“I think we ought to banish George from our minds,” Toffee said. “Besides, now that I’ve got the bottle back I don’t intend to be free about handing it around for quite some time.”
“All right,” Marc said. “Have it your way. George is banished.”
There was a prolonged period of contented silence, broken intermittently by faint gurgling sounds, first from one side of the closet then the other. It was Toffee who finally spoke.
“By the way,” she said, “what was all that nonsense about your getting yourself shot?”
“Oh, that,” Marc said negligently. “It’s a bunch of subversives. They have a subtle plan to poison the minds of the public against the government—with the government’s permission. I went on the air to expose them, but they had me shot to stop me. There was this dark fellow with a scar over his left eye in the control booth ...” He paused. “Holy smoke! I forgot. This is serious business, isn’t it?”
“It sounds like it,” Toffee said. “How far did you get in your broadcast?”
“I didn’t even get started. I suppose I ought to try to do it again.”
“If they think you’re dead or dying, they won’t be watching for you any more.”
“That’s right,” Marc said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay,” Toffee said. “Just take your arms away from my waist so I can get up.”
“Huh?” Marc said. “I don’t have my arms around your waist.”
“You haven’t!” Toffee said. “Didn’t you take the gadget from under my arm either?”
“Of course not.”
“It’s that sneaky George,” Toffee snorted. “And when I think of how I was enjoying it ... !” She turned in the darkness. “Let go of me before I lose my temper, George. So help me, you spurious spectre, I’ll twist your head off when I get ahold of you.”
There was no answer but apparently the threat had taken hold; there were sounds of Toffee getting to her feet.
“That’ll hold him,” she said. “Look outside and see how things are. I want that gadget back.”
Marc fumbled his way to the door, opened it a crack, then shoved it all the way open.
“All clear,” he said and turned back to Toffee. “Can you see him back there? Is he visible?”
“I can just make him out,” Toffee said, peering into the back of the closet. “He’s sort of lurking.”
“Okay, you rat,” Marc said. “Come out of there and give it to us. Snap into it.”
There were shuffling sounds from the shadows and slowly a figure emerged into the light. It was a dark, heavy figure. The face was swarthy and there was a scar over the left eye. The man leered at the two in the doorway.
“Okay,” he said. “Keep your shirts on. I’m going to give it to you all right. I’m going to give it to you good.”
He moved closer. In his left hand was Toffee’s gadget, in his right an enormous revolver.
THE swarthy man closed the door to the storeroom, locked it, and shaking his head, moved purposefully down the hallway to a door at the front of the warehouse. He stopped and knocked, and as an unintelligible grunt issued from inside, he opened the door and entered.
“I got ’em,” he announced.
Across the room a portly gentleman with a white mane and great shaggy black eyebrows looked up from a sheaf of papers on the desk before him.
“Them?” he said. “I told you just to pick up Pillsworth and finish him off.”
The swarthy man glanced away, embarrassed. “I couldn’t finish him off, congressman. He wasn’t even started. I went to the hospital, like you told me, to make sure about Pillsworth—and I was going along the hall lookin’ for this place where they cut ’em up—and all of a sudden there was a racket like a lot of people runnin’ around and yellin’, so I ducked into this closet to keep under cover. Well, I was only in there a little bit when all of a sudden somebody yanks the door open and this guy and this dame come shaggin’ in with hardly any clothes on. So I kept quiet and listened.”
“I’m not interested in the sordid doings behind the scenes at the hospital,” Congressman Entwerp interrupted. “Stick to the pertinent facts.”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t nothin’ like that. I just listened and pretty soon it come up in what they were sayin’ that this guy with the dame is none other than Pillsworth himself. And believe me, congressman, I can’t explain it, but there ain’t a thing wrong with him—physically.”
“Physically?” the congressman asked. “What do you mean?”
“The guy’s mentally a mess,” the thug said. “So’s this dame with him. She’s a terrific lookin’ little job, but crazy as a coot. It’s a dirty shame.”
“How do you know they’re crazy?”
“Just ask Hank. He drove the car. All the way over from the hospital they kept talkin’ to this guy who wasn’t there, and bawlin’ him out for followin’ them everyplace. They called him George, and they carried on a regular conversation with him. It was weird, leave me tell you. But one thing, this guy George, whoever he is, is lucky he doesn’t exist; the way that little dame kept tellin’ him what she was going to do to him if he didn’t show himself and help them out of this jam was enough to curl your hair. Pillsworth was all the time tellin’ this imaginary character what a ghoul he was to be hangin’ around just to see him get killed. They’re both nuts, boss, an’ no lie!”
“Maybe it was just an act,” Congressman Entwerp suggested skeptically.
“I don’t think so. You’d really have to feel mean to say some of the stuff those two was dishin’ out to this George.” The thug paused and withdrew Toffee’s thought gadget from his pocket. “Look what I lifted off the dame in the closet.” He placed it on the desk before the congressman. “She’s plenty hot to get it back. You’d think it was somethin’ worth somethin’.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of two-way flashlight, I guess. Just a piece of junk.”
THE congressman bent his shaggy head close over the gadget and examined it minutely. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, then shrugged and dropped it negligently into his pocket.
“Let’s have a look at these two crackpots,” he said, rising from his chair. “We’ll have to dispose of them, of course.”
“Okay,” the thug said. “I just hope they’ve got things settled with this George before we get there.”
Back in the storeroom, however, events were lurching ahead in a most uncertain manner. Things had started with an air of mild strangeness and mounted swiftly to a state of wild-eyed madness.
Finding themselves confined and in the hands of blood-thirsting murderers, Marc and Toffee had paused only momentarily to survey their musty prison, the cases of wines, brandies and whiskies stacked along the walls, before returning to the subject uppermost in their minds. Toffee, doubling her fists, addressed herself to the room at large.
“George,” she said evenly, “we know you’re with us. You gave yourself away in the car when you let that foot materialize, and you’ll give yourself away again. And when you do, brother, I’m going to kick your teeth out one at a time and have them made into shirt studs. I’m going to ... !”
“It’s no use threatening him,” Marc interrupted. “He’s got the advantage. He’s just hanging around waiting for me to be killed. And he’ll probably have his way before they’re done with us.”
In answer, a stiffled yawn echoed from somewhere in back of them. Toffee whirled about.
“Listen to him!” she fumed. “Now he’s rubbing it in! That was the most put-on yawn I ever heard.”
She started forward, but Marc put out a hand to stop her. He drew her toward the corner.
“Listen,” he said in lowered tones, “I’ve just thought of something. Maybe we can trap him.”
“We certainly should be able to,” Toffee agreed hotly. “George is pure rat, through and through. If we only had some cheese ...”
“What about whiskey?” Marc asked. “There�
�s plenty of it here, and where George is concerned it’s the best bait in the world.”
“I wonder why he hasn’t been at it already?” Toffee said, surveying the crates along the walls. “The place is practically seething with the stuff.”
“He’s too smart,” Marc said. “He doesn’t want to show where he is. By the time he opened a crate and got the bottle out we’d have him located. He’s afraid we’d slug him.”
“Of course we’d slug him,” Toffee said. “I personally intend to bop the living bejesus out of him at the very first opportunity. What difference does that make?”
“He knows what we’re after,” Marc explained. “He knows we want him to show himself to these people so they won’t know which one of us is me. And look what happened to George the last time he was knocked out.”
TOFFEE looked up with a smile of understanding. “Of course!” she said. “He lost control of his ectoplasm and materialized.”
“Exactly,” Marc said, “and it might happen again. Then it would not be just a matter of confusing them with the two of us. If George materialized we could leave him to take the rap all by himself.”
“Wonderful!” Toffee said. “Let’s do it. It would serve everybody right. How do we trap him?”
“It’s simple,” Marc said. “We open the crates and get the bottles out for George. At first we pretend to forget about him; we sit around and act like we’re swilling down whiskey by the gallon and having the time of our lives. This will drive George close to madness, locked in a room with two drinkers and no drop for himself. When we figure he’s sufficiently worked up, we’ll weaken and offer him a drink. He won’t be able to resist. While one of us hands over his bottle, the other takes a fix on George’s position and bashes the daylights out of him with his.” Marc permitted himself a smile of pride. “You see?”
“Marvelous,” Toffee said. “I particularly love that part at the end, where George gets bashed. Can I be the basher?”
“Okay,” Marc agreed. “Let’s go. And remember, act as though you’ve never enjoyed drinking anything so much in your whole life.”
With tremendous nonchalance, the two moved across the room to the stacked crates.
“My, my,” Marc said in a declamatory, radio announcer’s tone, “what do you suppose we have here in all these interesting-looking crates?”
“I should think,” Toffee said on cue, “that they contain bottles of fine old tangy whiskey. Of course that’s just a random guess, but I believe it’s a shrewd one. Shall we have a look?”
“Oh, let’s!” Marc cried, with a false grin of eagerness. He turned slightly in what he presumed to be George’s direction. “A drink of fine old tangy whiskey would certainly taste mighty good just now.”
“I can think of nothing better!” Toffee said, smacking her lips loudly. “My mouth fairly waters!”
Marc reached one of the crates down and, placing it on the floor, pried up one of the slats. He reached out two bottles and handed one toward Toffee.
“Well, well,” he cried with studied joviality. “Look what I found!”
Toffee clapped her hands after the manner of a witless child. “Oh, goody!” she gurgled. “Some of that wonderful fine old tangy whiskey! Just what I hoped for!” She took the bottle, opened it and took a swallow. She blanched and covered her face with her hand. “Ugh!” she rasped.
“Yes, sir!” Marc said, lifting his bottle to his mouth. “Some of the finest, oldest and tangyest fine old tangy whiskey there is.” He rolled his eyes in broad anticipation. “Yes, sir, bedad!”
“It’s a good thing you said that before you tasted the stuff,” Toffee hissed between clenched teeth. “You’d never have the breath afterward.”
THE warning came too late; Marc had already downed a large swallow. He closed his eyes and gagged. Like Toffee, however, he forced a frozen smile through his tears and rubbed his stomach luxuriously. “Umm-umm,” he managed to say. “It sure hits the spot.”
“And leaves it in ruins,” Toffee agreed. “They must cook this stuff up in old lye vats.”
“Keep drinking,” Marc whispered urgently. “And look happy.”
“Okay,” Toffee said grimly. “I’ll die with a smile on my face, but it’ll be the lie of the century.” She lifted the bottle gamely and drank. “Oh, boy!” she rasped through drawn lips, “this whiskey is the answer to a drunkard’s prayer.”
Marc drank dutifully in turn. “You said it!” he announced, tears streaming from his eyes. “It’s delicious!”
“I could go on drinking it forever,” Toffee wheezed, taking another gulp and clutching her throat. “It’s so smooth!”
“Makes you want more and more,” Marc said, shaking his head to clear it after a third libation. “It gives you a real boost.”
“Let’s not carry it too far,” Toffee whispered. “If I drink any more of this mange medicine I won’t be able to hit the barnside of a broad.”
“Broadside of a barn,” Marc corrected her weakly. “But you’re right. We’d better make the pitch while we’re still conscious.”
Toffee nodded and made a great show of registering happy inspiration. “Say,” she cried, “you know who would just love this whiskey?”
“No,” Marc replied like the second part in a minstrel skit. “Who”?
“George!” Toffee said. “You remember good old George?”
Marc nodded vigorously. “Wouldn’t he be just crazy about whiskey like this?”
“He certainly would. Crazy mad, he’d be. Isn’t it too bad he’s not here?” Then Toffee brightened. “But perhaps he is! You never can tell about good old George.”
“But when we were talking to him earlier he didn’t answer.”
“Perhaps he misunderstood something one of us said,” Toffee suggested. “Maybe he didn’t understand our type of humor and got offended. You know, like when I said I was going to gouge his eyes out? A harmless remark to most people, but perhaps not so to good old George.”
“True,” Marc said sagely. “George always was sensitive.” He glanced around the room. “George?” he called. “If you’re here, old man, how about having a drink with us? If we said anything to hurt your feelings we certainly didn’t mean to.”
He paused to listen. There was a hesitant shuffling across the room.
“Well ...” a voice said uneasily.
Marc and Toffee exchanged glances of triumph.
“You mustn’t miss out on this, old man,” Marc cajoled. “You really mustn’t.”
“And it will make such a nice friendly gesture,” Toffee put in, “to show that you forgive us our thoughtless little jibes.”
“Well,” the voice returned, a shade less hesitant. “I am a little dry.”
“Of course you are,” Marc said jovially, “and we have the very thing to bring you comfort and contentment. Just step over here and I’ll give you this whole bottle.”
“No tricks?” George asked warily.
“George!” Toffee said, thoroughly scandalized, “how can you even entertain such a notion?”
“Just to show you,” Marc said, “why don’t you stay invisible? You’re perfectly safe that way.”
“Okay,” George agreed. “Just hold out the bottle.”
“Right-oh,” Marc said and turned to Toffee. “Give it everything,” he whispered. Toffee nodded.
AS Marc held out the bottle, Toffee sighted on the area in line with his hand, on the principle that George, being a duplicate of Marc, his head would be on the same level. The best strategy, she felt, was to concentrate on this area as swiftly and violently as possible. She held the bottle in readiness and when, a moment later, the bottle jogged in Marc’s hand, she was prepared. She swung as hard as she could in a wide horizontal swipe. About half way, the bottle jarred to an abrupt stop and shattered, spewing liquid and glass in all directions. This was subsequently followed by a surprised moan and a heavy thudding sound in the vicinity of the floor.
“Got him!” Toffee cried jubilan
tly. “Smashed him right on the button!” She dropped the jagged neck of the bottle daintily to the floor.
“He’s still invisible,” Marc said worriedly. “I hope there’ll be developments.”
Developments came almost immediately, and they were well worth watching, though hardly the sight for sore eyes. Marc’s calculations had been correct. Surprised, as it were, into unconsciousness, George had completely lost control of his ectoplasm. The trouble, though, was that instead of splashing out through his body all of a piece, it trickled out in fits and starts.
What appeared on the floor, under Marc’s and Toffee’s watchful eyes, was not George in total, but a sort of jigsaw George in which many of the vital pieces had been omitted. While one could be grateful for George’s head, there was bound to be a pang of regret for the neck which had failed to appear.
An arm lay to the left, with only a finger or two to indicate that it had once blossomed a hand. Had there ever been an expression to the effect that half a torso was better than none, George had disproved it beyond measure; a torso, apparently severed from the collar bone to the mid-riff was so much worse than no torso at all as to be positively hair-raising. A random foot here, an errant knee cap there only garnished the over-all picture of hideous human butchery. With a shudder of revulsion, Toffee turned from the awful sight.
“Leave it to George,” she said, “just leave it to that monster to be as revolting as possible.”
“I don’t suppose it’s really his fault,” Marc said fairly, “but I wish he were invisible again.”
It was at this moment that the congressman and his henchman, having completed their discussion in the front of the warehouse, arrived at the door of the storeroom and fitted a key to the lock.
“Duck!” Toffee said. “Get behind those crates!”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to get my invention back. Besides they can’t hurt me, and the important thing is to give you a chance to escape.”
“Okay,” Marc nodded and faded into the dimness behind the crates.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 64
