Part 5

For one brief moment it seemed that the ruse, by dint of sheer boldness, was going to work. Toffee was almost to the corridor when one of the benumbed guards suddenly began to vocalize in an overwrought fashion. In a voice that slammed against the vaulted ceiling like a trumpet blast he shouted something that sounded loosely like, "Gamnovitch!" His tone did not convey the feeling of warm welcome. Toffee, sizing the situation up as the sort that only comes to a head with delay, bolted.

She darted into the corridor and kept going at a pace that utilized her lovely legs to the utmost. A noisy clatter from the rear, however, told her that she was not in the sprint just for exercise. She renewed her efforts. Then suddenly stopped.

It wasn't so much that the corridor terminated in a huge doorway only a few yards ahead--though that was bad news enough--the real thing was that before the door there stood not two but four enormous guards, supplied like the others with those ugly weapons. The guards and Toffee caught sight of each other simultaneously, but the really filthy part of it was that the surprise element in the incident shoved the guards into action while it only held Toffee motionless.

* * * * *

Toffee needed no one to tell her she was about to be surrounded. "I _would_ have to get into this place," she sighed. "It must be a barracks for guards." She watched with resignation as the bulky bayoneters formed a prickly circle around her. She chose the most likely-looking of her captors and smiled enchantingly into his sub-ugly face. But the favored one only reciprocated with a small jabbing gesture which was enthusiastically picked up and elaborated upon by his companions. Toffee was the first to realize that the situation was climbing toward that state which is often described as 'serious.'

"Look out, you lumbering oafs," she said hotly. "You could play hell with a lady's dainties with that sort of thing."

She considered her ring and the hoard of armed brutes around her; there were too many of them to deal with effectively. The situation called for help, and Toffee took her cue from the situation; though she didn't know the language she was willing to kick it around a bit.

"Helpovitch!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "Helpovitch!"

The result that followed was as instantaneous as it was unexpected. No sooner had Toffee's voice split the air of the hallway than the guards froze where they were and stared at her in a transfix of horror. Toffee hadn't the faintest notion of what she had said but she was awfully glad to have said it.

Experimentally she made a movement; the guards remained still. She stepped out of the circle, and one of the guards made a small movement of protest.

"Helpovitch, you rat," Toffee said. "You heard me."

The guard remained motionless.

Toffee paused, selected the door at the end of the hall as her destination, and went rapidly toward it. As she drew abreast of it, it opened just a crack and an ear presented itself in the opening. Apparently someone had been disturbed by the noise in the hall. Toffee leaned forward and placed her mouth close to the ear.

"Helpovitch," she whispered.

There was a moment, then the ear shuddered delicately, after which it turned red and withdrew quickly from sight. Here, Toffee realized, was the sort of ear that responded to a firm hand. She shoved the door open, stepped inside, and closed it behind her. Then she turned about--and stopped short.

* * * * *

It wasn't so much the room which, large and marbled, was a gasping matter all in itself--but the room's occupant; the ear had been misleading for its owner was none other than You Know Who himself. Between the Great Leader and Toffee there wasn't much to choose for goggle-eyed surprise. Toffee, however, was the first to recover from the encounter.

"Well," she said, "just the old villain I'm looking for!"

The Great Leader, his eyes retreating back into their sockets, set his mustache atremble with a great sucking breath and launched into a series of resonant sounds.

"Knock it off," Toffee commanded. "You're making a fog in here. Besides, I can't understand a word of that juicy jazz."

"So!" the Leader exploded. "Who iss? How you got har, hah?"

"Well," Toffee murmured relievedly, "at least you can speak English--using the language loosely, that is."

"How come you har, hey?" the Leader insisted truculently. "Why not soldiers kill you forst?"

"They had it in mind," Toffee said, "but I just said 'helpovitch' to them, and they dropped the whole thing."

"Vooman!" the Leader gasped. "You say soch dorty vord it is only sooprise soldiers do not drop teeth along with thing!" He waved his hand. "Go vay, dorty gorl! Screm!"

"For Pete's sake!" Toffee said. "What does the word mean?"

"Don't ask!" the Leader gasped, throwing up his hands. "You make me drop whole thing, too! Go vay or I call soldiers and tall tham shoot you all over--oop!--down!" He started toward the door. "Tarrible gorl!"

"Hold it, Cecil," Toffee said. "You touch that door and I'll pull off a shindig that'll make you sad all over."

The Leader stopped and regarded her uncertainly. "You American vooman spy, hah?" he demanded. "You think you smart. Vell, you be dad soon, vhat you think, hay?"

"I think you're going to be reasonable and do what I say, hey," Toffee answered firmly. "Either that or you're going to get the surprise of your life."

"Who iss you anyway?"

"An avenging angel," Toffee said. "That'll do for now."

"Nonsanse!" the Leader snorted. "No soch thing angel. Anyvay, angel vould not say dorty vords, make soldiers drop things."

"Okay," Toffee said, "so I'm no angel. You're right there, pop. But I'm avenging, and don't you forget it."

* * * * *

A new thought crossed the seething mind of the Leader. "You know who you talk to so mean?"

"Sure, Mac," Toffee said. "I know you."

"Than I tall you drop dad, you gotta do it, hah?"

"Huh-uh," Toffee said, shaking her head. "And let's have no more sass about killing people. Now let's get down to brass doorpulls...."

But just at that moment the soldiers outside not only got down to doorpulls, but pulled them: the room began to swarm.

"If I'd knew you were coming," Toffee said, "I'd have baked a snake." Nevertheless, she retreated warily. The guards paused uncertainly before her and started babbling among themselves.

"Now!" the Leader said triumphantly.

But Toffee pointed imperiously to the gabby guards. "What are those birds saying about me?" she demanded. "I've got a right to know."

The Leader paused to listen, then nodded with comprehension.

"Forst man say he think you foreign spy because you look nothing like voomans from this country. Other man say he's right because if you var from here you vould haf thick lags like his wife who iss von big slob. Forst man say he can say that again for his vife who iss so big slob you gotta say it twice to describe her." The Leader paused to consider this exchange and suddenly smote his brow. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "Now iss clear! You deganerate product of America sant har to make men unrastful with slobbish female population. So!"

"It's a side-line I hadn't thought of," Toffee said and smiled engagingly at the guards. "But if you think it'll work...."

"Iss no good you viggle around and look saxy," the Leader put in sullenly. "You gonna get shot good, you deganerate boopsy daisy." He turned to the guards and shouted an order which had but one meaning in any language. The men instantly formed a single rank with mechanical precision and raised their rifles toward Toffee, albeit with a certain gleam of reluctance in their eyes.

"Now you gonna gat it," the Leader said.

But Toffee only smiled. "I've told you," she said, "I'm an avenging angel. And we angels are practically indestructible."

"Ve see," the Leader snorted. "So!" He turned to the guards and barked an order that touched off a confusion of explosion and gun smoke. In the moment that ensued, as the smoke settled, there was a tense silence. This was followed by a many-throated cry of alarm.

Toffee, still smiling, and completely unscathed, stepped lightly through the screen of smoke and presented herself to the company at large.

"What would you like for an encore?" she asked.

She did not bother, of course, to explain that she could not possibly be destroyed as long as Marc's mind held the image of her as a live being. She would always be just as Marc imagined her and he quite evidently was not thinking of her as dead at the moment.

* * * * *

As she moved forward, the guards took a faltering step backwards. Then, as a man, they turned and fled the room, slamming the door after them.

Toffee shrugged lightly, turned and gazed about. The Leader was no longer in evidence. She paused to consider briefly, then crossed to the large desk in the center of the room, and bent down to peer underneath.

"You may as well come out," she said. "I see you."

The Leader's head appeared apprehensively in the opening. "Go vay," he said. "Vhy you not dad? You crazy?"

"Crawl out of there, Sam," Toffee commanded. "Loosen that tight collar of yours and get set for a lesson in future history. You can frolic about on the floor later."

Slowly the great man emerged and stood before her. Toffee's refusal to die or even get decently dented had shaken him to the very foundations. Furtively he eyed the bullet-scarred wall.

"Shame," Toffee said. "You've been naughty, Jasper. Sit down."

He did as he was told, looking as though he might burst into tears at any moment. "Vhy you not dad lak hangnail?" he insisted. "You got an iron gordle?"

"I simply can't be killed," Toffee said. "I just can't seem to bring myself around to a serious frame of mind about guns and knives and that sort of trash. Which leads me to the problem at hand. I've got a plan for you, kiddo, and though it won't take five years, we've got to shake a leg." She glanced at the row of buttons and the speaker on the desk. "You know what you're going to do?"

"No," the Leader said warily. "Vhat?"

"You're going to start pressing those buttons, one at a time, from right to left. You're going to talk to all the big shots wired to those buttons and you're going to order the country demobilized, tonight."

"Hah?" the Leader said. "And since vhen?"

"Right now," Toffee said. "You are going to have every bomb and every facility for making bombs blown to dust in the cool of the night. Every piece of live ammunition in the country is going to be laid to rest. By your order. So get busy and start having the danger areas cleared."

The Leader only stared at her in blinking disbelief.

"Voop!" he burped with deep emotion.

"And what is the meaning of that remark?" Toffee asked.

"Means you iss goofy. Means you got bats in the bonnet."

"And you're going to have ants in the pants if you don't start pressing your moist little finger to those buttons." Toffee eyed him humorlessly. "Are you going to start pressing or aren't you? You've had the word."

"I'm waste no more time talking foolish with dorty, saxy dame like you," the Leader said petulantly. He got up and started determinedly toward the door. "I call new guards and have them carry you avay."

"I warned you," Toffee said, raising her hand tentatively. "You'll regret it."

* * * * *

But the Leader, unintimidated, continued toward the door. He had just reached out to open it when Toffee brought her hand down quickly over the face of the ring. Events proceeded according to expectations.

"Halpovitch!" the Leader screamed, and plumped down heavily on the floor. "Oi!" Following the pattern of his forerunners he slapped his hands to his bottom and hugged himself into a knot of pulsating agony. A stream of highly charged verbiage sullied the air.

"You kick me in restricted, top secret area!" he wailed.

"Not exactly," Toffee said. "Though it's a shame. So many people have longed to." She moved closer to her distressed victim. "Going to start punching buttons? If you do I'll take the heat off."

"No!" the Leader gritted pettishly. "I ponch you in nose!"

"I see," Toffee said. "Suppose I call those guards back in here and let them see you like this? In no time at all the news will get around that the Great Leader has gone off his rocker and is snapping at his own bottom like a beagle after ham hock. A fine laughing stock you'll make, won't you?"

"No!" the Leader pleaded. "No! Oh, soch a pain!"

"Then suppose we have a little friendly cooperation around here?"

"Hokay!" the Leader cried. "I can't stand it no longer!"

Toffee made a pass at the ring and the Leader, after a moment of adjustment, arose.

"How you do soch rotten thing?" he asked.

"You haven't got all the secret weapons," Toffee said. "That's one your agents missed. Now hop to it and start thumbing those discs."

Shaking his head which was heavy with disillusion, the Leader made his way shakily to the desk. He looked at Toffee, then reached for the first of the buttons.

"Don't double cross me," Toffee said, raising her hand. "If you do you'll writhe in agony for the rest of your days."

"Hokay," the Leader said and pressed the button. A moment later a voice answered distantly.

"Halpovitch!" the Leader yelled at the top of his lungs. Instantly Toffee made the necessary gesture, and for the second time the great man assumed the position, placing his equipment as he went. He was moaning low in every sense of the word.

"I warned you," Toffee said. "Trickery will get you nothing but a pain in the terminus."

"All right!" the Leader groaned. "Stop it! I poosh buttons! I poosh 'em twice apiece! I do what you say like a liddle lamb."

Toffee manipulated the ring, and again the Leader picked himself up from the floor. "Let's stop this horseplay," she said, "and get going."

"Horseplay!" the Leader exclaimed, advancing his finger to the buttons. "Horses vhat play mean like you should be on the backs of postage stamps."

* * * * *

It was nearly an hour later when the Leader released the last button and sagged back in his chair, a broken man.

"Iss all," he said. "You have louse up averything. They all say I am insane, but they gonna do it anyhow 'cause I tell 'em, the dumbells. Over-regimented, they are, like a lot of stupid machines."

Toffee glanced out the window at the now-darkened square. "The fireworks should be starting soon, if they're as efficient as you say." She turned back to the Leader. "Is there any way to get to the top of this pile of concrete where we'll have a better view?"

"Opp stairs, sure," the Leader said dully. "Who vants to see?"

"Come on," Toffee said. "This is going to be _worth_ seeing, all that advanced gun powder going up in smoke."

"Hokay," the Leader agreed brokenly. "Who cares now?"

Toffee watched him carefully as he opened a drawer in the desk and slid his hand inside. It was a moment before he extracted a large bottle of vodka.

"For the medicinal purposes only," he explained ruefully. "And I am the sick buckeroo of them all."

Toffee smiled. "Let's get to the top, pop," she said amiably. "Let's tie one on."

* * * * *

Though it occurred miles away, the explosion shook even the solid foundations of the capitol building. Toffee and the leader watched with awe as the whole world, it seemed, suddenly screamed with white fire. The Leader was forced to cling to Toffee for support, and Toffee clung to the bottle strictly as a precaution.

"Beautiful," Toffee breathed as the building ceased to shudder. "It's beautiful to see all that death and destruction destroying itself. Makes you think of those scorpions who sting themselves in the neck when they're mad."

And if the explosions constituted an item of beauty for Toffee, the night was filled to overflowing with the gaudy stuff. The explosions, near and far, continued through the night. Toffee and the despairing Leader sat on the edge of a functional parapet and toasted each new blast with vodka and conflicting emotions.

Below them people churned bewilderedly in the streets like a rising and falling tide. A faint thread of dawn touched the horizon just as the last explosion shuddered across the land.

"Iss all," the Leader mourned soddenly. "All iss gone. You haf made me a tired old man."

"That's all you ever were," Toffee said almost kindly. "You were foolish to try to be anything else." She patted him on the head with groggy sympathy. "I've got a feeling I've got to be running along now. But there's just one more thing before I go...."

"Iss all. Iss all," the Leader moaned. "Iss no more."

"No, not that. All I want to know is what does helpovitch mean?"

The old man lolled his head to one side and looked at her lopsidedly from the corner of his eye. "Iss native slang vord meaning 'democracy.' Iss very dorty vord."

And then, as his beautiful tormentor vanished into thin air, he toppled from his perch on the wall and sprawled flat on his back.

The enemy, a bottle cradled protectively in his arms, had fallen....

* * * * *

Marc had fought the battle against sleep to the last ditch, and there had tripped and fallen squarely into the waiting arms of Morpheus. The sounds, the drone and buzz of Congress, swirled away into limbo and mercifully died. Marc was no longer among those present at the ridiculous investigation.

The only way Marc had been able to go to sleep the previous night was to take as many sleeping tablets as possible, and then a couple more. When Congressman Bloodsop had managed finally to awaken him and to tell him of Toffee's disappearance, it was a long while before he was able to appraise the situation rightly; that Toffee had simply transferred her activities to some other seat of operations, so to speak. Then, once this had soaked into his benumbed brain, it occurred to him that it constituted an ideal state of affairs. With the volatile redhead out of the picture there was an even chance that he would be able to extricate himself from the mess she had created for him and find his way back to Julie.

To accomplish this end he had only to stay awake so that Toffee could not put in an untimely appearance--no mean accomplishment considering the sleeping tablets fermenting in his system. Now he contributed to the congressional activities with a resonant snore.

"And do you persist, Mr. Pillsworth, in the absurd assertion that you did not aid in the escape of the young woman known as Toffee? _Mr. Pillsworth!_"

Marc stirred and opened his eyes as his name penetrated his awareness.

"Eh?" he yawned, then sat up abruptly as a current of horror flashed up his spine. What chilled him more than the reproving tone and the baleful eye was the realization that he had been asleep. He glanced away from the fuming chairman and subjected the room to a wary search. It was on the return sweep that his most awful expectations burst abloom. Toffee, looking for all the world like an abandoned torch singer on the corner of a piano, was sitting on the outer edge of the podium, one hand poised rakishly on a well-curved hip. She surveyed the assemblage with unmistakable disappointment. Throughout the room several hot games of tick-tack-toe were summarily abandoned as grey, greying, bald and balding heads snapped back in uncharacteristic attitudes of attention. The members of Congress, acting sharply against precedent, sat up and took note of the business at hand.

* * * * *

Since no one else spoke, Toffee took the initiative. "So this is a body of men, is it?" she sneered. "I've seen better bodies on Model T's."

The Chair eyed her with a definite lack of warmth.

"My dear young woman," the Chair said, glaring coldly through his glasses. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm here to be investigated," Toffee said, jauntily crossing her legs. "Get out the tape measure and heave to."

Marc pressed his hands to his temples and sank lower in his seat.

"What!" the Chair said. "You're the young woman known as Toffee?"

"The same," Toffee said complacently. "The very same."

"How did you get there on the stand all of a sudden?"

"Ask me no questions," Toffee said, "and you'll reduce the lie expectancy by at least fifty percent."

Marc's forlorn moan was lost as the Chair cleared his throat. He flicked a pencil in Marc's direction. "Take your place over there with your confederate, please."

"Sure," Toffee said. Abandoning her perch, she leaped lightly to the floor and shoved off in Marc's direction, pausing on the way to pat Congressman Bloodsop on the head. The congressman winked at her, withdrew the pocket flask which had been affixed to his mouth and wiped his lips genteelly on the back of his hand.

"Government," Toffee observed, settling herself happily at Marc's side, "is much the same the world over--full of medicinal purposes."

"Why did you have to show up now?" Marc asked sourly. "They'd have called the whole thing off in another few minutes."

"That's what I like," Toffee said, patting his hand, "a rousing welcome from the one you left behind."

Marc withdrew his hand frigidly and resisted a yawn. "Now we're right back in the same old soup."

Toffee scanned the Congress with a sweeping glance. "Don't tell me you're afraid of this collection of old nincompoops?" she scoffed.

She pointed to a bemused, bald-pated individual across the way who was engaged to the last nerve in the business of engraving a pierced heart in the top of the table in front of him. Across from this exhibit sat a lank citizen who was quietly strumming a guitar and chanting a ballad which had to do with a lonesome cowboy whose horse was dead, house was burned, well was dry, range was barren, and he himself was suffering from pernicious anemia--which individual, nonetheless, wished to assure his faithless sweetheart that she was not to worry for a minute that his affairs were anything other than tickety-boo and that he would 'git' along somehow.

* * * * *

Marc observed these examples of high-minds-at-work with a wry face. "That's just the trouble," he grieved, "they're completely irrational. Heaven knows what they might take a fancy to do to us. Your entrance didn't help any, you know."

"Nonsense," Toffee said. "They're just a bunch of harmless children."

"So harmless," Marc snorted, "they've danced the whole nation right down the path to extinction."

"Oh, that," Toffee said, smiling secretively. "I wouldn't worry about that. I wouldn't waste the time."

"Oh, you wouldn't, wouldn't you?" Marc said annoyedly. "Well, let me remind you, Miss Cotton Brain, that you're subject to the laws of extinction just as much as the rest of us. When I die you go with me, you know, and after the way you've messed up my final hours I will consider it a pleasure to perish just to get even with you. I will laugh as the bombs come crashing down on my roof."

"You're doing me a terrible injustice," Toffee said.

At this point their conversation was abruptly concluded by a heavy rapping from the Chair.

"The Chair addresses the young woman known as Toffee."

"If I'm known as Toffee," Toffee snapped, "then call me Toffee. Stop making me sound like some loose-moraled hussy slinging her hips around in a Klondike saloon."

"Just remain seated," the Chair said severely, "and speak into the microphone on the table. There are some questions for you to answer before we proceed."

Toffee eyed the Chair with raised eyebrows. "Okay," she said. "Shoot." She turned to Marc. "Stop nudging me."

"First of all," the Chair said. "Please make a statement of your political affiliations."