“Gas?” the druggist sighed. “We don’t carry gas. May I suggest a filling station?”
“You don’t understand,” Marc said. “I don’t want gas, I want to get rid of it.”
The druggist regarded him uncertainly. “No sale, pal,” he said. “I don’t need any.”
“Don’t need any what?” Marc asked. The conversation was beginning to make him feel a bit dizzy.
“Gas,” the druggist said. “Are you selling, door to door, or are you giving it away in samples?”
“I’d certainly like to give it away,” Marc said testily. “I know just the person for it.”
“No one will take it, eh?” the druggist said. “That’s human nature for you. It’s like this fellow who tried to give away hundred dollar bills ... ”
“I think we’re at cross-purposes here,” Marc broke in anxiously. “I have this gas, you see, and I want to get rid of it. Can you help me or can’t you?”
“Well,” the druggist said undecidedly, “I suppose I can ask around. But tell me this, why do you want to get rid of this gas? Is there something funny about it?”
“I’d hardly call it funny,” Marc said stiffly. “It makes an awful noise.”
“Noise?” the druggist said. “Why should it make a noise?”
“It just does!” Marc said angrily. “I can’t control it.”
“Then no wonder no one will take it. There’s your answer right there.”
“I think you must be mad,” Marc said shortly.
“I think one of us must be,” the druggist agreed. He surveyed Marc’s lean frame wonderingly. “Why do you keep on with this gas of yours if it makes these disgusting noises?”
“I don’t want to keep on with it,” Marc said desperately. “That’s why I came to you.”
“And on such a beautiful day, too,” the druggist murmured sadly. A new thought struck him and he glanced up sharply. “Where do you keep this awful gas of yours?”
“On my stomach, of course,” Marc said hotly. “Where would I keep it?”
Slowly the light of realization dawned in the druggist’s face. “Oh! What you mean is you have gas on the stomach!”
“Yes,” Marc said, drawing himself up. “But there’s no need to shout it out to the entire store, is there?”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” the druggist said apologetically. “I don’t know what’s come over me today.” His gaze reverted briefly to the legs across the aisle. “I guess there’s something in the air this morning.”
“I guess so,” Marc said shortly. “But do you have something for my gas?”
“Why, surely,” the druggist said grandly. He reached under the counter and produced a small brown bottle filled with a syrupy liquid. “A little mixture of my own. Just drink it down and your worries are over. Just put it in your pocket. I couldn’t charge you after all we’ve been through together.”
Marc slipped the bottle into his coat pocket. He started to murmur his thanks, but the druggist’s attention had returned permanently to harbor at the cosmetics counter. Marc shrugged and walked out of the store.
There certainly was something the air, Marc reflected as he strode toward the corner, an almost tangible kind of madness. The coming of spring had turned the world giddy. You could feel it everywhere. In the country, where spring was so much more in evidence, the feeling was probably just that much more intense ... But he tried not to dwell on that.
AT the corner the signal turned to red and as the traffic moved forward in a rush, Marc stepped back to the curb to wait. Lost in his own thought, he was not aware of the small hawk-beaked individual who had stopped beside him until a pallid, nervous hand tugged lightly at his sleeve. From his height of six feet two, he turned to look down annoyedly at the crown of a drab bowler hat and the shoulders of a shabby brown suit. Shiftily the little man glanced sideways, then grinned up at him.
“Hey, man,” he said furtively, “how about a look at some hot stuff straight from Paris, France. It’s the real thing.”
“I beg your pardon?” Marc said stiffly.
“You know,” the little man said with an odious wink, “dames with their skin showin’—all the way down.” With the quick movement of a conjurer he turned his hand and produced for Marc’s edification the photograph of a dark-haired, not-so-young lady, peering back lasciviously over a shoulder that was bare clear down to the soles of her feet. Flushing with surprise and embarrassment, Marc looked away.
“That’s one of the tame ones,” the little hustler said. “Man, the others will stone you! Dig?”
“I do not dig,” Marc said tersely, “and I do not wish to be stoned. Please go away.”
“You mean you don’t care about feminine pulchritude?” the little man asked in a scandalized tone.
“I am not interested in dirty postcards,” Marc said. “As a respecttable married man ... ”
The little man made a sharp sound of alarm. “You got trouble, man,” he said. “Respectable and married too! I bet you’re a big bomb around the house. There’s nothin’ a woman hates worse than bein’ married to a respectable married man.”
Mercifully, the light chose that moment to change, and Marc turned away. The nervous hand, however, again caught at his sleeve.
“Hold up, man,” the little man said urgently. He produced a small brown bottle from the inner reaches of his disreputable suit. “I like to see people happy, man, and if ever I saw a guy in a bind, it’s you. So, in your case, I’ll make you an extra special exception. I’ll give you a crack at this single last remaining bottle of genuine French Elixir.”
“Let go of my sleeve,” Marc said evenly.
The hand, nevertheless, remained. “You see here, right in front of your own eyes, one of the rare, unattainable hard-to-get exotic spring tonics of the world. It lifts the spirit and opens the eyes. It ain’t harmful or habit-formin’.”
Marc frowned severely. “I am not, nor do I care to become, a dope addict.”
“This ain’t no dope, man,” the little man insisted. “I told you! It gives a guy a new perspective.”
“From which he can more clearly look at the photographs of naked ladies? If that’s your idea of ...”
Marc stopped, for his adversary, seemed suddenly to go mad. Blanching, the little man hurled himself forward, apparently out of control. Colliding with Marc, he grabbled wildly with him for a moment, then abruptly shoved himself away. For a moment Marc was completely at a loss to explain this startling performance; then he caught sight of the policeman approaching from across the street.
“Sorry, man!” the purveyor of erotics said hastily and, with that, he darted off down the street.
In almost the same instant, the policeman gained the curbing on the run. He cast Marc a swift glance but kept on rapidly down the street.
Marc watched the chase bemusedly as it continued half way up the block, then out of sight into the entrance of an alley. He hoped the little peddler would be caught; a salesman of smutty pictures only added to the loose atmosphere of the day. He turned away, heading for the office. And then he stopped.
ACTUALLY it was the little man’s remark about the wives of respectable married men that halted Marc’s step. Suddenly it struck him that perhaps this message had been delivered to him, through Fate, as a sort of warning. He pondered for a moment with furrowed brow, then, resolutely, he turned again and started back the way he had come. He had definitely made up his mind. Julie had taken the convertible, but the coupe was still in the garage. If he started out now, he could be at the country house well before noon, and Mario could be fired, packed and sent on his way before sunset. Business, for this one day, would have to wait.
His course of action set, Marc continued determinedly down the street. His only fear, now, was that he might be too late. Julie, quite extraordinarily, had taken her prized and priceless collection of jewels to the country, a fact which was so highly significant and disturbing. Julie was so inordinately proud of her jewels that she neve
r removed them from the vault except for the most special of special occasions. Just what sort of special occasion she had been contemplating this time, Marc dreaded to think. By the time he had reached the alley, he had quite forgotten about the little man and the pursuing policeman. He started violently, therefore, when the policeman suddenly materialized from the mouth of the alley and grabbed him roughly by the shoulder.
“Here you!” the policeman snarled. “Hold up there!”
“Who?” Marc said weakly. “Me?”
“Not your Aunt Fanny,” the cop said sourly. His face was an angry crimson from running. “I seen you back there with Hotstuff.”
“Hotstuff?” Marc said. “Oh, you mean the pictures that ...”
“Don’t give me that, mac,” the cop growled. “Don’t tell me you are just an innocent bystander. If you ain’t that guy’s confederate ...”
“Confederate!” Marc wheezed. “Now, do I look like the sort of person who ...”
“Exactly, mac,” the cop said. “I’m used to you smooth operators.” He reached in Marc’s pocket and deftly removed a small packet of picture postcards. “And these look exactly like the kind of pictures you’d be sellin’.”
Marc gazed down dumbly at the postcards. “Those aren’t mine!” he gasped. “He must have planted them on me.”
“Yeah,” the cop drawled, “I’ve heard that one before, too.”
“Now, officer,” Marc said reasonably, “can you honestly think for one minute ...”
“I honestly can, mac,” the cop said heavily. “Now come along quietly,” He took Marc’s arm in an iron grasp. “Be my guest.”
MARC surveyed the cold grey boundaries of his cell and burped furiously.
“Tell it to the judge,” the guard said and, extracting the key from the lock, ambled off down the passage.
“I certainly shall!” Marc yelled after him. “This is the most flagrant abuse of authority ...” He gave it up and looked around at the two-tiered bunk against the wall. He walked over to it and sat down gingerly on the edge of the lower section and rested his chin in his hand. Raking back an unruly shock of sandy hair he gazed down at the floor with bewildered helplessness.
It was astonishing how swiftly life could become a rotten apple. Only a few minutes ago he had been a free and respected citizen on his way to a day of honest work; now he was a jail bird held on a charge of moral wrongdoing. The results could be disastrous, both to his business and his marriage. Julie would not regard the affair lightly; after all the pictures had been found on his person, no matter how they happened to be there.
Now, his desire to get to the country was twofold. His mind filled with gloom, his gaze wandered across the floor and to the opposite wall. It lingered for a moment at the lower area of the wall, then leaped upward to a drawing which evidently was the handiwork of a previous inmate.
Whoever the artist had been, his eye for the feminine form was both exact and subtle. The girl of the drawing, though scantily clad, was, unlike the nude photographs, in no way distasteful. She reclined in space, one slender leg outstretched, a look of artful speculation in her eyes. Her hand was at her hair, having caught its silken strands between her tapering fingers.
Marc’s gaze held to the drawing with unaccountable fascination. It wasn’t just the excellence of the sketch that held him, but something more. Staring fixedly at the girl on the wall, it came to him that perhaps she reminded him of someone he knew. Then suddenly it came to him in a flash.
“Toffee!” he whispered.
He withdrew his gaze hastily from the drawing, trying to force his thoughts into other, less dangerous channels. At the moment, Toffee was the last thing he wanted on his mind.
The truth of the matter was that Toffee was a phenomenon to which Marc would never completely adjust.
The thought that, within the depths of his own subconscious, there was a personality of such force and completeness that she had assumed a will and strength all her own, was simply too much for him. It would always upset Marc that his mere awareness of Toffee was enough to project into reality a living, breathing, hell-raising creature who was very much flesh and bone.
It was also alarming that Toffee was so completely untouched by worldly inhibitions. Not of this earthly realm, and therefore unaware of its mores and social dogmas, the girl had an absolute genius for saying and doing, in any given situation, the very thing most likely to curdle the blood and curl the hair. Worse still, though, was her curious sense of economy which caused her to regard her own physical perfection—her flaming red hair, her vivid green eyes and her scandalously voluptuous figure—as mere commodities that could not possibly be permitted to languish. To her way of thinking, that these remarkable gifts should be left unobserved, unadmired and unused was purely and shockingly sinful.
Not by any stretch of the imagination was Toffee the proper subject with which to concern one’s thoughts in a jail cell. With a shudder, Marc forced his attention to his immediate predicament and leaned back in his bunk.
The shock of his incarceration was beginning to wear off a bit now, and with its passing it suddenly occurred to him that, as yet, he hadn’t even been permitted to call his lawyer. Righteous indignation surging through him, and unmindful of the steel support immediately above his head, he jumped up.
The results were immediate and decisive. From Marc’s point of view there was merely a sudden surprising explosion of brilliant lights inside his skull as his head struck the metal support, and the floor, insanely, began to rise, embracingly, almost seductively, to meet him.
IN the next moment he was enfolded into a world of dark beauty where illusive glimmerings in the distance gave off a curious sound that was the tinkling of very small bells. For a moment he floated langorously, then, taking bearings on a shimmering blue star, he glided forward. Just as he drew close to it, however, it shattered into a million glittering fragments and vanished.
Then he fell.
He landed on his back in a sprawl and, as he did so, the scene, like a motion picture hastily projected on a screen, leaped, all at once, into being. He glanced around at the mossy, gently-sloping hillside, the grove of finely plumed trees and the playful blue mists trailing lightly down the rise.
Marc observed these surroundings without alarm. He knew at a glance that he had retreated into the valley of his subconscious mind and, now that he was there, he was just as glad. He ran his hand sensuously over the soft greenness upon which he lay and turned his eyes heavenward to the warmly glowing, yet sunless, sky. Then, folding his hands beneath his head, he lay back and closed his eyes.
A moment passed, then there was a quick stirring at his side. Two slender fingers closed viciously over his left ear and twisted.
“Stinker!” a voice hissed. “Redolent reptile!”
Marc sat up abruptly. “Hey!” he yelled. Toffee’s pert face was almost nose to nose with his own. “Let go!”
“If I do,” Toffee threatened, “it will only be to grab something much worse!”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Marc said uneasily.
She was kneeling beside him, her red hair cascading like inverted flame on one beautifully-molded shoulder. Her green eyes were aglitter with a lovely fury. As always, she was clothed only in the brief emerald tunic which, because of its extreme transparency, did nothing to hide her lithesome body, though it made up for this failure by accentuating each softly-curved perfection to the utmost. On her feet was a pair of gold sandals of some undetermined material.
“I should twist your faithless head off,” she said. “In fact I’ve been keeping some plasma on ice just in case I decide to murder you in cold blood.”
“This is hardly the greeting I expected,” Marc said, nursing his ear.
“Of course not,” Toffee said. “You expected me to fawn on you. You wanted me to chuck you under the chin and stroke your brow. Well, if I ever do, it will probably be with a ball bat.”
“I’m darned if I see what you’re so sore about,”
Marc said injuredly.
“You don’t?” Toffee said. “I should be content, I suppose, just because you’re here! Well, I’m not. I saw what you were thinking about me a while ago.”
“What I was thinking?”
“Good old Toffee!” Toffee sighed. “Keep her repressed. Let her languish. Let her rot. Who cares that this is the first day of spring and everyone else is enjoying it?” She traced the curve of his jaw fatefully with her finger. “I ought to bust you one.”
“But I was having so much trouble—” Marc protested weakly.
“Trouble!” Toffee said. “You just thought you had trouble.”
Marc met her insinuating gaze with a sense of inner trembling. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Guess,” Toffee said. “Just guess.”
“You wouldn’t materialize, would you? You wouldn’t ...”
“Give the man a cigar, a baby doll and a kick in the pants,” Toffee said lightly. “You got it right on the first try.”
Marc paled. “But you can’t!” he said. “Not now!”
“Can’t I?”
“But you mustn’t!”
TOFFEE lowered herself sinuously to his side and leaned close to him. She observed him amusedly through langorously lowered lids. “You’re going to see a lot of me, lover,” she crooned, “in more ways than one. If you want a word of sound advice, just relax and enjoy it. That way, you won’t get quite so messed up.”
“Now, don’t ...” Marc said thinly. “This is no time for nonsense.”
“This is precisely the time for nonsense,” Toffee said, slipping a cool, slim arm determinedly around his neck.
“Don’t start anything!” Marc cried, trying without success to disentangle himself. “Let go of me, you thinlydraped hussy.”
“I only wonder why I’m so good to you,” Toffee sighed. “I suppose it’s because you may not live much longer—if you don’t behave yourself.”
“You’re not good to me!” Marc said desperately. “You’re awful! You’re worse than ...”
Whatever Toffee was worse than never came to light, for Marc’s words were smothered beneath a warm, lingering kiss that went beyond words. A moment passed before she released him.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 70
