Part 1

YOU CAN'T SCARE ME!

By CHARLES F. MYERS

Toffee knew that Marc Pillsworth was in trouble again, so she came out of his subconscious mind to help him.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Adventures March 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Whether or not they had passed through the portals of Earl Carroll's, the girls that threaded their way daily through the offices of Marc Pillsworth's advertising agency were undeniably some of the most beautiful in the world. It was probably this abundance of beauty, more than anything else, that caused Marc to shun the more seamy things in life. It was this also that made it so doubly unbearable that, nine times out of ten, every time his office door opened, it was only to admit to his presence one of nature's most vulgar experiments with American womanhood. What Marc, by marrying Julie, had gained in a wife, he had quite certainly lost in a secretary.

Miss Quirtt closed the door primly and turned to face Marc--very easily the nastiest thing she could possibly have done to anyone. As always, just to add stark horror to the picture, she smiled and revealed to her unappreciative employer that she had accomplished the extremely doubtful triumph of whitewashing the old fashioned cow catcher, without, in any way, detracting from its accustomed appearance of up-swept grandeur. The proof of this lay in the sudden appearance of her amazing teeth. As the tight, dry skin of her face drew back to reveal this hideous accomplishment, it was hard to believe that the accompanying creaking sound that echoed through the room, was only a trick of the imagination.

"Yes, Mr. Pillsworth?" she inquired, and thereby added to this already astonishing display of hideosities, the horror of her voice, which held all the melody of a palsied hand searching vainly for the key of E on a rusty guitar.

Marc shuddered and quickly turned his gaze to a strip of oak paneling which had suddenly become, to him, an object of indescribable loveliness. He had only lately come to know why Julie had insisted on the employment of Miss Quirtt. The very qualities which he now found so repulsive had been, to his wife, the attributes that made the woman so desirable for the job. It might as well be admitted that Julie had become unreasonably jealous of Marc's association with a group of girls that seemed to her, pretty stiff competition for the most glamorous "Glamour Chorus" in town, let alone herself.

"Well," Marc said with false heartiness, "today is the day, Miss Quirtt. Will you please bring me the layouts for the Reece campaign? I'm going to submit them this afternoon. You have the key to that file, I believe?" He tried hard not to hear her answering rasp, and heaved a sigh of relief as he heard the door close; the signal that this horribly jarring note had once more, at least momentarily, gone out of his life.

When she returned, it was not quite so bad. This time, he had the contents of the brief case to distract him. It was important that the layouts be complete. His hands ran over them almost lovingly--a full year's advertising material for the most sensational medical product ever to be offered to a suffering public.

* * * * *

Old Gregory Reece really had something this time; a cure-all to end all cure-alls, and one that was the real McCoy into the bargain. It did everything that the old-time medicine doctor claimed, and a good deal more, as well. And that was the very thing that made the drug's initial presentation to the public so difficult. It was too wonderful to be true.

Reece had been cagy in asking all the agencies to submit advertising campaigns. That way, he would be certain to get just the right publicity slant, since this was easily to be the largest account to be had by any agency, ever. It would "make" the agency that got it, and quite likely break the ones that didn't. The firm handling this Reece product would be able to pick and choose the rest of its clients, and Marc was well aware that if the Mayes Agency, his most formidable competitors, beat him out on it, they would hesitate considerably less than a second to pick and choose the very accounts which he, himself, was now handling. However, he was not disturbed. The campaign that his boys had turned out was just the ticket--honest, imaginative and convincing. Besides that, he was already handling a number of other Reece products with considerable success. Confidently, he slid the material back into the brief case and rose from his chair. It was then that he noticed that the room was still haunted by the spectre of the outer office.

"Is there something else, Miss Quirtt?" he asked stiffly.

"Yes, sir. Mrs. Pillsworth called to say that she would meet you here for lunch."

"You told her that I would be out, didn't you?"

"No sir."

"What?"

"I didn't tell her, sir." Miss Quirtt shrilled half-wittedly. "She always makes a fuss about those things. She always thinks that you...."

"I wasn't aware that Mrs. Pillsworth was causing you so much trouble," Marc cut in sarcastically. "I'll have to speak to her about it. In the meantime, Miss Quirtt, call her back and say that I'll be tied up in some very important business during the lunch hour."

There was sincere concern in Marc's eyes as he picked up his hat and left the room. Julie's jealousy was fast becoming an office scandal. Something would certainly have to be done about it, he thought, as he hurried through the outer office, down the steps, and out, onto the sidewalk.

This ugly facet in Julie's otherwise completely beguiling nature, still had a firm grip on his thoughts as, at the sound of the traffic signal, he stepped from the curb, into the street. The city, in this quiet, pausing moment, just before the noon rush, seemed almost too serene. In the mid-day sun, the usually busy intersection had become almost unnaturally still. Perhaps it was this stillness that made the scream appear so dreadfully shrill.

It was a scream that, like a certain cough medicine, came with a three-way action--ear-splitting, hair-raising and nerve-wracking. Marc stopped short, and spun quickly around to discover the source of this dismaying performance. What met the eye didn't match up at all. He wouldn't have been a bit surprised to have seen a banner stretched across the intersection with the query, "What's Wrong With This Picture?" written across it.

At it was, the girl simply stood there on the sidewalk and yelled her head off, for no apparent reason whatever. If there had been a man with an evil looking glint in his eye, running either from or toward her,--it made no matter which--there might have been some reason for this wretched recital, but there was not. Suddenly, the girl unbelievably increased her volume and pointed directly at Marc. It was then that he heard the automobile behind him. He turned just in time to receive a montage impression of flashing chromium, black enamel, and spinning wheels,--all headed squarely in his direction.

* * * * *

What happened after that was a bit confused, except for the one clear fact that the pavement, apparently overcome with a mad desire to have a better view of Marc's face, was rushing impetuously toward it. It may have been this topsy-turvy indifference to the natural laws of gravity that dislodged the manhole cover, but whatever it was, a dark, black hole had instantly appeared in the center of the street, and Marc was unaccountably plunging, head first, into it.

As he descended into the thick darkness of the hole, he had no sensation of fear, however. He was falling slowly, almost floating downward; and his occasional contact with it, told him that he was moving through a sort of cylinder, the wall of which was of a consistency that brought to mind a sort of soft sponge rubber. Indeed, he had almost begun to enjoy his mishap, when he came easily to rest on what apparently was the bottom. This time, his hands came in contact with a different substance. He seemed to be lying on a small plot of grass.

As though his landing there had been the signal for it, a thin rim of bright light appeared evenly around the bottom of the dark tube, and began to widen steadily. As Marc looked up to discover down what passage he had come, he realized that it was withdrawing into what appeared to be a cloudless blue sky, and instantly his attention was drawn to his immediate surroundings.

There was something familiar about the tranquil little valley, with its emerald greenness and its soft blue mist that gave everything a shimmering chiffon-like softness. It was like a place long forgotten that, once remembered, would surely recall happy memories. Marc got to his feet and turned to the tree that stood, alone and lovely, behind him. Then, suddenly he started back in alarm. The tree seemed to have given bud to a pair of extremely well shaped legs.

"Well, it's about time!" Toffee said shrewishly, peering out at him from the foliage. "You've no idea how bored I've been, just sitting around in this awful stately mind of yours. I don't see how you can stand the silly thing, yourself. Don't you ever think of anything off-color,--something I could really get my teeth into?"

Marc stared at her in dismay as she swung lightly out of the tree. Her red hair, caught by the breeze, seemed like flame.

"Good grief!" she continued fretfully. "I've been sitting around up here, waiting for you, for so long, I've nearly got middle-age spread."

Marc quickly closed his eyes as she prepared to prove this statement. "I'll take your word for it!" he cried hurriedly.

Toffee's deep green eyes suddenly came alight as she grinned. "Oh, all right, you hypocritical old Puritan," she said affectionately. "Now that you're here, I might as well admit I'm glad to see you again." She started toward him. "Kiss me and say hello,--in that order."

Marc's hand was instantly raised in defense. "Oh, no!" he cried. "We're not going to have any more of that! It just leads to trouble."

Toffee looked grieved. "You haven't changed a bit," she said disappointedly.

"And that isn't all," Marc replied evenly. "I'm not _going_ to change, either. When I think of the way you messed things up for me last time,[1] my flesh fairly crawls. You're going to have to sit this one out alone."

[Footnote 1: Reference is made to a previous adventure of Toffee and Marc Pillsworth, which appeared in the January issue under the title: "I'll Dream of You."--Ed.]

Toffee smiled mysteriously. "Don't you bet any money on that," she said confidently. "Anyway, it won't hurt anything if we just talk over old times, will it?" She motioned toward the tree. "Let's sit down. You look tired."

Slowly, and definitely against his better judgment, Marc started in Toffee's direction, then suddenly he stopped short.

"Run! Run!" boomed the voice. It didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. It was just in the air. Even the mist seemed to stir under its heavy tone. "Run! Run!" it repeated, and Marc, not knowing clearly why, felt an impelling urge to follow its commanding advice.

Suddenly, in the grip of an unknown panic, he was running without direction or reason, until, in the influence of an impulse, he looked back, over his shoulder.

The black cylinder, now flexible, was twisting and turning after him, gaining on him at every step. Frantically, he increased his speed. In spite of the disturbing presence of Toffee, now that he had found his way back to the peaceful valley, he was reluctant to leave it. He tried desperately to dodge, as he saw the mouth of the dark passage almost directly overhead, yawning threateningly. Then, resignedly, he knew it was no use. It had followed him, and was already shutting away the light of the valley.

"Run! Run!" the voice continued vainly, but edging its way through, was also the voice of Toffee.

"Wait! Wait for me!" she screamed, and suddenly, impetuously, Marc was holding a hand out to her through the remaining free space.

All of a sudden, the tube closed over them with a dreadful sucking sound, and they were being lifted upward, Toffee clinging to Marc desperately, as though for her very life. The upward journey, thought Marc, was to be very like the descent, except for the accompanying sound of the voice, as it repeated over and over, "Run! Run!"

* * * * *

"Hit and _run_," someone was saying. "This guy was on the wrong end of it. Got it right in the middle of the street. According to his identification, his name is Pillsworth. He's not really hurt, just bruised up a little."

Then, a door closed somewhere, and a distinctly antiseptic smell was whispering to Marc that he was in the receiving room of a hospital. He lay still and kept his eyes closed for a moment. His head had become the uneasy heir to a dull throbbing feeling.

After a moment of silent consideration, he opened his eyes and then closed them quickly. He could have sworn that he'd seen Toffee smiling down at him. But that was impossible! It couldn't possibly happen twice in one lifetime to the same man,--not one that drank as little as he did, anyway. In another moment, however, a pair of warm lips were pressed firmly against his own, to tell him that it not only could happen, but had. In a mood of utter helplessness, he did not resist.

"Well, that's more like it!" Toffee said happily.

Marc immediately became starkly upright on the slab-like examination table, and at once, Toffee's wayward mode of dress was forcibly recalled to him. She still wore the same filmy, transparent scrap of material, and it, for its part, still seemed to cling to her remarkable figure reluctantly, as though having urgent business elsewhere. It was a material that could conceivably be put to a wide variety of uses, but it was unfortunate that not one of these uses was, in the remotest way, connected with the coverage of the human body.

"You--you--you--No!" Marc sputtered incoherently.

"No?" asked Toffee.

"No! You can't be here!" Marc gasped. "It isn't right! You'll just have to go back to where you came from."

Toffee's expression swiftly became that of the patient martyr. "Do I have to explain it to you every time?" she asked. "You know perfectly well that I've materialized from your subconscious, and I can't possibly return until the proper time--whenever that is. I promise faithfully to disappear when you sleep or lose consciousness--then I have to go back--but until my mission is accomplished, I have to keep right on materializing during every one of your waking hours. I do wish you'd get used to the idea."

Marc winced perceptibly. "Your mission?" he asked.

"Of course," Toffee said. "You men are all alike,--just a pack of selfish dogs. You must have needed me for something or you wouldn't have dreamed me up again."

"But you can't stay this time," Marc wailed. "I'm a married man now."

"Oh, don't let that bother you," Toffee said reassuringly. "I don't mind a bit. In fact, I think it's lovely for you to be married."

Marc leaned defeatedly back on the table and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, no--no," he murmured mournfully. Then, he sat up quickly as a voice sounded from just outside the door.

"Is this the right room?" it asked. "Is this where you put Pillsworth?" Then there followed a silence in which another unseen being apparently answered.

"Holy smoke!" Marc whispered. "You've got to get out of here! If they find you in here, like that, all hell will break loose." His eyes searched the room frantically and finally came to grateful rest on a white cloth covered screen in the far corner. He pointed quickly to it. "Get behind that!"

"What for?" hissed Toffee, placing a slender hand defiantly on a round, smooth hip. "Why do you always want me to hide just when a man comes around?"

"Don't argue!" Marc said threateningly. "Get behind that screen!"

"Oh, all right," Toffee pouted, "but I think you're just a kill-joy."

* * * * *

Slowly, she crossed the room, and slid behind the screen, just as the door opened to admit one of the tallest interns Marc had ever seen. In his white uniform, he looked like one of the chalk cliffs of Dover, and his ruddy face might well have been the sun rising over that cliff.

"Well, Mr. Pillsworth!" he called with hateful professional joviality. "I see that we're up. How are we feeling after our little accident?"

"Were you in it too?" Marc asked dryly, but the young man was not to be set aside with so trivial a rebuke. He, with his silly smile, thought Marc, had probably attended patients for years that hated his very guts.

"We were very lucky," the fellow continued offensively.

"Were we?"

"Yes. You haven't really been hurt at all. According to the report, you've no internal injuries, and only a few bruises that won't show at all, since they're located...."

"Never mind!" Marc cut in hastily, glancing toward the screen. "I'll find out where they are for myself."

The interne lounged his way across the room, and dangerously rested his arm on the top edge of the screen. Marc wondered if he were going to have a relapse. He almost wished he were still unconscious.

"I--I'll be permitted to leave the hospital, won't I?" he asked shakily.

The young man nodded. "You're perfectly all right. You'll just need to take it easy for a day or so. We might have kept you here for observation, but the hospital is too crowded. We tried to call your wife, but she was out."

"Fine!" said Marc. "And where is my brief case?"

"Brief case?" the fellow asked stupidly.

"Yes. Brief case. The one I was carrying when I was hit."

"But there wasn't any."

Marc felt a rush of terror which subsided almost immediately. It had probably been taken back to the office. After all, his name and address were all over the thing. Then, once again, his heart leaped to his throat, and the brief case was forgotten, as he saw the interne's hand slip lazily behind the screen. Marc needn't have worried himself about what was going to happen, for it happened instantly, and no one could have prevented it anyway.

The young man's red face turned an extravagant shade of deep purple, as his anguished cry rang out through the room like a call from the damned. Moaning wretchedly, he bent double and pressed his injured hand between his knees. The screen tottered drunkenly for a moment, and then clattered to the floor to reveal Toffee engaged in a half-won battle to wedge herself into a stiffly starched nurse's uniform.

The fire of virtuous outrage that blazed in Toffee's eyes, as she stepped over the screen, forcing her arm through a reluctant sleeve, clearly implied that, compared to her, Elsie Dinsmore was nothing more than a loose living slattern.

"You bit me!" the interne wailed.

"You bet I did!" snapped Toffee. "And next time you come groping around where I'm dressing, with those great hammy paws of yours, I'll gnaw them off clear up to the elbows!"

In the face of such heated self-righteousness, the young man could hardly doubt her statement. Obviously, he was being tormented by the picture of himself, continuing, armless, through the remainder of his life. "I'm sorry," he said contritely, apparently forgetting that, in view of the excellent nurse's quarters just upstairs, the indignant girl had chosen a rather singular place to dress.

"You should be," Toffee replied icily. "If it happens again, I'll report you." And without waiting for an answer, she started regally from the room.

"Button that dress!" Marc yelled inadvertently.

"Button your lip," Toffee replied composedly, disappearing around the edge of the door.

Marc wished desperately that he could go after her. There was no telling what she might do. He only knew that, having Toffee back, was merely a matter of traveling the shortest road to utter confusion at the highest rate of speed. He shivered at the thought of what doubtlessly lay ahead.

* * * * *

As Marc swung out of the hospital door, the last brilliant rays of a dying sun almost blinded him for a moment, and he didn't see Toffee, at first, sitting there on the steps, chin in hand, and looking very much like a completely thoughtless rendition of "The Thinker."

"What kept you so long?" she asked irritably.

"I had to sign some papers," Marc explained. "It's too bad that no one got the license number on the car that hit me. It would have...." Suddenly, he stopped, and stared at Toffee, mouth agape. The white uniform that he had last seen her in had miraculously been replaced, in part, by a black evening gown, that had obviously seen hell at the ruthless hand of its cutter. It had hardly a back to call its own, and as for the front, instead of covering Toffee's amazing figure, it seemed merely to draw a heavy black line around it for emphasis.

A look of pain came into Marc's eyes. "Where did you get _that_?" he asked weakly.

Toffee motioned vaguely across the street. "At that store over there," she answered serenely. "I charged it to you."

Marc groaned. "What was the matter with the uniform? I thought it was very neat."

"Wasn't it, though?" Toffee replied disdainfully. "It's no wonder all the people in the hospital are sick. It's enough to make anyone ill, just having to look at a woman all trussed up in one of those starch ridden atrocities." She pivoted on the steps, and a shimmering black cloud moved gracefully above her lovely legs. "Isn't it a dream?"

"Yes," Marc said emphatically. "A perfect nightmare. You look like something that should be raided and hauled off to headquarters. Why, if Julie...." A sudden chill lodged itself in his spine. "Holy Smoke! Let's get out of here!"

Unceremoniously, he took her by the arm and rushed her down the length of the steps to a taxi that was luckily standing idle in the hospital drive. As they approached it, an aged head, looking not unlike a mildewed melon, jutted from the driver's window, and two faded eyes widened with surprise. From wrinkled lips, a thin whistle sounded feebly into the dimming day.

"That's what I like about this world," Toffee said, getting into the cab. "Everyone seems so happy. At least the men do. They're always whistling."

* * * * *

"Oh, I remember this place," Toffee said, as Marc opened the door to the agency.

"I wish you didn't," Marc said flatly. "Without a memory, you're a terror, with one, you're a positive menace." He swung the door wide and motioned toward the steps. "Get in there, out of sight."

"And waste this beautiful dress?" she asked disappointedly. "I thought you were taking me out somewhere."

"You were wrong," Marc said shortly. "And besides, that dress has already been wasted until there's hardly anything left of it. It's indecent."

"Yes. I know," giggled Toffee, starting up the steps.

For a moment, they continued in silence, until Marc suddenly stopped short. There was a light burning just beyond the head of the stairs. "Wait a minute," he commanded. "Miss Quirtt is still up there. The efficiency of that female is enough to make your blood run cold, and she's got a mind like a clogged up cesspool. If she gets a load of you in that dress, it'll be a public scandal by morning."

"What are we going to do?" asked Toffee.

Marc considered this for a moment, and came to a decision. "We're going on up," he said determinedly. "But you'll have to stay behind me. Stick to me like wall paper."

Toffee nodded enthusiastically. Sticking to Marc like wall paper seemed to be her fondest dream. She stood aside to let him pass.