And George, finding himself alone, dissolved his ectoplasm and sat down with a troubled sigh. Absently, he scooped a handful of steam cloud from the small embankment and tossed it lightly out, into space.
He would need a long time to ponder the narrow escape he had just had. Then, too, the fact that Marc Pillsworth, through his unreasonable obstinance, had nearly wrecked his career, was not a matter to be dropped without serious consideration. And beyond that there was also that shrewish little creature who called herself Toffee. Toffee. Yes, a singular creature indeed. He wondered what department she worked under. To be sure, she was a nasty tempered little package, but her legs were nice, and her figure . . . He wondered, musingly, if someday they might meet again . . .
THE SPIRIT OF TOFFEE
Things were bad enough for Marc without having a friendly ghost messing up his life—but Toffee only made matters worse! ...
IN HIS private office the guiding light of the Pillsworth Advertising Agency sat behind his desk and looked slightly haunted.
And Marc Pillsworth was not the sort to look haunted without a good and sufficient reason. In this case, the reason seemed to be not only good and sufficient but rather spine-tingling into the bargain. Marc closed his eyes and made a real effort to suppress a nagging impulse to scream. But when he looked again the situation across the room had not noticeably bettered itself; the shoe was still in front of the chair, hanging indolently in mid-air.
In the last few minutes Marc had closed his eyes repeatedly, telling himself that the shoe was only a product of his imagination, an apparition born of a mind that had given way under an overwhelming burden of financial and domestic worries. But always, when he opened his eyes again, the shoe was still there, resting rakishly on nothing at all, seeming to stare at him evily with its beady eyelettes. Also, there was something about the hateful thing that bespoke its owner’s rather pungent personality. It had a look about it that was unmistakably aw-go-to-hell. It was a look that Marc found particularly distasteful, for it could mean only one thing. No getting away from it. George was back. And Marc wished he wasn’t.
Marc had learned of George’s existence through a previous experience so bitter it all but galled him just to think about it. When the ghost, Marc’s own, to be explicit, had first descended to this region under the misapprehension that Marc had accidentally terminated his own earthly sojourn, he immediately impressed himself on everyone as a trouble maker of the first hot water. And, as though his strikingly original haunting activities hadn’t been enough, he had resorted to random methods of mayhem in an effort to make Marc’s demise an untidy actuality so that he, George, might thereby secure his own position as a permanent earthly “haunt.” The affair had not been a picnic for Marc.
Though the wayward spectre, when materialized, was an exact duplicate of Marc in all physical respects, there the similarity did a screaming about face and streaked rapidly in the opposite direction. Where Marc was sober and serious-minded, George was a veritable connoisseur of all things viceful and frivolous. And where Marc was inherently honest, modest and retiring, George was frankly a crook, a braggart and rank exhibitionist. Also, it was not consoling that the spirit was extremely careless in the manipulation of his ectoplasm . . . a thing that any other, right-minded ghost would go to any lengths not to be.
If Marc looked on the reappearance of George without pleasure, his attitude was not entirely unwarranted.
Marc glanced at the shoe again and shuddered. Absently he wondered how he would ever manage to explain the silly thing if someone should suddenly pop into the office unannounced. Obviously, something had to be done about it; he couldn’t just let it go on dangling there, looking smug and complacent like that. And certainly it showed no inclination to leave of its own accord. In fact, it seemed quite content, as though it might just go on hanging around forever. Clearly, the situation demanded positive action. With quiet deliberation Marc lifted a bronze paper weight from his desk and aimed it with care.
The weight only grazed the toe of the shoe and fell dully to the carpet. But at least it produced some effect. The shoe instantly vanished. Marc leaned back and pressed a trembling hand to his eyes. Then he glanced quickly up through a haze of apprehension as a voice . . . a duplicate of his own . . . echoed across the room
“Well, I’ll be damned!” it exclaimed. “My ectoplasm must have slipped. How long has that shoe been showing?”
“Showing?” Marc said in a voice sounding a good deal less like his own than the other. “The awful thing has had me close to gurgling dementia for nearly ten minutes now. And if you must speak to me, please have the decent good grace to show yourself. It makes my spine fairly lurch to hear a voice coming out of nowhere like that.”
MARC didn’t realize the folly of his request until too late. Piecemeal, an arm, a leg, a mid-section at a time, George became visible, looking exactly like Marc right down to the last button.
Marc gazed on this phenomenon with utmost revulsion. “Can’t you materialize all at the same time?” he asked fretfully. “Do you always have to come into my presence looking like the victim of a hatchet murder?”
George grinned agreeably. “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t concentrate on everything at once, you know.”
“It seems you could at least concentrate on consecutive things,” Marc grumbled. “You needn’t break out like a rash.” He looked up and blanched. Neckless, George’s head was hovering over his collar like a loosely anchored balloon. “Oh, Lord!” he gasped. “How sordid!”
The head glanced around pleasantly, unaware of its airy isolation. It gazed admiringly down the length of the lean body beneath it. “Rather a nice job,” it said proudly. “No foggy spots. Everything very flesh-andbloody looking, I think.”
“Bloody, is right!” Marc croaked. “It all but drips with gore. For heaven sake complement that head with a neck before I scream.”
George flushed prettily, closed his eyes and obliged. The missing neck sprang cooperatively into place. To Marc the spectacle was almost as repulsive as the disconnected head.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he breathed. “I’d never live through it.”
“I’ll try to be more careful in the future,” George agreed.
Marc turned a quizzical eye on the ghost. He was being far too agreeable . .. almost sickeningly so. In his face there was a sort of determined pleasantness that looked ill at ease in such unfamiliar surroundings. A suspicion stirred vaguely in the back of Marc’s mind.
“If you think you’re going to kill me with kindness, you back-stabber, just forget it. It won’t work.”
“How can you think such things?” George asked woundedly.
“It just came to me, all of a sudden, looking at your smirking face.”
“You do me a terrible injustice,” George replied. “You cut me to the quick.”
“Believe me,” Marc said relentlessly, “I’d make it deeper if I could.”
“You’re going to be ashamed you’ve spoken to me like this,” George said. “I’ve come here to do you a favor.”
“Then do me one. Go away. I’ve enough trouble as it is.”
“Trouble?” George asked with sudden interest. “What kind of trouble?”
“Everything serious,” Marc said. “Especially now that you’re here.”
George smiled thoughtfully. “Conditions seem about perfect for my mission,” he murmured.
“Mission?” Marc looked on the spirit with open consternation.
“It’s the High Council,” George explained. “The big brass in the spirit world. They’re making me do penance for the way I behaved the last time I was here.” A shamefaced expression swept over his features. “They threw the book at me. They say I’ve set Spirit-Mortal relations back five hundred years and knocked their good neighbor policy into a cocked hat. Anyway, the upshot of the thing is that they’ve ordered me back here to haunt you until I’ve done you a good turn to make up for last time. And if I don’t . . .” Here
his voice broke with emotion and he shuddered. “They’ve only given me thirty six hours to make good.” He waved an unhappy hand at his materialized body. “And I can’t stay like this too long, either. They only gave me an emergency issue of ectoplasm, so I have to use it sparingly.” He looked at Marc pleadingly. “Though the idea thoroughly repells me, you’ve just got to let me do something nice for you. What can I do?”
“Off hand,” Marc said unpleasantly, “I can think of any number of things for you to do. Without exception they are fatal and extremely messy.”
“You don’t like me very well, do you?”
“Since you force me to say it,” Marc said flatly, “you disgust me. You disgust me through and through.”
George glanced up, interested. “Through and through what?” he asked.
MARC’S hand slapped hard against the desk. “Now, don’t start that!” he grated. “This time, keep your simpering banalities to yourself.”
“I only wanted to know . . .”
“Enough!”
“But if I’m going to do something nice for you,” George continued doggedly, “I have to know what’s troubling you, don’t I? That’s why I’ve been sitting around here half the night and all morning. Ever since midnight, I’ve been waiting right here for something to turn up that I could help you with.”
Marc looked distressed. “Must you help me, George?” he pleaded. “Can’t you just go on back to this Council thing of yours and tell them everything’s all right. Tell them I love you like a brother. Lie your head off. You can do it. Only, please, please, don’t try to help me.”
George sank back in his chair with a sigh. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. “If I did, they’d ...”
Suddenly he stopped speaking as a knock sounded on the door. He shot Marc an anxious glance.
“Dematerialize!” Marc hissed. “Disappear!”
George was instantly out of his chair, completely confused in his eagerness to do exactly as Marc wished. First a leg disappeared, then an arm; then his entire torso became foggy and vaporous. Suddenly the arm and leg reappeared again. He looked up at Marc, panic stricken, as the lower part of his face faded up to the nose, then stopped. He closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate with all his will. For a moment his entire body flickered like a weakening light bulb, disappeared, and promptly rematerialized in total.
“For Pete’s sake!” Marc cried. “Do you have to keep flashing on and off like an electrical advertisement? Fade out, will you?”
The distress in George’s face was genuine. He was earnestly doing everything he could to cooperate. “I’m too excited,” he said. “Emotional disturbances always react on me this way.”
The knock suddenly sounded on the door again, and Marc started as though he’d been struck. “Calm down!” he yelled. “For the love of heaven, be calm!”
George nodded, closed his eyes and breathed deeply several times. Slowly, a section at a time, he faded from sight.
Marc turned relievedly to the door. “Come in!” he called. Then turning back, he suddenly yelled, “No! Stay out!”
Like a great brown rat, George’s shoe was loping lazily across the room. Apparently the spirit was habitually forgetful of this particular extremity. Marc raced after it and came abreast of it just as it reached the chair. He swung his foot behind him and kicked viciously. The shoe faded just in time to save itself, and Marc’s foot collided painfully with the chair. Moaning, he sat down helplessly on the floor and began to nurse the offended member. Then, at the sound of Memphis’ voice, he glanced up with horrified eyes. The secretary was observing him interestedly from the doorway.
“A new dance step?” she asked tonelessly.
“Just . . . just getting a little exercise,” Marc stammered lamely. “Got to tone up the old system once in a while, you know. Push-ups.” He flexed his arms in half-hearted demonstration.
Memphis moved uncertainly into the room and closed the door. “Look out that chair doesn’t push back,” she said.
Marc laughed nervously and got to his feet. “I slipped,” he said.
“Well,” Memphis said resignedly, “since you’ve already cracked, I guess these can’t hurt you too much.” She extended a hand full of papers and dropped them on the desk. “Bills,” she announced.
“The show?” Marc asked soberly.
Memphis nodded. “I dropped in at rehearsal last night, just out of morbid curiosity.” She said it in a tone of voice generally reserved for use in funeral parlors and morgues. “I caught one of Julie’s numbers.” A look of utmost discomfort rested curiously on her ruddy face. “Sorry, Mr. Pillsworth.”
Obviously Memphis was acting as the close friend who always consoles the bereaved.
Marc didn’t know when the bug of theatrical ambition had begun to gnaw at the foundations of his home, but he was willing to bet an attractive sum that the craven little termite had been at its ravenous work for years, considering the matrimonial and financial devastation its insidious activities had wrought in just the last few weeks.
JULIE’S days as a model and “lady of the chorus” had dawned and waned long before Marc had ever met her. And that being the case, he was all too willing to forgive and forget them. Even in moments of domestic stress, when their handsome ghosts stalked arrogantly through his parlor, bedroom and bath, keeping Julie company as she proclaimed her intention to leave him and resume her “career” . . . even then he refused to pay them any serious attention.
However, he might have displayed more wisdom had he given those days all the studied attention due a plan of atomic control, particularly during the last few months, during which, in Julie’s reminiscences, they had taken on a more intense, misty-eyed glamour. But what Marc didn’t know was that one of Julie’s erstwhile chorus girl friends had recently arrived at a rather spectacular Broadway success.
For Julie, certain envious reactions had followed this event like a poison oak rash after an active day in the woods. The persistent weed of ambition that had been languishing in her innermost heart all these years suddenly flourished and blossomed forth like a tangle of deadly nightshade. From that moment on, though Marc was blissfully unaware of it at the time, the future of the Pillsworth marriage and bankroll was in deadly peril. Even Marc’s better judgment was in jeopardy, for when it came to psychological warfare, Julie was just the girl to teach the War Department a trick or two that would probably curl its hair. It was no time at all before Marc was financing a fabulously expensive musical comedy, entitled “Love’s Gone Winging,” and wondering what had ever possessed him. And all this on top of several outstandingly bad investments. The future was dusky indeed, if it still existed at all.
Marc stared unhappily at Memphis. “Pretty bad, huh?” he asked.
“If I told you what I think of your wife’s talents, Mr. Pillsworth,” Memphis said regretfully, “you’d either have to fight me or fire me. Maybe both. Mrs. Pillsworth may be a star tonight, but I bet she does a faster nose-dive than Halley’s Comet. I hope she’s getting a good rest today. She’s going to need her strength.”
Marc shook his head. “Got any idea what the total costs are so far?”
Memphis gazed unhappily out the window. “I’d rather not say,” she murmured. “You’d think I was lying. I would, too. There just isn’t that much money.” Her gaze moved self-consciously from the window to the carpet. “The bank wants to see you right away,” she added. “They were gentle but, oh, so firm.”
Marc flinched. “I guess I’ll have to see them,” he said. “While I’m gone be a good secretary and make me a reservation in the nearest bread line.”
“Don’t give up the ship,” Memphis said. “We can at least go down fighting. Even if it’s only the creditors. In the meantime, business as usual. What do you want me to do about the Carmichael Aspirin Account?”
“I don’t know,” Marc said wearily. “See if they give free samples.”
Memphis crossed to the door. “Well,” she said with forced jauntin
ess, “I’ll think of something. Maybe I’ll just roll it up and fry it in deep fat.” She slapped her girdle. “And I’m just the kid that could do it.”
When she had gone, Marc turned forlornly to the window. He wasn’t actually thinking of jumping, he was just wondering how long it would be before he did start thinking of it. Then he started as invisible hands began to pat industriously at the back of his coat.
“Stop that!” he yelled.
“I was only brushing you off,” George’s voice said, near at hand. “You got a little messed up on the floor.”
“I’ll dust myself,” Marc said. “Thank you, just the same.”
“I sure wish I could think of a way to straighten things out for you.”
“Just forget it,” Marc said. “Don’t trouble your invisible little head about it.”
“You need money,” George mused. “That’s the key to the whole problem as I see it.”
“Sometimes,” Marc said sarcastically, “you show signs of true genius.”
George made strange musing noises for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, he asked, “Where’s Toffee?”
MARC started visibly. He hadn’t thought of Toffee in a long time, and he didn’t particularly want to think of her now. One supernatural creature at a time was more than enough. Especially at a time like this.
Also, Marc was shudderingly mindful of Toffee’s intimate relationship with pandemonium; the two of them romped about, hand in hand, like a pair of grade-school sweethearts. The most remarkable thing about Toffee, though, was that, in fact as well as fancy, she sprang from the very depths of Marc’s own subconscious mind. Marc had long ago reconciled himself to the uneasy fact that his mind sheltered a precocious spirit who might, at almost any moment, be released into the world of actuality, and materialize right there before his astonished eyes. Then, too, there was Toffee’s penchant for snatching the affairs of his life from his own grasp and instilling in them the breath of sheer madness. It was a difficult pill to swallow, and one that was rarely graced with a sugar coating. Even if she did manage to leave his life in a fair state of repair, her methods always put him through such a rigorous program of mental anguish that the end seemed hardly to justify the means at all. Marc tried to turn his thoughts away from her, for to think of her might easily start the chain of psychological reaction that always provoked her reappearance. He wished that George hadn’t remembered the girl from his previous visit.
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 22