The laughter of Toffee
Date: 2021-08-08T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Fantasy fiction; Subconsciousness -- Fiction

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Title: The laughter of Toffee

Author: Henry Farrell

Release date: August 8, 2021 [eBook #66014]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66014

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAUGHTER OF TOFFEE ***

THE LAUGHTER OF TOFFEE

By Charles F. Myers

Marc's troubles began the moment Hotshot
Harold planted the miracle elixir on him. Then
came a bevy of cops—Toffee—and X-ray eyes....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

To the casual observer that morning Marc Pillsworth presented only the picture of a rather loose-jointed, yet constrained, businessman on his way to another orderly day at the office. One would hardly have guessed that he was striding forward into the first leg of a journey that was destined to take him on a shrieking, streaking sleigh ride of madness, frenzy and crime. Indeed, Marc himself would never have dreamed that such a thing was even possible.

The trouble was, of course, that this was the first day of spring. The world had finally shrugged itself free of winter and, with a toss of its golden curls, was unmistakably casting about for some sort of foolishness to get into. The sun was burgeoning bright in the sky, green things were intruding their heads impertinently through the warm soil along the sidewalks and the breezes, gentle and flirtatious, were fingering the voluminous skirts of the passing shop girls. The inhabitants of the city, to the man, were feeling pleasantly silly in the head.

To the man, that is, except for Marc.

Marc, founder, president, guiding genius and devoted slave to the Pillsworth Advertising Agency, felt merely dyspeptic. Making his way past the shops with their blossoming window boxes, he loathed the spring. At the moment, in fact, there was only one thing that Marc loathed more than the spring and that was Mario Matalini, the eminent Italian portrait artist.

Marc had never before experienced jealousy and it came to him now as a singularly unpleasant sensation. For one thing, it gave him gas.

Though he had been married long enough to have achieved a certain complacency about matrimony in general, every time he thought of Julie and Mario alone at the country house, he automatically burped. Italians, it was said, were notoriously affected by cold blonde beauty, and Julie on occasion, resembled nothing so much as a tantalizing and unattainable angel carved from ice. It was a combination that was not reassuring.

The trip to the country, of course, had been Mario's idea. It had come to him in a gaudy flash of inspiration the very evening Julie had commissioned him to do her portrait.

"Ah, Madonna Mia!" the mustachioed artist had crooned revoltingly. "You shall be my masterpiece! I can feel it now. There is the season of spring in your lovely face—the enigma, the withholding, the promise!" His dark eyes caressed her classic features, and he leaned forward abruptly. "I know!" he breathed. "I shall paint you surrounded by nature—on the very first day of spring! You will be like a goddess, with the new grasses and the first green leaves everywhere around you!" He sighed delicately. "I have never done a portrait in this manner, but how can I confine such a subject to a dismal studio?" He smiled at Julie as though Marc were not even in the room. "It is true, is it not, that you own one of the handsomest country houses in the state?"

Marc had opened his mouth to protest, but Julie's eyes were aglow with the vision of herself as a spring-time goddess. The damage had been done and there was no patching it up.

The two of them had been at the country house for a week now, looking for the perfect setting for the portrait, waiting for the perfect day to begin it. With each passing day Marc had grown a bit uneasier. Of course Mr. Busby, the caretaker, made a splendid chaperon, but there was still something about Mario that just naturally put your teeth on edge.

Business had prevented his joining the pilgrimage to the country; the summer advertising campaigns, now in preparation, demanded the last measure of his personal attention. As an active guardian of his castle and his wife's virtue, he found himself seriously hampered. With this dark thought looming in his mind, he burped anew and halted his office-bound progress to enter a drug store. A man could hardly expect to retain his clients' good will by belching in their faces.

Inside the store, he proceeded to the pharmacist's counter at the rear. There, he found himself confronted by a balding, fastidious individual in a white jacket whose gaze was fastened tenaciously on the remarkable legs of the silken brunette who presided at the nearby cosmetics counter. As Marc cleared his throat, the man looked up with eyes that were gently bemused.

"Yes?" he inquired disinterestedly.

Marc leaned forward. "I need something for gas," he said.

The druggist smiled blandly, but his gaze drifted back to the fascinating legs. "Grass?" he murmured dreamily. "Grass seed is at the front of the store.

"Not grass," Marc said. "I don't want grass. 'Gas' is what I said."

"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 in 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 respectable 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 never 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 wrong-doing. 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 thinly-draped 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.

"There," Toffee said. "Now it doesn't matter if you survive; your life has been rich and full."

"Now, see here, you," Marc said forcefully. "If you're thinking I'm going to lounge around with you...."

"I'm only wondering if you're strong enough," Toffee said.

"Stop saying things like that!" Marc said, holding his voice steady with an effort. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that you absolutely must not materialize—not even a finger!"

"Oh, never just a finger!" Toffee said with false alarm. "I intend to go much farther than that."

"Evidently," Marc said. "But you must realize...."

He stopped, for suddenly the valley had begun to blur, strangely, as though it were seen through a panel of water-washed glass. Even as the words died in his throat, a heavy greyness dripped through the sky, dulling its radiance. On the horizon, the odd, feathery trees seemed to melt and merge, and the grass upon which they were sitting became a wavering sea of misty green.

"Oh, my gosh!" Marc gasped. He turned to Toffee, his eyes filled with alarm. "Now, you've got to take me seriously...."

"Oh, I will!" Toffee said happily, locking her arms around his neck. "I'm going to be positively grim about you!"

"No!" Marc cried. "Let go of me!" The darkness was coming rapidly now, and the last traces of the sky were nearly gone. "Let go!"

"If I feel myself slipping," Toffee said breathlessly, "I'll just hook my fingers in your ears." She drew her lips close to his ear. "Lover," she murmured, "I'm going to stick to you like a barnacle on a boat. You'll never scrape me off!"

Marc stirred. He inched his hand forward tentatively over the cold relentless surface of the floor and opened his eyes. For a moment he couldn't think where he was, then the dull grey walls and the barred-in opening that looked out on the passage brought it all back to him. He raised himself to his knees and crawled forward. He grasped the bars and dragged himself partially upright. Then he froze, staring fixedly ahead.

At first it seemed only that his sight had dulled. Then slowly, out in the passage, the haziness before him began to take form, languidly, easily, gathering itself into a dismaying solidity. A bit at a time, Toffee, working from the toes up, appeared in all her vivid aliveness on the other side of the bars. Standing there against the background of iron greyness, she seemed even more outrageously alive and lovely than she had in his subconscious mind. And also more naked. She turned to Marc and regarded him quizzically.

"Oh, no!" Marc wailed. "No, no! You can't be here!"

"But I am," Toffee said brightly. She studied the bars between them with an air of bafflement. "What are you doing in that cage? Why don't you come out?"

"I can't come out," Marc said. "This is a jail. I'm locked in."

"And I'm locked out," Toffee observed without favor. "We'll never get anywhere that way. Where do I go to get the key?"

"You can't get the key," Marc said. "The jailer—or somebody—has it—out there." He made a vague gesture toward the iron door at the end of the passage.

"Then, I'll go ask him for it," Toffee said blandly and started away.

"No!" Marc yelled. "Don't go out there! Not like that!" He pressed urgently against the bars. "Come back here!"

Perhaps it was the effort or maybe it was the awful thought of Toffee loose in the jail, but suddenly it was all too much for him. Marc's knees buckled and he slid toward the floor. Slowly he crumpled and sprawled backwards. With an anguished murmur he passed out.

At the end of the passage, reaching for the door, Toffee quickly faded and vanished into thin air.

It was only three minutes later when Sergeant Feeney, absorbed in a copy of Shocking Stories, looked up apprehensively over the edge of the magazine and turned a ghastly white. If he had not been mistaken—and he certainly had not—there was an odd sort of fuzziness in the air just beyond his feet at the other side of the desk. As he watched this clouded bit of atmosphere, it alarmingly solidified, a bit at a time, and became a strikingly beautiful redhead, clothed merely in what appeared to be a pair of translucent kitchen curtains. The sergeant gulped, and the magazine, which was already trembling like a leaf in a wind storm, dropped from his nerveless hand.

"Here, now!" Sergeant Feeney gulped. "What do you think you are up to, you?"

As soon as he had spoken, the sergeant was overwhelmed with a sense of his own utter foolishness; the girl was obviously nothing more than a trick of imagination and everyone knew that such things, no matter how industriously one might question them, could not answer back.

"I'm looking for the key," Toffee replied amiably. "Marc fainted, but I guess he's better now, or I wouldn't be here, would I? I have to go away when he's asleep but when he wakes up I come right back again."

The sergeant jumped to his feet, upsetting his chair with a deafening clatter. "Here, now!" he yelled. "Stop that!"

"Stop what?" Toffee asked innocently.

"Stop talking to me, now!" Sergeant Feeney gasped. "I'm a sober upright minion of the law, and it's not right that the likes of you should come jabberin' around so's I can hear it."

"Well, I don't see why not," Toffee said bewilderedly. "How am I going to get the key, if I don't ask you for it?"

"There you go again!" the sergeant wailed. Trembling in every fiber of his great hulking being, he turned away from her. "If you don't stop it, now," he said, "I'm going to close my eyes, and then you won't be there."

"But I have to have the key," Toffee protested.

"That does it!" the sergeant said woundedly. He closed his eyes so tightly they might never have existed. "There, now!"

"Where?" Toffee said.

The sergeant visibly flinched. "Where what?" he asked faintly.

"Where's the key?"

"What key, for heaven's sake?"

"The key to the cages, of course. Where is it?"

The sergeant sighed. Then he straightened, and when he spoke again there was an edge of craftiness to his voice. "If I point out the key to you, will you take it and go away?"

"Instantly," Toffee agreed.

Promptly the sergeant pointed to the wall where the key hung on a metal hook. "Help yourself," he said grandly. "And a pleasant journey to you."

"Thank you very much," Toffee said. "For so complete an imbecile, you've been most cooperative." Moving to the hook, she removed the key, and swinging it lightly on her finger, left the room.

The sergeant waited until he heard the door close, then opened his eyes. Looking about, he began to chuckle to himself.

"Now, isn't it a wonder how easy you can outsmart a hallucination?" he said to himself. "She's gone away happy as a lark, and anybody knows a mere thing out of the thin air could never steal a key."

Only five minutes later Marc and Toffee descended the steps of the jail and paused for a moment in the sun. Marc, still a little woozy in the head, waited for his thoughts to clear.

"Are you sure he gave you that key?" he asked.

"He fairly begged me to take it," Toffee said. She glanced around happily at the bright spring day. "What wonderful weather," she said. "It makes you want to buy things, doesn't it, scandalous things that hold you in just enough so that you can go all out. If you know what I mean."

Marc glanced down at her brief costume. In the morning sun it seemed almost non-existent. Quickly he took off his coat and held it out to her. "Here!" he said imperatively, "put this on!"

"On one condition," Toffee said. "I want a new dress. I'm through hinting about it."

"And you shall have one," Marc agreed. "No one ever needed one more acutely."

With mild regret Toffee put the coat on. In it, she looked rather like a shapely scarecrow whose lack of hands had been more than amply compensated for by a pair of stunningly formed legs. This settled, Marc shook his head, just to get the remaining cobwebs out, and looked around.

"Are you sure this is all right," he asked, "my leaving like this?"

"The man gave me the key, didn't he?" Toffee said.

"I don't know," Marc said doubtfully. "I can't think quite clearly, but somehow it doesn't seem quite regular."

"Regularity is so dull," Toffee said, "in spite of what all those cereal manufacturers say."

Shrugging, Marc followed along as she started off down the street. A passing delivery boy, catching sight of the briefly-draped redhead, paused to whistle. Toffee waved at him happily and whistled back.

"Don't do that!" Marc said. "Stop attracting attention to yourself!"

Toffee grinned up at him. "It's myself that attracts attention to me," she said. "You made me that way and I must say I dearly love you for it." Glancing down the street, her gaze stopped at a tall department store building which was fronted by long, gleaming show windows. She pointed to it eagerly. "That looks wonderfully extravagant," she said. "Let's go charge things to your account."

As they approached the store, Marc's step became firmer, his head unclouded. He stopped just outside the entrance with an abrupt burp.

"I just remembered," he said. "I've got to get out to the country house. I.... What am I going to do with you, though?"

"You're going to buy me a ridiculous dress at a ridiculous price," Toffee said. "We'll worry about Julie and her shabby amours with that lecherous paint-dauber later."

"How did you know about that?" Marc asked.

"From sitting around in that arid mind of yours," Toffee said. "Sometimes I tune in on what's going on just out of sheer boredom."

Meanwhile, within the jail, a moiling drama of considerable scope was swiftly reaching a head. Sergeant Feeney had discovered, with much goggling of the eyes, that hallucinations not only could steal keys, but had. With a thrill of horror he called in the members of the force on duty, six in all, and instituted an inspection of the cells. In due time, it was noted that the jail's prize prisoner had flown the coop.

"Mary, mother of triplets!" Sergeant Feeney shrieked. "We gotta get that bird back in his cage before the chief hears of this!"

"He couldn't have gotten too far away, sergeant," one of the city's hearties observed moodily. "We better scour the streets, I think."

"That's it!" Sergeant Feeney rasped, rushing blindly toward the hallway. "Scour the streets men! Everybody scour! Follow me!"

Thus it was that Marc and Toffee, standing before the entrance to the store, glanced casually back along the street just in time to witness a disquieting eruption of blue-clad figures from the doorway of the jail. So astonishing was the sight that they stood for a moment too long watching it; Sergeant Feeney, catching sight of them, pointed an excited finger in their direction.

"There they are!" he roared. "After them, men!"

"The bloodhounds!" Toffee yelled. Taking Marc's arm, she dragged him forcibly through the entrance and inside the store. Counters laden with colorful spring merchandise stretched before them in what seemed like endless rows. A floor manager observed them curiously, and then moved away.

"Come on!" Toffee said.

"You're insane!" Marc said. By now Toffee had led him to the stairs. "We can't be bothered with dresses at a time like this."

"I'm going to have a spring dress," Toffee said determinedly. "No matter what!"

A dark browed lady, upon overhearing this snatch of dialogue, observed the ascending pair with brooding thoughtfulness. She turned triumphantly to the pallid, grey-suited individual at her side, on whom had befallen the misfortune of becoming her husband.

"There!" she said, pointing up the stairs to Toffee's flashing legs. "That's exactly what I'm going to do next time I tell you I haven't anything to wear and you ignore me. I'm going to strip down to the skin and shame you in public. Then we'll see!"

"Then, everyone will see," the man observed gloomily. "There will probably be fainting in the streets."

At this juncture, as Marc and Toffee disappeared up the stairs, there was a blast at the entrance of the store, announcing that Sergeant Feeney, his redoubtable six and his whistle had arrived and the situation was slipping rapidly out of hand.

"Everyone stay where you are!" the good sergeant bellowed, charging about frenziedly. "Everyone keep calm!" And so saying he dashed headlong into a small grey-haired lady and knocked her forthwith to the floor.

Displaying an agility not to be looked for in so old a party, the sergeant's victim leaped to her feet and snatched up her parasol.

"Fool!" she snapped. "Idiot!"

"Stop hopping about!" the sergeant yelled, sitting up. "Everybody stay still!"

"How can I stay still when you keep knocking me down?" the little woman demanded hotly. She rapped the sergeant smartly across the bridge of the nose to emphasize her point. "Lummox!"

The sergeant grabbed at his nose and observed the lady with deep-seated hostility. "Lady," he said, "you're tamperin' with the law, you are!"

"You've tampered with worse than that!" the little lady retorted. "If I were a little younger I'd have you for mashing!"

Meanwhile, Marc and Toffee, taking the stairs two at a time, had reached the third floor where, in a dim cavern of soft lights and muted music, the Parisian styles were being displayed, as they should be, on lovely living models. Marc turned to Toffee and burped impatiently.

"If you're determined to do this," he said, "be quick about it." He burped again. "The law is practically breathing down our necks!"

"Why do you keep making that revolting noise?" Toffee asked interestedly. "It sounds like hogs rooting in the mire."

Marc winced at her indelicacy. "I can't help it," he said. "When I'm upset it affects my stomach."

"Then do something about it," Toffee commanded airily and drifted away.

Marc started to protest that there was very little he could do about it as long as she kept him upset, when he remembered the bottle the druggist had given him and took it from his pocket. Removing the cap, he took a deep, hurried draft. This done, he screwed the cap back on and replaced the bottle in his pocket.

He completed this maneuver just in time, for no sooner did the syrup hit his gullet than he issued an explosive cough and staggered forward as though he had received a healthy blow from and to the rear. The liquid burned inside him like liquid fire.

Gasping, he beat his chest for relief and steadied himself against the wall with a trembling hand. The dizziness that he had only just gotten rid of, returned. He closed his eyes in the hope that it would pass.

His eyes were still closed when the scream issued piercingly from across the room. Opening them, he glanced across to where the models appeared and almost wished he hadn't bothered. It was too insane.

Toffee had evidently found the dress she wanted, an ethereal affair consisting of a couple of scraps of filmy stuff arranged to make its wearer look like nothing so much as a gift-wrapped Diana out for the kill. As Parisian dresses went, Marc supposed that this flimsy confection was only a little bit worse than most, but it had one glaring flaw which almost anyone—anyone, that is, but Toffee—would have noticed at a glance; the dress was still on the model. Toffee, however, was not deterred, not even by the girl's desperate screams. She was industriously disrobing the poor creature before the startled eyes of the other customers.

Marc, forgetting his dizziness, shoved himself away from the wall and ran forward. "Stop!" he yelled. "You can't do that!"

Toffee cast him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but did not stop her frantic efforts with the illusive dress and the struggling model.

"It's difficult all right," she shot back, "but I think I can manage."

"Madam, please!" the model shrieked, her air of aloof stateliness demolished. "Oh, please!"

From a curtained doorway, a small dark woman, the manageress of the department, looked out and emitted a thin cry of disbelief. The model, now stripped to the waist, was hugging herself in a paroxysm of horror. Throwing back the curtains, the manageress ran forward.

"Madam!" she cried. "Madam! You really mustn't!" She hastened to Toffee's side and tried to pull her away from the terrified girl. "If you like the dress, please step back to the fitting room."

"Step back to the fitting room yourself!" Toffee snapped. "And don't call me madam!"

"But the model...."

"She'll have to take her chances," Toffee gritted determinedly. "I need this dress worse than she does." The skirt came free in her hand, revealing the model in nothing more than a pair of very sheer panties.

"Oh, madam!" the girl wailed.

"Well, don't just stand there, exposing yourself!" the manageress cried. "Grab something and put it on!"

Gazing about frantically, the girl's eyes shot to the next model who had been displaying a negligee when all the trouble started. Reaching out, she deftly grabbed the zipper and yanked. The garment relinquished its hold and slithered to the floor in a vaporous cloud. The first model snatched it up and hurriedly put it on. The second model, finding herself revealed in the flesh, announced her shock in a shrill scream and made a wild grab for the mink coat that lay in the lap of a nearby customer. The customer, however, was too quick for her. Despite her over-padded figure, she shot out of her chair on the run.

"No you don't!" she screamed, "not after all I went through to get this!"

"Come back here!" the model yelled determinedly and took out in hot pursuit.

As bedlam became the general order of the day in the salon, Sergeant Feeney and his crew charged heroically up the stairway, announcing their arrival with a shrill blast from the sergeant's whistle. At the sight of the scrambling customers and models, the men in blue jolted to a flat-footed halt.

"Lord in heaven!" the sergeant gasped, removing the whistle from his lips. The fur-bearing customer and denuded model shot past him, collided with a plaster manniquin and tumbled to the floor in a frantic tangle of arms, legs and mink. The sergeant flushed furiously and turned back to his followers. "Scour lightly here, men," he said. "We don't want nobody bruised."

Taking advantage of the sergeant's momentary dismay, Marc shoved a bill into the hand of the screaming manageress, grabbed Toffee, who had now struggled into the dress, and, flanking the befuddled law, led her quickly to the stairs.

"Hurry!" he said. "And be quiet."

"You're under arrest!" the sergeant roared behind them. "Everybody's under arrest—probably!"

In record time, Marc and Toffee gained the level of the second floor and kept on running. As they ran, Toffee returned Marc's coat and he slipped it on.

The pain from the gas medicine had departed now, and Marc was feeling better. In fact, now that he stopped to think about it, he was feeling so much better he was actually beginning to enjoy himself. Striding forward, counters, customers and gaping clerks fading rapidly into the background, he even found time to admire Toffee's new finery.

"That's probably the briefest dress known to man," he remarked amiably.

"I hope it shall be well-known to man," Toffee returned happily. "One man in particular. At least I shall endeavor to make it count for the most."

"Or the least," Marc said.

Arms and legs flashing, they quitted the china department and, according to the signs, entered Sportswear on the left and Imported Liquors on the right. Thinking this a curious arrangement of merchandise, Marc turned to Toffee. He started to speak, then jolted to a halt with a thin wheeze of astonishment. Toffee stopped and turned back.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "What are you gaping at?"

Marc could hardly believe his eyes. He had turned to Toffee only to observe one of the most astonishing and upsetting things he had ever witnessed. Before his very gaze, her new dress was slowly dissolving into nothing. Already, the skirt had melted away to her thighs.

"Holy smoke!" Marc gasped. Then, feeling that affairs were rapidly going too far, he looked quickly away. He fixed his eyes firmly on a female manniquin costumed for tennis.

"What's the matter with you?" Toffee demanded.

"Your dress ..." Marc said weakly.

"My dress?" Toffee said. "What's the matter with my dress? I thought you liked it."

Marc opened his mouth to answer, but the words refused to come; suddenly he was confronted by still another cause for alarm. The phenomenon that had so mysteriously struck Toffee had now transferred itself to the manniquin. As he stared at it, the clothes began to fade from its plaster torso with unbelievable rapidity.

"Good heavens!" Marc rasped. "Look at that!"

"Look at what?" Toffee said, staring at the manniquin. "What are you carrying on so about?"

Marc took a breath. "Don't you see anything funny about that dummy?"

Toffee observed the dummy more closely. "Very dull," she said. "No sex appeal. Maybe it's those shorts she's wearing."

"Shorts?" Marc said. "You mean you can still see shorts—and things?"

"What are you babbling about?" Toffee said hopelessly. "What's wrong with that dummy, anyway?"

Marc stared at the manniquin wonderingly. "Good Lord!" he breathed, "I've developed X-ray eyes! As far as I'm concerned that dummy's as naked as a plucked chicken."

"But that's impossible!" Toffee said.

"Yes," Marc said, "but it's true. To me, that dummy is sheer unadorned plaster and nothing else. This is awful!"

"Maybe it will wear off," Toffee said uneasily.

Just then a bejewelled matron appeared at the end of the aisle. Inadvertently Marc glanced in her direction, then shudderingly looked away again; the woman's dress had melted away and she had been left strolling amongst the counters in only her girdle. Marc lowered his head and waited for her to pass.

"This is shocking!" he groaned. "I can't go around like this, seeing everyone without their clothes! It's indecent!"

"But how did it happen?" Toffee asked. "If we knew what caused it, maybe we could do something about it."

There was not time for Marc to answer this, for right on cue, with a blast from his whistle, Sergeant Feeney and his underlings swarmed at the head of the aisle.

"Duck!" Toffee hissed and, crouching down, vanished swiftly into the inner reaches of Imported Liquors.

Marc, followed this example, dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled behind the nearest counter in Sportswear. The official scufflings at the entrance grew louder.

"Spread out, men!" Sergeant Feeney thundered. "Check everybody!"

Behind the counter Marc settled back against the merchandise drawers. Then he jumped as a feminine voice sounded close beside him.

"May I help you, sir?" the voice inquired.

Marc, without thinking, looked around. A large, brassy blonde with circles under her eyes had hunkered down beside him. She smiled broadly at his glance.

"It's nice to get down here away from the noise and confusion, isn't it, sir?" she said throatily. "The customer is always right in this store—especially as far as I'm concerned."

As she spoke, the upper half of her dress slowly disappeared, revealing the most remarkably full net brassiere. Coloring prettily, Marc hastily snapped his eyes shut.

"Leave me alone!" he said in tones of anguish. "Please go away!"

"Go away?" the blonde said woundedly. "But I thought.... Three men have pinched me already today and, the way you crept in here, I thought maybe you were the more earnest type."

"I'm quite earnest," Marc said soberly. "In fact...."

"Goody," the girl said. She snuggled down beside him. "Now, what do we do?"

"I don't know what to do," Marc said miserably, "that's just it!"

"You don't?" the girl said unbelievingly. "You certainly don't expect me to tell you, do you?"

"How could you?" Marc asked reasonably.

"Well, I could, I guess, if I wasn't a lady," the girl said with a touch of pique. "Why are you squinting at me like that."

"The light hurts my eyes," Marc said briefly. "Really, I think you ought to go away."

The girl sighed deflatedly. "I guess I might as well," she said. "You're too ignorant and I'm too refined. I must say, though," she added wistfully, "for a minute there I expected great things." She started to move away.

"Just a minute!" Marc said quickly.

The girl fairly whirled around again. "Yes?" she said. "Have you thought of something?"

"Yes," Marc said. "Since this is the sportswear department, I assume you have dark glasses?"

The girl sighed again. "There are some around somewhere," she said.

"Well, find me some," Marc said, "only make them darker—dark enough that I won't be able to see through them at all. Paste cardboard inside them or something."

The girl looked at him quizzically, then shrugged. "Okay," she said. "I know when I'm licked."

"And hurry," Marc urged. "There's no time to lose."

The blonde departed, and Marc's attention was taken by a hurried scuffling in the aisle. He opened his eyes and cautiously peered out. A series of blue-clad legs, that, even as he watched them, turned bare and hairy, raced by. When they had passed, Marc leaned back again and gave himself over to a moment of quiet and confused contemplation.

He tried hard to find some clue to the cause of his extraordinary eye affliction, but arrived at nothing definite. There was a rustling at his side and he turned to find that the blonde had rejoined him. He closed his eyes again as the net brassiere, for a second time, began to appear from beneath the fading fabric of her dress.

"Here are the glasses," the blonde said coldly. "I put tape on the inside of the lenses." Marc held out his hand and she gave them to him. "Your eyes certainly must be sensitive."

"You'll never know," Marc said gloomily and slipped the glasses on.

"Can you see anything at all?" the blonde asked inquisitively.

"Not a thing," Marc said. "It's a great relief."

"Mister," the blonde said flatly, "I guess I just don't understand you."

There was the sound of stealthy approach from the direction of the aisle, and Marc quickly lowered the glasses to observe Toffee approaching on tip-toe. She was carrying a bottle of champagne under each arm and she looked enormously pleased.

"I think they've gone," she said. Then, seeing the blonde, suspicion flickered in her eyes. "Leave it to you; all I have to do is turn my back and you're snuggled up with some big blonde."

"I'm not snuggled up," Marc said. "I've been making a purchase."

"Of what?" Toffee said sharply.

"These glasses," Marc said. "The young lady was good enough to fix them so you can't see through them."

"Just glasses," the blonde murmured regretfully. "And that's all." She made a small sound of disillusionment. "And I thought this was going to be my lucky day, too."

"It is," Toffee said. "If anything had passed between you two besides a pair of glasses, you'd be wearing your neck off the shoulder this season."

"Where did you get the champagne?" Marc broke in. "Or is that a subject too delicate to discuss?"

"Almost," Toffee said grandly. "I ran into a salesman in Imported Liquors with foreign ideas. We indulged in a bit of hand-wrestling amongst the East Indian wines, and he lost. He's resting quietly now, however." She held out one of the bottles of champagne. "I used this to defend myself." She shoved the bottle into Marc's hand. "Let's get slightly damp."

Meanwhile the blonde had begun to edge away.

"Leaving?" Marc asked pleasantly.

"I'm going over to Imported Liquors," the blonde said.

She departed, and Marc extracted the cork from the bottle with a fruity pop and handed it back to Toffee.

"A pause for refreshment," he said, "and then we've got to do something about my eyesight. Did you say the cops have gone?"

"The last I saw of them," Toffee said, "they were lumpering through ladies' lingerie, headed for silverware and china." She paused for a deep drink from the bottle. "With the head of steam they had worked up they should be far beyond the horizon by now."

"Good," Marc said. He received the bottle from Toffee and drank thirstily. "Cops have a positive talent for being disagreeable."

"A bad lot," Toffee nodded. "They tend to weigh on the spirit. And speaking of spirits don't keep sucking at that bottle all day. Save some for me."

Twenty minutes later, one bottle depleted, the other tucked protectively beneath Toffee's arm, the two emerged unsteadily from behind the counter and started on an uneven course down the aisle.

"You'll have to lead me," Marc said thickly. "I can't see a thing."

Toffee took his hand. "Blind as a drunken bat," she giggled.

"You will probably lead me astray," Marc said happily.

"I shall do my best," Toffee said. "Luckily, I'm familiar with the route."

Marc held back for a moment. "I've just figured it out," he said. "It was that burp medicine that affected my eyes. We've got to go look up that druggist."

"All right," Toffee said. "But if I had X-ray eyes I would be content to stand on street corners and whistle."

This concluded, they tottered on to the end of the aisle and down the stairs.

"Going astray!" Marc sang vaporishly. "Going astray! I'm jus' going astray!"

With a wild lurch the two fugitives precariously left the stairs and emerged onto the first floor. As they started unsteadily down the aisle a veiled and voluminous lady in black turned from her examination of a silk blouse and observed their progress with smiling approval. She turned benignly to the sales girl who was serving her.

"Isn't that sweet?" she murmured. "Imagine a stunning girl like that sacrificing a day to take her poor old blind father shopping."

Toffee and Marc proceeded in a more or less orderly fashion to the doorway, leaving the good Sergeant to ransack a store now empty of its quarry.

Five minutes later and three blocks removed from the department store, the two law-evaders paused to reconnoitre. Or at least Toffee reconnoitred while Marc, still sightless behind his glasses, awaited directions. He held out his hand in readiness, waiting to be led. At his side, Toffee momentarily broke her mood of concentration.

"As I see it," she said, "our next move is to flee the city."

"But what about the druggist?" Marc said. "I've got to find out about my eyes." He stopped as he became aware of a nervous tugging at his sleeve.

"Hey, man," a voice said, "I've been lookin' for you everywheres."

Marc hastily lowered his glasses. He glanced down to find a familiar shifty-eyed, weasel-like face peering up at him.

"You!" he said.

"Yeah, man," the diminutive peddler of lewd pictures grinned. "You still got the cool stuff, huh?"

"The cool stuff?" Marc said with sudden stiffness. "If you mean that collection of disgusting pictures, no I haven't got them. At the moment, I believe they're listed as Exhibit A in the case of The People against Marcus G. Pillsworth."

"Man!" the little man wailed. "You mean somebody goofed and the cops got 'em?"

"Precisely," Marc said frigidly.

"Who's this Pillsworth cube?"

Marc drew himself up into a living tower of glowering hauteur. "I am Marcus G. Pillsworth," he said nastily.

"You!" the little man said. "You got hooked with the goods?"

"I got hooked," Marc said flatly, "with the goods just where you planted it on me."

"Jeez!" the little man cried despairingly. "You just can't rely on nobody no more." He chewed his lip for a moment, then looked up at Marc anxiously. "What about the French Elixir? Did the bulls heist that, too?"

"French Elixir?" Marc said. "I don't know anything about your French Elixir."

"The hell you don't, man," the little man said. "I faded it into your coat pocket. Did they find it?"

Marc paused. A chill of apprehension skittered up his spine. "Into my coat pocket," he said. "A small brown bottle?"

"It wasn't a big blue jug," the little man said impatiently. "You still got it?"

Marc reached into his pocket and pulled out, first one brown bottle, then another. They were almost identical except that the liquid in the one marked 'French Elixir' had been depleted by approximately one fourth.

"Good night!" Marc yelled. "I drank the wrong stuff!"

"You drank the Elixir!" the little man said. He snatched the bottle from Marc's hand. "You drank it?"

"I said I drank it," Marc said distractedly.

"Then, you owe me twenty bucks, man. That bottle of genuine, hard-to-get French Elixir sells for fifty, sixty dollars." He held out his hand. "Pad my palm, friend."

"I certainly will not pad your palm," Marc said indignantly. "Do you know what that stuff's done to me?"

"Huh?" The little man paused reflectively. "How should I know what it done," he said. "They say all sorts of stuff could happen to you, according to how you're repressed." He regarded Marc interestedly. "What happened?"

"I've got X-ray eyes!" Marc said dramatically. "That's what happened."

The little man looked at him skeptically. "What's X-ray eyes?"

"When I look at people," Marc said, "I see right through their clothes. If I didn't have these glasses on everyone on this street would be stark naked."

The little man made a thin whistling sound, then began to chuckle. "Lord, man," he laughed, "you ain't got X-ray eyes, you just got a dirty mind!"

"What!" Marc said.

"That's all!" the little man said. "It was all explained to me. The stuff works different on different people. It lets out what you've been pluggin' up inside. Oh, man," he chortled, "and you gave me the freeze for showin' you those French postcards!"

"I do not have a dirty mind," Marc said, "and even if I did, it would hardly be any business of yours. The point is that this awful elixir of yours has made a mess of things."

"At least," Toffee put in, "it's given us a devil of a handicap."

The little man looked at Toffee directly for the first time and obviously was struck by what he saw. "Who's the cool chunk of stuff?" he asked. He moved in close to Toffee and put a hand casually on her shoulder. "Just call me Hotstuff Harold, honey," he murmured. "That's how I'm referred to by all my intimate friends."

"If you don't keep your grimy little paws to yourself," Toffee said evenly, "they'll soon be referring to you as 'the deceased.'"

"It's nice that you two are acquainted," Marc said sourly, "but that still doesn't solve my problem." Peering over the top of his glasses, he fixed Hotstuff Harold with a beady eye. "How do I get rid of the effects of this awful elixir of yours?"

"As far as I know," Hotstuff said, "all you can do is wait for it to wear off."

"And how long will that take?"

"Who knows?" Hotstuff shrugged. "I ain't never messed with the stuff. Maybe I been repressin' a better nature and it would come out and ruin my life's work."

"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 half-naked 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 orange-red 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 might 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 cop-smackers, 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-so-innocent diversion, only the bus driver was distressed.

"Now, cut it out, you!" he yelled back at his cop-assaulting passengers. "Lay off 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, stone-faced 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 out-look."

"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.

Behind them, the bus started up, lurched crazily forward, shot through the hedge bordering the drive and took off drunkenly across the lawn and into the trees.

"Oh well," Marc sighed. "I suppose it might be worse—though I can't imagine how."

"Devastation seems to be prevalent today," Toffee agreed.

"And with you helping it along," Marc said, "I seem to have gotten a double order." Lifting his glasses briefly, he stared off toward the woods. "I suppose I'd better get going. The sooner I settle things the better."

"If you want my advice," Toffee said, "take a gun."

"What in the world would I do with a gun?" Marc asked.

"It would give weight to your argument," Toffee said. "These Latin lovers expect jealous husbands to carry guns."

"I am not jealous," Marc said stiffly, "I'm just worried, that's all."

"In that case," Toffee said, "why don't we just wait here until they get back? We could join the party in the cellar."

"It's this spring-time daffiness that really upsets me," Marc said. "Everyone seems out of control."

"Look," Toffee said, "if they went to the woods in that direction, why don't we go to them in the other direction and let Julie do the worrying for a change. Fair's fair, isn't it?"

"How could that possibly worry Julie," Marc asked. "She wouldn't even know we were there."

"That's right," Toffee said evilly, "she wouldn't, would she?"

"Unprincipled little trollop," Marc said.

"Unprincipled to the bone," Toffee agreed. She sighed. "But what good does it do me?"

"I suppose I should drop in on my guests before I leave," Marc said, "just to make sure they're comfortable."

"They're probably so comfortable by now, they're unconscious."

"They're better that way," Marc said.

This settled, he turned away, then turned quickly back again as Busby, wringing his hands with desperation, suddenly flew through the door and down the steps.

"Sir! Sir!" he yelled. "They've done it already, sir! I can't imagine.... They must be quick as cats!"

"What are you talking about, Busby?" Marc asked.

"The silver, sir!" Busby wailed. "And Mrs. Pillsworth's jewels! Your—associates cleaned out the lot! And they merely passed through the house, sir!"

"Like corn through a goose," Toffee murmured.

"Oh, Mrs. Pillsworth will be furious, sir!" Busby lamented. "Mrs. Pillsworth puts great store by her silver and jewels!"

Marc shuddered with apprehension. Julie would be more than furious; she would be livid. And, worse than that, she would be livid at him! Since the pack of thieves who had taken the things were his guests, the whole thing, therefore, would be all his fault. She would never forgive him.

"We'll have to get them back!" he said.

"I could call the police, sir!"

"No!" Marc fairly yelled. "No, Busby, don't call the police." He frowned concernedly. "Are they all down in the cellar now?"

"Revelling," Busby said hauntedly. "Revelling and shouting and guzzling. I don't think I'd go down there if I were you. It's a regular den of vice."

"Nevertheless," Marc said, "they need a good talking to. It's hardly good manners to accept a man's hospitality and steal his wife's jewels."

"It was probably Floss," Toffee said vengefully. "She's got her eye out for a good thing, all right."

Together, the three of them entered the house, crossed the wide, cool hall at the front, passed through the solarium and kitchen and drew up at the doorway that led down to the cellar. The sound of coarse laughter momentarily halted their steps. From inside his jacket, Busby extracted a revolver.

"Perhaps you should have this, sir," he said. "I keep it for emergencies."

"And this is certainly an emergency," Marc said. Taking the gun, he faced the stairway. "I will speak to them firmly and if that doesn't work, I'll—I'll—"

"Call the police, sir?"

"No! No, I'll—I'll hope for the best."

"With that mob," Busby said dismally, "the best is bound to be something worse than the worst, if you get my meaning."

"Nevertheless," Marc said, "we will have to face them with it." He led the way through the door and down the steps into the dim, musty sweetness of the cellar. As they descended, a second roar of laughter rose to greet them.

"Hey!" a voice called roughly out of the shadows. "Mine host approaches—with vassals?"

"Vassals of what?" another voice inquired woozily. "Or do you mean sea-going vassals?"

Marc peered into the dimness and held up a hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, not without a note of irony. "Ladies and gentlemen, Busby, here, has just told me a most shocking story."

There was a stirring in the dark. "Old Busby did that?" a voice said interestedly. "He hardly looks like he'd know any shockin' stories."

"Shame on Busby!" a feminine voice giggled out of the distance.

A form moved out of the shadows and proved to be Floss. "Let's hear this shockin' story," she said eagerly. "Ain't nothin' like a good shockin' story to get the party goin'."

Marc put up his hand again. "No," he said, "you don't understand; it's not that kind of a shocking story."

"A true confession, huh?" a voice said sullenly from behind the wine bins. "Don't sign it, Busby. Get a good shyster before you put your name to it."

"Please!" Marc said. "Let me tell you...."

"Not if it makes us accessories to the fact!" the voice came back. "I don't want to hear it. I'm putting my fingers in my ears!"

"Let's all put our fingers in our ears!" a blonde-sounding voice tittered. "It tickles!"

"Now, just a minute!" Marc yelled. "Listen! Someone here has stolen the silver and my wife's jewels, and I've got to have them back. The only thing I can do is appeal to you as a friend."

"You'd appeal to me even as an enemy," Floss giggled tipsily. "Advance, friend and be recognized."

"If he does," Toffee snarled, "he'll also be cauterized. Stay back, you two-bit lollypop!"

But Marc was not to be distracted from the matter at hand. "Now, which one of you did it?" he asked. "There won't be any arrest if you will just return the things."

There was a dense silence. Hotstuff shuffled out of the dimness and took up his place unsteadily at Marc's side.

"Okay, you crazy cats!" he hollered. "Which one of you pinched Mrs. Pillsworth's rocks?"

"Was she wearin' them at the time?" a female voice inquired.

"No, she wasn't," Marc said. "What has that got to do with it?"

"Plenty," the voice said. "If she was wearin' them there might have been a hell of a lot more pinched than just her jewelry." The speaker sighed with understanding. "Sometimes a girl likes to be pinched just for herself alone."

"You're gonna get slugged just for yourself alone if you don't shut up," Hotstuff snapped. He paused significantly. "Ain't no one gonna sing?" He turned back to Marc. "Was the stuff insured?"

"Yes," Marc said, "but it's not as simple as that." Resignedly, he launched into the story of his domestic problems. "So, you see," he concluded imploringly, "I have to have the original jewels back or I might lose my wife."

"And she's out two-timin' you with this Mario creep?" a voice said indignantly. "Disgustin'!"

"You gotta take your rod and blast the guy," another voice said hotly. "Defendin' your home, you could get off scot free."

"Hey!" Hotstuff broke in suddenly, "I got a great idea!" He grinned at his unseen audience with triumph. "Here we are, enjoyin' a healthful, restful day in the country, all at Mr. Pillsworth's expense. Well, now, don't it seem like we owe him some kind of token of thanks?"

"Yeah!" Floss said happily. "Like an ash tray made like a toilet seat!"

"Naw, Floss, nothin' like that," Hotstuff frowned. "What I mean is something real useful that he needs."

"Yeah?" a voice asked eagerly. "Like what?"

"Well, now I was thinkin'," Hotstuff said, "what Pillsworth, here, needs most is to have this Mario removed outa the way. Naturally, he can't go knock the guy off himself; he just ain't the type. So, what I got the idea for, is why don't we do the job for him? Kind of like a thank-you present because we're havin' such a nice time!"

"Hey!" a voice growled enthusiastically, "that's a solid idea. It's got a lot of sentiment, too. Like one good turn deserves another."

There was a general murmur of assent.

"After all," the blond-sounding voice said soddenly, "what are friends for, except to go around and help out one another?" There was the sound of loud snuffling. "It kind of gets you when you stop and think about it. Who's got a rod that ain't hot?"

"Now, wait a minute!" Marc yelled. "You can't do that! It's murder!"

"But we gotta make up for the jewels, don't we?" Hotstuff said. "We gotta be honest with you, don't we?"

Already, the murderous drunks had begun to swarm out of the dimness. The blue-jawed Moose appeared brandishing a wicked looking .38.

"We'll all take shots at him," he chuckled, "and say it was a huntin' accident. That way, they won't be able to pin it on no one in particular."

"Now, listen!" Marc rasped desperately. "I can't permit you to do this!"

"Oh, it's really nothin'," Hotstuff said modestly. He motioned to his followers. "Come on, friends, to the woods!"

"You mustn't do this!" Marc cried.

"What a guy!" Moose growled admiringly. "You gotta practically fight him to even do him a little favor."

The band swarmed past Marc and up the steps. "We'll spread out and force him into the open!" Hotstuff yelled.

"Stop!" Marc hollered. "Don't do it! I don't want you to!"

But the last of the assassins reached the top of the steps and disappeared out the door. Marc turned hopelessly to Toffee.

"I should have stayed in jail!" he said. "I can just see the newspapers when all this is over. Julie will divorce me for certain!"

"Well, don't just stand there wringing your hands," Toffee said. "Let's go out and warn them. We'll have to hide this Mario character until they've cooled down and gone away."

"I suppose so," Marc said. He turned and, with Toffee's guidance, started up the steps. "At least we know where to look. Maybe we can beat them to it."

They hurried up the stairs and out the back door. Marc turned briefly back to Busby.

"You stay here," he said. "If Mrs. Pillsworth and Mario return warn them to stay out of sight."

"Yes, sir," Busby said. "And I think I'll stay out of sight myself."

Marc and Toffee started out.

"They're probably down along the stream somewhere," Marc said. "Let's hurry."

It was when they had reached the end of the lawns and were starting into the brush that Marc stumbled and lost his glasses. After looking about them then, hurriedly, he gave them up.

"I'll just have to do without them," he said.

"This is hardly the time to indulge your Puritan sensitivities," Toffee agreed. "Come on!"

They forged ahead over rocks and through bushes until they came to the edge of the stream. There they stopped, scanning the banks for as far as they could see, but there was no one.

"You go in that direction," Toffee said quickly, "And I'll go upstream. If I find them I'll whistle."

Marc nodded agreement and struck out, shoving his way through a thick tangle of foliage. He moved along carefully toward a clearing that he remembered to be ahead. Finally, starting through the last leafy barrier, he caught his coat on a branch. He turned back to loosen it, at the same time backing out into the opening, pulling against the hold of the branch. The gun in his hand, however, made the maneuver awkward. As the coat finally came loose, he fell backwards, landing on the grass.

He was just starting to boost himself up, when he heard the scream behind him. It was a shrill scream and filled with horror. There was an ensuing moment of silence, then the sound of swiftly padding feet, scurrying in all directions. Marc turned and looked.

At first glance he was deeply startled, having forgotten momentarily the condition of his eyes. A large collection of humanity, glistening pinkly in the afternoon sunlight, were disappearing frenziedly into the surrounding greenery. As their unclad backsides vanished behind cover, Marc noticed that they had left behind them a number of picnic baskets, thermos jugs and blankets.

He sat for a moment, getting back his breath, then, on brief reflection, it came to him that these picnickers, whoever they were, had behaved with singular strangeness. Why should they run so desperately for cover just because he had fallen into the clearing?

He had only begun to ponder this curious equation when he realized that perhaps his falling there really had nothing to do with it at all. Perhaps something else, something much more formidable than a mere intruder, had panicked them. Visions of man-consuming cobras and slavering tigers flashed through his mind. Whatever it was that had so upset these people, he wasn't going to hang around to welcome it single-handedly. Leaping to his feet, he also ran for cover.

He crashed through the scratchy frontier of brush and came to an abrupt stop. Crouching before him, her back fortunately turned, was a plumpish, dark-haired woman, hiding her face in her hands. Marc crouched quickly down beside her and for a moment there was a tense silence. It was as though they waited for a bomb to drop. As the moments passed, however, and nothing occurred, Marc cleared his throat. The woman flinched nervously.

"Shh!" she hissed. "Be quiet!"

"What for?" Marc asked. "What happened?"

"Didn't you see?" the woman asked.

"I must have missed it," Marc said.

"Well, just be quiet," the woman said again, and once more the silence returned.

Finally, out of sheer curiosity, Marc was forced to reopen the conversation.

"This seems to be my day for crouching down with women," he said, trying a social tone.

"Is it?" the woman said. "I suppose there's a reason why?"

"I don't know," Marc said, feeling that this exchange was not destined to make a great deal of sense. "But I'm beginning to be just a little stiff from it."

"From what?" the woman asked absently.

"From crouching down with women," Marc said, wishing he hadn't started the discussion in the first place.

"Do you mean you get stiffer from crouching down with women than with men?" the woman asked.

"Well, I don't know about that," Marc said. "I've never crouched down with any men. Do you suppose it would matter if I stood up and stretched a bit?"

"For heaven's sake!" the woman gasped. "Do you want to be seen?"

"Why shouldn't I be seen?" Marc asked.

"You know very well," the woman said, "the way you are."

"The way I am?"

"Certainly," the woman said. "You know how people get about that sort of thing."

"Oh?" Marc said, completely lost. "Say, how am I, anyway?"

"How should I know how you are?" the woman said primly. "I don't allow myself to think about those things."

"But you were just talking about it," Marc said, "and about how people get about it."

"Your mind should be above it all," the woman said. "If you're asking for compliments, you've come to the wrong party."

"I persistently get the feeling," Marc said, "that we're talking about two different things."

"Weren't you at the last meeting when the citizen's committee showed up and started chasing us around?"

"Why no," Marc said interestedly, "I guess I missed that one."

"The way people act," the woman said peevishly, "you'd think we nudists aren't decent or something."

"Nudists!" Marc yelped. "Then, you really haven't any clothes on after all!"

"Of course I haven't," the woman said self-righteously. "And you...." Suddenly a quiver of realization coursed through her plump body and, removing her hands from her eyes, she looked around at Marc with a glance of horror. Her lips parted and she screamed.

"You're dressed!" she cried. "You're the man with the gun! Get away from me. Don't come near me!"

"I wouldn't think of it!" Marc said, leaping to his feet. "Good heavens, don't turn around!"

"Don't worry," the woman said fervently, "I don't think I could even if I wanted to! I'm just going to sit here and yell." And just to prove it, apparently, she screamed again. "He's here!" she shrieked. "He's here, with all his clothes on!" Her tone implied a nasty accusation.

"Good grief!" Marc said. "You don't have to tell everybody, do you?"

Now that the alarm was out, the landscape came madly to life. Nudes of all sizes and descriptions, clutching bits of greenery to themselves where it was most needed, began leaping about through the brush like fish in a net.

Swiftly it developed into a full-blown stampede. Marc goggled with disbelief as tanned figures rushed across the clearing and flashed out of sight along the banks of the stream.

"Well, I'll be darned!" Marc breathed and glanced down at the leavings of the picnic. He shrugged and started on, hoping fervently that he wouldn't overtake them again. With his eyes behaving so strangely everything became so fraught with complexities. When, for instance, was a nude not a nude?

Meanwhile, in another clearing just a bit farther along, Julie, her blonde hair glinting golden in the sunshine, sat in a leafy bower with her wide yellow skirts spread artfully about her long, aristocratic legs. The hypnotic whisper of the stream was in her ears and the spell of the first day of spring was in her blue eyes. From beneath drowsily lowered lids, she watched Mario as he arranged his canvas and paints and then, looking up, came toward her.

"The neck of the blouse, Madonna mia," he said, "it needs to be just a trifle lower so as to display more of the—uh—shoulder." He reached out a slender hand. "May I?"

Julie looked up, and for a moment her eyes met his. She glanced quickly away, wondering what in the world was coming over her; she had never felt this odd melting sensation before. Inwardly, she gave herself a little shake, as a reminder that she was not a predatory creature of impulse, no matter how much she felt like one. Then Mario's hand touched her shoulder and she shivered. For just that one instant it was as though Marc had never existed; the spell of the spring was too strong.

"Mario!" she breathed.

"Madonna!" Mario whispered fervently, dropping to her side. "You are exquisite! You are like a rare jewel in the sunlight!" And his arm moved practicedly toward her shoulder.

Their eyes met, and for a moment the tableau of romantic danger held, suspended in time, it seemed. Then it shattered as the greenery suddenly parted around them and a host of naked figures, desperately clutching bunches of leaves to themselves, flooded into the clearing. Julie looked up frightenedly and screamed.

"Good heavens!" she cried.

The undraped stampeders stopped short. There was an interval of stunned silence, then the leafy interlopers, seized with a fit of modesty, hastily huddled together and crouched down.

"My God!" a small round-eyed man gasped. "We're surrounded. Everybody's wearing clothes today."

"Everywhere you look," said a tousled-looking blond, "there's concealment!"

The silence returned, more awkwardly this time. The nudists stared worriedly at Julie and Mario and they, too stunned for words, stared back. Julie, from sheer nervousness, finally spoke.

"You—you haven't any clothes on!" she observed rather foolishly.

"We are aware of that, madam," a bald-pated gentleman said miserably. "And we're growing more aware of it every minute. You don't have to tell us."

"Don't you even care?" Julie asked shakenly. "Don't you want to have any on?"

"No, we don't," the first man said defiantly. "We feel that for the sake of our health—and morals, too—we shouldn't have."

"It may be wonderful for your health," Julie said doubtfully, "but I can't think it would do much for your morals."

"That's because you don't understand," a woman snapped. "You're not a right-thinker."

"Well, it hardly matters now whether I understand or not," Julie said. "Are you going to go on like that indefinitely?"

"Not wearing clothes?" the man asked.

"No," Julie said. "Crouching there, I mean, staring around. You are making me terribly uncomfortable."

"If we stood up," a skinny man said, "we'd make you a lot more uncomfortable."

"Yes," Julie agreed quickly. "I suppose you would. Still, we can't just all sit here like this, can we?"

"I don't know about you, lady," the skinny man said, "But I'd rather not."

"Then, what will we do?" Julie said. "If we close our eyes will you promise to go away—very quietly."

"But where will we go?" the man asked. "The woods are alive with non-nudists today. We hardly know which way to turn."

"You should have thought of that before you took your clothes off," Julie said edgily.

At the far end of the clearing there was a dry parting of the bushes and Marc ambled into range. His gaze went no farther than the nearest nudist and, despite the gun, he put his hands over his eyes.

"Marc!" Julie cried.

At the sound of Julie's voice Marc's face drained of all color. The worst had happened, just as he had suspected. Under Mario's degrading influence, Julie had not only gone astray, she had even joined the nudists.

"Julie!" he cried forlornly. "How could you do a thing like this?"

"A thing like what?" Julie asked, getting to her feet. "What are you talking about?"

"Running around—like that!" Marc said.

"I'm not running around," Julie said, inching her neckline up guiltily. "Why are you holding your hands over your eyes like that? And what are you doing with that gun?"

"I can't bear to look," Marc said. "I may shoot myself."

"What!" Julie said, then smiled. "Oh, it's all this bare skin that upsets you, eh?"

Marc winced anew. "Doesn't it bother you?" he asked.

"You'll never know how much," Julie said, "but they say it's good for the health and the morals."

"Morals!" Marc said. "I'm surprised you even know the word any longer. I think I'd better leave."

"Well, if I can face all this, surely you can, too," Julie said. "You still haven't explained what you're doing with that gun."

The skinny nude gentleman stirred anxiously. "Are you people going to go on chatting all day?" he asked plaintively. "My leaves are beginning to wilt."

"Your leaves," Julie said tartly, "are no concern of ours."

"If they droop just a little bit farther they'll be everybody's concern," the man said wanly.

"Yes, they certainly will," Marc shuddered. He turned in Julie's direction. "I hope your leaves are holding up all right."

"I don't have any leaves," Julie said. "Why should I have? Why are you acting so strange?"

Marc started forward. As he did so, he caught his toe on a projecting root and stumbled. Lurching forward, he threw out his hand blindly and inadvertently pulled the trigger of the gun. There was a deafening report and a bullet sailed into the air. Julie, clutching at Mario's arm screamed at the top of her lungs.

"He's trying to kill us!" she yelled. "Run, Mario, run!"

Mario hardly needed the invitation; even before it was completed, he had begun to put his feet into motion. Dragging Julie after him, he crashed into the brush, and the two of them disappeared from sight.

"Julie!" Marc said brokenly. He opened his eyes and looked in the direction of their departure. He glanced back at the nudists. "I hope you're satisfied!"

"We're not, mister," the skinny man wailed. "We can't hold onto these leaves forever. What will we do then?"

"I wouldn't be surprised at anything," Marc said nastily, "not from a gang like you."

Like a belated echo in the distance, there was the sound of a loud report from the direction in which Julie and Mario had departed.

"Good Lord!" Marc said, leaping forward. "I forgot!" He started toward the bushes just in time to collide with Toffee who darted suddenly into the open.

"They're after them!" Toffee cried. "They heard your shot and closed in!" There was the sound of two more shots. Marc started forward, but Toffee held him back.

"Don't go out there!" she cried. "They're in a mood to shoot anything that moves!"

"But if they kill Mario, Julie will swear I did it!" Marc said. "I've got to stop them!"

Suddenly the air rattled with gunfire, this time closer at hand. In the quiet that followed there was the sound of swiftly approaching footsteps. An instant later, Moose crashed into the clearing and jounced to a stop against Marc's chest.

"Get outa the way, you civilian!" the thug yelled blindly. "The joint is swarmin' with bulls!"

Marc had only barely digested this frenzied bulletin when Floss, Hotstuff, the blousy blonde and the other assorted criminals hurtled drunkenly through the opening.

"Cops everywhere!" Hotstuff wailed. He fixed Marc with a cold eye. "Who tipped 'em off, huh?"

"I didn't," Marc said. "Where are they?"

"Fannin' out!" Floss whined. "Closin' in!"

"Both at the same time?" Toffee asked curiously.

"Well, I suppose it's better than murder," Marc said hopelessly.

During this exchange, the fugitives had collected themselves enough to be aware of the nudists, who, rising, were clutching their greenery to them with trembling fright.

"Holy gee!" Floss said. "Will you look at them! What's goin' on here, an open air smoker?"

"We do it for our health," the plump woman said defensively.

"That's a new angle," Floss said interestedly.

"The police!" the skinny man moaned, unaware of Floss' roving eye. "They'll arrest us!"

"Boy," Floss said evilly, "what a place for a pair of prunin' shears!"

"Floss!" Hotstuff said severely. "This is no time for fun. The cops will be swarmin' all over us in a minute!"

"Are we just going to stand here and let them arrest us?" Toffee said.

"We're surrounded," Moose said. "We'll have to shoot our way out."

"No!" Marc yelled. "Absolutely no more shooting!"

"We nudists," the skinny man announced quaveringly, "refuse to have any part in all this."

"You shut up!" Moose snarled. The sound of a wailing siren approached from the distance. "Good God, they're on wheels now! They've got us out-pointed."

There was a general nervous shuffling as the assembled law-offenders moved forward to view their oncoming fate. The movement was suddenly arrested, however, as a roaring sound, accompanied by the snap and crunch of despoiled underbrush, echoed near at hand.

"Holy smoke!" Marc cried, "they're sending in tanks!"

"Everybody grab something!" Floss said hysterically. "A lady must defend herself to the end!"

"And then what?" Toffee inquired bitterly.

Already, the trees and bushes at the end of the clearing were starting to thrash about with frenzied agitation. A tree crashed to earth and, plowing over it, in a veering rush, came the yellow sight-seeing bus. The driver, markedly foggy of eye, leaned his head out the window.

"The cops!" he yelled. "They're after me! They've been chasing me to hell and gone all over the place!" With a great grinding of brakes, the bus jolted to a stop. "I gotta get outa here!" He peered down at Marc. "Which way do I go, mister?"

"Hey, wait!" Toffee said. "We've all got to get out of here!" She ran around to the door of the bus. "Open up!"

There was a crush of humanity as nudists and thugs alike struggled to climb into the palpitating bus.

"Snap into it!" the driver barked. "They're comin' in droves, those cops, and they're all sore as hell!"

Marc and Toffee stumbled to the rear of the bus and dropped into adjoining seats.

"At least we've got a running start," Toffee said breathlessly.

"Toward what, though?" Marc asked dismally. "The law thinks I'm an undesirable and my wife thinks I'm a homicidal maniac. Have I thanked you sufficiently for your wonderful help in this affair?"

"At least I tried," Toffee said. "You might show a little gratitude for that."

But Marc wasn't listening. He was gaping at the others as they climbed aboard and fell into their seats up ahead.

"My gosh!" he breathed.

"What is it?" Toffee asked.

"In all this excitement—and with all those nudists around—I didn't notice."

"Notice what?"

"The elixir is wearing off. Now, everybody's in their underwear! Except the nudists, of course."

"Well, at least," Toffee sighed, "you can keep your eyes open now."

"I'm not so sure," Marc said. "You should see Hotstuff's underwear—begonias on a field of purple."

"No!" Toffee said delightedly. "I suppose even he has his poetic side."

The conversation stopped short as the bus leaped ahead, throwing the passengers back in their seats.

"We'll try to circle around them!" the driver called out. "Hang on!"

There was a crash as the bus lunged back into the foliage. Branches lashed frenetically at the windows and skittered back into the distance. There was a communal scream as a large oak loomed before the windshield, but the driver, pulling frantically at the wheel, managed to send the bus swerving around it. Presently, the leaping, bucking vehicle fought its way clear of the wilds and emerged onto the green expanse of the lawns.

It all happened too quickly for any of the participants to have a very clear view of exactly what happened. One thing, though, was woefully evident; the driver had gotten mixed up in his directions. As they quitted the undergrowth, they suddenly found themselves in a head-on rush toward the charging ranks of the law. All at once the landscape was fairly littered with scrambling, dissembling cops. A siren shrieked with mechanical outrage.

"Give it the gas!" the passengers yelled. "Give it hell!"

The driver reacted automatically and pressed his foot down on the gas with everything he had. The bus shot ahead, wildly out of control, and headed into a zig-zag course toward the house. In the path there suddenly loomed a pair of distracted figures who, at the sound of the churning bus, looked back and instantly froze in their tracks.

"Julie!" Marc screamed, leaping from his seat and fighting his way to a position beside the driver. "Julie! Run!"

Outside, Julie merely covered her face with her hands. "Oh, Lord!" she wailed. "Now he's after us with a bus!"

At the last second Marc grabbed the wheel from the driver and yanked at it furiously. The bus careened to one side as Julie and Mario leaped or fainted to the grass, out of the way. The bus roared on, while in the background the siren hurled its piercing tone to the sky. Somewhere in the distance a voice barked hoarsely.

"Fire!" it bellowed. "Get 'em in the tires! That bus is packed with lunatics!"

There was an instantaneous volley of gunfire and suddenly the bus skittered to one side, teetered precariously on two wheels, then righted itself and plunged dead-on into the substantial trunk of a weeping willow. There was a thunderous crash, a rising chorus of terrified voices and then silence.

By fighting her way through the mass of struggling bodies in the aisle, Toffee managed to reach Marc's prone figure. She dropped down beside him and drew his head gently into her lap.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Marc opened his eyes and looked at her mistily. "I think so," he said. "I feel so drowsy, though." Then suddenly he frowned.

"What is it?" Toffee asked quickly.

"Julie...." Marc said.

"Julie? What about her?"

"She wasn't with the nudists after all," Marc murmured. "I mean she wasn't one of them."

"Well, what's so bad about that?"

Marc sighed unhappily. "She's wearing pink lace underwear!" he said. "And she's never worn it before." With that, as though the thought were too much for him, he closed his eyes and went limp in her arms.

Toffee, like a drifting, though shapely, cloud of smoke, faded rapidly into thin air.

"Jeez!" breathed a cop who had reached the door of the bus just in time to witness this phenomenon. "This gang is even creepier than we thought!"

Judge Frennish plainly boggled at the sight that greeted his astonished eyes as he ascended the bench.

The defendants had split themselves into definite factions. At one side of the court the nudists had huddled together in a tight little protective unit, while the thugs and their dolls had disdainfully withdrawn to the other side. Marc, still in a state of slumber, had been casually deposited in a chair, mid-distant between the two groups.

Briefly, the judge studied these separate crime camps and turned a disillusioned gaze toward Sergeant Feeney who had reluctantly accompanied him to the bench.

"Good grief, Feeney," he said, "do you mean to say you picked up this gang all in one place?"

"All in one place," Sergeant Feeney nodded wearily.

"Good Lord!"

"Definitely, your honor," Sergeant Feeney agreed. "The ones without any clothes claim they were havin' a picnic."

"I'll just bet they were," the judge said. "Though I shouldn't think they'd care to be so frank about it." He sighed tremulously. "And the others? I see many familiar and loathsome faces there."

"They explained that they were botany students out for a field day. They're still quite drunk, your honor."

"Isn't that Hotstuff Harold there in the middle?"

"Yes, your honor," Sergeant Feeney said thinly, "he insists he's the head of the class."

"Quite a haul," the judge said. "I only wish they'd haul them somewhere else. What about that tall fellow there who seems to be asleep? Is he the one who was turned in earlier on the morals charge?"

"Yes, your honor. There's nothin' rightly wrong with him, accordin' to the doctor. Either he's shammin' or he's been takin' dope."

"A nasty business, Feeney," the judge commented sourly. He glanced around the room as though hoping to find some unexpected avenue of escape, then shrugged. "I suppose I might as well plunge in." Picking up the gavel, he banged it heavily on the bench. The defendants and the spectators looked up apprehensively.

"The court will come to order!" the judge announced, a severe look coming into his dark eyes. "It had darned well better, anyway." He fixed the nudists with a steely glance. "Is there a spokesman for this shameless group over here?"

The skinny man edged forward, clutching his badly drooping leaves. He flushed embarrassedly.

"I suppose I am, your honor," he said weakly.

The judge eyed him without pleasure. "Why are you crouched down like that? Got a bellyache?"

"No, sir," the skinny man said. "It's just that I can't stand up—the way my leaves are. It wouldn't look right."

"It doesn't look right now," the judge said tersely. "It looks perfectly dreadful."

The skinny man flushed a still deeper shade of red and agitated his leaves. "I'm sorry, your honor."

"It's too late to be sorry," the judge said. "Now, suppose you just tell me what you people were doing, running around indecently exposed."

"Well, your honor," the skinny man said hopefully, "we were having a picnic."

The judge blanched a mottled grey. "So I've heard," he said. "There's no need to be defiant about it, you know."

"It was all very nice and orderly," the man offered, "until Mr. Pillsworth showed up."

"And then it got disorderly?"

"Everything got completely out of hand."

The judge's gaze swiveled toward Marc with gloomy speculation. "This fellow Pillsworth must exert a powerful influence everywhere he goes," he said. He turned back to the nudist.

"Just how out of hand did everything get, would you say?"

"I don't know exactly," the skinny man said. "Everyone was leaping about and running. It got pretty hard to follow. I don't think there were any broken bones, though."

"Broken bones!" the judge wheezed. He closed his eyes, as though to blot out a vision too awful for observation. When he opened them again, they were fixed on Hotstuff Harold.

"And how did you and your disreputable friends get mixed up in this?" he asked malevolently.

"We weren't mixed up in it," Hotstuff Harold said innocently. "We didn't know anything about these nudists until close to the end. We were very shocked at them."

"I dare say," the judge said dryly. "And may I ask, since you were out merely sniffing the flowers, how you all happened to be armed with guns?"

"Well," Hotstuff said vaguely, "we botanists can't be too careful, you know. There might be snakes."

"There are snakes," the judge said evenly, "and this courtroom is fairly crawling with them. Don't tell me that you were shooting up the countryside just to be on the safe side. Don't tell me that!"

"No, sir," Hotstuff said sullenly. "I was goin' to, but I won't."

Floss stepped forward, her hair in wild disarray. "Look, your honor," she said, "I guess we might as well come clean. We was only out doin' a little job for Pillsworth."

"What!" the judge said. "You mean to say this Pillsworth commissioned you to do murder for him?"

"Well, not exactly murder," Floss said ingenuously. "We was just arrangin' a little accident—outa gratitude."

"This Pillsworth is a veritable fiend!" the judge said hollowly. "He's even managed to corrupt the underworld!" He glanced around the room. "Where's this bus thief I've heard about?"

The disconsolate driver shuffled forward. "That's me, I guess," he said.

The judge studied the man pettishly. "You admit stealing this bus?"

"I guess I did steal it," the driver said, "if you want to be technical about it."

"And I do," the judge said. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Well," the driver reflected, "I didn't exactly steal it with malice aforethought. That is I wasn't even thinking about stealing it until Pillsworth came along and asked me about it."

"Don't tell me this Pillsworth persuaded you to take the bus?"

"Well, the money was quite an inducement."

For a moment, the judge appeared to brood into space, then, decisively, he turned to Sergeant Feeney.

"Wake this Pillsworth monster up," he said.

"Yes, your honor," the sergeant said and advanced toward Marc.

"I'll help," Floss said, joining him. "I'll loosen his tie."

"Thanks, miss," the sergeant said. "And I'll rub his wrists."

The court became quiet with speculation as Floss and the sergeant labored to arouse Marc. The stillness was soon shattered, however, as the door at the rear flew open and Julie, followed by Mario, flew down the aisle, her eyes ablaze.

"Stop!" she yelled. "Stop everything!"

"Madam!" the judge said, "the court is in session!"

"That's just fine," Julie said. She looked around wildly. "Where is he? Have you got him under restraint?"

"Have we got whom under restraint?"

"My husband, Marcus Pillsworth. Is he tied up?"

"He's under arrest," the judge said. "Should he be under restraint, too?"

"Should he!" Julie said. "He's mad! He tried to shoot us and when that didn't work he chased us with this frightful bus!"

"How awful!" the judge said. "Your husband appears to be a one-man crime wave."

"Then he took the silver and my jewelry!" Julie nodded. She turned to Mario. "Isn't that right, Mario?"

"Yes, Madonna," Mario said.

The judge shook his head. "Your husband hasn't missed a trick today. I never saw anyone so hell-bent for criminality."

"I want a divorce!" Julie cried. "I...."

The judge held up a hand. "Just a minute!" he cried. "I'm losing track." He consulted the sheaf of reports before him. "Now, taking it from the beginning, your husband's crimes, since only this morning, include possession of lewd pictures, jail breaking, destruction of private property, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace, assaulting seven officers, collusion in an automobile theft, lewd and immoral conduct, two attempts at murder, harboring criminals and, now, grand larceny and perhaps an insurance swindle." The judge paused for breath. "That's just hitting the high points."

"I want a divorce!" Julie insisted.

"You certainly shouldn't have any trouble getting one," the judge said firmly.

The skinny nudist, stirred uneasily. "Your honor," he said timidly, "what about our leaves? Now, they're beginning to dry out. They may even fall!"

The judge started, banging the gavel with reflexive nervousness. "Your leaves are entirely your own responsibility!" he snapped. "If they're drying out, then just don't rustle them."

"That doesn't allow us much freedom of movement," the nudist said.

"From what I've heard, that's probably all for the best. And if I hear any rustling I'll know what to make of it." The judge turned back to Julie. "After your husband answers the charges...."

At this point, Marc, responding to treatment, sat up and opened his eyes. He looked around at the assemblage and smiled bewilderedly.

"Fiend!" the judge thundered.

"Hold him back!" Julie screamed. "Don't let him near me!"

Marc started violently, and Floss put out a hand to steady him.

"Get your sticky hands off that man!" a voice hissed.

Everyone turned in surprise to see Toffee, newly reinstated to the realm of reality, move forward.

"I was only tryin' to help," Floss said defensively.

"I saw you palm that wallet," Toffee said hotly. "Put it back, you camp-following kewpie before I crack your plaster!"

"Okay," Floss said, replacing the wallet, "but I guess I've got as much right to him as you."

"You've also got a right to be carried out of here feet first!" Toffee said. Doubling her fists, she stepped forward. "What kind of flowers do you want on your coffin?"

"Why, you redheaded hellcat...."

The gavel banged thunderously. "Just what's going on here?" the judge roared, leaning across the bench. He pointed to Toffee. "How did you get in here?"

Toffee moved sinuously toward the bench. "Don't upset yourself with worrisome details, judge," she smiled. "Let's just stop flubbing around here and get on the ball."

"What!" the judge yelled.

"You're far too upset to handle the situation sensibly. Anyone can see that."

"Are you in contempt of court?" the judge wheezed.

"Please don't ask me that, judge," Toffee said sweetly. "Let's be friends."

"Now, look here...."

"Be calm, judge!" Toffee said. "If you don't settle down we'll have to find someone else. Now, who's being charged with what around here?"

"Who is that woman?" Julie demanded sharply.

Toffee smiled at her winsomely. "It would only upset you to know, dear," she murmured.

The gavel banged again, announcing that the judge had regained the gift of speech. "Silence in the court!" he bellowed. He turned eyes heavy with vexation on Toffee's pert face. "If I give you a resume of the court's activities until the awful moment of your intrusion, will that make you feel sufficiently included in things?"

"That would be fine, judge," Toffee said pleasantly.

"God in heaven!" the judge moaned and took a deep breath. In a rumbling voice he enumerated again the list of Marc's crimes. As he did so, Marc's expression became more and more incredulous.

"But that's not true!" he cried out. "Almost none of it, judge!"

"Certainly it isn't," Toffee said. "In the first place, those lewd pictures were planted on him."

"That's right, judge," Hotstuff said contritely. "I eased 'em onto him."

"And he didn't wreck any store, either," Toffee said hotly. "It was the sergeant and his clumsy chums. As for assaulting them, I'd be happy to oblige."

"And about the bus," Marc said. "I hadn't any reason to suspect it was stolen."

"I guess that's right, judge," the driver said sadly. "I didn't tell him it wasn't mine."

"There's something else you didn't get straight, judge," the skinny nudist said. "His behavior wasn't lewd or immoral. It was just that he had his clothes on. Naturally, we were upset."

"He wasn't shootin' at anyone, either," Moose put in. "He was just tryin' to stop us."

"Wait a minute!" the judge yelled. "In a minute you'll be trying to tell me this Pillsworth is a saint." He coughed excitedly. "I'm pleased that you've all decided to incriminate yourselves, but you still haven't succeeded in clearing Pillsworth. There are still the charges of jail breaking and jewel robbery." He levelled his gaze on Marc. "What have you got to say to that?"

Marc's interest, however, had been diverted by Hotstuff, who, for the past several minutes had been staring with unbroken fascination at Mario. Overlooking Hotstuff's begonia infested shorts, Marc followed the pickpocket's gaze across the courtroom.

The first thing Marc noticed was that Mario was not comfortable under Hotstuff's curious stare. The second was a large birthmark, roughly the shape of an eagle, on Mario's forearm.

"My word!" Marc murmured.

"Mr. Pillsworth!" the judge said. "Would you mind giving your attention to the court?"

"Oh, yes, your honor," Marc said, "I was just noticing the birthmark on Mr. Matalini's arm. Its resemblance to an eagle is remarkable."

"Birthmark?" the judge said, glancing at Mario. "What birthmark?"

"Well, judge," Marc said, "you can't see it. But with my eyes the way they are...."

"Mayfair Marvin!" Hotstuff ejaculated loudly. "Well, I'll be damned!"

"You be quiet!" the judge said. "No one asked you anything."

"But I'm telling you something!" Hotstuff said excitedly. "That guy is Mayfair Marvin with a dye job and a moustache. He's one of the hottest international jewel thieves in the racket!"

"What!" the judge said. "Isn't there anyone innocent in this court?"

Mario, who had suddenly lost his ruddy complexion, edged toward the exit. "That's preposterous!" he said.

"Yeah?" Hotstuff drawled. "Let's check that birthmark with the official descriptions." He turned to Julie. "If you want to know where your jewelry is, lady, just ask this bum."

Stricken, Julie turned to Mario, who refused to meet her gaze.

"How about it, Marvin?" Hotstuff said. "Do you fork over the rocks or do I tell the court about that job in London when...."

"All right!" the bogus Mario said weakly. He turned to Julie. "If you look under the hedge at the end of the drive you'll find your jewelry buried there. I meant to come back for it later, after a fortuitous call to the bedside of my dying mother."

"Sergeant Feeney," the judge said, "grab that man and have him locked up."

"Yes, your honor," Sergeant Feeney said and, taking Mario by the arm, relievedly escorted him from the room. As he did so, Julie buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

"There!" Toffee said elatedly, turning to the judge, "you see? There goes another charge!"

"There's still the one of jail breaking," the judge said spitefully. "It simply means that the charges, instead of being centralized with one man, are now more evenly distributed. In a minute now I'm going to start throwing sentences around here like rice at a wedding. The lot of you—with the exception of Mrs. Pillsworth—can start planning a nice long retirement."

As the judge leaned down to study and rearrange the reports before him, Toffee turned quickly to Marc.

"Do you still have the elixir?" she asked.

"Huh?" Marc said, his eyes on Julie.

"The elixir," Toffee said. "Give it to me!"

"Oh, that," Marc murmured. He reached into his pocket, extracted the partially filled bottle and handed it over. "Here."

"Thanks," Toffee said. She advanced happily to the bench and stood for a moment gazing soulfully into the judge's scowling countenance.

"If you need some help," she said demurely, "I'll be glad to give you a hand. You'll probably never figure it out all by yourself."

"What!" the judge said, infuriated.

"Well, let's face it," Toffee said innocently, "with a muckle-head like you running the show we'll never get anywhere."

"You are in contempt!" the judge screamed. "I thought so all along!"

"Well, you must admit it's a pretty contemptible court," Toffee said. "Nothing personal, judge, but...."

"Silence!" the judge cried. "Don't say another word or I may have to send myself up for murder! I...." The rest was lost in a fit of coughing.

Quickly, a triumphant gleam in her eye, Toffee reached to the water pitcher at the side of the bench, emptied the elixir into it and poured a draft for the judge.

"Here, judge," she said, "pull yourself together."

The judge drained the glass and, closing his eyes, leaned back in his chair. Through the ensuing silence, Toffee returned to Marc's side.

"His honor may see things a little differently now," she mused.

"Why should he?" Marc said angrily. "All you've done is insult him."

"I also fed him the elixir."

"You—you gave him that!"

"In the water," Toffee nodded. "I hope it works."

"But it's unpredictable! There's no telling how he'll react."

"Any change," Toffee said, "is bound to be an improvement."

During this exchange, the judge seemed to have fallen into a doze. For a time, while the court waited breathlessly, he remained still, then he stirred. Drowsily, he opened his eyes and sat up. Looking enormously refreshed, he surveyed the defendants before him blankly for a moment and then, quite astonishingly, grinned with a sort of gentle mischievousness. He looked around at Sergeant Feeney, who had just returned from the cells.

"Well, hello, sergeant," he said. He made an inquiring gesture toward the defendants. "Who are all these attractive people?"

"Huh?" grunted Sergeant Feeney. "Why they're bein' tried, your honor."

"Tried?" the judge said. "How do you mean?"

"You're tryin' them, that's all," Sergeant Feeney said, puzzled.

"I am!" the judge said. "Then I must stop it instantly. I assume that when you say they're being tried, you mean someone has been very trying with them. I can see, now that you mention it, they look a bit put out. Well, we'll have to do something about that." He smiled at Marc and Toffee and the others with winning graciousness. "I want you to know that I'm grateful to you all for coming today, and I'm sorry if I've bored you." He turned back to Sergeant Feeney. "Have I been lecturing on the life of the mollusk again, or something like that?"

Sergeant Feeney observed the judge quizzically. "Your honor, this is a gang of desperate criminals and you're the judge who's...."

"Oh, no, no!" the judge laughed suddenly. "Oh, you're mistaken, sergeant! I'm no judge." His expression, however, became thoughtful. "It's curious, though, that you should think that, because I do have a vague recollection that I once was a judge—though it may have been a dream—and I wanted nothing more than to forget it. I got so weary of having to be virtuous all the time. But, I'm sure it was only a dream. Aren't you?"

"Your honor!" the skinny nudist said plaintively. "I really think something ought to be done about our leaves!"

"Your leaves?" the judge asked.

"Yes, your honor. We need fresh ones desperately."

"My, my," the judge said admiringly, "don't you all look cool and comfortable, though?"

"Huh?" the nudist said. "You mean you aren't sore at us any more for being nudists?"

"Sore at you?" the judge said. "Why should I be sore at you? As a matter of fact I'll tell you a little secret." Abandoning the bench and descending to the floor, he lifted his robes to display a pair of bare and knobby knees. "On warm days I never wear pants!" he chortled.

"My gosh!" the nudist said.

"Hey, what about us?" Hotstuff said. "Are you going to let them off and send us up for taking pot shots at Mario?"

"Did you do that!" the judge said delightedly. "Of course I don't know this Mario of yours, but I'm sure it did the scamp a world of good to have his pot shot at." He looked around fondly at the assemblage. "But what are we all doing indoors on a lovely day like this? Why don't we all go on a picnic or something?"

"Then you mean we're all dismissed?" Toffee asked. "We can go?"

"Why certainly, you lovely child," the judge said benignly. "Run along and get into some sort of beautiful mischief. And if there's anything I can do to help...."

"You've already done it," Toffee said. She turned to Marc. "Come on!"

But Marc was watching Julie as she turned and started disconsolately to leave the court.

"Julie!" he called. "Julie!"

"Hey, now," Toffee said, "don't tell me you're going to go chasing after that thin blonde just because you married her once!"

Marc remained heedless. "Julie!" he cried, starting after her. "Wait a minute!"

"Oh, yeah!" Toffee said and, deftly, she put her foot in front of his.

Marc shot out into space head first and came up abruptly against the leg of a table. He dropped to the floor, made a small twitching movement and went limp.

"Julie!" he murmured.

"That'll show you, you big stiff," Toffee said. "You can't just toss me aside like a...."

And then, as Marc passed out, she, like the words she never finished, faded away into nothing....

"What a stunning girl," the judge murmured thoughtfully. "There's something so elusive about her."

At his side, Sergeant Feeney fainted dead away.

In his subconscious world of gently-sloping knolls and strange feathery trees, Marc lounged on the cool greenness and smiled up at Toffee.

"Sometimes," he said, "I'm not certain which is truly real, this world or the other."

"Reality is only relative," Toffee said sagely. "After all, if you didn't believe in me, I wouldn't exist." She leaned down close and brushed her lips across his. "You wouldn't even be able to feel my kiss. Reality can be happy or sad, depending on how you look at it. If you see only the happy side of things...."

She paused as the light began to flicker uncertainly in the glowing sky above them. "It's time for you to go back now; I'll have to continue this little sermon another time." She touched his cheek. "It's been a lovely day, Marc. Goodbye—until we can do it all over again...."

"Goodbye," Marc said, "and thanks."

The light flickered again and was gone. Marc felt himself begin to drift.

"Goodbye...."

"Marc!" the voice cried.

Marc looked up to find Julie bending over him. He was relieved to note that she now appeared fully dressed.

"Oh, can you ever forgive me?" Julie said. "It was Mario who suggested I take the jewels to the country—in case he needed them for the portrait. And when we were out by the stream this afternoon...."

"Never mind," Marc said. "It's all over now, let's forget it. Will you help me up?"

Taking his arm, Julie guided him to his feet.

"Look, dear," she said, "couldn't you drive back to the country with me? A few days vacation wouldn't hurt too much, surely. You'd like to, wouldn't you?"

"I'd love to," Marc said suddenly. He took her hand in his. "Let's go."

"You poor dear," Julie murmured. "I wonder how you stood it, with everyone saying such awful things about you when you really hadn't done anything at all."

Together, they left the court and started down the walk toward the convertible.

As they left the city and started into the country, Marc pulled the car over to the side of the highway and gave his attention to the drama of the brilliant sunset.

"Well," he sighed, "there it goes, the first day of spring."

"Thank heavens," Julie said. "Now we can relax and enjoy it."

But there was still a question nagging at the back of Marc's mind.

"I was just thinking, dear," he said, "about your birthday...."

"Birthday!" Julie said. "But that's months away yet!"

"But, still," Marc said, "I was wondering what you'd like for a gift. I thought maybe some nice pink lace underwear...."

"Pink lace underwear!" Julie said. She began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Marc asked suspiciously.

"Darling," Julie said, "don't you remember the pink lace underwear mother gave me for Christmas and how I loathed it? Well, I brought it to the country where it wouldn't matter just so I could wear it out and get rid of it."

Marc's relief came to the surface in a smile. "Then pink lace is out, huh?"

"Definitely," Julie said. "But if you insist on lingerie, get me something wicked and black. No true siren would ever dream of letting herself be caught in pink."

Marc reached across the seat and drew her close to him. "In the spring time," he said, "a young man's likely to get fancy."

The sun, on the horizon, slid conveniently out of sight and was gone. As it did, a breeze blew lightly through the car and somewhere, it seemed, there was laughter.

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- THE LAUGHTER OF TOFFEE

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