“I doubt it,” Marc said. “But there must be something I can do about this.”
“If I was you, man, I’d go sit in a Marilyn Monroe picture until they kicked me out.” Hotstuff put his hand to Marc’s sleeve. “You still owe me some bucks, boy. Twenty for the pictures and twenty more for the shot of elixir.”
“Now, look here,” Marc said sternly, “if you think ...”
He stopped, for Hotstuff, a businessman of some agility, already had Marc’s wallet in his hand and was counting out the money. Marc snatched it back from him.
“Here, now!” he said.
Harold grinned modestly. “Mother taught me how to take up public collections while I was still in rompers. They say I was the cutest little dip that ever worked the Stem.”
“Well, this is one stem you’re not clipping,” Marc said hotly. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
“I ain’t goin’ to leave till I get paid, Hotstuff said without animosity.
“Just a minute.” Toffee broke in. “While you two are arguing, time is running down the drain. If we’re going to the country we’d better get started.”
Marc turned to her with a sigh. “I thought I explained to you that ...”
“But I’ve got it all figured out,” Toffee said complacently. “While you’ve been wasting your time with this grifter, I’ve been working out a plan.”
“I’m sorry,” Marc said wearily, “but I don’t think I could stand another one of your plans. Not today.”
“But this will work,” Toffee said brightly. “Now the problem, to put it succinctly, is for me to go to the country, but not to be noticed by Julie. Well, actually, that’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“Oh?” Marc said. “If you imagine that Julie is likely to overlook a halfnaked redhead ... ”
“Now, look at it this way,” Toffee interrupted, “if you wanted to hide yourself where would be the best place?”
“Me,” Hotstuff interjected, “I always go out and mix with the crowds when I’m on the dodge.”
“Exactly!” Toffee said. She looked on Hotstuff with new respect, then, glancing back to Marc, pointed across the street. “See that bus?”
TILTING his glasses, Marc followed the direction of her pointing finger. Diagonally across the street was parked a large yellow sight-seeing bus of a vintage so distant as to defy memory. At the front of the bus stood a tall, cadaverous looking individual in shirt sleeves, about whom was an atmosphere of listless resignation. Inside the bus, the seats were starkly uninhabited.
“What we do,” Toffee went on enthusiastically, “is hire that bus and fill it up with a lot of people. Then we drive out to the country, and when Julie sees this great gang knocking about the place she’ll never pay any special attention to anyone in particular. She’ll never notice me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Marc said. “In the first place I doubt I’d ever be able to hire the bus privately.”
“From the looks of business,” Hotstuff said, “you could probably have it for a song.”
“Even so, Marc said doggedly, “we are not a crowd. We are only two people, and I’m positive Julie is quite capable of picking a strange young lady out of a group of two.”
“I’d be very happy to accompany you,” Hotstuff said. “In fact I insist on it, so’s I can protect my investment.”
“There!” Toffee said. “We’re forming a crowd already. All we need are about twenty more.”
“And where are we going to get them?” Marc asked serenely.
“I could have a number of my business acquaintances and their—uh—molls—out here on the corner in a flash,” Hotstuff offered obligingly. “I know a number of personalities who are quite hot to get out of town for various reasons.”
“Go get them!” Toffee said. “We’ll hire the bus while you’re gone.”
“Now, just a second ...” Marc yelled, but Hotstuff had already scurried off down the street toward the corner poolhall.
THE deal for the bus was concluded in almost the same instant that Marc approached the gangling individual on the sidewalk.
“Sure, mister,” the man said sadly. “Why not? A day in the country would suit me fine. You can have the bus and me for whatever you want to offer, and you can bring along all the friends you want!”
Marc fatefully handed over a couple of bills and glanced, not without apprehension, down the street. “The others should be along any moment now,” he said. He turned to Toffee. “Just how are we going to explain all these people to Julie. We can’t just say I asked them out for dinner.”
“Well, then,” Toffee said, “we’ll just say you’re a group of botany students on a field trip.” As though that satisfactorily explained everything she started into the bus. “Heigh, ho! Oh, for a day of biology in the open air!”
“I thought you said botany,” Marc said, uneasily.
“One can always hope,” she said grandly.
True to his word, Hotstuff was back almost instantly, trailing after him a cast of characters the likes of which is rarely seen on the streets before sundown. The men, five of them in all, were heavy-browed and flashily dressed. Their female counterparts—or molls, as Hotstuff had described them—were so unanimous in their endorsement of low necklines, high heels, dyed hair and ankle bracelets that they seemed almost to be in uniform.
At the approach of this strange swarming, Marc lowered his glasses only to replace them even a bit more quickly than was entirely necessary.
“Good Lord!” he groaned. “It looks like Saturday night at the police lineup.”
At that moment, however, Hotstuff arrived at the front of the bus, his questionable companions crowding close behind him.
“These is some of my best chums,” he announced with beaming pride. “I would introduce you to them only they don’t like their names mentioned.” He drew forward a crimson-lipped creature who had crossed the street close to his side.
“This is Floss, my mouse,” he said.
Floss, whose hair ran the gamut of colors from jet at the roots to orangered at the ends—with blond, brown and platinum intervening—gazed at Marc from beneath mascara-encrusted eyelashes.
“Hi, tallstuff,” she said in a smoky tone, “ain’t I seen you somewheres before?”
“Knock it off, Floss,” Hotstuff said. “Today’s vacation. Besides, the gent can’t see you through those glasses, so don’t waste your wattage.” He grinned at Marc. “She likes you, man.”
“I always like to improve public relations,” Floss said delicately.
“I’m much obliged,” Marc said, edging away. “Well, I suppose we ought to be on our way.”
“Okay, everybody!” Hotstuff yelled. “Climb aboard! We’re off to mingle with nature!” He took Marc’s arm and guided him to the steps. “Everybody brought a couple of bottles,” he said. “All you have to do is supply the grub. Boy! is this going to be some party!”
“Yes,” Marc said fatefully, “it probably is.”
IT was not until the bus left the city and was churning its way into the fresh-budding atmosphere of the country that the little assemblage began to get into the true spirit of the trip.
Until then they had been content to sit quietly drinking from their bottles, but now, with the green fields and trees unfolding before them they were moved to song. Lifting their voices in shattering discord, they howled out a little number about an unfortunate heroine called Underslung Fannie whose amorous exploits, according to the lyrics, were distressingly uncanny. At the rear of the bus, Marc slunk in his seat and turned to Toffee.
“Leave it to you,” he moaned. “How am I ever going to palm off this tight little segment of the underworld as a bunch of fun-loving botanists?”
“Oh, they’re not so bad,” Toffee said. “At least you don’t have to worry about whether they’re bad or not. You know they’re bad right from the beginning.”
“And so are you,” Marc said dryly. “However, I suppose everyone seeks his own level. I migh
t have expected this.”
Toffee generously patted his cheek. “You’re just overwrought,” she said. “You need a drink.” Reaching under her seat, she brought out the bottle of champagne. “Take some of this and you will see everything in a happy glow.”
“Behind these glasses?” Marc asked.
“You may even find the nerve to take them off,” Toffee said.
“In this crowd?” Marc said. “Heaven forbid!”
Nevertheless, after several lengthy drafts from the bottle, Marc did begin to see things more brightly, and he did remove his glasses. It gave the congregation before him a strange, bare-shouldered look, but the effect, since everyone was seated, was hardly shocking. He was careful, however, to keep his gaze averted from the passing landscape, particularly after a startling view of a pink-skinned, full-formed farmgirl scattering feed to a flock of hideously defeathered chickens. After a time he began to look on his new-found companions a bit more fondly.
“At least,” he yawned, mellowed by the champagne and the warm sun, “they’re a happy bunch of criminals.”
As though to prove his words correct, the company suddenly roared with laughter, and Marc, content that things were going well, put his head back against the seat and dozed off.
The burst of laughter, however, had Marc listened more closely to it, was more a cause for alarm than complacency. In its gleeful, boisterous tones was the announcement that the drunken little band of miscreants had found still a new outlet for their antisocial tendencies.
A blowsy blonde named Dora, spotting a cop lounging against his motorcycle along the highway, had observed the prescribed amenities between the law and the underworld by leaning out the window and making a series of rude and meaningful gestures. Admiring Dora’s finesse in this affair, her escort, a blue-jawed second-story artist named Moose, leaned out beside her and dispatched a depleted whiskey bottle at the cop’s head, scoring a solid hit along side the ear. Their friends and companions, as a result, had fairly collapsed in their seats with helpless laughter.
IN this sordid incident were the beginnings of a well-routined game. The criminals, seeing no end of fun in this little sport, organized themselves into a team so that it might be pursued with the greatest efficiency and dispatch. Splitting themselves into cop-watchers, cop-insulters and copsmackers, they became a yelling, yowling menace to every patrolman and peace-enforcer along the highway. As Marc continued to slumber, a chorus of sirens began to wail and shriek in the wake of the lumbering bus. Of those involved in this not-soinnocent diversion, only the bus driver was distressed.
“Now, cut it out, you!” he yelled back at his cop-assaulting passengers. “Layoff before you get me into serious trouble!”
“Step on the gas, you hacky!” Moose roared. “Give it the gun!” And having delivered this command, he snatched up another bottle and sent it sizzling through the window toward the head of an unsuspecting sheriff’s deputy.
“Got him!” Floss shrieked with childish glee and collapsed to the aisle in a fit of giggles.
The sirens following the bus had reached a many-throated scream before Marc finally awoke. Opening his eyes with a start, he gazed about, firmly convinced that the world had gone mad. A glance toward the front of the bus and another out the rear, however, swiftly told him the frightful truth of the matter.
“Stop that!” he yelled. “Stop it this instant!”
“Look, mister!” the bus driver hollered. “Either you quiet down those maniacs or I’m going to drive this bus right off a cliff somewhere!”
Marc looked ahead down the highway. Mercifully, deliverance, of a sort, was at hand.
“Just around the next bend!” he yelled. “Take the drive to the left!”
“Golly! Toffee cried happily, “isn’t this exciting!”
Marc cast her a brief, scathing glance and concentrated on the road ahead. The bus, traveling at maximum speed, was rattling and creaking in every joint. Tires squealing, the driver took the turn ahead, then cut sharply to the left and through the gateway that bore the sign, ‘Pillsworth Acres.’
The bus careened up the circle of the drive, spitting gravel and dirt from beneath its tires. A rambling, stonefaced house loomed rapidly ahead. Green, tree-studded lawns stretched away on all sides. Down the rise to the west a swimming pool flashed by, studding the greenness like a glimmering, intermittent sapphire. With a scream of the brakes, the bus ground to a terrifying stop at the entrance to the house. In the distance, back on the highway, the avenging sirens grew louder, then faded swiftly away into the distance. The driver at the front of the bus went limp in his seat.
“All out!” he gritted. “Get the hell out of here before I go nuts!”
Marc whirled about to Toffee. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he demanded.
“What for?” Toffee asked blithely. “You’d only have worried. And everything turned out fine, didn’t it?”
As the company of undesirables staggered, reeled and toppled from the bus onto the lawn, Marc and Toffee followed after. Marc refitted his glasses to his nose and paused before the driver’s extended hand.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Look, buddy,” the driver said, “where can I hide this hack? Those cops may be comin’ back here any minute.”
“Seems a shame to hide it,” Marc said acidly, “when we’ve spent so many happy hours together in it.”
“I gotta hide it, mister,” the driver said. “I don’t want to get into any trouble. You see, this ain’t my bus.”
“What?” Marc said.
THE driver shook his head woefully. “I was just standing there when you came along and offered to hire it. The guy who owns it was in a java joint down the street. I just got fired off my job this morning, and when you came along and made me that offer, well, it was such a beautiful day and all ...”
“You, too!” Marc said, aghast. “Isn’t anybody legitimate today?”
“I still think I ought to hide this can.”
“Hide it by all means!” Marc agreed. “Remove all trace of it.” He motioned toward the woods. “Drive it out there, where it will never be seen again.”
Hotstuff, who had overheard this exchange, moved in confidentially. “Me and my pals are experts at obscurin’ the evidence,” he offered. “We could convert it into an icebox, so’s they’d never know the difference.”
The driver shook his head. “I think the woods are better,” he said. He sighed. “Besides, I want to be off by myself for a while, where I can take a nap.”
Toffee held out the bottle of champagne which was still half full. “Take this with you,” she said. “You need it.”
“I sure do, lady,” the driver said gratefully, accepting the bottle. “I need every drop of it. I’m going to get so drunk I won’t even know who I am.”
At this point Mr. Busby, Marc’s paunchy, genteel caretaker, tottered curiously down the steps and approached the bus with evident caution.
“‘Afternoon, Mr. Pillsworth,” he said uncertainly. “I see you brought along some—uh—guests.”
“Why, yes, Busby,” Marc said, with an attempt at nonchalance. “I brought them up for a little outing. A group of business associates and their wives.”
At this description, Floss straightened her skirt and put a hand to her hair. Hotstuff removed his hand gracefully from a companion’s pocket and smiled ingratiatingly.
“I see,” Busby said quietly, but in his pale eyes there was an enormous doubt.
“Where is Mrs. Pillsworth?” Marc asked casually. “And Mario?”
“I’m not just certain,” Busby said. “They took their paints and a lunch hamper and went off into the woods.” He pointed to the south. “They were headed out that way.”
“I think I’ll hunt them out and have a word with them,” Marc said.
“And your—uh—associates?”
“Oh, yes,” Marc said. He leaned a bit closer to Busby. “What do you think would amuse them, Busby?”
“I don�
�t suppose I should say it, sir,” Busby said, “but I think I ought to slip inside and put the silver and Mrs. Pillsworth’s jewels in the vault. As for amusing them, we haven’t any dope or revolvers on the premises, but, then, perhaps they’ve brought their own.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Marc said.
“And while I’m about it, sir,” Busby went on, “I think I’d better put the lock on the wine cellar.”
“Wine cellar!”
It was Hotstuff, the ever-present eavesdropper, who spoke up. “Hey, gang, there’s a wine cellar!” he announced. “Cool, huh?”
“Say,” Floss drawled, sidling up to Marc, “you’ve really got class, huh? A wine cellar is right up my alley. The lower I get the better I like it.”
TOFFEE stepped forward, eyes glittering. “You may get lower than you care to, doll, if you keep on like that. You may find yourself six feet under with a very dim outlook.”
“Listen, sister,” Floss said belligerently, “I’ll tangle with you any time.”
“You may never get untangled if you do,” Toffee flared. “You may wind up wearing that fright wig of yours on your bustle!”
“I’ll risk it, carrot-top!”
“There’s no risk involved,” Toffee said, doubling her fists. “I’ll make you a money-back guarantee!”
“Well, well,” Hotstuff said approvingly, “the girls are getting real well acquainted, ain’t they?”
“Too well,” Marc said. “We’d better separate them before they get downright intimate.” He turned to Busby. “Show the guests to the wine cellar.”
“But, sir ...”
“I know, Busby,” Marc said, “but they’ll probably be quiet there—at least for a while.”
“I suppose so, sir,” Busby said dully. He started back toward the house, and the raucous little band fell in behind him. As they departed, Toffee stared after Floss malevolently.
“I may belt that kid one yet,” she murmured.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 73
