“Well, it’s a good thing we’re investigating you then,” the congressman said. “One does like to know who’s killing one, you know. It gives you a clue whom to curse with your dying breath.”
“But getting back to these others,” Toffee said, “who is it? What country, I mean?”
“Why, You Know Where, of course,” the congressman said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You Know Where, who else?”
“Did someone put something in my coffee,” Toffee asked, “or are you just being terribly coy about this thing?”
“I’m not being coy at all, dammit,” the congressman said. “You Know Where is the country.”
“Good grief,” Toffee said, “now he’s lapsing into baby talk. Very well, congressman, if you can’t bring yourself to tell me the name of the country in a straightforward manner, perhaps you’ll just mention the man who’s at the head of it. Just as a hint.”
“You Know Who,” the congressman said flatly.
For a long moment there was silence as Toffee gazed toward the gardens with apparent serenity.
“All right, congressman,” she said presently. “Just forget the whole thing. Forget I even mentioned it.”
“Come here,” the congressman said, drawing a globe atlas forward across his desk. “I’ll show you.”
Toffee got up and crossed to the desk. She followed the congressman’s finger as it swept across the United States, brushed aside the Hawaiian Islands, and came to rest on a large country on the soiled outskirts of Europe. Quite plainly the county was marked: YOU KNOW WHERE.
“For heaven’s sake!” Toffee exclaimed. “Why, that’s ... !”
“Don’t!” the congressman broke in frightenedly. “Don’t say that name! It’s illegal. It was the government’s idea that we should ignore the country, refuse to recognize it. It was hoped that if we just didn’t speak to it any more and acted as though we didn’t know it was there, it would go away and leave us alone. The use of the name was outlawed five years ago. Unfortunately, it’s still there so we have to call it something.”
“Very shrewd,” Toffee said. “Reminds one of the tactics of sulky children. And this You Know Who, I suppose, is the head of the government there?”
THE congressman reached across the desk and drew a newspaper toward them. On the front page was the picture of an elderly man in a short choke-collar effect. He had penetrating eyes and a drooping mustache.
“Oh,” Toffee said, “you mean ...”
“You Know Who,” the congressman supplied quickly.
“Of course,” Toffee agreed. “Then as I see it the country is faced with the question of whether You Know Who from You Know Where is going to drop you know what on the USA?”
“Not whether,” the congressman amended, “but when. Otherwise, you have stated the situation in a nutshell.”
“And I can’t think of a better place for it either,” Toffee murmured. “Outside of a pecan pie it’s the nuttiest situation I’ve ever heard of.”
“Well,” the congressman said, “there’s nothing to be done about it now. Unless, of course, your secret weapon has some bearing on the crisis. But I doubt it. We’ve piled secret weapon on secret weapon and the situation has simply worsened with each one. It’s very disheartening.”
“I see,” Toffee reflected. “It makes a murky state of affairs. However, if you could get people away from the idea of blowing each other up and reduce them to the oldfashioned, intimate methods of warfare ...”
“Oh, Lord!” Marc moaned aggrievedly.
“Well,” the congressman sighed, “he’s still in the religious cycle at least.”
At that moment the door opened at the far end of the room, and a heavy-lidded French maid appeared in the opening and leaned exhaustedly against the sill.
“Someone smeared a French pastry on the woodwork,” Toffee commenpted dryly.
“I have served the gentlemen in the hall tea for three hours,” the maid sighed, shoving her hair out of her eyes. “They are the devil himself. They play funloving games, like children.” She paused and sighed again. “Dinner is served, I presume.”
The congressman boosted himself out of his chair. “I will speak to those funloving gorillas in person,” he said. He turned to Toffee. “Are you hungry, my dear?”
“Famished,” Toffee said, and looked at Marc. “And you?”
“Yeah,” Marc said dolefully. “My wife is gone, my business is ruined, my world is about to go up in smoke—but what the heck!”
He turned a sardonic eye on the congressman. “Lead on,” he said.
TOFFEE sat down gingerly on the corner of the bed and surveyed the congressman’s best guest room with voluptuous appreciation. It was a production in lace and rococo gilt in which the curly-cued, beflounced bed was lost like a fireworks display in a gaudy sunset. Toffee only regretted that such splendor, for her part was only to be wasted.
It was not that she would not have willingly stayed the night there, had she the choice—but she had not. Being a thought projection of Marc’s conscious mind, she would not exist in the material world when Marc slept. She had to return to the land of his imagination until he awoke again; then she would rematerialize wherever she chose. She ooked at the bed, imagined the roseate picture of herself amongst the linens and laces, and sighed a sigh of regret.
She removed herself from the bed, went to the door and listened. There were sounds; the guard was still there. The other guard would be posted at Marc’s door.
Toffee glanced at the ornamental clock on the bedstand. It was well after midnight, and she was still in the land of reality. That meant that Marc was still awake—and still worrying about Julie—and the bombs.
She crossed to the bed, sat down as before, and ran her hand absently over the lace coverlette. Something had to be done to help Marc before he became a nerve case. It was true that she had gained the attention of the law makers, but now it seemed that the law makers were as irresponsible a group as one could wish for. And there might not be much time left. Something had to be done ... something big ... and in a hurry. If either side could be made to see the sheer idiocy of the situation. If, for instance, You Know Where ...
Suddenly Toffee stood up.
“My gosh!” she cried. “If I could only ...!”
She stopped suddenly and a gasp came to her lips. Even as she did so her very being seemed to fade a bit.
“Oh, no!” she cried. Then slowly she became more completely materialized again; Marc had yawned. She ran to the door and threw it open. Instantly the guard, a youngish ape in a dark suit, appeared before her.
“Yes, miss?”
“I’ve got to see Mr. Pillsworth!” Toffee cried. “He’s going to sleep and he mustn’t! Not yet.” She started forward, but the guard stood firm.
“Sorry, miss,” he said. “You’re not permitted to see Mr. Pillsworth tonight.”
“But I must!” Toffee cried. “He has to stay awake until ...!”
“I’m sorry, miss,” the guard said, then looked at Toffee more closely. “Aren’t you feeling well, Miss? You look a trifle pale around the gills.”
“And what’s worse,” Toffee said, “I feel pale too.”
“Well,” the guard said helpfully, “I saw an advertisement once about a lady who recommended a vegetable compound very highly. Of course I couldn’t be positive but I believe the lady’s name was Sylvia Pinkham, or something of the sort. She was a very kind looking old lady ...”
“LOOK,” Toffee put in distractedly, “could I go to the study if you came with me? It’s terribly important.”
“Well,” the guard reckoned, “all right. But don’t you think you ought to lie down. This lady... Sylvia ... seemed to think that other ladies should lie down ...”
“Blast Sylvia Pinkham,” Toffee said. “And blast her compound, too. Come on. Hurry!”
Together they hastened down the stairs. On the first floor the guard led the way to the study and switched on
the lights. He watched Toffee with concern as she swept past him into the room.
“My, miss,” he said. “You’re looking paler every minute. You’ll soon be nothing more than a ghost the way you’re going.”
Heedless, Toffee ran to the desk. There she reached for the globe and turned it with a hurried hand. The guard joined her curiously.
“Let’s see,” Toffee mused. “We’re here. You Know Where is there.” If you concentrated in a straight line in that direction .. .”
“Miss?” the guard said softly. “I’m sure Miss Sylvia Pinkham wouldn’t like it at all ...”
“And I wouldn’t like Miss Sylvia Pinkham at all,” Toffee said shortly. She turned back to the globe. “This must be the capital of You Know Where, this heavy black dot over here. It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Miss. But if you’re thinking of going there, they won’t let you in, you know. There’s the Brass Curtain.”
“I thought it was iron,” Toffee said.
“It used to be. But after a few dealings with those people everyone decided it must be brass.”
Without comment Toffee snatched up the newspaper and studied the picture of You Know Who as though she were committing the unlovely features to memory. Finally she set it aside and turned to the guard.
“There now,” she said. “I think I’ve got everything fairly straight in mind. There’s just one thing. Mr. Pillsworth is going to sleep now. Don’t let him sleep too long—just a little while, then wake him up.”
“Are you certain he’ll want to ... ?” the guard began.
“Don’t forget,” Toffee said positively. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Well, okay,” the guard agreed. “I’ll tell him you said ...!”
Then, with a gasp, the poor man’s voice descended down his throat with the gritty rattle of a parcel of bones dumped into a disposal. As he watched, shaken to the very roots of his soul, the girl by the desk gradually faded into thin air ...
DUSK had come to a distant land.
Toffee stood in the formidable square and looked with disfavor on the great concrete pilings that brooded over the clear area in the center and isolated it from the waning light of day. Functional architecture, with frippery —cold, grey and starkly oppressive. Very functional, like a straight jacket, and just as pleasant to look at.
There were hardly any signs of human life. A couple of men, so grey and so gross that they seemed only a part of the buildings around them, lumbered down the steps of the largest and most formidable of the structures, stopped to look at Toffee curiously, then passed on. Toffee shrugged and turned toward the building from which they had just come. The best way to obtain information, after all, was to ask someone for it. And if those men had just come from the building, life must exist inside the place in spite of appearances.
She had no more than set foot on the steps of the place, however, than life suddenly descended upon her in a rush; two grey-uniformed guards, seemingly patterned very closely on the physical and spiritual makeup of the gorilla, clumped down the steps toward her with bayonets fixed. One of them barked something that, to Toffee, had no specific meaning. The bayonets, pointing in the vicinity of her midsection, spoke with great eloquence. Toffee felt keenly that the moment called for a disarming smile.
“Don’t be silly, boys,” she said with arch modulation. “There’s no occasion for manly demonstrations.”
There was a sputtered, incoherent exchange between the two, interspersed with moments of silence which allowed them time to stare in open-mouthed wonderment at the lightly swathed redhead before them. Toffee listened to this for what seemed the proper social interval, then started determinedly forward. The bayonets, however, thrust a little closer, took all the verve and sweep out of the gesture.
“Now, kids,” Toffee said, “I don’t want to have to get rough with you.” And so saying she reached out, delicately parted the bayonets, and passed between them. Their owners, obviously unused to this open flaunting of the sword, turned to stare after her in petrified astonishment. After a stunned silence, there ensued a growl-and-spit interchange of thought on the matter.
Though Toffee had no way of knowing it, one aborigine inquired of the other if they were eye to eye in the opinion that they were seeing things. The other replied in the affirmative, adding that if it were not illegal to entertain such notions, he might venture that they had just been bypassed by an angel from heaven. Of course, since everyone knew that heaven and angels did not exist, the notion was silly.
“Nothing descends from heaven but bombs,” his companion observed with native starkness. “The Great Leader has said it is so.”
“Then it is so, and we are only the victims of a delusion.”
Shrugging their massive shoulders they returned to their posts and hoped for the best.
INSIDE the building Toffee found herself confronted by a wide foyer from which innumerable corridors stretched away in all directions. Guards of a similar stamp to those who had accosted her on the steps literally infested the place, two to the corridor. They seemed so much a part of the sombre decor, however, that Toffee did not notice them at once. She had proceeded nearly to the center of the room before, overtaken by a certain feeling of uneasiness, she stopped and reconnoitered.
As she glanced around, the walls began to bristle with bayonets. She appraised this nasty state of affairs with concern and decided to adopt the policy of the congressman and his colleagues. A song on her lips, if not in her heart, she fixed her eyes straight ahead on the center corridor and resumed nonchalantly in that direction —perhaps if she pretended that these bayoneted orangoutangs were beneath her notice they might go away and leave her alone. They didn’t appear to be the friendly, informative type anyway.
For one brief moment it seemed that the ruse, by dint of sneer boldness, was going to work. Toffee was almost to the corridor when one of the benumbed guards suddenly began to vocalize in an overwrought fashion. In a voice that slammed against the vaulted ceiling like a trumpet blast he shouted something that sounded loosely like, “Garronovitch!” His tone did not convey the feeling of warm welcome. Toffee, sizing the situation up as the sort that only comes to a head with delay, bolted.
She darted into the corridor and kept going at a pace that utilized her lovely legs to the utmost. A noisy clatter from the rear, however, told her that she was not in the sprint just for exercise. She renewed her efforts. Then suddenly stopped.
It wasn’t so much that the corridor terminated in a huge doorway only a few yards ahead—though that was bad news enough—the real thing was that before the door there stood not two but four enormous guards, supplied like the others with those ugly weapons. The guards and Toffee caught sight of each other simultaneously, but the really filthy part of it was that the surprise element in the incident shoved the guards into action while it only held Toffee motionless.
TOFFEE needed no one to tell her she was about to be surrounded. “I would have to get into this place,” she sighed. “It must be a barracks for guards.” She watched with resignation as the bulky bayoneters formed a prickly circle around her. She chose the most likelylooking of her captors and smiled enchantingly into his sub-ugly face. But the favored one only reciprocated with a small jabbing gesture which was enthusiastically picked up and elaborated upon by his companions. Toffee was the first to realize that the situation was climbing toward that state which often described as ‘serious.’
“Look out, you lumbering oafs,” she said hotly. “You could play hell with a lady’s dainties with that sort of thing.”
She considered her ring and the hoard of armed brutes around her; there were too many of them to deal with effectively. The situation called for help, and Toffee took her cue from the situation; though she didn’t know the language she was willing to kick it around a bit.
“Helpovitch!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Helpovitch!”
The result that followed was as instantaneous as it was unexpected
. No sooner had Toffee’s voice split the air of the hallway than the guards froze where they were and stared at her in a transfix of horror. Toffee hadn’t the faintest notion of what she had said but she was awfully glad to have said it.
Experimentally she made a movement; the guards remained still. She stepped out of the circle, and one of the guards made a small movement of protest.
“Helpovitch, you rat,” Toffee said. “You heard me.”
The guard remained motionless.
Toffee paused, selected the door at the end of the hall as her destination, and went rapidly toward it. As she drew abreast of it, it opened just a crack and an ear presented itself in the opening. Apparently someone had been disturbed by the noise in the hall. Toffee leaned forward and placed her mouth close to the ear.
“Helpovitch,” she whispered. There was a moment, then the ear shuddered delicately, after which it turned red and withdrew quickly from sight. Here, Toffee realized, was the sort of ear that responded to a firm hand. She shoved the door open, stepped inside and closed it behind her. Then she turned about—and stopped short.
IT wasn’t so much the room which, large and marbled, was a gasping matter all in itself—but the room’s occupant; the ear had been misleading for its owner was none other than You Know Who himself. Between the Great Leader and Toffee there wasn’t much to choose for goggle-eyed surprise. Toffee, however, was the first to recover from the encounter.
“Well,” she said, “just the old villain I’m looking for!”
The Great Leader, his eyes retreating back into their sockets, set his mustache atremble with a great sucking breath and launched into a series of resonant sounds.
“Knock it off,” Toffee commanded. “You’re making a fog in here. Besides, I can’t understand a word of that juicy jazz.”
“So!” the Leader exploded. “Who iss? How you got har, hah?”
“Well,” Toffee murmured relievedly, “at least you can speak English—using the language loosely, that is.”
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 57
