that direction when last
seen. Marc could not imagine to what kind of place in the universe
George had returned.

       *       *       *       *       *

Far beyond the cloud that Marc watched, George sat rigidly upright on a
hard piece of atmosphere and shifted uneasily. He glanced at the entity
next to him and grinned wryly.

"I'm glad I don't have to go in first," he said glumly.

"What are you up for?" the other entity asked. "When you get to the
supreme Council it must be bad."

"Disorderly conduct," George said, "and attempt at falsifying the fate
of a mortal down on Earth."

"That's bad," the other said.

"Yeah," George said, "but what gets me down is how they recalled me.
They planned it all without letting me know. I tell you it was a
nasty jolt to my nervous system when I found out that damned catapult
had been aimed right smack at the chambers of the High Council. They
probably will banish me to hard labor on one of the planets. You know,
digging out those craters for the mortals to stare at through their
silly spy glasses. It was a terrible shock."

"How was it on earth?" The other shifted eagerly.

"Well ..." George answered, and a reminiscent look came into his eyes,
"there was this little redhead, see...." He smiled secretly, and gazed
off into the distance. "I guess," he continued, as though to himself,
"on the whole, I'd say it was worth it...."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Mr. Pillsworth!"

Marc awoke from his reverie and turned around. The government man had
taken hold of his sleeve.

"Now you give him your formula."

Marc glanced quickly toward the podium where the Chief was staring back
at him expectantly. Stiffly, he rose from his chair and moved forward.

The Chief turned back to the audience.

"Ladies and Gentlemen!" he announced dramatically. "The Pillsworth
Formula!"

Suddenly the heavens echoed with a cry from several thousand throats
that was almost terrifying in its magnitude. Marc reached into his
inside coat pocket, felt for the little black book and found it.
Quickly he slipped the pen clasp free and withdrew the book. Then,
strangely, he hesitated. Suddenly he wondered if this was the right
thing to do. At any rate, it was much too late now. The sooner he
handed over the formula, the sooner he could leave and start looking
for Julie. He drew his hand from inside his coat and held the book out
to the Chief.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was then that the whole affair took on a new and more sensational
aspect than even the politicians on the platform had dared hope for.
The Chief in reaching out for the book, neglected to extend his hand
far enough, and Marc, thinking that he had taken hold of it, let go
of it. Suddenly the book began to fall. But only for an instant.
Describing a small loop in mid air, it only started down, before it
shot upward. Before anyone realized, or even believed, for that matter,
what was happening, the little book had risen high beyond the Chief's
grasp and gone soaring rapidly toward the heavens. The cry in the
thousands of throats became a gasp of horror.

Marc stood dumbly staring at the black dot in the sky, as it grew
smaller and smaller, even in the space of a heart beat. He felt awful
in the first moment, and then, all at once, he was assailed with a
feeling of great relief. Suddenly, he realized that exactly the right
thing had happened to the book and the terrible formula. Smilingly, he
turned and looked at the disgruntled expressions about him. The Chief
was swiftly turning a lovely green color.

At once Marc realized that he had no further business with these
people, or they with him. The world had suddenly become a much brighter
and simpler place to live in. Without a word, he turned, walked down
the steps of the platform and started across the field toward the exit.

It was just as he neared the exit that the first cheer went up in the
stands, and before he got to it, the stadium was screaming from end to
end. There was no question that the disposal of the formula had been
a great relief to everyone. Marc turned, smiled his agreement to the
crowd, and disappeared beneath the stands. Just as he started into the
shadows, he saw the figure waiting at the outer doorway.

"Julie!" he cried.

She ran toward him, and there were tears in her eyes. Even before she
reached him she had begun to talk.

"I was on my way to Reno," she sobbed. "I felt so awful I didn't look
at the papers or listen to the radio ... and then I saw a newspaper in
the dining car ... with your picture on it ... I thought I'd go out of
my mind ... I left the train ... but there weren't any planes because
of the weather ... and ... and ... I just got back...."

Marc just stood staring at her, too happy, too warm inside to speak.

"Please forgive me," Julie said. "I'll give up the clubs ...
and ... and everything.... You won't have to spend your time in the
basement.... I'll even forget about the redhead, if you'll just take me
back.... I thought you were dead!... You will take me back, won't you?
Please Marc!"

Marc nodded dumbly.

"Oh, thank you, darling!" Julie smiled. "Thank you!"

Marc took her in his arms and drew her close to him.

"Oh, hell," he grinned, "that's all right. Just call on me any...."

Then suddenly he stopped. He wondered vaguely if he hadn't heard
someone else say that before....


                                THE END



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADES OF TOFFEE ***