TOFFEE TAKES A TRIP

By CHARLES F. MYERS

Marc Pillsworth decided he needed a
vacation—so he went on a trip. But where
Marc went, Toffee followed—with trouble.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures July 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Glumly, situated in sandy discomfort, Marc Pillsworth watched as another blustering wave tripped, fell flat on its watery face, and embarrassedly dissolved into a foolish fringe of giggling froth. It was the sameness of the thing that was getting him down, the business of being constantly sold short on a promise of something interesting. He rolled carefully over, onto his stomach, which had, by now, become a bloody shade of vermillion, and transferred the sunny torture to his back, which had only reached a color, approximately that of tomato soup. Taken either way, front or back, and considering his bright yellow trunks, he was, as the biographers always say, a pretty colorful citizen. Also, as the biographers never say, he was a pretty dejected one.

With one slender finger he traced a circle in the gritty surface before him, then jabbed viciously into its center. There was something frightening, deliberate in the action, especially when it was known that, to Marc, the circle represented the eye of a rascally unknown writer of magazine articles. It seemed only a matter of time before he entered into the refreshing pastime of sticking pins into wax effigies. He didn't really wish the fellow any harm; only that he'd break his treacherous neck by next Saturday at the latest.

Marc was certain that on the eve of his last earthly day he would be able to point an enfeebled finger squarely at the present day and the three preceding it, and assuredly say, "That was the darkest period of my life." He didn't know which magazine article had planted the hideous idea of separate vacations in Julie's golden head, but he had already sworn violence, bloodshed, and even sudden death to its author if ever he found out. That a man should spend two weeks in a beach house without his wife was plainly, to him, a new and outstanding high in sheerest idiocy. He was only surprised that in a country so nearly glutted with legislation of all descriptions, there should be no laws to protect an unwary husband against the published oozings of so loathsomely promiscuous a mind as would endorse, and even encourage, the diabolical arrangement of separate vacations.

Ennui was setting in like a sort of spiritual rigor mortis. The first day, he had golfed and gotten sunburned, the second, he had ridden and gotten sunburned, and the third, he had fished and gotten sunburned. Now, in desperation, he was reducing the whole tortuous process to its primary element, and simply getting roasted to a flaming crisp with as little exertion as possible.

With eyes that were as optimistic as a slab in the morgue, he gazed up the face of the cliff, beyond the highway running along its edge, and to the beach house on the hill at the other side. It was just as he had supposed. There was no car out front ... no jaunty blue convertible ... and more to the point, no Julie. She hadn't changed her mind. He didn't know why he should think she would. It would serve her right, he thought spitefully, if Toffee chose this precise time to make a new entrance into his life.

He folded his hands before him and muzzled his chin into their hollow. He'd been too busy to give Toffee much thought lately, but now that she'd slipped into his consciousness, he found that he recalled her with curiously mixed feelings. Pleasure finally proved to be the strongest, however, and he began to smile for the first time in several days.

Lord knows there was proof enough of Toffee's existence ... almost too much ... but still it took an effort to realize that such a phenomenon could actually be. And Toffee was a phenomenon in every sense of the word ... even a few that wouldn't bear repeating. With her, it was a matter of "Out of sight, IN mind," and vice versa. A creation of Marc's imagination ... a lovely, vivacious phantom of his dreams ... she had seen fit on various occasions to materialize from his subconscious and uninvitedly play an active role in his everyday affairs. During the duller stretches of his life, she was apparently content to bide her time in the tranquil valley of his mind, but given a moment of high excitement, she was sure to materialize and gleefully build it into a full fledged crisis with free wheeling.

At first, Marc had found it difficult to believe he would ever become accustomed to this peculiar arrangement, but apparently he had, for now, as he thought of Toffee, it was not with awe of the curious circumstance under which she existed, but rather with an almost wistful loneliness for the girl, herself. It was true, he realized, that pandemonium could not be far behind with Toffee on the threshold, but he couldn't help the feeling that his current doldrums could do with a dash of her particular brand of redheaded chaos like a man in a death chamber could do with a shiny new, cross-cut file. It was just as he had come to this decision that alien voices broke through the delicate wall of his quiet, introspective mood, and left it shattered beyond recall.

His head darted up, and his hand raked back a disordered shock of hair that had fallen over his brow. Thus uncovered, his eyes, two charred embers projected through the throbbing sheet of flame that was his face, strained upward, to the top of the cliff, in search of the noisy intruders. Usually no one ever came to this particular beach, except himself, and he had come to think of it as exclusively his own. But if he were preparing to relinquish his solitude to a band of vapid, would-be bathers, he was quite, quite mistaken, for much to the contrary, at the head of the crude board stairway leading down to the tiny beach, there stood two of the most unlikely homo sapiens he had ever seen. They looked like the culls of a dyspeptic nightmare.

The man was short, stocky, mostly bald, and at the moment, extremely animated. But the woman at his side was another matter entirely. Nearly six feet tall, an almost ghostly figure without a trace of color, she was a cruel and unconditional triumph of plainness. Worse than a horse of another color, she was a horse without any color at all. It was hard to believe that blood, rather than water—or perhaps acid—ran in her veins. She was listening intently to what the little man was saying, but there was something clearly argumentative in the inclination of her raw-boned, equine body.

"But I tell you he's done it!" the little man wailed.

"But I tell you," the woman trumpeted authoritatively, "It just isn't possible. The old fool couldn't! It won't work!"

"You'll see! You'll see!" the little man piped in a voice that was becoming increasingly mindful of an amusement pier calliope. "He's done it!"

And suddenly turning, he started down the rickety flight of steps as fast as his hammy little legs could carry him. He seemed almost to jitter along them as he sped downward, his bald pate glistening nervously in the bright afternoon sun. The faded woman, apparently still partially unconvinced, hung back for a moment, gazing icily after him. Then suddenly, with a for-better-or-worse but I bet it'll-be-worse shrug of her mammoth shoulders, she decided to follow. Awkwardly, like a runaway beer wagon, she began jolting down the steps, two at a time. The ancient board creaked a feeble threat, but didn't make it good.

Marc, watching this baffling performance with open-faced curiosity, rolled over and boosted himself into an upright position, so as to have a better view of it. Whoever these newcomers were, and whatever they had come there for, he was inclined to regard them as a blessing, no matter how shabbily disguised. Anything that happened now was bound to be a relief from the endless monotony of the last few days. After all, the newcomers might be members of some wayward, secret cult, come here for a sort of pagan ritual. It was a good deal to hope for, and hardly likely, but his jaded mind clutched hungrily at the idea.

Now on the beach, the two principal actors in whatever drama was about to be performed, moved swiftly past the rock behind which Marc rested and raced purposefully to the left. This only lent further intrigue to the affair since such a course, if followed to it's ultimate end, could only lead them crashingly against a further wall of the cliff. And considering the rate at which the pair were traveling, such a collision seemed altogether probable ... even imminent. Eagerly, Marc jack-knifed forward to keep them in sight.

But about half way to the wall, the little man skidded to a disordered stop and pointed a chubby finger toward a large rock that jutted straight and tall from the sands, like a staunch sentinel standing guard. "That one'll do," she shrilled, and to Marc's bitter disappointment, disappeared behind the boulder's shielding bulk. The woman, still reluctant, paused at the rock's edge.

"It won't work," she insisted. But her voice had now lost some of its authority. She followed her companion into the obscurity behind the rock.

Marc would have given his immortal soul, along with his only copy of Forever Amber, to have known what it was that was not going to work behind that boulder. He felt meanly cheated. He felt that the intruders, like the waves, had led him to expect great things, then deliberately let him down. For a moment he knew what it was to be a trusting chorus girl who had been promised jewels, only to find, by the morning's depressing light, that she had received only a hangover and a pair of cheap stockings. He knew what it was to—

Then, suddenly, he only knew panic as a tremendous explosion grasped the little beach and shook it like a limp dishrag. Rocks, dislodged from the face of the cliff, began to fall everywhere through churning, sand-laden air. Marc wasn't bored any more. He clutched the rock at his side with all the zeal of an impassioned suitor back home after a three-year absence on a desert island. His attitude clearly intimated that he loved that rock dearly and nothing would ever part him from it. Something that was not a rock landed thuddingly at his side, but he was too distracted to notice.

"Earthquake!" he gasped.

The sudden, nerve-shattering blast turned the world upside down, and the woman along with it.

"Earthquake, my left eye!" a voice grunted thickly. And Marc's head snapped about to find the ghostly woman looking up at him with startled eyes. She had exchanged locations with amazing rapidity. Lying on her stomach, arms, legs, and hair in a distressing state of disarray, she looked like nothing so much as a bloodless witch who had suffered a rather devastating crash landing. Certainly, she had descended as from the heavens, and yet, one glance told you that her association was certainly not with things astral. With stunning directness, she parted bluish lips and spat an impossible quantity of sand onto the beach where it looked much more natural.

Marc shrank back suspiciously. Perhaps it wasn't the gallant thing to do, but it seemed prudent. "What ... what happened?" he asked timidly.

"How should I know?" the woman asked bitterly, beginning an unconcerned inventory of her various parts. "I was too busy getting away from it to notice." Then, pummeling an embarrassingly intimate region with vigorous enthusiasm, she seemed to come to the comforting conclusion that she had passed through her ordeal still in possession of all she had started out with. Just why this should mean anything to her, Marc could not fathom. It seemed to him that any change, willy-nilly, could hardly miss being an improvement. No matter what ever happened to the woman, it could never be any worse than the awful trouncing that nature had already given her. She got stiffly to her feet and peered cautiously over the rock.

"Holy mother!" she breathed. "They're gone like a maiden's illusions!"

"What?" Marc asked. "What's gone?"

"The rock," the woman replied with dismaying heartiness, "and Mr. Epperson. He's gone too." Obviously, these missing items had been listed in the order of their importance.

"You ... you mean the little fellow? He's dead?" Marc asked shakily.

"Exceptionally so, I should say," the woman replied almost gleefully. "Look for yourself."

Marc accepted the invitation reluctantly, and peered around the edge of the rock with eyes that were only partly open. Then he gasped with amazement. It wasn't that there was so much to see, but rather that there was so little. Certainly, there was no sign of the rock or the little man. In the spot where they should have been, however, there was a deep hole in the sand that looked much like the work of a sizable dredger. Around this, there seemed to linger a sort of undefined gaseous body.

"Where ... where is he ... the little man, I mean!" he asked hesitantly.

"I told you," the woman replied impatiently. "He's gone."

"But his ... his remains? Where are they?"

"Vaporized, most likely," the woman answered airily, as though explaining a self-evident mathematical rule to a not-too-bright child.

"Vaporized?" The word seemed meaningless when applied to human bodies.

"Certainly. Those gases you see out there are all that's left of him."

Marc stared at the illusive last remains of Mr. Epperson, and shuddered.

"A noisy way to go," the woman reflected philosophically, "but nice and clean." She seemed to be speaking of an experiment that had turned out with surprising success. "He was a dirty little pest anyway. I never did like having him around." She smiled and it was no improvement. "I'll bet it's the first time anyone's ever gone to heaven with a rock ... if he went there at all."

"What happened to him? What did it?"

The woman regarded Marc thoughtfully for a time and seemed to come to a decision. She reached into the pocket of her grimy skirt and drew forth a minute, white capsule. She held it out for his inspection. "See that?" she asked.

"Just barely," Marc answered truthfully. "It's awfully small."

"And awfully powerful," the woman went on with dramatic emphasis. "That's what did it. Anyway, it was one just like that."

"What is it? What's it made of?"

"I don't know for sure," the woman replied. "It might be anything ... even common dirt. It doesn't matter. The point is that whatever it is, it's been charged so that when it's exposed to air, it just naturally blows everything around it all to hell and gone. Mr. Epperson opened the other one, and I guess that's why he was vaporized. I ducked around the rock just in time."

"But that's impossible!" Marc protested.

"I know it," the woman said flatly. "It's as impossible as a three dollar bill. But it works, just the same. Look what it did to old Eppy!"

Marc winced. He couldn't help the feeling that nothing good could come from such blatant familiarity with the dead. "Where did you get those things?" he asked, changing the subject.

"They're the brain child of a certain Dr. Herrigg," the woman replied. "I always thought there was something offside about the old crow, and now that I know it, I'm going...."

Suddenly, she was interrupted by a nasty cracking sound, and Marc quickly took up his old courtship with the rock, lest it be the overture to another explosion. He sensed, rather than saw or heard, the woman dropping to his side.

"What was that?" he whispered. Then he turned to the woman and started back in horror. She was lying face-down in the sand, and the hole at the base of her skull was clearly visible. The matter of the fluid running in her veins was settled beyond all argument; it was blood.

Blindly following a first impulse, Marc leaped to his feet to see where the shot had come from. He regretted it almost instantly. No sooner had he gotten on eye level with the top of the rock, than there was a second cracking sound and a bullet whined viciously past his ear, like a great, lethal gnat. He hugged the rock again, wondering incongruously if he were to spend the rest of his life in a crouching position. It seemed such a vulgar position in which to die. In the brief moment of his exposure, he had seen a small, grey-haired figure, with a pointed, sharp-featured face, and a gun to match. The sight had done much to shake Marc's confidence in his own future. Indeed, he imagined that this, approximately, was what the mystery writers were referring to when they mentioned a "tight spot." And the sound of footsteps descending the stairway convinced him that his own personal spot was swiftly becoming downright constricting. His eyes, wide and wild, frantically ran the length of the beach.

There was only one choice, and it was a dismally unknown quantity. Cut off from the stairway, he would have to crawl along the base of the bluff in the opposite direction, keeping down behind the covering rocks as well as he could. He wasn't sure just where such a path might lead, but it held one feature that appealed to him over-whelmingly; it would at least put a distance between himself and the man with the gun, who's deadly acquaintance he was reticent to make.

By the time Marc had come to the end ... the dead end ... of his tortuous path, his knees, with a trim of parsley, would easily have made an attractive addition to even the best butcher's display. Still crouching, he drew himself stiffly up, and sat down on a flat rock to inspect his damaged joints. Finally satisfied that they had not been worn all the way through, no matter how much they felt like it, he gave his attention over to the situation at hand. It looked hopeless.

To his left, and in front of him, there was nothing but ocean; to his right, a grey-haired killer; and directly behind him, the sheer, stony face of the cliff. There was nothing to do but hope for the best ... in spite of an insistent feeling that the best would be none too good. He picked up a loose stone and regarded it bleakly. Compared to the gun he'd glimpsed on the beach, it looked loathsomely harmless.

Marc couldn't have said exactly how long he'd been sitting there, looking like an unhappy throw-back to the stone age, but the afternoon light had already begun to fade from the sky, and the rock in his hand had become heavy. He guessed it was about an hour. Why hadn't the man followed him? He gazed toward the darkening sea, and fished vainly for some meaning, some key, to the afternoon's events. In them there had been surprise and danger, but over it all, there had also been the discoloring shadow of unreality. He began to wonder if it hadn't all been just a delusion born of over-exposure to the sun. After all, during the summer months, fried brains weren't the exclusive property of the local restaurant owner. They were anybody's, just for the basking.

Somewhat bolstered by this possibility, but still wary, Marc stood up and peered apprehensively over the shielding barrier of rocks. There was no sound, no movement, anywhere. Hesitantly, still crouching, but not on his hands and knees this time, he started back. In spite of a halting, stop-and-go progress, it was only a matter of five minutes before he was back on the beach proper. Just before he reached the point where he had abandoned the body of the nameless woman, he stopped again, longer this time. Finally, like a man about to plunge into a pool of iced water, he sucked in his breath and stepped resolutely around the side of the rock. Then he stopped short. The body was gone.

When he'd recovered sufficiently from this surprise, he gazed uneasily over the top of the rock to the main part of the beach. It was utterly deserted. Outside of the still missing stone, it was just as he had first seen it that day. He shrugged and started toward the stairway. Sun-stroke or whatever, forces had obviously been at work that were hopelessly beyond his comprehension.

He climbed the complaining stairs, crossed the deserted road, and made his way up the path to the beach house.

For a moment, as he looked at the small, streamlined dwelling, his earlier mood of loneliness was sharply recalled to him. It was a place meant for parties and gaiety and carefree companionship. Without these things, it seemed rejected and forlorn; like a lovely, giddy girl dressed for a ball and left waiting by a heartlessly indifferent beau. He forced the feeling aside and hurried on.

Finding the door open, just as he had left it, he stepped inside and started to close it against the growing chill of the evening. His hand started forward, then froze in mid-air. Behind him, in the dimness of the tiny reception hall, he'd heard a faint rustling sound, and swung quickly about. But not soon enough. Instantly, something cold, hard, and as decisive as a tombstone, struck him across the side of the head. The room began to spin deliriously.

'Round and 'round the little room traveled, until it had become nothing more than a dizzy, churning whirlpool. For a moment Marc teetered precariously on its brink, then suddenly caught in its expanding tide, lost his footing and plunged downward.

Spiraling helplessly toward the center of the whirling, fluid cylinder, he could see that its center was dark, and he was frightened. He tried to fight the dragging current, but it was no use. Next, he was caught in that darkness, and was spinning dizzily downward, faster and faster, like a great, human pinwheel.

Marc had lost all sense of time before his frantic journey was ended. It might have lasted a split second or an hour. He didn't know. But when it was over, he was grateful. Landing flat on his stomach, he lay perfectly still for a time, his eyes closed. Curiously, now that he had come to rest, a strange feeling of contentment was slowly creeping over him. He didn't know where he was, but he was glad to be there.

Turning slowly over, swinging his long legs before him, he opened his eyes and gazed about. At first he was blinded by a bright light that seemed to come from everywhere. A bit at a time, however, his surroundings began to swim into view. He discovered, piece-meal, that he was in an immense room; apparently some sort of filing room, for the walls, on every side, were lined to a distant ceiling with business-like filing cabinets. Against the opposite wall stood a metal ladder that was fastened at its base to a track that stretched evenly around the room. He still couldn't discover where the light was coming from, but it was bluish and very bright.

"Hello," a voice said softly above him, and Marc, glancing up, thought it sounded vaguely familiar. He was right. Perched on the uppermost rung of the ladder, and dangling a pair of scandalously perfect legs, sat Toffee. Clothed, as always before, only in a scrap of transparent, emerald colored material, her figure was being shockingly frank about its own perfection. It seemed almost conceited in its exciting loveliness. She smiled roguishly and her green eyes sparkled through the distance. There was a quick flash of red hair as she swung about and started down the ladder.

"You would come just when I'm busiest," she scolded happily, swinging easily from step to step. "I should have known it. When could I ever expect any consideration from the likes of you?"

Rather than enter into preposterous argument with his own senses, Marc admitted that she was actually there, before him. He knew by now that he would have to sooner or later, anyway. "Busy?" he asked with as matter-of-fact a voice as he could manage. "Busy with what?"

"Your files, of course," Toffee replied lightly, jumping with kittenish softness to the floor, disdainful of the last three steps. "This is the end of the year for you, mentally."

"What files?"

"Didn't you see the sign when you came in?"

"The way I came in," Marc replied sourly, "I didn't see anything."

"Oh, of course not," Toffee agreed. "Just looking down that way and seeing you here all of a sudden, I forgot for a moment that you were from outside. Well, just so you'll know, this is the Miscellaneous Information chamber of your mind. You've never been here before. You've only seen the valley of your mind." She smiled demurely. "I guess you're just naturally drawn to wherever I happen to be. But I do wish you'd seen the sign. It's an idea I got from outside, in your world. It's all lit up with mental impulses ... just like neon. It's really beautiful."

Marc winced. That his mind might someday become a mental replica of Broadway was the most repulsive idea he'd had to face in weeks. Toffee would be setting up a chain of "Grey Matter" hot dog stands next. "Miscellaneous Information?" he asked, uncertainly.

"Yes," Toffee said, with the professional air of a paid guide giving a fifty cent tour. "In a year's time, you pick up more odd facts and figures than you think. If they were left lying around, your mind would look like a city dump. So at the end of every fiscal year, it's my job to gather them all together and file them alphabetically under topic headings. Then, it's always here when you need it, unless it's too out of date. See what I mean?"

Marc nodded slowly. "I guess so," he said, and his voice was laden with uncertainty. "But don't you think it's a little creepy?"

"Nonsense!" Toffee cried, dismissing the idea. Then her smile suddenly faded and her eyes became hard. "And while we're on the subject," she said menacingly, "there's something I'd like to ask you."

"What's that?"

Turning to a small table nearby, she picked up a stiff white card, and flipped it angrily under his nose. "Just you tell me," she demanded hotly, "How you happened to pick up the bust measurements of the entire Gaities chorus!"

Marc's expression was one of utter stupification for a moment, then it relaxed. "Oh, that!" he exclaimed with false heartiness.

"Yes, that!" Toffee echoed ruthlessly, placing one hand on a smooth hip.

"That's easy to explain," Marc went on quickly. "It all had to do with the advertising agency. We handled some ads for the Gaities."

"Ads?" Toffee sneered. "You mean they advertise things like that!"

"Well, no. Not exactly. It was really the show that we advertised."

"What a show it must be!" Toffee exclaimed sarcastically. "That Miss Flare La Greer must be a fair sensation every time she sets foot on a runway. With measurements like that, I wonder that there's any room left for the rest of them."

"Don't be vulgar," Marc put in without hope.

"If you ask me," Toffee said icily, "it's that La Greer moll that's being vulgar. She was born vulgar." Then her smile suddenly appeared as unexpectedly as a sunburst in the middle of a rain storm. "But if it's the way you say," she cooed, "I guess I'll just have to forgive you. Now let's say hello properly." She stretched her arms out toward Marc, and made quick, beckoning motions with her hands.

Marc was instantly on his feet. Of all the censorable things in the world, experience had taught him that Toffee's interpretation of a proper greeting would probably head the list. "Get away from me!" he yelped, backing into a filing case. "Stay mad! Hate me! Don't start that old stuff, or I'll...."

"Or you'll what?" Toffee asked wickedly, sliding her slender arms smoothly around his neck.

It may have been Toffee's kiss that started the room spinning. Marc didn't know, and somehow, try as he would, he couldn't seem to make himself care. At any rate, it was spinning, and gaining speed at every turn. In a moment, it was whirling like a thing possessed, and Marc could feel himself being lifted easily upward. He opened his eyes and looked out with dismay. It was as though they had been caught in the very center of a gigantic tornado. Caught, just as he had been in the whirlpool only a moment before.

"Wow!" Toffee cried gleefully, her arms clasped tenaciously about his neck. "What a kiss!"

Marc groaned and rolled over. Then, lest it fall off, he clutched his head in his hands, and sat up. Instantly, he experienced a feeling that was like having several gross of heavy-duty ice picks driven into the base of the skull, just behind the left ear. He groaned again and tried to guess where he might be, but his mind, still in a state of churning confusion, would not be prodded into an answer. It was as limp and uninterested as an old, worn glove. He was surrounded by a brooding, unbroken darkness, and for a moment thoughts of coffins and coal bins chased each other unrelentingly over his tired brain. Then, experimentally, he reached a cautious hand into the blackness, and then quickly shrank back.

The touch of soft, cool flesh was not precisely what he had expected. Neither was he expecting the slap that was soundly administered across the bridge of his nose only a split second later.

"And don't tell me you were just looking for a match, either!" an irate feminine voice rasped. "I'll teach you to come pawing around me!"

"Toffee!"

"Marc!"

Immediately, two slender arms were about his neck, and Toffee was contritely saying, "I'm sorry Marc. I didn't know it was you. It didn't feel like you."

"How should you know how I feel?" Marc asked annoyedly, trying to disentangle himself from her insistent embrace. "Do you always have to say a thing so it sounds lecherous? Where did you come from, anyway?"

"I've materialized from your mind again," Toffee replied gaily, happy at the achievement. "You submerged into your subconscious and dreamed me up a moment ago, so naturally I just dropped everything and returned to consciousness with you. What kind of a mess have you gotten into this time?"

"Mess?"

"Yes. There must be something wrong or you wouldn't have been around bothering me. You never do come around," she added fretfully, "unless something's gone wrong." She patted his hand. "It's because you're such a low type, I guess."

"Holy smoke!" Marc cried, suddenly remembering the day's odd adventures. "You're right. Things are plenty wrong. I was ambushed!"

"Oh, no!" Toffee cried. "How terrible! You're so young!"

"I was hit over the head," Marc added flatly.

"Oh," Toffee breathed with relief. "Where are we?"

Marc had already gotten to his feet and was fumbling along the wall. "I'm on vacation," he said through a dark distance. "We're at the beach house."

"Where's Julie?" Toffee asked with a tinge of apprehension, remembering that Julie, on other occasions, hadn't been precisely cordial.

"She's visiting her mother at the farm," Marc replied shortly. "She read an article about separate vacations."

"Craziest thing I ever heard," Toffee pronounced bluntly. "What are you doing, sanding that wall?"

"I'm looking for the light switch," Marc explained. "It's right by the stairway closet as I remember."

His hand, running out of wall, began fishing absently about in a narrow open space. "I think I've found the closet," he called reassuringly. Then, strangely, he was aware that the space had begun to widen, almost automatically it seemed. He guessed that the door was swinging open of its own volition, and attributed the phenomenon to faulty construction. He made a mental note to check the door in the morning. But what happened a second later could hardly have been explained by structural discrepancies. With truly alarming ferocity, two unidentified arms were flung about his waist, and caught off guard, he was carried crashingly to the floor. The darkness became alive with the sounds of conflict.

"Cut it out, Toffee!" Marc yelled, struggling wildly to free himself, and getting hopelessly entangled. "Try to restrain yourself! This is no time for playing games!"

"I'm perfectly restrained," Toffee called back suspiciously. "And who's playing games ... and what kind of games? I'm just waiting for the lights."

"Then who's this on top of me?" Marc wailed, cagily fighting his way into a position that left him completely impotent against his unseen attacker.

"Why don't you ask him?" Toffee suggested helpfully through a jumble of scuffling, gasping sounds. "I'm sure I don't know." Swiftly, she started in search of the illusive light switch herself.

"I don't think he's interested in formal introductions," Marc wheezed with what sounded like a dying gasp. "Hurry and get those lights on before he kills me. He's strangling me!"

As though in instant answer to his command, the room suddenly blazed with light, and Marc, seeing his assailant, almost nose to nose, turned deathly pale. His eyes snapped lightly shut, and turning his head to one side, his lips began to move feverishly, although his voice seemed to have deserted him. On his chest, face down, and in an immodest state of disorder, lay the lifeless figure of the woman on the beach.

Toffee gazed wrathfully on this grotesque display, and the usual hand moved threateningly to the usual hip. "Well, you might at least have the decency to stop whispering to her!" she hissed contemptuously. "The lights are on, you know! I can see you! I'm not blind!" She paused for a moment, and seeing no change in the distressing tableau, went on. "Tell that shameless wench to get up and get out of here! You never miss a chance do you? The minute the lights go out, you've got to be frisking about on the carpet!"

With a tremendous effort, Marc partly opened one eye and looked pleadingly up at her. He managed to force out a few wretched words. "She's ... she's not a ... a shameless wench," he whispered half-hysterically. "She's ... she's a ... a ... a body!"

"I can see that for myself!" Toffee retorted hotly. "And not such a hot one, either, if you ask me. Now, tell her to gather up her flabby old body and drag it out that door, before I practice violence on it. Don't just lie there staring up at me like a wall-eyed clam!"

"But ... but she can't!"

"Sodden drunk, eh?"

"No. She ... she's a dead body." Marc's voice suddenly broke through its bonds and came back with unexpected force. "She's been shot!" he roared. "Get her off me before I lose my mind!"

The angry fire of suspicion flickered one last time in Toffee's eyes, then went out. She leaned down for a better look at the smothering figure. "How sinister!" she breathed.

"Don't waste time on adjectives!" Marc entreated. "Just get the horrible thing off me!"

Toffee forced a slender hand to the woman's shoulder, and with an incongruously dainty gesture rolled it from the distraught Marc. "It makes my spine fairly tingle," she said.

"What do you think it's done to mine?" Marc asked reproachfully, getting to his feet and rubbing the injured section.

Toffee continued to stare at the discarded body. "I do think you could have shown better taste in your choice of victims," she mused. "It couldn't have been a crime of passion, or passion isn't everything I've heard it is." Having satisfied herself on this point, she turned brightly to Marc. "Why did you shoot her?" she asked with honest curiosity.

"I didn't shoot her," Marc denied stoutly. "I only saw it done ... down on the beach."

"Then what's that gun doing here?" Toffee asked, pointing to the corner.

Marc forced himself to pick up the revolver. It looked like the one he'd seen on the beach. Obviously, whoever had hit him, hadn't meant to kill him. It would have been so much easier to have shot him. "Someone's trying to frame me," he said, as though trying to explain this fact to himself.

"I don't blame them," was Toffee's prompt reply. "You're quite a picture in those yellow trunks. They set your sunburn off like a keg of dynamite."

"But what am I going to do with that body?" Marc asked, ignoring the irrelevant criticism. "If it's found here, they'll lock me up forever."

Toffee thoughtfully chewed a thumbnail. "You might try giving it to someone," she said pensively. "There must be just lots of people who are simply dying to have a body all their own. A person with an ingenuity at all could probably find all kinds of uses for it."

"Stop driveling," Marc broke in curtly. "And try to think of something useful. I'll try to get it back in the closet, then I'll have to change clothes. We'll decide what to do about it afterwards."

"You asked me," Toffee reminded him. "I don't suppose the woman really cares much what you do with her body. After all, she hasn't much use for it any more. And it wasn't really such a good one to begin with. I'm sure I wouldn't care what people did with mine."

"You never did," Marc snapped, and summoning the courage born of necessity, he lifted the figure reluctantly to his shoulder. "You have no modesty. And please don't go on like that about bodies. It's indecent."

"It's no more indecent than you in those trunks," Toffee retorted.

Marc propped the body in the closet and quickly closed the door.

"With legs like yours," Toffee went on, "I wouldn't even take a bath for consideration of the poor peeping Toms, much less go out on the beach where innocent women and children might see the things. They're horrible."

Marc had ignored the insult as long as he could. "What's wrong with my legs?" he asked woundedly.

"They're skinny," Toffee said, thoughtfully taking stock, "and hairy. They look like a couple of twisted pipe cleaners ... dirty pipe cleaners. They also turn the stomach and wither the soul."

"That's enough!" Marc yelled reddening. "Hereafter, I'll thank you to leave my pipe clean ... my legs out of this. Just try to forget that I even have legs at all."

"Gladly," was the obliging reply. "I'll just pretend to myself that you're staggering about on hooks."

Blanching, Marc strove to restore his sense of dignity. He drew himself up to his full height, some six feet, two inches, and started regally up the stairs. With the gun still in his hand, he looked like a noble suicider. "I'll return," he said frigidly, "after I've put on some trousers." Then he stopped and regarded Toffee's transparent tunic with slow deliberation. "And while we're on the subject," he added quietly. "You might just try to do something about your own nakedness. It's revolting!"

Marc pulled on a discreetly colorful sport jacket and glanced at himself in the mirror. With the exception of a worried expression, everything he wore was in neat, conservative good taste. He sighed, left the room.

Downstairs, he crossed the reception hall, careful to give the closet a wide berth, and made his way into the darkened living room. He felt his way to a floor lamp and turned it on. Immediately, a bright circle of light spread over the thick carpet like ink through a blotter. Noting this common phenomenon without interest, he turned away, then stopped as the door at the opposite end of the room opened. Toffee, resplendent in a cunning arrangement of the dining room drapes, moved sinuously into the room with all the unconscious grace of a stalking panther.

The drapes, a bold flowery design on a background of white, had been fashioned into a bare midriff evening gown of truly provocative design. The two parts, obviously disdainful of each other, contrived to leave a maximum of midriff, while doing little or nothing toward covering their assigned portions. The skirt was widely split at one side, exposing an exquisite leg, like a diamond in a show case. Toffee's nod to decency had been most perfunctory indeed.

"Like it?" she asked, smiling radiantly. "You'd never dream that it used to cover windows, would you?"

"I'd never dream it ever covered anything," Marc replied amazedly. "And if it ever had any ambitions along those lines, they're certainly shot now."

"It was just an idea I had," Toffee replied proudly.

"In night clubs all over the country," Marc commented dryly. "Thousands of girls have that same idea three times nightly, only they get paid for their nakedness ... or hauled into night court by the decency squad."

Fortunately, any further discussion of Toffee's "creation" was suddenly forestalled by the unexpected sound, from outside, of tires leaving pavement and turning grindingly onto gravel. Marc and Toffee ran swiftly to the window, where they vied athletically for a view of the drive; each for his own separate reason. Marc was having nightmarish visions of Julie, returned with a changed mind to share the remainder of his vacation. Toffee only knew that any addition, at this moment, was bound to be an interesting one.

"It's a man!" she breathed happily.

"Thank heaven," Marc sighed relievedly, then on second thought added, "Good grief!"

An instant later, a knock sounded at the front door and Toffee started eagerly toward the hall. "I'll let him in," she said over her shoulder.

"Don't!" cried Marc. "What about the thing in the closet?"

"Oh, that!" Toffee called back airily. "We'll have him hang his hat on a lamp or something." She continued toward the door.

"Stop!" Marc yelled commandingly.

And Toffee opened the door.

A lanky rustic, replete with drooping mustache and high heeled boots gazed unbelievingly at the dream-like creature that had opened the door to him. And a great, wistful sadness came into his eyes. "I'm Morton Miller," he drawled with a voice that so perfectly completed the homespun picture it was hard to believe he hadn't arrived by stage coach.

"It could be worse," Toffee consoled, obviously in serious doubt of her own statement.

"I'm the sheriff," the fellow elaborated.

Marc and Toffee exchanged a glance that was a silent, two-way scream.

"You got a body, lady?"

"You ought to know," Toffee replied, snatching furtively after her retreating composure. "You've hardly taken your eyes off it."

The sheriff cleared his throat and his voice dug its toe awkwardly into a hay stack. "No, lady," he said nervously. "That ain't what I mean. I'm lookin' fer a dead body."

"We don't have any," Toffee lied promptly, as though speaking of termites.

"That's funny," the sheriff mused chattily, now on firmer ground. "A fella called me on the phone and said a woman'd been shot out here."

Marc swiftly joined them. He knew that the wheels of calamity had inexorably begun to turn. He could almost hear them grinding.

"What fellow?" Toffee was asking.

"Don't rightly know. Wouldn't give his name. Had a sort of whiney voice, as I recollect. Sounded kinda goofy."

"He was goofy," Marc put in flatly. "Goofy as they come. No one's been shot here yet." Then, starting toward the door, he added, "Goodnight."

"Just a minute," the sheriff said, placing a mammoth foot firmly on the doorsill. "I gotta look around. It's my duty." He eyed Marc suspiciously. "And just who are you?"

"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc said almost ashamedly. "This is my place."

The sheriff nodded, pushed the door open, and stepped authoritatively inside. Obviously, this was one arm of the law that had a well developed muscle, if not much else. "Always like to have the owner around, when I'm ransackin' fer a body," he said cryptically. "Usually find that's the bird that hid 'er there."

"You're making a mistake," Toffee objected weakly.

"Maybe," the sheriff replied composedly. Then he pointed to the closet. "First things first," he said with thread-bare philosophy. "What's in there?"

"Nothing," Toffee replied with desperate casualness. "It's just an empty closet."

In an attempt at simulated innocence, Toffee had managed to look completely like a Borgia, caught with her cyanide showing. Morton Miller gazed briefly on this laughable performance, and started wordlessly toward the closet. Toffee followed quickly after him.

"Maybe you're right," she said with a surprising reversal of attitude. "You really ought to look around, and satisfy yourself that everything's all right. We wouldn't want you to go away feeling frustrated you know."

She stepped lightly in front of him and opened the closet door.

"It's pretty dark in there," the sheriff complained. "Ain't there a light?"

Toffee nodded. "It's loose," she explained. "I couldn't reach it to tighten it. But I'll bet you can. You're so tall, and all." She pointed to one of the closet's darkest corners. "It's back there."

The sheriff, a determined man if anything, followed the suggestion blindly, and moved into the inner darkness of the tiny compartment. Never had a man looked so much like a lamb going trustingly to slaughter.

It happened just as Toffee had hoped it would. No sooner was the sheriff in the closet than she slammed the door and turned the key standing ready in its lock. It may even be that she closed the door a bit before the sheriff was fully inside, for there had been an undignified slapping sound that implied as much. Either way, however, the deed done, she turned breathlessly to Marc.

"Let's get out of here!" she cried. "You've been framed like a museum masterpiece."

Marc, too stunned to quite grasp the situation, stared at her blankly.

"What did you do with the gun?" Toffee went on.

"It's upstairs, on my bed," he murmured, gazing unbelievingly at the closet door.

The atmosphere within the closet was swiftly becoming agitated. A series of formidable thudding sounds was suddenly followed by a shriek that sounded like a fast freight going through a rural junction at midnight.

"I think the sheriff's found the body," Toffee commented dryly. "Well, it's what he was after, and he can't say we didn't do our best to help him. Let's get out of here. If he keeps that up, he'll wake the dead."

To Marc the remark seemed singularly ill-timed. Shudderingly, as he followed Toffee out the door, he tried not to think of the grim goings-on inside the darkened closet.

The car swerved crazily, missed the oncoming truck by a sickeningly narrow margin, and sped on down the highway, followed by a shower of rare and salty expletives, recited with great sincerity by a truck driver who was undisputedly a master of spicy invective.

"I thought you knew how to drive," Marc moaned, moving his hands slowly away from his eyes.

"There's nothing to it," Toffee bragged, pressing the accelerator to the floor.

"There certainly isn't, the way you do it," Marc replied coldly. "You just step on the starter and, zoom!, before you know it, you're resting quietly in the morgue. It's a dandy arrangement if you have a passion for morgues. It just happens that I haven't."

"Nonsense!" Toffee cried. "You worry too much. A child could do it!"

"I'd rather a child did," Marc sighed defeatedly. "I'd feel safer."

"Watch this!" Toffee cried happily. And she started swinging the wheel recklessly from side to side so that the car careened deliriously back and forth, across the road. "There's no end to the fun you can have in a car!"

"Oh, yes there is!" Marc cried, clinging desperately to the door handle. "And ours should take place within the next ten seconds, if I'm any judge!"

"You're so morbid minded," Toffee complained.

Then, at the last possible moment, she swung the car sharply into a side road, and the evening stillness was hastily dispatched to the realm of memory by a shrieking protest from the tortured tires.

"Holy smoke!" yelled Marc. "If the sheriff isn't after us by now, the highway patrol must be."

Toffee didn't answer. She was too busy regaining a lost foothold on the accelerator. Marc noted with relief that the new road was deserted. At least she couldn't kill any innocent bystanders here. There was still a chance that manslaughter wouldn't be added to the list of their crimes.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"How should I know?" Toffee replied toughly, from the side of her mouth. "Where do people go when they're making a getaway?"

"You don't have to talk like a gun moll," Marc admonished, and suddenly he was overcome with the hopelessness of the situation. It seemed that fate had gone out of its way to find new confusions for complicating his life. If things had been too monotonously simple only a few hours before, now they were too hecticly complex. They had gone far beyond his capacity for such things. Through it all, Marc was wishing that Julie were there to console and advise him, as she had so often in the past. It was only a matter of a moment before he was lost deep in a reverie in which only the stillness of the night, his wife and himself existed. The car began to lose its speed.

"Stop that!" Toffee's voice said with unnatural faintness. "You're making me fade!"

"Huh?" Marc turned toward her, and his eyes widened with alarm. Toffee was almost transparent.

"You were day dreaming again, weren't you?" she accused, becoming more visible. "I've warned you about that before. I can't exist unless I'm projected through your full consciousness. Now stay awake unless you want to be wrecked."

"I'm sorry," Marc said, relieved that she had already become almost completely materialized once more. But Toffee, obviously concerned with other matters, seemed to forget the incident instantly.

"I think we're being followed," she said gravely.

"What!"

"A car turned off the highway just after we did, and has been gaining on us ever since. I've been watching it in the mirror."

Marc shifted quickly in the seat, and thrusting his head out the window, peered into the darkness, behind. Two headlights, like the eyes of a nightmare demon, stared malevolently back at him, and crept closer.

"Step on it!" he yelled. "It's probably the sheriff!" Then, suddenly, like a turtle retreating into the safety of its shell, he jerked his head back inside as a shot rang out through the still night.

"He's shooting at us!" he cried.

"Don't you think I know it?" Toffee moaned, bending low over the wheel. Then she screamed as another barking sound announced a second shot. The car began to skid drunkenly sideways.

"They've hit a tire!" she screamed. "We're out of control!"

Instantly the darkness was filled with scraping, rending sounds as the car swung crazily across the road, fell into a shallow ravine, and imbedded itself, nose-first, in the opposite embankment.

Following the musical aftermath of glass and metal showered on pavement, the ensuing stillness inside the car was almost deafening. Then, Toffee, dropping a broken steering gear daintily out of the window, turned to Marc.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so," Marc replied, without a trace of conviction.

"I don't think your car will go any more," Toffee said regretfully. "We'd better make a run for it. You'll have to get out first. My door is jammed."

Simultaneously, as though repeating a well rehearsed routine, they turned toward the door at Marc's side, then froze. Framed in the window, neither the gun nor the hand that held it looked in the least way friendly.

"I ... I can explain everything, Sheriff," Marc stammered.

"You won't have to explain a thing," a strange voice said softly, and the hand and gun were disconcertingly joined by the pointed, sharp-featured face that Marc had seen on the beach. "All you have to do is get out and follow my instructions as I give them. It's very simple."

The face disappeared and the gun waved them out of the car.

"What...?" Marc began.

"We'll talk later," the man broke in. "Right now, I'll have to ask you to blindfold each other."

His hand held out two crude, white bandages.

"Gee," Toffee giggled delightedly, accepting one of the strips. "It's just like a game isn't it?"

Marc's answering glance effortlessly hurdled years of scientific research and rendered the death ray hopelessly obsolete. His emotions, translated into words, would have required a brief but highly specialized vocabulary which he did not possess.

"You may remove your blindfolds now," the man said, and Marc and Toffee lost no time in doing so. For a moment both of them stood gaping incredulously at their new surroundings. They were standing in the center of an enormous dome-shaped room that seemed to be walled entirely with highly polished, unbroken rock; as though a small mountain had somehow been hollowed out. Except for two curved, slit-like doorways, the monotonous smoothness went endlessly on like perpetual motion. One door was directly before them; the other, through which they had obviously come, directly behind. Both were closed with a knobless, metallic panel. A few bits of austere, metal furniture stood here and there, looking lost in the vastness of the place. But the most unusual particular of the room was the way in which it was lighted. High in its ceiling, a fiery, sun-like ball revolved lazily, impossibly held aloft by what appeared to be two rays of strong, white light. The resulting brightness was like that one might expect to find in an unshaded meadow at high noon. Marc glanced at the contrivance and turned away blinking. It was too bright for steady scrutiny.

"You like my place?" the man asked, and his voice was the kind that crept up from behind and tapped you quietly on the shoulder. Listening to him, Marc wondered absently why Hollywood should bother with men like Peter Lorre when there were others, like the grey-haired little man, around.

Toffee, however, not so much interested in voices as what they were saying, gave the room a second appraising glance. "I don't think it's so screaming wonderful," she said with sledge hammer bluntness. "It might make a pretty fair dance hall, though, if you'd just tone down that silly light fixture up there."

The prideful glint in the little man's eyes went cold to be surplanted by the colorless ash of disappointment. Obviously, he had expected this to be an impressive moment.

"This," he said with battered dignity, "is a citadel of science."

"This," Toffee corrected ruthlessly, "is as nutty as a peanut stand at a county fair."

"And yet, there may be things here that will interest you intensely."

Toffee turned briefly to Marc. "I don't like the way he said that."

Apparently, the statement hadn't struck just the right note with Marc, either. He'd already turned to the little man. "Now, look here Dr. Herrigg...."

"Miss Logan told you my name?"

"Miss Logan?"

"The deceased Miss Logan," the doctor elaborated.

"... Whose body was planted in my closet," Marc completed angrily.

"That was a shame," the doctor sighed. "I'm truly sorry about all that, but it did seem the only thing to do at the time. I couldn't find you on the beach, so I had to make some hasty readjustments. You had to be gotten out of the way, and the woman's body had to be disposed of. What could be better than turning the whole problem over to the police? It all dove-tailed beautifully. After all, I have a very good reason for not wanting the police curious about my whereabouts."

"Just off hand," Marc said sourly, "I can't think of a better reason than murder. They're so apt to be high-handed about the thing."

"Exactly," the doctor agreed.

Toffee gazed disappointedly at the doctor's slight figure.

"Killers, nowadays," she murmured unhappily, "just aren't what they used to be. Maybe it's the shortages."

The doctor's eyes were heavy with exasperation as they turned toward her. "I do wish you weren't so preoccupied with murder," he said tiredly.

"You mean you're not?" Toffee returned quickly.

"Certainly not. I wouldn't have killed Mr. Epperson and Miss Logan if they hadn't forced me to. They got to prying into my private affairs, and I had to put an end to it somehow."

"The method seems a little extreme," Toffee pointed out. "A good, old-fashioned talking-to might have been simpler ... or were you afraid of hurting their feelings?"

The doctor waved an impatient hand through the air.

"They were only laboratory assistants and they insisted on knowing what I was working on. So I simply obliged them. I contrived to leave a couple of capsules where they would be sure to find them. I was certain they'd both be destroyed by the blast, but that fool woman ... she never did do anything right ... got outside the radius of vaporization. Naturally, I had to shoot her."

"Oh, naturally," Toffee broke in. "Anyone silly enough to get outside a perfectly good radius of vaporization deserves to be shot. I see what you mean."

"If you must speak," the doctor said scornfully, "try to say something intelligent."

"Give me time," was Toffee's bland reply, "and I'll build up a really good insult for you."

"But we were talking of other things," the doctor said loftily, wagging a finger toward a group of chairs before his desk. "You'd better sit down."

Hesitantly, Marc and Toffee accepted the invitation. Toffee crossed one lovely leg over the other and regarded it bleakly. Obviously, she thought it a waste in such scientific surroundings. Her determined belief in the idea that sex, if just given half the chance, could surmount any obstacle, seemed in grave peril of disproof. It was the first time that her faith in herself had ever been shaken, and it was not a nice feeling. She scowled at the doctor, who quickly averted his eyes. He sat down at the desk, dropped the gun on its glistening surface.

"And now," he said, shifting his attention to Marc, "I think we'd better get to the point of your visit. And just to relieve your minds, I'll tell you that you are not to be killed."

Toffee brightened.

"No," the doctor continued, "You were brought here, Mr. Pillsworth, because you are one of America's most influential advertising men. As such, you can be of use to me." He smiled wryly. "I didn't know of your profession when I placed Miss Logan in your home and knocked you out."

"You have something to advertise?" Marc asked evenly. "Don't tell me you're reopening Murder Incorporated under new management."

"No," the doctor smiled. "But I've something to advertise just the same ... a button."

"A button?" Marc and Toffee chorused unmusically.

The doctor smiled at their surprise. "This button," he said, and he pointed to a smooth white disc set into the corner of his desk ... an ordinary push button.

Toffee and Marc exchanged glances. Both asked questions. Neither received answers.

"I once had a plan," the doctor continued dreamily, "and I worked for years to perfect a bomb ... a curious sort of bomb. It was to be charged with infectious bacteria, and it could be hurled into the regions high above the earth by catapult. The result would have polluted the very heavens. All the rainfall thereafter, and eventually all the water supplies of the world would have become deadly to human life. Everyone would have died. It would have been ghastly ... a magnificent triumph of science." He shrugged philosophically. "I never did get it perfected."

"Thank heaven!" Marc murmured.

The doctor smiled again, more broadly. "So I worked out something else."