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 recaption 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 arrange-ment 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 goon of frilly 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, sniffing 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 dreamlike 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
“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 threadbare 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 ri
ght,” 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 explitives, 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 loose 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 knob-less, 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.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 11
