“Yes,” Toffee put in quickly, by way of ending the discussion. “Two bottles, if you please.”
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” Agatha drawled. “I wouldn’t drink from the same bottle with that little lush, anyway.”
THE merchant made a brief, strangling noise as he tore his eyes away from Agatha and Chadwick and backed into a shelf, upsetting several bottles onto the floor. “I shouldn’t of nipped the stock in the back room,” he muttered to himself. “Me old lady warned me this would happen. She said it would start just this way.” He turned his back on Toffee and the infants, grasped the edge of the shelf and rested his head on the backs of his hands. A deep shudder ran the full length of his body. It was some time before he began to recover even a little bit.
Finally, without turning around, he managed to say, “What kind of whiskey did you want, lady?”
Toffee looked at Agatha and Chadwick questioningly.
“What kind have you got?” Agatha called out.
The merchant shuddered again. “I don’t know,” he whimpered. “I don’t know nuthin’ right now. Maybe this is all Chanel number 5 up here on these shelves. It wouldn’t surprise me none. Why don’t you just look around and take what you want? I won’t look. You just take it and go away. Just tiptoe out and don’t slam the door. That’s all I ask. The liquor is on the house.”
After the selection of two large, rather vaporish-looking bottles, the little company returned to the sidewalk. The babies, however, were becoming increasingly troublesome in their eagerness to be at the liquor, which was in Marc’s custody for the time being. Their ill-tempered cries, however, were almost entirely directed at Toffee. People began to stop in the streets to watch and to listen. If they could believe their ears, they were overhearing two new-born infants calling their mother names that even an adult hadn’t any right to know. Shocking invective gushed from the sweet mouths of the babes in a fountainous stream. Toffee, probably for the first time in her life, was embarrassed.
“Can’t we do something?” she asked her companion. “Can’t we go somewhere? If this sort of thing goes on much longer I’ll be picked up by a home for wayward mothers or something.”
Marc glanced down the street. Then he pointed. “Over there,” he said. His finger indicated a public library. “There should be quiet and privacy in there.” He turned to the babies. “Now listen here, you two, either you be quiet and behave yourselves or you won’t get a drop. Understand?”
Agatha and Chadwick were instantly subdued.
The library was a large, highceilinged place of passages and corridors. Just inside the main entrance was a large foyer-like room out of the center of which, like a giant mushroom, jutted a circular checking counter. Toffee moved quickly to the counter and rested the babies on it. An aged woman whose spinsterish face belied her gay dress turned and smiled, revealing a mouth full of charred fags.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Where are the books?” Toffee asked.
“What books?”
Toffee looked puzzled for a moment. “Big books,” she said. “In stacks. I was told there were veritable walls of books in here.”
“And there are,” the woman said defensively. “Which books are you interested in?”
“How should I know?” Toffee asked helplessly. “I haven’t read them yet.” The woman sighed. Then her eyes fell to Agatha and Chadwick lying on the counter and they lighted with the fanatical gleam of frustrated motherhood. She reached out and pulled back the velvet folds,
“My, what beaut ... !” The lie died in her throat. To suggest that Agatha and Chadwick were anything but downright ugly was too great a falsehood for even this child-starved soul. “You must be . . . uh . . . proud,” she said tonelessly. However, she was game; once she’d started she wasn’t going to give up. She reached out a hand and waggled a finger over Agatha’s protruding tummy.
“Kitchy-kitchy,” she said unhappily.
Anger flashed in the infant’s eyes.
“Get your horny talons off me, you withered old wraith,” she snapped. And having given warning, she parted her bubbling lips and bit the woman’s finger.
THE woman didn’t cry out in surprise; she didn’t make any sound at all. She simply stared hard at Toffee for a long moment, then silently pointed to a distant corridor.
“The books on abnormal child psychology are in there,” she whispered. “And if I were you, honey, I’d hurry.”
Toffee gathered up Agatha and Chadwick and joined Marc and Mr. Culpepper, who had been watching from a distance.
“That was fine,” she scolded Agatha. “That was a splendid display.”
“What did you expect?” Agatha replied haughtily. “The old hag was thumbing me like a ripe watermelon.”
“I wish she’d throttled you,” Toffee said annoyedly. “Lord knows you deserve it. Your mothers must have been women of great forbearance. How they kept their hands off your little throats is more than I can tell.”
The little party made its way through the nearest passage and found itself in a forest of books. Shelves lined on either side stretched out toward them like great, reaching fingers. Here and there a solitary “browser” was picking his way painfully along the long rows, title by title, but on the whole the great, book-jammed room was reasonably deserted. Toffee moved along the ends of the rows, found a browserless section and disappeared inside. Marc and Mr. Culpepper followed. Together, they all retreated to the end of the section and formed a sort of huddle. Marc produced the bottles from beneath his coat.
“How are we going to measure it?” Toffee asked. “We have to give them ten jiggers exactly.”
“Do I have to think of everything?” Agatha inquired scornfully. Her small hand emerged from her velvet wrappings, clutching a jigger glass. “It was lying around loose on the counter,” she explained.
“As in womanhood,” Toffee said philosophically, “so, too, in infancy is she a crook.”
As though in solemn ritual, the bottles were silently opened and the initial portion poured.
Agatha stretched out her miniature hand. “Gimme,” she said. “It’s my glass. And, boy, do I need a slug!”
“Tell me, dear,” Toffee said quietly, tilting the glass to Agatha’s eager mouth, “whatever became of that lovely accent of yours?”
Agatha polished off the whiskey and burped. “None of your damned business,” she said with truly childish simplicity.
By alternating between the two babes, a certain amount of decorum was maintained. Marc took charge of the stoking of Chadwick while Toffee continued in behalf of Agatha. Mr. Culpepper shoved a few volumes aside on one of the lower shelves and seated himself, watching with interest as the glass moved from hand to hand to bottle to baby. He looked like a spectator at a tennis game being played on a checker board. The glass shuttled from pouted lip to pouted lip until the inner infant, on both scores, had been fortified five times over. From this point on, as the whiskey poured down the tiny throats, a corresponding amount of exuberance arose via the same channel. Agatha, made congenial by the liquor, began to while away the time between drinks by lifting her childish voice in song.
“Becky lived in a Turkish harem,” she chortled. “She had towels but she wouldn’t wear ’em.”
“Stop that caterwauling,” Toffee commanded.
Agatha perversely increased her volume “Becky looked like Theda Barer,” she shrieked. “Theda was bare but Becky was barer!”
SUDDENLY a sharp, gasping sound echoed around the little group, seeming to come from no place in particular; the bookshelves themselves appeared to be making little twittering sounds of surprise. The Pillsworth party froze as it was. Eyes moved furtively in unturning heads. It was Toffee who discovered the cause of the interruption.
Several books had been removed from one of the upper shelves, leaving a sort of peep hole into the next section. In this opening had appeared the forbidding face of the spinsterish librarian. It bore the dismayed expression of a maiden la
dy who had inadvertently stumbled into a YMCA swimming pool.
“Heavens!” the woman gasped. “Giving liquor to babies! No wonder they’re retarded!”
Toffee, recognizing the situation for what it was, displayed what she believed was great presence of mind in grabbing the tell-tale bottle from the shelf and lifting it to her own lips. She drank deeply of the contents, and just to lend conviction to her performance as a ravening drunkard, staggered against the bookshelves, rolling her eyes loosely in their sockets.
“Oh, dear,” Mr. Culpepper put in from the perch on the shelf. “If I were you, I don’t think I’d . . .”
A little moan issued from the colorless face in the bookshelf. “Oooo, what depravity!” it exclaimed. “And teaching the babies to drink, too!”
“Nonsense,” Toffee said, addressing the face openly. “We’re drinking this ourselves, We’re just a bunch of roaring sots. We’re too stingy to give any to the babies.”
“I saw you,” the face insisted. “You were forcing the filthy stuff on those infants. You ought to be reported.”
Toffee turned to Marc. “We weren’t either, were we?” she asked. “We never give these babies any liquor, do we?”
“Certainly not,” Marc said indignantly. “We were only fighting them off, trying to keep them from taking it away from us. We love the stuff too much to waste it on them.”
In demonstration, he grabbed the bottle that had been Chadwick’s and pressed it eagerly to his mouth, a fanatical gleam in his eye.
“Oh, really,” Mr. Culpepper cried. “I really don’t think . . .”
“You see,” Toffee said to the face. “Can’t leave the stuff alone. Those babies haven’t got a look-in as far as liquor is concerned. We wouldn’t give them a drop if they were dying of thirst.”
Doubt came into the face as Marc withdrew the bottle from his lips with a loud smacking noise and grandly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The librarian was beginning to look more or less convinced. Slowly, the face started to move away.
“Becky’s boy friend came and found her,” Agatha suddenly shrilled in a voice that was definitely dewy. “But her towels were not ...”
The voice suddenly became softly muffled, as though by velvet.
The face darted back into the opening between the books. “What was that?” it asked.
“Me,” Toffee said. “I like music with my liquor.”
The face was some reassured. “Well, you’ll have to stop it,” it snapped. “You’ll have to stop almost everything you’re doing, in fact, if you expect to remain here. Drinking is not allowed.
A loud, rumbling burp issued from the velvet bundle in Toffee’s arms.
“Oh!” the face exclaimed, and suddenly disappeared. There was the sound of quick tapping footsteps on the other side of the shelf.
WHEN the footsteps had died away Toffee and Marc, with renewed vigor, returned to their labors with the bottles and the babies.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Marc said. “That old hag had a look about her that definitely meant trouble if you ask me.”
“I agree,” Toffee said. She glanced down at Agatha. “And you didn’t help matters any. You displayed your customary perverseness, I noticed.”
The baby cocked an insolent eye at her. “You acted with rare intelligence, yourself,” she said. “In my opinion you handled the situation like a jerk. I only shudder that all these strangers are laboring under the degrading notion that you are my mother.”
The liquor flowed with increasing velocity. The eighth jigger had been administered when the footsteps sounded in the doorway beyond the book shelves. They entered the room and hurried forward as though they knew just where they were going.
“In there!” came the voice of the aging librarian. “They’re in section five, throwing a regular wild party! They’re drinking liquor and singing dirty songs and . . . and . . . contributing to the delinquency of babies! They’re carrying on ’till you wouldn’t believe it!”
“My!” a voice said, not untinged with pleased expectancy. “Sounds like the time we raided that house over on the other side . . .”
“Shut up,” another voice said. “No matter what’s goin’ on behind them books, this is different. And don’t you forget it!”
The footsteps drew closer and swiftly rounded the end of the section. The members of the Pillsworth party looked up in unison and saw two large, blue clad policemen running toward them.
Toffee fairly threw Agatha into the arms of Mr. Culpepper. “Here!” she said. “I’ll hold them off. You see that she gets the other two shots!” She sounded like the little Dutch boy about to cram his pinky into that dyke over in Holland. Agatha landed in Mr. Culpepper’s lap with a thud and a burp.
Thus relieved of her besotted burden Toffee raced quickly to a movable ladder stretched up against the long shelves. Reaching it, she started upward, two rungs at a time.
The ladder was the sort that rested on rollers at either end and could easily be shuttled from one location to another with a good deal of facility. Once aloft Toffee lost no time in using the contrivance to its utmost capacity. Rollers whirred and Toffee and the ladder sped forward to the attack, toward a section that was notable for the number of truly weighty volumes it housed. Toffee seized up the first of these volumes and paused momentarily to read its title.
“War and Peace,” she read. “That ought to put them to sleep.”
Never was literature so forced upon anyone as it was on the hapless policemen in the awful moments that followed. “War and Peace,” true to Toffee’s expectations did indeed, leave the first of the cops looking extremely drowsy as it clipped him on the chin and sent him staggering backwards against his companion. In a matter of seconds two of the city’s finest were groveling pitifully on the floor, trying vainly to ward off a hail storm of books. Toffee, in selecting a lettered diet for these two besieged gentlemen showed a marked preference for the heavier works. Her victims were most impressed, in a very physical sort of way, with the works of the ancient Greeks.
The cops, apparently unwilling to perish under this literary avalanche, turned tail, and started crawling toward the outer protection of the shelves. Seeing that victory . . . at least momentary victory . . . was at hand, Toffee turned back to see what progress was being made with the howling Harpers. Everything at the end of the section was oddly serene.
AGATHA had been set aside on one of the shelves and apparently the last of the ten libations was being given to Chadwick. While Toffee was watching this picture of rather distorted domestic contentment, one of the cops timidly extended his head around the lower corner of one of the shelves.
“Lord,” he commented to his companion, “they’re choking whiskey down them young’uns like it was a matter of life and death. What do you suppose they wanna do that for?”
“Maybe they get a kick out of drunk babies,” the other returned morosely. “Maybe hooched-up babies are a barrel of fun. How should I know?”
“Looks more like they’re tryin’ to kill ’em,” said the peeping cop. “Infanticide is a serious charge. Attempted infanticide is just as bad. It’s goin’ to go hard on ’em when we get ’em outa there.”
“If we get ’em outa there,” his companion corrected. “Me, I feel almost like just crawlin’ outa here and lettin’ ’em do as they please.”
“Shame on you, Murphy,” the first cop said. “It’s our duty to protect them babies, even if they don’t look very human.”
“What’ll we do?”
The cop surveyed the situation; Toffee was now facing away from them, watching as Chadwick was being shelved beside Agatha.
“Now’s our chance,” he said. “Let’s rush ’em.”
“I wouldn’t mind rushin’ that redhead,” Murphy said stoutly, “if I could just get out of the readin’ room. She flings a mean book.”
“Let’s go,” the first cop whispered. “No time to jaw.”
Together, the policemen rushed once more onto the sc
ene of their recent defeat. Somehow confused, they both ran headlong for Toffee and the ladder. Apparently neither remembered the swift mobility of the ladder for, simultaneously, they lunged at it, throwing their full weight against it.
Instantly the ladder shot into motion, fully burdened with the two startled cops and a thoroughly unbalanced Toffee. At the outset Toffee toppled from her perch, hurtled downward, and caught one of the cops around the neck just in time to prevent a crashing arrival at the floor. From there on, it was just one grand, piggyback ride for the redhead. For the cop it was a matter of an extra burden and hanging on for dear life. Books, row upon row of them, flashed by in a screaming blurr. They were heading for a dead end with the speed of a bullet.
“Get off me!” Toffee’s protector yelled ungallantly. “Beat, it, lady! No riders!”
“Not on your life!” Toffee hollered back through clenched teeth. “For the rest of this trip you and I are sweethearts!”
At this moment the librarian appeared at the end of the book littered aisle and gazed on the scene within with open amazement. “Just look at those cops!” she exclaimed. “Carrying on just as bad as the others! You’d think this was a fun house. You boys stop that this instant!” she yelled. “I’m going to call the commissioner!”
“When you do, lady,” one of the policemen hollered back, “tell him for me what he can do with his lousy job! I got a wife and kids to think of!”
Just then, the ladder, like a transcontinental express, arrived at the end of the line and discharged its protesting passengers like three jet propelled missiles. The two policemen shot out into the air, headed directly for Marc and Mr. Culpepper who had been watching the little excursion in a state of rigid immobility. Toffee, through some hitherto undiscovered law of physics, left the back of her stalwart carrier in a sweeping upward arc that landed her ungently atop the book shelves.
THE law literally swept down on Marc and Mr. Culpepper, upending them posthaste and hurling them to the floor. From the top of the bookcase, Toffee collected her breath and gazed blandly on the scene of confusion below. She might have hurled a book or two in Marc’s behalf, except that in the tangle of arms and legs, it was impossible to tell which were the property of Marc. Besides, she had just become happily aware of a window at her side, one that was easily accessible from the top of the book shelves. She threw the catch and it slid open.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 33
