“At any rate, no request for reservations has been received under the name of Pillsworth in any of the upper planes, and this has caused us to be uncertain. Still, we cannot risk the possibility of a slip-up. When a mortal dies his haunt must be dispatched instantly to his friends and loved ones. It’s always been that way.” The Head eyed George and suddenly looked sad. “It just happens that the Pillsworth’s are unlucky.”
“I will endeavor...” George began earnestly.
“Silence!” The Head bellowed. “We know what you’ll endeavor to do, you devil. Anyway, it has been decided, against all reason and better judgment, that you shall be dispatched to Earth as per schedule. But only on a probationary and exploratory basis. In other words, it will be your mission to go to earth and determine whether Marc Pillsworth is really dead or not. If he is, you will remain and perform your duties according to the code. If, however, he proves still to be alive—and let me emphasize this—you will depart the earth and return instanter. And not a moment later. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” George offered timidly.
“And now,” the Head continued, “there is the matter of your character. If it deserves the name. Actually, you are the most characterless spirit I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. In you are combined all the base qualities which we strive so hard to fight in this region. Sometimes I find myself looking on you as a sort of trash dump in which are collected all the vile qualities which we have managed to cleanse from the other spirits. But that’s only desperate rationalization. How you happen to be as you are I have never been able to figure out. It appears that for every virtue your earthly part has acquired you have embraced an additional evil. At any rate, you are no angel, and that’s the very least I have to say on the matter.
“The point is that we do not dare to hope that you will stick to the accepted and orthodox procedures of haunting, let alone be even the least bit of consolation to Pillsworth’s survivors. We only ask—no, we demand—that you do not disgrace the fine traditions of haunting. It will be plainly understood that you may be recalled and punished at any time should you get so far out of line as to be an embarrassment to us. In other words, Pillsworth, watch your step. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” George said mildly. He gazed down at his toes, dissolved them nervously. “Yes, indeed, sir.”
“Very well, then,” the Head said. “You will prepare to take the oath by swearing from memory to the ten rules. Raise your right hand.” He turned to one of his colleagues on the bench. “If this isn’t a hollow mockery, I’ve never seen one,” he muttered.
The favored entity nodded. “As hollow as Aunt Maggie’s bustle,” he said. “And twice as tacky.”
George raised his right hand and solemnly lifted his eyes in a heavenward direction. The ten rules, transcribed there sometime before in hopeful anticipation of this moment, had remained quite legible on the sleeve of his atmospheric robe.
FULLY DRESSED now and returned to the edge of his bed, Marc watched the first faint beginnings of night’s evolution into day. Since he had kindly been spared any knowledge of the other force which had been released by the explosion in the basement, his thoughts concerned themselves with the staggering circumstance of Toffee and the buoyant debris. He rose, crossed to the door, and listened for any sound from across the hall. It was quiet there now.
Leaving the door, he went to the bureau at the far side of the room, cautiously opened the top drawer, careful to keep his hand over the opening, and caught the little black book as it gained freedom and shot upward. He put it in the breast pocket of his jacket and fastened it there by clasping his pen over it. Then he crossed quickly to the wardrobe, took out a light topcoat, draped it over his arm, and returned to the door. He paused again to listen, then shoved the door open and stepped silently out into the hallway.
In the basement, at the bottom of the steps, he paused and glanced tentatively about, braced himself against an attack from the redhead. He waited a moment, then called Toffee’s name. There was a moment of quiet, then a slight rustling as Toffee appeared from the shadows of the wine bins. She raised her arms above her head and stretched with a languorous yawn. In the grey light of early morning her apparel, or rather the lack of apparel, was even more startling than it had been during the night. Marc glanced quickly away and held out the coat.
“Here,” he said distractedly. “Put this on. And button it up all the way down.”
Toffee looked at the coat without interest. “What for?” she asked with bland innocence. “And, besides, how can I button it up and down at the same time?”
“Never mind,” Marc said. “Just cover your nakedness.”
“My nakedness? Toffee said. “Why in the world would I want to cover it? What’s wrong with it? I have a perfectly divine nakedness. I’ll match my nakedness with yours any time...”
“No!” Marc broke in. “Don’t go on.”
“Well, with anyone’s nakedness, then, if you’re going to be edgey. I haven’t anything to be ashamed of.”
“If you did,” Marc said bitterly, “you wouldn’t have the decency to be ashamed of it. Put the coat on and, stop wasting time.”
Toffee shrugged bewilderedly and took the coat from his outstretched hand. “Oh, well,” she said, slipping it on, “if you’re going to make a scene about anything so silly. Where are we going?”
“I wish I knew,” Marc said wearily. “Anywhere away from here. Obviously, you can’t hang around here where Julie will run into you.”
“No,” Toffee said mildly. “I suppose not. Though it would be fun to see her reaction. Might do her a world of good.” She waved a hand at the wreckage clustered on the ceiling. “What about that? What are you going to do about your experiment?”
Marc shrugged. “I have to think about that later, when I’ve got you out of my hair.”
Together, they proceeded to the hole in the wall. Marc lifted Toffee out, then boosted himself after. Toffee reached down to give him a hand.
“Don’t look so glum,” she said. “Nothing really awful has happened. Not yet.”
“Be quiet,” Marc said.
He led her to the garage at the back of the house, cautiously lifted the door and indicated a large green convertible. “Get in,” he instructed.
“I am your slave,” Toffee said with mock subservience. “Take me where you will.” She got into the car.
Mincing slightly, Marc slid into the seat beside her. “Be quiet,” he said. “Let’s try to get out of here without waking up Julie.”
IT WAS unfortunate that Marc, in his haste to remove Toffee from the premises, did not have the foresight to raise the top of the convertible. With that one small act of protection he might have secured a clean getaway. As it was, with him and Toffee exposed and plain to the eyes of the world, he threw the convertible into gear and backed out of the garage toward just about the most slipshod escape ever enacted by man.
As the car slid smoothly down the drive, Marc switched off the ignition so that it might coast soundlessly past that part of the house which held the window to Julie’s room. It was precisely at this point, of course, that tragedy befell. The black book twisted itself lose in Marc’s pocket and suddenly shot upward.
“Oh, good grief!” Marc said. He put on the brakes.
As he and Toffee watched, the book sailed higher, flitted a bit to one side and lodged itself in a cross-section of trellis precisely next to Julie’s window.
“What are you going to do?” Toffee whispered.
“Climb up and get it, I suppose,” Marc said wretchedly. “I can’t leave it there.” He got out of the car, then turned back. “Don’t you make a move while I’m gone.”
Toffee nodded vigorously and pulled the collar of her coat up around her face. “I’ll be positively furtive,” she giggled.
Marc made his way to the trellis, tested it with his foot, and started up. Several feet up, he paused to listen. Then, reassured, he continued upward. A moment later
he was within reaching distance of the book. He sighed with relief.
Down in the car Toffee watched without great concern. However, she was anxious to be away; it was dull just sitting there. She looked around for some way to hasten matters. It was then that she conceived the idea of starting the car so that they could continue their flight the moment Marc returned to the ground. She glanced at the profusion of knobs on the elaborate clash board, thoughtfully selected the prettiest, and twisted...
It was in the same moment that Marc reached for the little book and caught hold of it, that the early morning suddenly thundered with a booming rendition of “Anchors Aweigh!” performed by a marine band. All at once, drums throbbed, cymbals clanged and bugles blared with all the crashing enthusiasm that a hundred healthy seagoing men could muster.
Marc whirled about, clinging to the trellis, and stared down at Toffee in horror. But Toffee was too busy frantically twisting knobs to notice. The music swelled and became louder as windows began to fly open all over the neighborhood. On the trellis, Marc was assailed with a chill feeling that there were eyes on the back of his neck. As he turned about, his nose came within a fraction of brushing Julie’s.
“Oh, Lord!” he moaned in belated prayer.
“Marc Pillsworth!” Julie shrieked, leaning further out the window. “What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?” Then her astonished gaze moved to the car and Toffee. “Who is that woman?”
Marc glanced distractedly down at Toffee, as though seeing here there for the first time. “That’s nobody,” he murmured feebly.
And the next instant it seemed that he had almost spoken the truth, that indeed the car, Toffee and the pounding radio had never actually been there at all. As a unit, as Toffee’s frantic hand quickly selected another button and pressed it, they all shot backwards out of the drive and out of sight. Toffee’s shriek of dismay was added discordantly to the moan of a naval tuba and the scream of racing tires. Marc glanced desperately at the stunned, sleep-stained faces peering from the houses across the street and shudderingly closed his eyes. With the others, he waited for the sound of the crash. But it did not come.
“Marc Pillsworth ... !” Julie began, then stopped as Toffee and the green convertible suddenly reappeared as swiftly and sensationally as they had departed. Still travelling backwards, the car shot into the drive with a spray of gravel and headed toward the house like a thing possessed. Toffee was wildly manipulating the wheel on a hit or miss basis.
“Help!” she screamed.
“Turn right!” Marc yelled from the trellis. “Turn right!”
Automatically, Toffee followed instructions. She grasped the wheel with both hands and pulled to the right. The car swerved, crashed over a flower bed and headed for the lawns. There, pawing turf like a reversed bull, it described a wide circle and started back for the drive.
Toffee waved elatedly to Marc over her shoulder. “Now I’ve got it!” she cried. “It’s easy’!” Apparently she did not realize that she had learned to drive backwards, that there was another way of directing the mechanism.
Racing the car to the area in front of the garage, she whipped it around down the drive again. She looked up at Marc.
“Jump as I come past!” she yelled.
“Who is that?” Julie shrieked, finally recovering her voice. “Answer me! Marc Pillsworth, stay right where you are!”
“Jump!” Toffee yelled. “Now!”
Marc landed on the seat beside Toffee and felt himself borne, as if by the wind itself, down the drive.
The band swung into a booming arrangement of “Don’t Give Up The Ship!” as, hind bumper first, they skidded into the street and sped away...
CHAPTER IV
THE TOWERS of the Wynant Hotel, a snobbish establishment whose austere front hulked over the general public with stoney aloofness, marked the center of the city.
Within, the Wynant shed upon its cowed clientele all the warmth and home-like comfort of a walk-in freezing unit. The personnel had obviously been trained to regard the paying guest as a fraud, a vandal and a momentary fugitive from social and moral levels so low as to be mainly inhabited by gophers.
As to decor, the Wynant had permitted itself only a single divergence from the completely austere. In the center of its vast foyer there was a fountain and pool, topped with the marble figure of a woman in the final stages of dishabille. The lady in question, however, was of a classic pedigree and, therefore, her condition of undress was permissible; one was allowed to look upon her classic charms without fear of suspicion from the bellhops. If the guests of the Wynant, who stayed there mainly for the dubious purposes of prestige, felt a certain affection for the lady of the fountain, it was because she, in her classic security, was accomplishing for them the very thing they had always longed to do themselves; she had presented herself solidly in the very center of the Wynant and caused an area of dampness thereupon. It did not matter that the lady clutched her nakedness to her in a fit of modesty; the guests of the Wynant knew what she really had on her mind and loved her for it with a devout intensity.
Marc had always considered the Wynant a veritable bully of a place, and this opinion was generally shared by a multitude of others. On the one occasion when he had gone to the Wynant to attend what was unanimously conceded to be the most stultifying businessmen’s luncheon in the annals of human commerce, he had vowed never to set foot in the place again. However, there always comes a time to break even the most solemn of vows.
It was logic of a sort that caused Marc to bring Toffee to the Wynant; if there was any atmosphere chill enough to conquer the irrepressible redhead’s wayward disposition, the Wynant had just such an atmosphere to offer in aces and spades. It was Marc’s rather naive thought to banish Toffee to the more elevated regions of this spiritual salt mine and leave her there until, out of sheer, screaming boredom, she made up her mind to disappear to the place from whence she had come. Thus he would be free to make his peace with Julie and set his house in order in the several ways that it now required.
Noting the doorman’s glance of disapproval as they entered, Marc carefully jockeyed himself into a position in front of Toffee so that she might be hidden from view. The top coat, several cuts too long both in the sleeves and the skirt, did little to give the girl an air of refinement. As rapidly as he could, Marc led her across the broad foyer to the desk at the opposite side of the room. Toffee flapped obediently along behind him, but her gaze moved curiously toward the fountain and its unclad mistress.
“Is that one of the guests taking a bath?” she asked innocently.
“Certainly not,” Marc said, “It’s a statue. That fact is quite evident.”
Toffee’s eyes narrowed suspiciously on the statue. “She looks awfully lifelike to me.”
“Don’t worry,” Marc said. “You won’t have to take your bath in public.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Toffee said absently.
THEY PROCEEDED to the desk and were instantly greeted by a clerk of a precise black-and-white perfection. Though the man was shorter than Marc he still seemed to look down on him from a great height.
“Yes?” he asked with a slight reptilian hiss. Marc had prepared his story in advance. “I’d like a suite for my niece,” he said.
The clerk regarded Marc’s “niece” and her costume and notched up the last small measure of slack in his eyebrows.
“I’m Marc Pillsworth,” Marc said hopefully, “of the Pillsworth Advertising Agency.”
The clerk regarded Marc with a cool steadiness that indicated all too plainly that anyone engaged in advertising, in the opinion of the Wynant, was nothing more than a not-so-high-class ballyhoo artist. Then he glanced down at the polished surface of the counter as though expecting to see three shells and a pea suddenly appear there.
“And your niece’s luggage?” he asked.
“My niece was in an accident,” Marc said quickly. “Her luggage was lost, burned. She’s in town to replace the things that were des
troyed.”
“I see,” the clerk said, obviously mulling over the very interesting fact that Toffee had managed to be caught in the accident in nothing but a gentleman’s topcoat.
“It was so embarrassing,” Toffee put in tragically.
“I daresay,” the clerk said sourly. He turned back to Marc. “I’m afraid the hotel is completely filled.”
Marc sighed. Now he would have to discover some other disposition for Toffee. But suddenly he was too tired to even think. All at once he was overcome with such a feeling of fatigue that he could hardly restrain himself from leaning down to rest his head on the desk counter. He was exhausted beyond belief. He tried to turn away, but he hadn’t even the strength for that. And then his eyes began to play tricks. As he looked at them, the clerk, Toffee, the desk blurred and became hazy. He felt that he was slipping into unconsciousness but he had no sensation of falling, Rather, it was as though he were simply floating away from reality. Reality dimmed, faded away and was gone... Then suddenly everything jumped back into place with startling clarity. It was as though he had traveled a long, long journey in a space of seconds.
“Marc!” Frightenedly.
It was Toffee who had screamed, and Marc turned quickly toward her. Then he came close to screaming himself. Something had happened to the girl. She had grown so terribly short all of a sudden! And the clerk too. Neither of them rose to a height quite even with his waist. They were both staring up at him in open-mouthed horror.
“What’s happened to you?” Marc gasped.
“To us!” Toffee cried. “It’s you! What are you doing up there?”
“Up where?” Marc asked. Then suddenly he glanced about him, and his breath made a startled rattling sound at the back of his throat.
At once, Marc could neither deny nor believe what he saw. A dreadful confusion crowded his senses as he regarded the space of thin air that stretched between his feet and the floor. Impossibly he had elevated to a height of about three feet. And he was still rising!
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 38
