The Complete Adventures of Toffee

by Charles F. Myers

  Meanwhile the insane contest at the head of the stairs had arrived at a state of complete impasse. Four different energies pulled in four different directions, one balanced just enough against the other to hold the urn perfectly motionless. Other than a rapidly deepening blueness in Marc’s face, there was no evidence that the men had not simply joined together to provide a grotesquely decorative stand for the urn. That this constituted a condition of utter absurdity, Toffee was the first to realize. She placed herself impatiently at Gerald Blemish’s side and raised her hands to her hips.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, you nincompoop?” she hissed. “Let go.”

  Gerald looked up at her unhappily, considered, then let go. The three remaining contestants staggered drunkenly aside, still clinging doggedly to the urn.

  “Show him your gun,” Toffee directed.

  Gerald thought about it, then bestirred himself. He went over to the maitre de and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The maitre de looked around.

  “Look,” Gerald said, taking his gun from his pocket and shoving it under the poor man’s nose. “See?”

  The maitre de knew when he was licked. Instantly, he let go of the urn and backed away. A look of great disillusionment came into his eyes. With a soul-searing sob he turned and sat down heavily on the steps.

  “You’ve ruined me,” he blubbered. “You’ve deliberately come in here and ruined my reputation. And I know who’s behind it all; Felix of the Gaylord!”

  “Oh, dear!” Toffee said. “Please don’t do that. Don’t cry. I just can’t stand to see a man cry.”

  Cecil Blemish relinquished his hold on the urn and joined his brother at the ruined man’s side. In the background, Marc sagged limply under the sudden weight.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Gerald asked. “We’ve ruined him,” Cecil explained briefly.

  The maitre de shuddered with a new convulsion of self pity.

  “Now, look here,” Toffee said kindly. “There’s no reason to go on like this. I’ll tell you what. Why can’t we all cooperate in this thing? We want food and you want to throw us out. Why don’t we just compromise? We’ll take a table and eat and then we’ll let you throw us out. You can make a terrible scene, and we won’t say a word.” She turned to the Blemishes. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, very,” Cecil said enthusiastically. “We’re wonderful at being thrown out. We act cowardly as anything, we snivel.”

  “Oh, we snivel beautifully!” Gerald confirmed.

  “Fine,” Toffee said. “Why don’t you do a little sniveling right now? Just show the gentleman what he can expect. It’s bound to cheer him up.”

  TOGETHER the Blemishes descended to their knees beside the sobbing maitre de. Then, contorting their faces into expressions of despicable self-abasement, they began to make small damp sounds of cowardly beseechment. Tears began to course down their faces and into their beards. Slowly, the maitre de raised his head and looked around. Then with a cry of purest horror he leaped to his feet and bolted from the room as though pursued by a thousand devils

  “I quit!” he screamed as he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. “I go back to the automat!”

  “Poor man,” Toffee murmured. “Definitely the ulcerous type.” She turned to the sniveling Blemishes. “Stop that awful noise and get up.”

  Marc struggled forward under the weight of the urn. “I can’t hold out much longer,” he said.

  Supremely unaffected by the horrified silence which had fallen over the room, Toffee turned, surveyed the table accommodations, and sighted a place in the center of the room.

  “Follow me, men,” she said.

  As the strange party made its way to the middle of the room in sedate silence, heads turned everywhere to follow its progress. Marc just made it to the edge of the table. Toffee and the Blemishes seated themselves as though their arrival had been accomplished in completely orderly manner. The Blemishes, in a formal mood, didn’t bother removing their hats.

  “What about me?” Marc gasped. “Am I supposed to hold this thing in my lap?”

  Toffee studied his predicament through thoughtful, half-closed lids. “No,” she murmured, “you couldn’t do that.” She glance around, at the Wyman’s markedly heavy silverware. She promptly picked up her own place setting and dropped it in Marc’s pockets. The Blemishes quickly followed suit.

  A moment later Marc’s pockets fairy bulged with purloined silver. The other diners looked on with awed fascination.

  “Have you ever seen anything so flagrant?” a woman at an adjoining table whispered. “I’ve heard of people stealing a knife or fork for a souvenir, but... well... cleaning out the whole table!”

  “Even the salt and peppers,” her companion observed, half with admiration. “Before they get through there’ll be nothing left of this hotel but the hollow shell.”

  Toffee regarded Marc with satisfaction. “That should hold you,” she said. “Unburden yourself.”

  Willing to risk anything by now, Marc put down the urn. He remained stationary. With an echoing sigh of relief and a loud clattering of silver, he seated himself at the table.

  “Thank God!” he groaned.

  The other diners, feeling that they were now in for a period of respite, turned back to their cooling meals and a general buzz of low-key conversation. It was at this moment that a waiter, just on duty and starkly unappraised of recent developments, made his entrance into the dining room, picked up a pitcher of water, and went to the aid of the newcomers. He moved forward with the light step of the happy and the innocent. Toffee saw him coming.

  “May we have more silver?” she asked.

  The waiter stopped short, put the pitcher of water down heavily on the table. The dining room quieted for a second time.

  “What happened to the silver that was here?” he asked. “A Wynant table is never left without silver.”

  “Oh, that,” Toffee said. “We used all that up.”

  “For what?” the waiter wanted to know. “What did you do with it?”

  Toffee pointed blandly to Marc. “He has it in his pockets,” she said.

  Marc shifted in his chair with musical unease and refused to meet the narrowed gaze of the waiter. There was a long moment of silence before the waiter turned back to Toffee.

  “You mean he just picked it up and put it in his pockets?”

  “Oh, no,” Toffee said. “Of course not. We picked it up and put it in his pockets for him,” She nodded to her dark-browed accomplices.

  FOR A MOMENT the waiter stood undecided. One could almost see the desperate churnings of his mind. Finally he bent low toward Toffee in a manner of great confidence. “Since you’re so open about the whole thing,” he murmured, “I trust you and your friends are playing some sort of game to amuse yourselves. I assume that you intend to take the silver back out of the gentleman’s pockets and return it to the table. Am I right?”

  “Certainly not,” Toffee said. “We wouldn’t think of it.”

  “I’d be very pleased if you would,” the waiter said a bit more firmly.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be pleased at all,” Toffee said. “You’d despise it. Now just run along and get some more silver.”

  “So you can stuff this fellow’s pockets with it?” the waiter said. “If you put any more in them they’ll rip off.”

  “We want to eat with it,” Toffee said.

  “How novel,” the waiter said. He turned to the Blemishes and blanched slightly. “Would you... uh ... gentlemen please remove your hats?”

  “Now look here,” Toffee said. “There’s no use getting petty about this thing.” She nodded toward the vacant chair on the other side of the table. “Sit down, and I’ll explain everything.”

  The waiter gazed on her with heavy disdain. “I can’t sit down,” he said.

  Marc, on his side of the table, had looked away for a moment, his attention caught by the frankly admiring glance of a dark, heavy-lidded lady at the ne
xt table. There was about her an unmistakably continental air, and Marc couldn’t help noticing that her neckline had plunged and crashed somewhere in the neighborhood of the Arc de Triumph. He flushed and turned away.

  “Oh, please,” he said anxiously, to no one in particular. “Please give me something to eat.”

  “Can’t sit down?” Toffee said to the waiter. “For heaven’s sake, why not? Has something happened to your...?”

  “Of course not!” the waiter said quickly. “It isn’t allowed. Waiters never sit with the guests at the Wynant.”

  “Why not?” Toffee asked. “Is there something the matter with the waiters here?”

  The waiter opened his mouth to answer, then was silent with thought. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with us. At least I think I’m all right. I don’t see why I shouldn’t sit down. If I’m invited, that is.”

  “Then have a seat,” Toffee said.

  “Thank you,” the waiter said with a slight bow. “I don’t mind if I do.” With great deliberation he turned, regarding the other diners with a look of scornful defiance, then crossed around the table and sat down. “Now, about that extra silver you wanted...”

  A gasp echoed through the room. At the far side a bejeweled matron rose from her place with a snort of outrage and stiffly departed the room. In the meanwhile Marc had turned imploring eyes to the only quarter from which he had so far received any attention at all. The heavy-lidded lady smiled slowly.

  “Would you give me something to eat?” Marc asked weakly. “You have so much there and... If I don’t get something soon I’ll drift off into space.”

  “It is such a feeling as I have often suffered myself,” the woman said in a heavy French accent. “But never for the want of food. I could not forgive myself to turn away a man with the hunger.”

  “I’ve got the hunger something fierce,” Marc said.

  “Of course, monsieur will pay bill?”

  “Sure,” Marc agreed eagerly. “Anything.”

  THE LADY reached out a tapering hand to the table and picked up a piece of paper covered darkly with figures. She handed it to Marc.

  Marc glanced at the total and blanched.

  “Champagne is so expensive in this country,” the lady said regretfully. “And to me it is like water.”

  “Obviously,” Marc murmured. “You must wash your clothes in the stuff.” He held out his hand. “But never mind. Just give me the food.”

  “You have only to open the mouth,” the lady smiled. “I will feed you with my own hands.” Her eyes held his own with a suggestive glint. “It will be sweeter that way.”

  “Just give me the plate,” Marc said.

  The woman paid no attention. “You will drink the wine of my country from the cup of my hand, like a great, thirsting beast.” She laughed throatily. “It is so that we make love with the meal.”

  “Doesn’t it get awfully messy?” Marc asked ruefully. “Or do you wear gloves?”

  “Love is never tidy,” the woman breathed, leaning close to him. “Not when it is worthwhile. Love is always a beautiful, beautiful mess.”

  Marc, more embarrassed than enthralled at this invitation to amour among the foodstuffs, was not aware that Toffee had paused in her conversation with the waiter and fastened her eyes with brooding hostility to the back of his neck.

  “And now,” the French temptress was saying, “the monsieur will part the beautiful lips so Lisa can give him the food of love.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Toffee put in hotly from across the table. “If the monsieur parts the beautiful lips Toffee will part his teeth for him!”

  Marc started guiltily. “Now, Toffee...!”

  “Stand back from that French pastry, you philandering gourmet!” Toffee said, getting up from her chair. “When I get through with her there’s going to be a lot more broken than just her speech!”

  “She’s only feeding me!” Marc said.

  “Yeah,” Toffee sneered. “The food of love. I heard her.” She swung toward the woman. “I’m the dietitian around here, honey, and don’t you forget it.”

  “I only show the monsieur how she is done in the old country.”

  “Well,” Toffee said, “get a load of how she’s done in the new one. Prepare yourself to get fractured, you Parisian petunia!”

  And with that the turbulent redhead snatched the plate of squab that rested in the tapering hand of the enchantress and carefully emptied its contents into the lady’s elaborate hairdo.

  “Mon dieu!” the woman screamed as she shot out of her chair. She swung about and eyed Toffee malevolently through a trickle of gravy. “So! The mademoiselle would be the wildcat, eh?” She glanced quickly about for ammunition and found it on a neighboring table. Scooping a plate of soup from beneath the owner’s very spoon, she turned furiously and prepared to hurl it into Toffee’s face. “I have never been so insult in all my life!”

  “Put that soup down, Fifi,” Toffee warned, “or you’re going to get insult in places you didn’t know you had.”

  The soggy siren did as she was told, but only by accident. As she started toward Toffee, the plate of soup slithered out of her hand, looped gracefully through the air and landed upside down in the lap of a lavender-laced matron. Heaving herself from her chair, the matron trumpeted her displeasure to the assemblage at large, armed herself with a pitcher of water, and entered the fray. Stepping with great dignity to the side of the beseiged European, she heaved the contents of the pitcher in the general vicinity of her midsection. Then, with great pleasure, she threw back her head and laughed. Just in time to receive a plateful of oysters squarely in the face.

  IN THE NEXT moment the entire room had entered into the spirit of the occasion. Naturally repressed, the guests of the Wynant were quick to seize upon this opportunity to give expression to their pent up feelings. Pandemonium ruled the room from end to end. Trays and diners slid across the floor together with an air of abandoned democracy. Mrs. Jones, having long resented the upward tilt of Mrs. Smythe’s nose, did her level best to lower it with a sauce bottle. The action, for the main part, however, gravitated frenziedly toward the center of the room where it had started. Toffee, having applied the squab to her victim, was now gustily engaged in massaging it into the scalp, all the way to the bone if possible.

  Marc, for his part, was busily engaged in reaping the spoils of the battle. He picked up an abandoned roll here, an unwanted steak there, and even occasionally caught a delicacy as it flew through the air. He stuffed himself as ravenously as a starved road-worker at a free lunch. The Blemishes remained seated at the table, thoroughly confused and disillusioned at the activities of the upper classes. The waiter merely leaned back in his chair with an enigmatic smile and enjoyed to the fullest the spectacle of these people doing to each other what he had been secretly tempted to do to them nightly for several years.

  Marc, still concerned with the matter of dining, reached out for an abandoned pudding and discovered new and still more alarming element in the fracas. Just as his hand was closing in on the dessert, the dish suddenly leaped into the air, poised itself carefully, then sailed across the room to catch a portly gentleman neatly at the side of the ear. In a seizure of surprise, as the gooey mess dribbled into his collar, the man whirled about and dealt his female companion a stinging blow across the bridge of her nose.

  “Oh!” he gasped in instant regret, “I’m so terribly sorry!”

  For a moment the woman only stared at him without expression. Then, with slow calm she reached out to the table, picked up a bottle of wine, carefully removed the cloth from around it, and belted her abject attacker a solid blow across the crown of the head.

  “Perfectly all right, lover,” she murmured as she stepped over his prone figure and started from the room. “Don’t bother getting up.”

  Marc turned back to the table and frowned sternly.

  “George,” he said tentatively. “George, I know you’re there, so there’s no us
e hiding. Show yourself.”

  “Of course,” George’s voice said out of space, with malicious levity. “In a moment. Wonderful fight, isn’t it?”

  “George!” Marc said.

  But there was only silence from the ghost. Marc gazed speculatively around, peering anxiously into the ranks of the warring diners for some sign; there was no telling what the sporadic spook might undertake in a situation of this sort. It was only a moment before the worst of his fears were realized.

  There was only a slight disturbance around the cigarette urn at first, a faint billowing of the table cloth. Then, as though someone had secured a grip on the thing ... as George indeed had ... it suddenly lifted into the air. There was a period of shifting and balancing, then it lifted steadily upward until it was above the heads of the embroiled diners.

  “No!” Marc yelled at the top his lungs. “George! Put it back!” Instantly all was silence in the dining room as the warring guests froze in various attitudes of combat and cast frightened eyes upward at the floating urn. The enchantress from France, her hand clutching at Toffee’s hair, was somewhat more affected than the others.

  “I haf loose my reason!” she wailed. “I am departed from my wits in this land of barbarians!” Then, becoming considerably more heavy-lidded than before, she wilted quietly to the floor.

  Meanwhile the urn had continued upward, paused, sighted its course, and started viciously in Marc’s direction. George’s plan was hideously plain; he meant to dispatch his earthly part to the hereafter by means of bombardment.

  “Run, Marc!” Toffee screamed. “Run!”

  Marc, however, now laden with food, silver and lead weights, was all but incapable of flight. He started forward, but only ploddingly. Loaded to the teeth with ballast, his progress was not only extremely noisome, but greatly retarded. “I can’t run!” he panted.

  IN THE NEXT moment the urn had arrived at a position almost directly above him. It shuttled nervously back and forth, evidently adjusting for a direct hit. Toffee dashed toward the table and the petrified Blemishes. She bent quickly over Cecil and snatched the revolver from his hand.