Part 2

Rather than enter into preposterous argument with his own senses, Marc admitted that she was actually there, before him. He knew by now that he would have to sooner or later, anyway. "Busy?" he asked with as matter-of-fact a voice as he could manage. "Busy with what?"

"Your files, of course," Toffee replied lightly, jumping with kittenish softness to the floor, disdainful of the last three steps. "This is the end of the year for you, mentally."

"What files?"

"Didn't you see the sign when you came in?"

"The way I came in," Marc replied sourly, "I didn't see anything."

"Oh, of course not," Toffee agreed. "Just looking down that way and seeing you here all of a sudden, I forgot for a moment that you were from outside. Well, just so you'll know, this is the Miscellaneous Information chamber of your mind. You've never been here before. You've only seen the valley of your mind." She smiled demurely. "I guess you're just naturally drawn to wherever I happen to be. But I do wish you'd seen the sign. It's an idea I got from outside, in your world. It's all lit up with mental impulses ... just like neon. It's really beautiful."

Marc winced. That his mind might someday become a mental replica of Broadway was the most repulsive idea he'd had to face in weeks. Toffee would be setting up a chain of "Grey Matter" hot dog stands next. "Miscellaneous Information?" he asked, uncertainly.

"Yes," Toffee said, with the professional air of a paid guide giving a fifty cent tour. "In a year's time, you pick up more odd facts and figures than you think. If they were left lying around, your mind would look like a city dump. So at the end of every fiscal year, it's my job to gather them all together and file them alphabetically under topic headings. Then, it's always here when you need it, unless it's too out of date. See what I mean?"

Marc nodded slowly. "I guess so," he said, and his voice was laden with uncertainty. "But don't you think it's a little creepy?"

"Nonsense!" Toffee cried, dismissing the idea. Then her smile suddenly faded and her eyes became hard. "And while we're on the subject," she said menacingly, "there's something I'd like to ask you."

"What's that?"

* * * * *

Turning to a small table nearby, she picked up a stiff white card, and flipped it angrily under his nose. "Just you tell me," she demanded hotly, "How you happened to pick up the bust measurements of the entire Gaities chorus!"

Marc's expression was one of utter stupification for a moment, then it relaxed. "Oh, that!" he exclaimed with false heartiness.

"Yes, that!" Toffee echoed ruthlessly, placing one hand on a smooth hip.

"That's easy to explain," Marc went on quickly. "It all had to do with the advertising agency. We handled some ads for the Gaities."

"Ads?" Toffee sneered. "You mean they advertise things like _that_!"

"Well, no. Not exactly. It was really the show that we advertised."

"What a show it must be!" Toffee exclaimed sarcastically. "That Miss Flare La Greer must be a fair sensation every time she sets foot on a runway. With measurements like that, I wonder that there's any room left for the rest of them."

"Don't be vulgar," Marc put in without hope.

"If you ask me," Toffee said icily, "it's that La Greer moll that's being vulgar. She was born vulgar." Then her smile suddenly appeared as unexpectedly as a sunburst in the middle of a rain storm. "But if it's the way you say," she cooed, "I guess I'll just have to forgive you. Now let's say hello properly." She stretched her arms out toward Marc, and made quick, beckoning motions with her hands.

Marc was instantly on his feet. Of all the censorable things in the world, experience had taught him that Toffee's interpretation of a proper greeting would probably head the list. "Get away from me!" he yelped, backing into a filing case. "Stay mad! Hate me! Don't start that old stuff, or I'll...."

"Or you'll what?" Toffee asked wickedly, sliding her slender arms smoothly around his neck.

It may have been Toffee's kiss that started the room spinning. Marc didn't know, and somehow, try as he would, he couldn't seem to make himself care. At any rate, it _was_ spinning, and gaining speed at every turn. In a moment, it was whirling like a thing possessed, and Marc could feel himself being lifted easily upward. He opened his eyes and looked out with dismay. It was as though they had been caught in the very center of a gigantic tornado. Caught, just as he had been in the whirlpool only a moment before.

"Wow!" Toffee cried gleefully, her arms clasped tenaciously about his neck. "What a kiss!"

* * * * *

Marc groaned and rolled over. Then, lest it fall off, he clutched his head in his hands, and sat up. Instantly, he experienced a feeling that was like having several gross of heavy-duty ice picks driven into the base of the skull, just behind the left ear. He groaned again and tried to guess where he might be, but his mind, still in a state of churning confusion, would not be prodded into an answer. It was as limp and uninterested as an old, worn glove. He was surrounded by a brooding, unbroken darkness, and for a moment thoughts of coffins and coal bins chased each other unrelentingly over his tired brain. Then, experimentally, he reached a cautious hand into the blackness, and then quickly shrank back.

The touch of soft, cool flesh was not precisely what he had expected. Neither was he expecting the slap that was soundly administered across the bridge of his nose only a split second later.

"And don't tell me you were just looking for a match, either!" an irate feminine voice rasped. "I'll teach you to come pawing around me!"

"Toffee!"

"Marc!"

Immediately, two slender arms were about his neck, and Toffee was contritely saying, "I'm sorry Marc. I didn't know it was you. It didn't feel like you."

"How should you know how I feel?" Marc asked annoyedly, trying to disentangle himself from her insistent embrace. "Do you always have to say a thing so it sounds lecherous? Where did you come from, anyway?"

"I've materialized from your mind again," Toffee replied gaily, happy at the achievement. "You submerged into your subconscious and dreamed me up a moment ago, so naturally I just dropped everything and returned to consciousness with you. What kind of a mess have you gotten into this time?"

"Mess?"

"Yes. There must be something wrong or you wouldn't have been around bothering me. You never do come around," she added fretfully, "unless something's gone wrong." She patted his hand. "It's because you're such a low type, I guess."

"Holy smoke!" Marc cried, suddenly remembering the day's odd adventures. "You're right. Things are plenty wrong. I was ambushed!"

"Oh, no!" Toffee cried. "How terrible! You're so young!"

"I was hit over the head," Marc added flatly.

"Oh," Toffee breathed with relief. "Where are we?"

Marc had already gotten to his feet and was fumbling along the wall. "I'm on vacation," he said through a dark distance. "We're at the beach house."

"Where's Julie?" Toffee asked with a tinge of apprehension, remembering that Julie, on other occasions, hadn't been precisely cordial.

"She's visiting her mother at the farm," Marc replied shortly. "She read an article about separate vacations."

"Craziest thing I ever heard," Toffee pronounced bluntly. "What are you doing, sanding that wall?"

"I'm looking for the light switch," Marc explained. "It's right by the stairway closet as I remember."

* * * * *

His hand, running out of wall, began fishing absently about in a narrow open space. "I think I've found the closet," he called reassuringly. Then, strangely, he was aware that the space had begun to widen, almost automatically it seemed. He guessed that the door was swinging open of its own volition, and attributed the phenomenon to faulty construction. He made a mental note to check the door in the morning. But what happened a second later could hardly have been explained by structural discrepancies. With truly alarming ferocity, two unidentified arms were flung about his waist, and caught off guard, he was carried crashingly to the floor. The darkness became alive with the sounds of conflict.

"Cut it out, Toffee!" Marc yelled, struggling wildly to free himself, and getting hopelessly entangled. "Try to restrain yourself! This is no time for playing games!"

"I'm perfectly restrained," Toffee called back suspiciously. "And who's playing games ... and what kind of games? I'm just waiting for the lights."

"Then who's this on top of me?" Marc wailed, cagily fighting his way into a position that left him completely impotent against his unseen attacker.

"Why don't you ask him?" Toffee suggested helpfully through a jumble of scuffling, gasping sounds. "I'm sure I don't know." Swiftly, she started in search of the illusive light switch herself.

"I don't think he's interested in formal introductions," Marc wheezed with what sounded like a dying gasp. "Hurry and get those lights on before he kills me. He's strangling me!"

As though in instant answer to his command, the room suddenly blazed with light, and Marc, seeing his assailant, almost nose to nose, turned deathly pale. His eyes snapped lightly shut, and turning his head to one side, his lips began to move feverishly, although his voice seemed to have deserted him. On his chest, face down, and in an immodest state of disorder, lay the lifeless figure of the woman on the beach.

Toffee gazed wrathfully on this grotesque display, and the usual hand moved threateningly to the usual hip. "Well, you might at least have the decency to stop whispering to her!" she hissed contemptuously. "The lights are on, you know! I can see you! I'm not blind!" She paused for a moment, and seeing no change in the distressing tableau, went on. "Tell that shameless wench to get up and get out of here! You never miss a chance do you? The minute the lights go out, you've got to be frisking about on the carpet!"

With a tremendous effort, Marc partly opened one eye and looked pleadingly up at her. He managed to force out a few wretched words. "She's ... she's not a ... a shameless wench," he whispered half-hysterically. "She's ... she's a ... a ... a body!"

"I can see that for myself!" Toffee retorted hotly. "And not such a hot one, either, if you ask me. Now, tell her to gather up her flabby old body and drag it out that door, before I practice violence on it. Don't just lie there staring up at me like a wall-eyed clam!"

"But ... but she can't!"

"Sodden drunk, eh?"

"No. She ... she's a dead body." Marc's voice suddenly broke through its bonds and came back with unexpected force. "She's been shot!" he roared. "Get her off me before I lose my mind!"

The angry fire of suspicion flickered one last time in Toffee's eyes, then went out. She leaned down for a better look at the smothering figure. "How sinister!" she breathed.

"Don't waste time on adjectives!" Marc entreated. "Just get the horrible thing off me!"

* * * * *

Toffee forced a slender hand to the woman's shoulder, and with an incongruously dainty gesture rolled it from the distraught Marc. "It makes my spine fairly tingle," she said.

"What do you think it's done to mine?" Marc asked reproachfully, getting to his feet and rubbing the injured section.

Toffee continued to stare at the discarded body. "I do think you could have shown better taste in your choice of victims," she mused. "It couldn't have been a crime of passion, or passion isn't everything I've heard it is." Having satisfied herself on this point, she turned brightly to Marc. "Why did you shoot her?" she asked with honest curiosity.

"I didn't shoot her," Marc denied stoutly. "I only saw it done ... down on the beach."

"Then what's that gun doing here?" Toffee asked, pointing to the corner.

Marc forced himself to pick up the revolver. It looked like the one he'd seen on the beach. Obviously, whoever had hit him, hadn't meant to kill him. It would have been so much easier to have shot him. "Someone's trying to frame me," he said, as though trying to explain this fact to himself.

"I don't blame them," was Toffee's prompt reply. "You're quite a picture in those yellow trunks. They set your sunburn off like a keg of dynamite."

"But what am I going to do with that body?" Marc asked, ignoring the irrelevant criticism. "If it's found here, they'll lock me up forever."

Toffee thoughtfully chewed a thumbnail. "You might try giving it to someone," she said pensively. "There must be just lots of people who are simply dying to have a body all their own. A person with an ingenuity at all could probably find all kinds of uses for it."

"Stop driveling," Marc broke in curtly. "And try to think of something useful. I'll try to get it back in the closet, then I'll have to change clothes. We'll decide what to do about it afterwards."

"You asked me," Toffee reminded him. "I don't suppose the woman really cares much what you do with her body. After all, she hasn't much use for it any more. And it wasn't really such a good one to begin with. I'm sure I wouldn't care what people did with mine."

"You never did," Marc snapped, and summoning the courage born of necessity, he lifted the figure reluctantly to his shoulder. "You have no modesty. And please don't go on like that about bodies. It's indecent."

"It's no more indecent than you in those trunks," Toffee retorted.

Marc propped the body in the closet and quickly closed the door.

"With legs like yours," Toffee went on, "I wouldn't even take a bath for consideration of the poor peeping Toms, much less go out on the beach where innocent women and children might see the things. They're horrible."

Marc had ignored the insult as long as he could. "What's wrong with my legs?" he asked woundedly.

"They're skinny," Toffee said, thoughtfully taking stock, "and hairy. They look like a couple of twisted pipe cleaners ... dirty pipe cleaners. They also turn the stomach and wither the soul."

"That's enough!" Marc yelled reddening. "Hereafter, I'll thank you to leave my pipe clean ... my legs out of this. Just try to forget that I even have legs at all."

"Gladly," was the obliging reply. "I'll just pretend to myself that you're staggering about on hooks."

Blanching, Marc strove to restore his sense of dignity. He drew himself up to his full height, some six feet, two inches, and started regally up the stairs. With the gun still in his hand, he looked like a noble suicider. "I'll return," he said frigidly, "after I've put on some trousers." Then he stopped and regarded Toffee's transparent tunic with slow deliberation. "And while we're on the subject," he added quietly. "You might just try to do something about your own nakedness. It's revolting!"

* * * * *

Marc pulled on a discreetly colorful sport jacket and glanced at himself in the mirror. With the exception of a worried expression, everything he wore was in neat, conservative good taste. He sighed, left the room.

Downstairs, he crossed the reception hall, careful to give the closet a wide berth, and made his way into the darkened living room. He felt his way to a floor lamp and turned it on. Immediately, a bright circle of light spread over the thick carpet like ink through a blotter. Noting this common phenomenon without interest, he turned away, then stopped as the door at the opposite end of the room opened. Toffee, resplendent in a cunning arrangement of the dining room drapes, moved sinuously into the room with all the unconscious grace of a stalking panther.

The drapes, a bold flowery design on a background of white, had been fashioned into a bare midriff evening gown of truly provocative design. The two parts, obviously disdainful of each other, contrived to leave a maximum of midriff, while doing little or nothing toward covering their assigned portions. The skirt was widely split at one side, exposing an exquisite leg, like a diamond in a show case. Toffee's nod to decency had been most perfunctory indeed.

"Like it?" she asked, smiling radiantly. "You'd never dream that it used to cover windows, would you?"

"I'd never dream it ever covered anything," Marc replied amazedly. "And if it ever had any ambitions along those lines, they're certainly shot now."

"It was just an idea I had," Toffee replied proudly.

"In night clubs all over the country," Marc commented dryly. "Thousands of girls have that same idea three times nightly, only they get paid for their nakedness ... or hauled into night court by the decency squad."

Fortunately, any further discussion of Toffee's "creation" was suddenly forestalled by the unexpected sound, from outside, of tires leaving pavement and turning grindingly onto gravel. Marc and Toffee ran swiftly to the window, where they vied athletically for a view of the drive; each for his own separate reason. Marc was having nightmarish visions of Julie, returned with a changed mind to share the remainder of his vacation. Toffee only knew that any addition, at this moment, was bound to be an interesting one.

"It's a man!" she breathed happily.

"Thank heaven," Marc sighed relievedly, then on second thought added, "Good grief!"

An instant later, a knock sounded at the front door and Toffee started eagerly toward the hall. "I'll let him in," she said over her shoulder.

"Don't!" cried Marc. "What about the thing in the closet?"

"Oh, that!" Toffee called back airily. "We'll have him hang his hat on a lamp or something." She continued toward the door.

"Stop!" Marc yelled commandingly.

And Toffee opened the door.

* * * * *

A lanky rustic, replete with drooping mustache and high heeled boots gazed unbelievingly at the dream-like creature that had opened the door to him. And a great, wistful sadness came into his eyes. "I'm Morton Miller," he drawled with a voice that so perfectly completed the homespun picture it was hard to believe he hadn't arrived by stage coach.

"It could be worse," Toffee consoled, obviously in serious doubt of her own statement.

"I'm the sheriff," the fellow elaborated.

Marc and Toffee exchanged a glance that was a silent, two-way scream.

"You got a body, lady?"

"You ought to know," Toffee replied, snatching furtively after her retreating composure. "You've hardly taken your eyes off it."

The sheriff cleared his throat and his voice dug its toe awkwardly into a hay stack. "No, lady," he said nervously. "That ain't what I mean. I'm lookin' fer a dead body."

"We don't have any," Toffee lied promptly, as though speaking of termites.

"That's funny," the sheriff mused chattily, now on firmer ground. "A fella called me on the phone and said a woman'd been shot out here."

Marc swiftly joined them. He knew that the wheels of calamity had inexorably begun to turn. He could almost hear them grinding.

"What fellow?" Toffee was asking.

"Don't rightly know. Wouldn't give his name. Had a sort of whiney voice, as I recollect. Sounded kinda goofy."

"He was goofy," Marc put in flatly. "Goofy as they come. No one's been shot here yet." Then, starting toward the door, he added, "Goodnight."

"Just a minute," the sheriff said, placing a mammoth foot firmly on the doorsill. "I gotta look around. It's my duty." He eyed Marc suspiciously. "And just who are you?"

"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc said almost ashamedly. "This is my place."

The sheriff nodded, pushed the door open, and stepped authoritatively inside. Obviously, this was one arm of the law that had a well developed muscle, if not much else. "Always like to have the owner around, when I'm ransackin' fer a body," he said cryptically. "Usually find that's the bird that hid 'er there."

"You're making a mistake," Toffee objected weakly.

"Maybe," the sheriff replied composedly. Then he pointed to the closet. "First things first," he said with thread-bare philosophy. "What's in there?"

"Nothing," Toffee replied with desperate casualness. "It's just an empty closet."

In an attempt at simulated innocence, Toffee had managed to look completely like a Borgia, caught with her cyanide showing. Morton Miller gazed briefly on this laughable performance, and started wordlessly toward the closet. Toffee followed quickly after him.

"Maybe you're right," she said with a surprising reversal of attitude. "You really ought to look around, and satisfy yourself that everything's all right. We wouldn't want you to go away feeling frustrated you know."

She stepped lightly in front of him and opened the closet door.

"It's pretty dark in there," the sheriff complained. "Ain't there a light?"

Toffee nodded. "It's loose," she explained. "I couldn't reach it to tighten it. But I'll bet you can. You're so tall, and all." She pointed to one of the closet's darkest corners. "It's back there."

The sheriff, a determined man if anything, followed the suggestion blindly, and moved into the inner darkness of the tiny compartment. Never had a man looked so much like a lamb going trustingly to slaughter.

* * * * *

It happened just as Toffee had hoped it would. No sooner was the sheriff in the closet than she slammed the door and turned the key standing ready in its lock. It may even be that she closed the door a bit before the sheriff was fully inside, for there had been an undignified slapping sound that implied as much. Either way, however, the deed done, she turned breathlessly to Marc.

"Let's get out of here!" she cried. "You've been framed like a museum masterpiece."

Marc, too stunned to quite grasp the situation, stared at her blankly.

"What did you do with the gun?" Toffee went on.

"It's upstairs, on my bed," he murmured, gazing unbelievingly at the closet door.

The atmosphere within the closet was swiftly becoming agitated. A series of formidable thudding sounds was suddenly followed by a shriek that sounded like a fast freight going through a rural junction at midnight.

"I think the sheriff's found the body," Toffee commented dryly. "Well, it's what he was after, and he can't say we didn't do our best to help him. Let's get out of here. If he keeps that up, he'll wake the dead."

To Marc the remark seemed singularly ill-timed. Shudderingly, as he followed Toffee out the door, he tried not to think of the grim goings-on inside the darkened closet.

* * * * *

The car swerved crazily, missed the oncoming truck by a sickeningly narrow margin, and sped on down the highway, followed by a shower of rare and salty expletives, recited with great sincerity by a truck driver who was undisputedly a master of spicy invective.

"I thought you knew how to drive," Marc moaned, moving his hands slowly away from his eyes.

"There's nothing to it," Toffee bragged, pressing the accelerator to the floor.

"There certainly isn't, the way you do it," Marc replied coldly. "You just step on the starter and, zoom!, before you know it, you're resting quietly in the morgue. It's a dandy arrangement if you have a passion for morgues. It just happens that I haven't."

"Nonsense!" Toffee cried. "You worry too much. A child could do it!"

"I'd rather a child did," Marc sighed defeatedly. "I'd feel safer."

"Watch this!" Toffee cried happily. And she started swinging the wheel recklessly from side to side so that the car careened deliriously back and forth, across the road. "There's no end to the fun you can have in a car!"

"Oh, yes there is!" Marc cried, clinging desperately to the door handle. "And ours should take place within the next ten seconds, if I'm any judge!"

"You're so morbid minded," Toffee complained.

Then, at the last possible moment, she swung the car sharply into a side road, and the evening stillness was hastily dispatched to the realm of memory by a shrieking protest from the tortured tires.

"Holy smoke!" yelled Marc. "If the sheriff isn't after us by now, the highway patrol must be."