Marc winced. It didn’t seem she was leaving him a very attractive alternative. His ears, though a bit large perhaps, had served him well and faithfully so far, and he was anxious to continue the association. Besides, even if the invitation to rebuttal had been made without threat of disfiguration, he was beginning to doubt his physical ability to accept it. The glove of challenge had been thrown down, but he was too weak even to pick it up. Already, Memphis’ angry face was beginning to blur and drift lazily back and forth before him. A curious limpness had come into his body, and he felt himself sagging toward the floor.
“Good grief! He’s sick!” Memphis’ voice came to him distantly, as though through water. Then he felt her arms about his shoulders, holding him away from the floor. “Well, don’t just sit there, you gaping parasites, help me carry him into his office!” Though commanding and brusque, the voice carried a faint overtone of self-reproach.
BEING carried ... or dragged, as it seemed ... into the quiet confines of his private office, Marc was only half aware of what was happening. However, as he felt the softness of the lounge beneath him, his head began to clear a little. He opened his eyes. The door was just closing on an assortment of backs and a confusion of whispered conversation. Memphis, sitting in a chair next to the lounge, was staring at him with worried concern.
“I didn’t mean to let go at you like that, Mr. Pillsworth,” she said regretfully. “But, really, you shouldn’t have done it. I was so disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” Marc asked weakly. “Shouldn’t have done what?”
She waved a hand vaguely through the air. “Oh, everything. Drinking in the office. Making passes at the girls. Chasing them. All the rest. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to go on like that in a business office.”
“Drinking?” Marc looked deeply perplexed. “Who’s been drinking?”
“It’s all right,” Memphis replied soothingly. “And it doesn’t matter now that it’s all over. I’m sure it won’t happen again. Will it?”
Marc raised himself slowly to one elbow. “What won’t happen again?” he asked. “What’s been going on here, anyway? I demand to know.”
“Who knows better than you?” Memphis returned, a touch of temper creeping back into her voice. “Just look at this office.”
For the first time Marc turned his attention to his surroundings. The office was a shambles. Paper was strewn everywhere, and in the center of the room, a chair, turned on its back, lay discarded and forlorn. Across from him, by the leg of another chair, a suspicious-looking half-filled bottle stood on the floor. The air was redolent with the odor of liquor. Unbelievingly, Marc swung his legs over the edge of the lounge, rose shakily to his feet, and toddled toward the offending container. Drawing abreast of it, he squatted down and reached for it. Then, blinking incredulously, he withdrew from it, empty-handed. The battering his head had taken that morning must have affected his sight. He could have sworn the bottle moved out of his grasp of its own accord. Shaking his head, he turned to Memphis.
“How did that get in here?”
“I guess you hauled it in here when you came in this morning.”
“Came in this morning?” Marc was more bewildered than ever. “But I’m just now getting here. I was held up. I had an accident . . . a whole lot of accidents.”
Bemusement crept stealthily across Memphis’ face. “You weren’t here until now?” she asked slowly. “I’d be the last one to call you a liar, but I saw you with my own eyes. So did Miss Hicks and Miss Graham. Oh, Lord, and don’t they wish they hadn’t!”
Under a wave of dizziness, Marc made his way unsteadily back to the lounge. “You did not,” he said fretfully, sitting down. “I wasn’t here.”
Exasperation finally flashed in Memphis’ eyes. “All right,” she said unhappily. “So you weren’t here. I didn’t see you. You’re absolutely right, Mr. Pillsworth. And . . . and that isn’t all you are!”
She may have said more, but if she did, Marc didn’t hear her. As he sank back onto the lounge, the room suddenly started to spin. Then it stopped, and began to fill with writhing, surging waves of blackness. Ink-like liquid was seeping in everywhere, its whispering tide rising swiftly toward him. It was coming so fast! In a moment it covered Memphis, hiding her from view, and he wondered fleetingly why she allowed herself to be submerged without a struggle.
Then, quickly, the blackness washed over the edge of the lounge, and Marc felt himself, light and buoyant, being lifted upward. Up, up and up he moved and then, just as he was nearing the ceiling, there was a terrible sucking sound and he was drawn swiftly downward into unbroken, unending, fluid blackness.
HE MOVED in a drifting delirium that seemed endless and brief all at the same time. Time, hours ... or were they really minutes? ... dissolved and were lost beyond remembrance. He drifted lazily through ages, shot fleetingly through racing seconds. Then, just as he had resigned himself to this curious state of timelessness, he was lifted upward once more, and shot out of the darkness, into brilliant, nearly blinding light. Borne on the crest of an ebony wave, he was hurtled forward and heavily deposited on what appeared to be a grassy beach.
He lay flat on his stomach for a time, listening to the dying rumble of the wave. And when it was gone, there was a deep stillness, broken only by the lingering lap-lap of the receding blackness. Rolling over, he saw that he was resting on the topmost point of a grassy knoll. The black waters had entirely disappeared now, and the greenness of the little hill stretched out endlessly in all directions. Here and there, clusters of strange feathery trees swayed gently at the command of a blue vaporous mist. It was so blissfully quiet.
Then something shot past his ear and struck the earth behind him with a soft thud. He turned just in time to see a glistening apple . . . golden and perfectly round . . . rolling down the far side of the mound. He sat up and watched it quizzically.
“Darn!” a voice said shrewishly. “I should have hit him right between his fishy eyes.”
Marc swung around, but there was nothing and no one behind him . . . nothing, that is, except one of the strange trees. Curiously alone and aloof, it was the only tree on the little hill. Getting to his feet, Marc moved warily toward it. Then he stopped short as be noticed an odd fluttering motion in its foliage. Then, all at once, there was a flash of red along one of the branches, and he wondered if it were afire. He drew closer, then stopped again. What he was really looking at was a mop of agitated red hair. A hand suddenly appeared and brushed the hair aside, and two green eyes, wide with aggravation, glinted down at him.
Marc recognized them at once. “Toffee!” he exclaimed.
“Miss Toffee to you, mushhead,” the girl replied hotly. “I shouldn’t think you’d have the brass to show your sniveling face around here after the way you’ve treated me. A crime, that’s what it is!”
“What are you doing up there?” Marc asked noncommitally.
“I’m falling out,” Toffee snapped. “Right now, I’m just barely dangling by my toes. But in a second I’m going to let go, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll catch me. I lost my balance chucking that apple at you.”
“Serves you right,” Marc said. He stepped forward, under the tree, and looked up. It was true. Toffee was dangling precariously between two branches. Her foot acting as a grappling hook on one branch, her hand grasping the other, she looked like nothing so much as a shapely pink hammock. Her transparent tunic, always an aloof bystander at best, was hanging loosely to one side, unconcerned that its wearer was left shockingly exposed. Marc quickly averted his eyes and held out his arms.
“Okay!” he called. “Let go!”
Toffee came down promptly and heavily, her sudden weight rocking Marc back on his heels. For a moment it was touch and go between the staggering man and the forces of gravity. But Marc finally won out and righted himself. Then, looking down, he discovered, to his horror, that Toffee had landed face-down in his arms. Obviously, certain adjustments needed to be made immediate
ly. With a timid hand, Marc tried, to do what he could about them.
“Stop pawing me, you wrinkled adolescent!” Toffee yelled. “Put me down!”
And with that, she sank two talon-like fingernails into the flesh of Marc’s thigh. Marc’s trousers might just as well have been made of tissue for all the protection they afforded him against the cutting nails,
WITH a piercing scream of agony, he promptly gave Toffee over to the ground, where she landed with a resounding thump. “You little beast!” he cried, clutching his leg. “Of all the ingratitude!”
Toffee looked up owlishly from over her shoulder. “I told you to put me down,” she said vindictively. “Surely, you didn’t expect me to just hang there while you made finger prints all over my—”
“I was only trying to set you right,” Marc cut in quickly.
“Hah!” Toffee jumped lightly to her feet. “From now on,” she said, placing a slender hand on a sculptured hip, “I’ll take care of my own setting, and don’t you ever forget it.”
“Do what you like with your precious setting,” Marc put in, his irritation mounting. “See if I care. You can hurl the fool thing out the window for all of me.”
“I wouldn’t even tilt it over the sill for the best part of you,” Toffee sneered. “Not after the torture you’ve been putting me through lately.”
“I torture you!” Marc laughed bitterly. “That’s good, that is!”
“Then what do you call it?” Toffee made a quick gesture that encompassed the whole of the valley. “How would you like to be locked up in this place months on end? The valley of your mind! Hah! The sump hole would be more like it. You haven’t had an original thought in the last six months.”
“You’re so depraved,” Marc said, rising to his own defense, “you wouldn’t know an original thought if you saw one. And if you think I’m going to dedicate my days to the contemplation of smut, just for your sweet sake, you’re mistaken. Just because you’re nasty minded, doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”
“Why you hypocritical old heller!” Toffee flared. “Some of the thoughts you’ve had were enough to singe the hair right off a censor’s head. It makes me fairly blush sometimes, just being in the same mind with them.”
“I’ve a fine picture of that!” Marc snorted. “You haven’t got a modest blush left to your name.”
Toffee shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway,” she said, “you might at least have dreamed me up in time for the excitement this morning. The one morning in your dull life when something happens, and you keep me chained up in your sub-conscious!”
Marc’s features suddenly fell into lines of deep meditation. The morning and its frantic adventures had gone completely out of his memory until now. Toffee’s remark had stirred vague remembrances. All of it was slowly coming back.
Toffee started toward him with sudden concern. “What’s wrong, Marc?” she asked softly. “Is it anything I can help with? Even if you are a low viper, I still love you, you know. I guess I just can’t help it.”
Marc shook his head. “I don’t quite know what’s wrong myself,” he said slowly. “That is, I know what’s happened, but I don’t know why.”
“You sound a little mixed up.”
“I am. All mixed up.”
Then they both swung quickly around as an odd lap-lapping sounded softly behind them. At the foot of the mound, the black tide was already rising swiftly toward them, each successive surge blotting out more and more of the little valley. For a moment, they just stood looking at it, too surprised to move.
“Here we go again,” Toffee said happily, turning to Marc.
Her voice seemed to wake him from a sort of trance. “Go again?” he asked. “We?” A frightened look came into his eyes. “No! No, you don’t. Things will be bad enough without you!”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Toffee giggled. Then seeing that the speeding tide was already near their feet, she suddenly turned to Marc and swung her arms around his neck. “You need me.”
“Let go!” Marc yelled. He ducked, tried to break her grasp, but it was no use. Then it was too late. All at once, the tide caught them up and hurled them toward the sky. And just as it seemed they were going to touch the clouds, there was a horrible sucking sound and they were drawn down into the inner current of the flowing blackness.
THE light of day returned to Marc slowly and without welcome. Partly opening one eye, he wished he hadn’t, for his head instantly began pulsing like a heavily burdened steam engine pulling out of a mountain way-station. Somewhere there was a faint, intermittent hissing sound, which Marc expected was probably caused by gases shooting rhythmically from his ears. He opened the other eye and tried to clear his head by concentration. But the hissing continued. He lay back and turned his attention to the restful blankness of the ceiling. When Toffee’s pert, puckish face swam into view just above his own, he was only mildly surprised. After everything else, it seemed only to be expected.
“It’s so lovely to be materialized again,” she sighed happily. “I feel all alive and wonderful. I even begin to like you a little.” Unmoved by these glad tidings, Marc nodded absently and closed his eyes again. “You look simply awful,” she added.
“You wouldn’t win any titles, yourself,” Marc mumbled, “if you’d been kicked, pummeled and bashed all over town like I have.”
“What happened. Who kicked you?”
Sitting up and holding his head in his hands, Marc tried to give her a brief and coherent summary of his havoc-ridden journey to the office. Also, he included the depressing welcome afforded him by the staff upon arrival.
“Very strange,” Toffee mused, moving thoughtfully around the disordered room. “Something has obviously gone amiss.”
“Amiss!” Marc groaned. “Something’s gone completely berserk.” Suddenly he stopped speaking, looked up, and inclined his head in a listening attitude. “Do you hear something?” he asked.
“That hissing sound?” Toffee said. “Gets on your nerves, doesn’t it?”
“Thank heaven,” Marc sighed. “I thought maybe it was in my head. What do you think it is?”
“Sounds like someone sleeping, breathing heavily,” Toffee said, Then her roving eye lit on the half-filled bottle at the other end of the room, and she moved swiftly toward it. She started to reach down for it, then suddenly stopped, tilting her head to one side. “That noise is louder over here.” She straightened and pointed to the chair beside the bottle. “It seems to be corning from that.”
“Don’t be silly,” Marc said shortly. “Why would a chair hiss?”
Leaning down again, Toffee extended a slender finger, and jabbed quickly at the cushion of the chair. Instantly, a horrible grunting sound echoed through the room, and she jumped back, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Good grief,” a voice said thickly. “Haven’t you any sense of decency at all? Keep your prodding fingers to yourself. Go exercise your low instincts somewhere else.”
Toffee swung quickly around to face Marc. “This,” she said sternly, “is no time to be sitting around throwing your voice. If you must give vaudeville entertainments, go to a cheap theatre where your vulgar talents will be appreciated.”
Marc’s face twisted with wonder. “I didn’t throw anything,” he said innocently. “Least of all my voice. But I heard it, and it was awful.”
“It was your voice,” Toffee insisted. “I’d know that rasp anywhere. And if you try it just once more, I’ll . . .” Suddenly her voice froze into silence as she saw Marc’s expression swiftly change to one of undiluted horror. Slowly, she turned and followed his gaze to the garrulous chair, and promptly started back with a hysterical sob.
“Holy gee!” she breathed. “If that isn’t the most hair-raising sight ever!”
FROM the chair an apparently disembodied hand swung downward and grasped the bottle on the floor. Then, even as they watched it, it raised the bottle rakishly over the center of the chair and poured a portion of its contents into . . . into nothing!
This done, the hand and bottle moved downward again, and a resounding burp rumbled messily through the room.
“Holy gee!” Toffee repeated breathlessly.
“What . . . what’s . . .” The words died in Marc’s throat.
The floating hand, now at rest on the arm of the chair, had suddenly been matched by another on the opposite arm. Marc and Toffee, struck dumb by this spectacle, remained rigid, staring with wide-eyed amazement. And as they watched, two feet, as though to add balance to the already gruesome picture, slowly appeared on the floor in front of the chair. After that things seemed to really get under way, and it was only a matter of seconds until, a section at a time, a whole body had come into view, complete with everything . . . except a head.
“Ulp!” The sound came from Marc.
“You said it,” Toffee murmured. “I think I’m going to be hysterical.” With a shudder she turned away and gazed intently out the window.
“You . . . you see it too?” Marc asked wretchedly.
“I’m doing my level best not to,” Toffee replied. “It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever set eyes on. It’s positively haunting. I’d be just as pleased if you wouldn’t remind me of it.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
“I don’t know,” Toffee returned miserably. “And I don’t care. I just want to forget all about it. Maybe if we simply ignore it, it will go away and leave us alone. Let’s just look out the window and engage in casual conversation. Maybe it’ll get the idea it’s not wanted.”
“I wonder if it can go away?” Marc said. Shakily he rose from the lounge, and with one last tormented glance at the headless figure, moved rapidly to Toffee’s side. “Suppose it . . . it can’t move . . . any more?”
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 16
