The Complete Adventures of Toffee

by Charles F. Myers

  “Pretty tough getting a ride at this time of night, I imagine,” Gerald was saving chattily to thin air. “Particularly being a ghost and all.” He waited but there was no answer. He turned back to Cecil. “Doesn’t want to talk, I guess.” Then, as the traffic ahead began to move, he shifted gears and started forward. Thus occupied, he didn’t notice that his revolver had suddenly become possessed of a life of its own; he didn’t see it nose out of his pocket and take flight into the air.

  Toffee nudged Marc excitedly. “Look,” she whispered. “He’s going to help us.”

  Together they watched breathlessly as the gun moved furtively upward. Then they started with surprise and horror as it righted itself and pointed its muzzle purposefully in Marcs direction.

  “No, George!” Toffee cried. “Don’t shoot! It’s those two you want! They’re planning to blow up the city and float it away. Liquor and all, George!”

  The gun faltered, then started to turn uncertainly toward Cecil. But not fast enough. Cecil suddenly reached out and slapped it free of George’s invisible grasp. The gun described a small arc into the back seat and landed in Toffee’s lap. Marc, Toffee, Cecil and presumably, though there was no way of proving it, also George, all reached for the gun at once. The result was a writhing snarl of reaching arms and clutching hands. Toffee giggled dementedly.

  “Stop that!” she screamed. “I’m ticklish!”

  “This is no time to indulge in mad laughter,” Marc grunted sharply. “Our lives are at stake.”

  “I know!” Toffee trilled lightheartedly. “I’m frightened sick! Only get your hands out of my ribs!”

  As three sets of madly working hands rose, twined together, the gun danced wildly from the fleeting grasp of one to that of the other.

  “Good grief!” Toffee said. “Even if I got hold of the thing I’d never know it; I can’t tell which hands are mine!”

  The hands and the gun traveled higher in the air, then suddenly one of the hands rose above the others and reached viciously for the errant fire arm It struck it, without catching hold of it, and sent it crashing to the back of Gerald’s unsuspecting head. Gerald instantly let go of the wheel and slumped down in his seat. The car swerved dangerously to the wrong side of the street. Momentarily the warring factions in the back seat, now concerned with more immediate matter of navigation, disengaged their hands and forgot the gun as it fell to the floor at Toffee’s feet.

  “George!” Toffee screamed. “Grab the wheel!”

  Apparently the ghost followed the suggestion for the car suddenly veered sharply to the left and, with a screech of the tires, darted into a gas station. George’s voice echoed worriedly out of thin air.

  “How do you stop this thing?”

  But there was no answer. Toffee, now certain that the car was at least temporarily under control, reached down for the gun. So did Cecil. So did Marc. The struggle in the back seat started afresh just as it had left off.

  WHEN THE black sedan entered the station, Pat O’Brien, a young and stalwart Irishman with red hair, viewed its arrival from within the station house and strode forward, with the simple thought of serving his public. As the car sped past the pumps and circled back, Pat assumed that the driver was merely bringing the vehicle in line with the pump of his choice. However, Pat thought it somewhat queer when it continued past the pumps the second time. As it turned back for the third time, and he noticed that there was no driver and that the back seat was the scene of a life and death struggle between two men and a girl, he began to have quite a definite feeling that things were not exactly as they ought to be.

  “Faith,” Pat said to himself. “There’s an uncommon thing goin’ on here.”

  Then he jumped back into his enclosure as the car turned for still another swooping run at the pumps. Pat sat down on a stool to collect his thoughts in his own sluggish way. The company policy dictated clearly that the customer was always right, but Pat wasn’t certain but that this mightn’t be the exception that proved the rule. Then he grew more positive of it as he watched the black sedan plunge to a crashing stop against one of the gas pumps and send it tilting a bit to the leeward. Pat reached for the telephone and asked for the police.

  As he waited he noted that a revolver had leaped from the back window of the car and skidded across the pavement; that the rear door of the car had flown open and three struggling figures had tumbled out. Then a gruff voice, equally as Irish as his own, took his attention.

  “Faith,” Pat said.

  “Faith, yerself,” the voice said. “And who’s callin’?”

  “It’s me,” Pat said. “Pat O’Brien.”

  “Is it now? That movie actin’ fella?”

  Pat flushed modestly. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “Just plain Pat O’Brien, down at the gas station.”

  “Oh,” the voice said with a new note of chattiness. “There’s a good lad. And how’s yer dear ma, Pat?”

  “The picture of health,” Pat said, “even if she is down with the gout, poor soul.” Then suddenly he turned away from the telephone, his eyes drawn to the struggle by the pumps. Things seemed to have gotten quite far out of hand. The girl had taken the hose loose from one of the pumps and was swinging it determinedly at the head of the small man in the derby. It did not help matters that she had managed to trip the mechanism and was hurling gasoline in all direction. Worse than that, however, was the behavior of the water hose; all by itself it had risen in the air, like a huge, spiteful snake, and had begun adding water to the deluge.

  “Faith,” Pat commented darkly. “It’s a terrible thing.”

  “Do stop repeatin’ yerself like that,” the voice on the telephone answered. “It makes you sound like a proper ninny, it does. What is it that’s a terrible thing? Is it in a professional capacity that you’re callin’ me?”

  “And so it is,” Pat affirmed. “It’s a bit of advice I crave. The company that owns this station says that the customer is always right, but I’m wonderin’ if it’s still true when the world’s gone mad?”

  “And in what way has the world gone mad, Pat?”

  “Well,” Pat said, “there’s a girl here in the dooryard who’s spittin’ out gasoline all over everything,”

  “How’s that!” the voice said. “This girl, you say, she’s spittin’ out gas? Do you mean to say....”

  “With the aid of the pumps, to be sure,” Pat explained fairly. “And, you’d believe it, it’s butterflies she’s wearin’ in the place of her clothes... They’re all hollerin’ and yellin’ and carryin’ on something frightful. It’s probably the end of the world all right.”

  “Patrick O’Brien!” the voice said with sudden sternness. “Shame on you! It’s a fanciful lad you’ve always been, and I’ve been of a mind to forgive you it for bein’ a comfort to yer gouty ma, but when you start callin’ up a poor tired cop like me and runnin’ off at the mouth about gassy girls and yellin’ butterflies... Shame is all I’ve got to say to you.”

  “I didn’t even mention the water hose,” Pat said stubbornly. “It’s the end of the world, I’m confident.”

  “It’s the bottom of the bottle!” the voice snapped. “My advice to you is to soak yer head in cold water and say a prayer that the devil doesn’t take yer soul. Goodbye to you.”

  The telephone clicked loudly in Pat O’Brien’s ear.

  “Faith,” Pat said sadly. “And that’s the last time I’ll hold conversation with the law.” He slumped back on his stool and turned his eyes to the company rules which were pasted on the wall; there was no mention anywhere as to proper procedures in the event of the world’s end.

  Outside, however, the struggle at the pumps came to an abrupt end as Cecil won possession of the revolver. He turned and aimed it at Marc. Promptly the splatter of gasoline stopped, as did that of the water.

  “All right,” Cecil said, “get back in the car and wake up Gerald.”

  For a moment Marc and Toffee stood motionless, gazing at the fanatic gleam in Cecil’s eyes. Th
en slowly they turned and started toward the car. Both of them knew very surely that the little man would hesitate considerably less than a second at the act of murdering a man ... or a city...

  CHAPTER XI

  THOUGH it couldn’t possibly have been more than a couple of hours, it seemed that they had been twisting and turning through the night for eternities. Long ago the lights of the city had slipped away into the darkness behind them. Marc had completely lost track of where they were.

  George, the unpredictable ghost, after a brief narrative about how he had fender-hopped his way back into Marc and Toffee’s company, had drifted off into unconcerned and discordant slumber. Between snores, made forgetful by sleep, he had fully and completely materialized. If the Blemishes noted the exactness of the ghost’s features to Marc’s they didn’t bother to comment on it; apparently the brothers, in their feverish dementia, were perfectly willing to credit anything as natural.

  Gerald sped the car through a long wooded lane, then turned sharply to the right into a private drive. At last, for better or for worse ... with the balance heavy on the less attractive side ... Marc and Toffee arrived at the destination chosen for them by their crazed captors.

  As the car ground to a stop Marc and Toffee peered fearfully out the window and were greeted by the sight of an enormous, turreted old house that loomed in the night like a preposterous, rococo mountain. It was the sort of place that the newspapers would surely describe as a ‘mystery manse.’ Neither Marc nor Toffee felt called upon to make any comment as to the majesty of the structure or the loveliness of the gardens that surrounded it. Cecil nudged his gun in their direction.

  “Get out,” he said. “This is it.”

  “Yes,” Toffee said glumly. “But what is it?”

  In the front seat Gerald shook George and the recital of the nasal passages snorted to a stop. Blinking, George sat up, observed his state of materialization, then looked around.

  “Eh?” he said. “Where are we?”

  Toffee turned back at the door of the car. “You know, George,” she said, “next to an open grave, I think we’ve found the ideal place for you to settle down. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t meet a lot of your old friends here.”

  The party climbed out of the car and assembled before the old house. Then, with Gerald leading and Cecil guarding the rear, they creaked up a long set of wooden steps, crossed a littered veranda, and brought up before a formidable oak door that was easily large enough to accommodate the comfortable passage of a fat elephant with its ears flapping. Gerald produced a key and unlocked the door. As he shoved it open it swung back on a cavern of unbroken darkness.

  “Look out for bats,” Toffee said.

  “Just step inside,” Gerald said.

  “Leaving all hope behind,” Marc added in a whisper.

  The company moved slowly forward into the darkness. Even George seemed somewhat loathe to cross the threshold, but he managed it. When they were all inside Cecil closed the door after them and relocked with a gritting sound that fairly scraped the spine. There was the sound of movement close by, then the click of a switch. Instantly there was light.

  “Oh!” Toffee cried in amazement. “Oh!”

  STARING dumbfoundedly at the amazing thing that had risen before them, the three newcomers remained where they were, incapable of movement.

  It was as though the hulking house had simply been scooped hollow with an enormous spoon. Where there had once been partitions and floors, there was now nothing but an area of great gaping space. The house had originally been four stories high, now it was merely one; from where Marc and Toffee and George stood gaping, the garret ceiling was clearly visible. Within the walls of the old house there were literally acres of unbroken space. But that was only the least of it.

  The place was simply crammed with strange, incomprehensible equipment, mechanisms whose purposes were completely unguessable. Enormous coils writhed sinuously, twining themselves about great metal tubes that stretched high into the air. Wheels turned smoothly within wheels that turned within wheels. At the far end of the room a great slide shot gleaming metal tracks upward into one of the turrets and then on into the night. A panel of switches ran the full length of one wall.

  “Well?” Cecil said. “How do you like it?”

  “If you’ll pardon the vulgarism,” Toffee said, “this is the damnedest shanty I’ve ever seen. What is all that stuff for anyway?”

  “Well,” Gerald said slowly, “we’re not exactly sure about all of it ourselves. Of course our main interest is that big machine in the center.” He pointed to a mammoth arrangement of wheels, tubes, dynamos and levers. “We call that the production unit. With the proper adjustments you can produce almost any mechanical chemical device known to man. With that machine alone, and enough raw materials, of course, a single man could match the output of any of the nation’s largest factories. The inventor only made it just to have something to do. Actually, he was going to destroy it. Said it would make mankind useless.” He turned to Marc. “There won’t be any trouble making the bomb ... or even a thousand bombs with that.”

  “What happened to the inventor?” Marc asked uneasily.

  “Oh, him,” Gerald said with a note of sadness. “Unfortunately he met with an untimely end just after we met him.” He nodded to the gleaming track. “He was explaining that space catapult to us, telling us how a man wearing the proper equipment could be thrown out into space, even into regions unknown to man, and live to tell the tale. He was just telling us how to work the lever when suddenly the thing went off with him in it.” He lowered his eyes delicately. “If ever a man went to heaven, it must have been poor Mr. Adams. At least he was certainly headed in that direction the last time we saw him. Anyway, Cecil and I like to think he’s just away on a little trip.”

  “How terribly sweet and sentimental,” Toffee said acidly. “I suppose he wasn’t wearing the right equipment at the time?”

  “Alas, no,” Gerald said, “Anyway, Mr. Adams was a very strange man. He had no practical sense at all. He just stayed here all alone and built all these things just to see if they really could be built. He had no idea of ever putting them to any commercial use. He never saw anyone or had any friends apparently. It seemed a little sad at the time that Cecil and I, both virtual strangers, were the only ones here to see him off.”

  “Still, he seemed lonesome for company,” Cecil put in. “He was very nice to us when we came here. It was only by chance that we found him, you know. We were out this way looking for a hideout... we thought we ought to have one since all the other spies did . .. anyway, we got lost and stopped here. Mr. Adams took us in just like we were old friends. I guess he wanted someone to show his inventions to. Maybe we really shouldn’t have pulled the switch on the old man that way, but he, kept saying he needed to get away somewhere...” “The only decent thing to do, really,” Toffee murmured.

  “Exactly,” Cecil said. “At first ... after Mr. Adams left... Gerald and I toyed around with the idea of making mankind useless, but we decided that mankind would probably enjoy it too much, and things are moving in that direction fast enough anyway. But we always knew this stuff would come in handy someday if we just waited.” He turned to Marc. “And now you’ve come along with your bomb.”

  “May God forgive me,” Marc said bitterly.

  CECIL pointed to another catapult arrangement, smaller than the one which had launched Mr. Adams into regions unknown to men, and aimed considerably lower.

  “We’ll send the bomb out with that,” he said. “That was Mr. Adams’ first experiment with the catapult. It will direct a missile accurately anywhere in the world. In fact, at full strength, it can throw a two-ton weight around the world three times. Nonstop.”

  “A two-ton weight of what?” Toffee asked.

  “How should I know?” Cecil asked. “What difference does it make?”

  “All the difference,” Toffee said emphatically. “It would be perfectly preposterous for an
yone to want to go flinging a two-ton weight around the world three times.” She paused. “Unless, of course, it was a two-ton weight of something you hated so much you wanted to see it going away from you three times.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Cecil said shortly. “The main thing is to get the bomb made as quickly as possible.” He turned to Marc. “I hope you’re ready to go to work?”

  “Right now?”

  Cecil nodded. “We plan to start tonight. Fortunately, every known chemical is on hand here. Mr. Adams was amazingly thorough. Would you rather write the formula down for us, or call out elements as we go along?”

  “And let me warn you,” Gerald put in, “you’d better be accurate. We’re planning a test bombing, just to make sure. If it doesn’t work you may have an opportunity to meet Mr. Adams in person.”

  Marc was hesitant. “It’ll take time to scale the formula to your needs,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to do it tonight.”

  “Well, we can get started at least,” Cecil said. He turned to Gerald. “Don’t you think we should tie them? Wouldn’t it be more professional?”

  “Oh, sure,” Gerald said. “Only I think chains would be better than ropes. More effective. You know, like the ones we used in our last picture, Mr. X and Madam Q? We can chain them up and threaten them for a while.”

  “We haven’t got time to threaten them,” Cecil said. “Do we have any chains?”

  “Oh, lots,” Cecil said. “I’ll go get them.”

  In the meantime, everyone had forgotten about George. Unobserved, the materialized ghost had wandered interestedly in the direction of the giant catapult. Noting the compartment provided for the human missile, he turned back and studied Marc’s lean figure with thoughtful calculation. He stroked his chin for a moment, then nodded with satisfaction.