As Toffee aimed the magic ring, You Know Who suddenly sprawled across the desk with a howl of pained surprise!
As Toffee aimed the magic ring, You Know Who suddenly sprawled across the desk with a howl of pained surprise!
As Toffee aimed the magic ring, You Know Who suddenly sprawled across the desk with a howl of pained surprise!
"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 beworthseeing, 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."
"Political affiliations?" Toffee said, completely bewildered. "If you mean have I ever had anything to do with politicians, I haven't. I might as well say that I think all politicians are a bunch of bums." She turned again to Marc. "Are you ill, dear? Why are you making that awful choking noise?"
Marc repeated the awful choking noise, and the Chair rattled for attention. The Chair also glowered through its glasses.
"What the committee wants to know is which political philosophy do you embrace?"
"None of them," Toffee said. "I wouldn't touch any of them with a pole, much less clasp them to my bosom as you suggest. Aren't you getting a little lewd with all this talk about embracing?"
"Let's put it another way," the Chair said with strained patience. "Of which nation are you a citizen?"
"Why, none of them, of course," Toffee said. "Not that they wouldn't have me, you understand...."
Precisely at this point a door behind the Chair burst open, and a small, musty individual in shirt sleeves hurled himself into the room.
"It's come!" he piped. "It's come!"
"Has someone been praying for rain?" Toffee asked innocently.
The Chair rattled frenziedly. "Just what is it that's important enough to justify this outburst?"
"The news!" the little man jibbered. "I was working down in the Intelligence Department just now...."
"I wondered where they keep all the intelligence around here," Toffee said. "I didn't know they had a department for it."
"Shut up, can't you?" Marc hissed. "You've made enough enemies already to last us out a lifetime."
"You Know Where!" the little man screeched. "You Know Where!"
A murmur of apprehension moved through the room.
"They've attacked?" the Chair asked quickly. "Has the attack begun? Speak up, man!" Then without waiting for a reply, he turned to the gathering at large. "I will now lead you all in prayer."
"No!" the little man cried. "No, no!"
"You don't want us to pray, you nasty little atheist?"
"No!" the little man cried. "Yes! I don't care! But there isn't any attack! There isn't going to be one! You Know Where was demobilized last night. It's a positive miracle! Our agents report rumors about a religious revival going on there. Everyone is talking about an angel with red hair who appeared to the Leader and...."
Marc turned sharply to Toffee with the look of a man who has just been stung by a bee.
"You...!"
"Uh-huh," Toffee said. "We had quite a romp last night, the Leader and I." She spoke through a pandemonium of cheering, crashing bottles and mad guitar music.
"Oh, bury me not on the lone prar-ee!" the lanky Congressman chortled besottedly. "Where the coyotes howl 'cause there's no whisk-ee!"
The Chair added to the din in behalf of a moment of silence and received just a moment.
"Let's knock off for the day," a voice yelled, "and get drunk!"
"We did that yesterday," the Chair said. "We have to think of appearances once in a while, you know. Besides, this new development puts a whole new face on things. It calls for action."
"What about me?" Toffee yelled. "I insist on being investigated."
"Please be quiet, young woman," the Chair said. "You're no longer needed here."
"Thank heavens!" Marc sighed. "Come on, let's leave."
"Certainly not," Toffee said. "I have other business to take care of."
"Oh, no!" Marc cried, and slumped exhaustedly into his chair. "I'm too tired for any more!"
"We must realize," the Chair was saying, "that an opportunity has been placed in our hands. The enemy is helpless.Now is the time to strike!"
There was a pause while this sank in, and then the cheering and rough-housing began again with greater vigor.
"Rickety-rax!" One vaporish congressman giggled, slipping limply from his chair to the floor. "Rickety-rax! Give 'em the axe!"
A colleague at his right launched a squadron of paper darts into the air as the guitarist twanged away at an off-key rendition of theAir Corps Song. This musical interlude, however, came to an unhappy end as the gentleman across the table, finishing the pierced heart with a flourish, picked up an inkwell and emptied it into the bowels of the instrument. There was a splintering crash as the donner received his contribution, guitar and all, across the crown of his head. Undaunted, the man rose from his seat and launched into a lamentable imitation of Jolson doing a mammy song.
"We'll kill 'em!" the cry went up. "We'll give it to 'em in the teeth, the dirty, yella, murderin' rats!"
"Gentlemen!" the Chair pleaded. "Gentlemen! Your enthusiasm and patriotic spirit is commendable. But let's be constructive about this thing.Let's declare war!"
Toffee and Marc, who had been watching this display with rising emotion, got to their feet simultaneously.
"Now just a minute!" Toffee yelled. "Just a minute, you tramps!"
"Precisely," Marc said, steadying himself against the table. "Just a minute."
But their protest was unheard in the din of the merry-making.
"I can see," Toffee said, lifting her hand, "that the time is due to take measures."
"For once," Marc said, "I'm with you one hundred percent." He moved to her side in a limp gesture of staunch support, blinking drowsily.
Toffee eyed the revelling law makers with a selective eye. Her gaze fell to two rotund parties who, their arms clasped about each other's shoulders, were dancing a polka in the aisle. As one of the bulbous rears swiveled in her direction, she let go. It was a direct hit on the target.
With a searing cry the erstwhile dancer unclasped his partner and doubled over, his chops aquiver with an emotion too great for expression.
His partner, at first taken aback, eyed this inexplicable development with bleary gloom. Then he beamed with happy understanding.
"Leap frog!" he yelled joyously. "Hey, fellas! Leap frog!"
The rush for the aisle was instantaneous and enthusiastic. As the playful congressmen lined up for the game, Toffee leaped to the top of the table and assumed a firing stance. Taking careful aim as the first gamester wheezed up the aisle and boosted himself aloft over the back of his suffering brother, she executed a neat wing shot which dropped her victim into place with a convulsion of shocked pain.
"Fish in a barrel," Toffee said gleefully.
"Good," Marc said, coming momentarily awake. "There! Get that gaffer on the rise!"
And another congressman doubled in mid-air and came to earth with a rasp on his lips.
"Stacking up nicely, eh?" Toffee said. "Makes a neat exhibit, all of them in a row like that."
The sport continued apace. It wasn't long before the aisle was lined from end to end with tortured congressmen who moaned and wailed like lost souls taking hell's post grad course. Texas, naturally, made the loudest noise.
"Here, now!" he blurted. "What's going on here? What do you fellows think you're doing; you look like a lot of distressed cats who've found cement in the sand box. It doesn't look at all nice. I'm surprised at you, Maine, for being mixed up in this sort of thing. You, too, South Dakota. Young woman, why are you standing on that table?"
"When I go to the circus," Toffee said, "I like to see everything. I wouldn't want to miss this for the world."
"I thought I told you to go home. The Congress has finished with you."
"But have I finished with the Congress?" Toffee said. "That's what I ask myself."
"Get out!" the Chair cried, definitely beginning to show cracks about the outer surface. "Please go home. Please!"
"I'm afraid I can't," Toffee said. She nodded significantly toward the convulsed members. "I'd hate to go and leave so much unfinished business behind. Or should I say so much behind, unfinished business?"
"Do you mean to say that you are in some way responsible for that repellent demonstration in the aisle?"
"I take the credit proudly," Toffee said. "Remember, I said I had a secret weapon? However, I must say that Mr. Pillsworth, here, has given me all sorts of moral support."
"Thank you," Marc said with composure. "Glad to be associated with any enterprise of a worthwhile nature. I'm a real sucker for these toney clambakes."
"Toney!" The Chair snorted in outrage. "I suppose you are able to undo this disgraceful state of affairs?"
"Oh, quite," Toffee smiled. "In a twinkling. But I wonder if I really want to."
"You must," the Chair said distractedly. "With all that moaning and groaning going on down there I can't hear myself think."
"Heaven only knows why you should want to," Marc said, "with your dwarfed powers of reasoning."
"Quiet!" the Chair snapped. "Young lady, I'm telling you to release those men from whatever unattractive thing is ailing them. That's a congressional order!"
"Okay," Toffee said. "But with one stipulation."
"And what is that, may I ask?"
"That you follow the example of You Know Where—and follow it to the last bomb and factory."
"What! Are you actually suggesting that we demobilize the country?"
"I'm telling you now," Toffee said earnestly. "And I'm telling you to do it immediately. Get religion, brother."
"I see," the Chair said quietly. His hand moved cautiously toward an alarm button.
"I'm sorry," Toffee murmured, "but I haven't time to waste on any more guards." She lifted her hand, made the necessary motion, and the Chair departed his moorings with a leap that sent his glasses sailing off into the air.
"Murder!" he screamed, and crashed back into his seat in a fit of acute discomfort.
"Well," Marc sighed. "Fair's fair. These boys have been giving everyone else that localized pain for years. Now they're just getting a shot of their own medicine. By the way, what happened to that little man from Intelligence?"
"He's in with the congressmen," Toffee said.
Dusting her hands lightly, she turned away just in time to see a door swing open to permit the pompous entrance of several over-costumed and over-decorated individuals who had obviously played the army and navy game with the right set of loaded dice.
One, however, stood ahead of and apart from the others. He glittered and shone with all the bogus brilliance of a dime store jewelry counter. From the peak of his duck-tailed blonde hair to the tips of his two-toned shoes—passing quickly over his rust-red jacket and lemon yellow trousers—he was the absolute end and final gasp in well-upholstered commercial entertainers. As he stood impressively in the doorway his shirt front added the final touch of elegance by lighting up with the classical quote: Kiss Me Quick!
"Good night!" Marc said. "President Flemm! And the heads of the War Department!"
As Toffee gazed on this fine new catch, whole vistas of fresh achievement spread themselves before her. "Hail! Hail!" she said. "Deck the halls with poison ivy!"
The President, having had his little joke, had since fallen into a mood for a bit of tribute from what he considered his official flunkies—or straight men. As he waited for the Congress to rise in his honor—without result—an expression of petulance swept over his features. It wasn't as though they weren't aware of his presence; he made himself known surely. Then why didn't the clods snap into it?
He stepped imperiously to the head of the aisle, from whence there issued low sounds of displeasure and suddenly, with a start, found himself faced with a shattering view of a whole row of upturned bottoms.
"Here, now!" he exclaimed. "What sort of greeting is this? If you men have some personal criticism to make against me there must be a nicer way of expressing it!" He swung about to the Chair. "Just who is responsible for this insulting...!"
The words jammed together in his throat at the sight of the Chair whose sightless eyes peered down at him with every evidence of complete loathing. He seemed to snarl. In fact, as the President watched, the Chair actually did bare his fangs and snarl.
"Now, just a minute!" the President cried, taken aback. "Maybe we do have our little differences now and again, but there's no need to get obstreperous about it. Now stop slavering at the mouth in that extraordinary way and tell those old fools in the aisle to turn around right end up."
The Chair only snarled again.
"Oh, very well," the President said coolly. "If that's the attitude you want to take...."
"I don't think you're really going to get anywhere with him," Toffee put in mildly.
The President whirled about. "And who are you?"
"You might say I'm in charge here," Toffee said. "My friend and I. I think you'll discover that the Congress is suffering from shock—in a way." She nodded to the Chair. "With that one, it's something I said." The big brass crowded in curiously from the rear and ogled Toffee with enormous appreciation. "Oddly, you are just the group I've been waiting to see. I've been wanting to tell you that the time has come for you to demobilize the nation—unload all that high-powered ammunition before it goes off and hurts someone."
The President merely stared at her for a moment. Then he shook his head. "Wouldn't get a big enough laugh," he said.
"I take it you are replying in the negative?" Toffee asked.
"You got it, sis," the President said with his customary dignity. "Besides, just where do you get off telling me the time? Who signed you up for the act?"
"Allow me to present my credentials," Toffee said, and raised her hand. "You'll get a kick out of this."
A moment later President Flemm, quite to his own surprise, added acrobatic dancing to his list of talents. Toffee, aware that important persons required her best efforts, added a shot to the President's neck, having already administered to the more logical location.
President Flemm's fine tenor assailed the air with ear-splitting clarity, as his companions edged away in terror. Clutching alternately at his neck and his rear, the man leaped about like a fan dancer deprived of her feathers before a meeting of young business executives. The President gave the performance of a man who was torn in his very soul.
"Think that'll get a laugh?" Toffee asked. And then, lest the President desired companions, she quickly added the efforts of the War Department. The effect was engaging in a primitive sort of way, though there was a great deal of clanking and crashing of brass on brass.
"Any time you gentlemen decide to sit one out," Toffee said, "just let me know. There are plenty of telephones handy with which to spread the good news."
She and Marc retreated to the steps in front of the podium, picking up an abandoned bottle on the way. Toffee settled back comfortably and indulged in a long draft.
"Hey," Marc said, "you might leave a swallow for me. I'm the one who needs the stimulant, you know."
Toffee handed him the bottle, and for a moment they sat silent listening dreamily to the sounds of gnashing teeth and grunted curses that filled the air about them. Marc looked over to where the President and his cronies had fallen into a stupor of misery.
"Looks like the government has collapsed," he observed drowsily. "I might say it has a pain in its brass."
Even as he spoke, the President lifted an enfeebled hand and beckoned to them. "I think the President wishes a word with us."
"Isn't it thrilling," Toffee said, "meeting all these important people on such intimate terms?" She tilted the bottle again. "Let's toddle over and see what the old comic wants."
"This is excruciating!" the President panted as they approached. "You've got to stop it; it's unbearable."
"Now you know how people felt about your jokes," Toffee said. "I take it you're on the verge of capitulation?"
"Over the verge," the President grunted weakly. "Huh, fellas?"
Four sets of clenched teeth bobbed up and down behind him, accompanied by the plaintive rattle of metal.
"Good show, men," Toffee said. "That's using the old heads. Follow me to the telephones the best way you can and start the wires singing—my tune, of course."
Half an hour later Toffee and Marc let themselves out of the room by the back way and walked along the corridor toward the street.
"I'm hungry as an abandoned babe," Toffee said.
Marc regarded her from beneath drooping eyelids. "I don't know if I can stay awake long enough to feed you," he said. Then he stopped and nodded worriedly back the way they'd come. "Are you sure you ought to leave them all groaning around in there like that?"
"Until after the fireworks tonight," Toffee said. "When it comes to backing out on your word those boys could face to the rear and win the Olympic races without straining a nerve. Besides, suffering has a cleansing effect on the soul, they tell me, and that mob in there has the grimiest set of souls I've ever seen. I informed the lot of them that if they welched on this deal they'd stay that way the rest of their lives and would have to be buried in round coffins. We can come back and turn them loose later."
"I suppose you're right," Marc said. "Right now, I've got to have a pot of coffee before I pass out."
By now they had reached the sidewalk and luckily spotted a cab. Waving for the driver's attention, they hurried forward.
It was just as Marc reached for the door of the cab that he suddenly stumbled. All at once his weariness became too great to be borne further; it reached to his very bones and turned them to sawdust. As he went down to his knees the blackness swam in around him. He reached out a hand to steady himself, but there was nothing to cling to. He was vaguely aware of falling....
"Well, now, how'd you like a dame like that!" the cab driver exclaimed, climbing out of the car. "She takes a powder just because the guy gets a snootful and passes out!" He looked down at Marc who, sprawled on the sidewalk, was tuning up for a good solid snore. "I wonder where he belongs?"
Wherever he belonged, Marc at that very moment was lounging in a state of quiet bliss on one of the rising slopes in the valley of his mind. He turned to regard Toffee whose costume had once again become the transparent tunic, and to reflect that Paris would have to go a long way to stitch up anything half as becoming. Toffee smiled back at him and propped herself up lazily on one elbow.
"Well," she said. "It was something of a whirl, wasn't it? I mean it leaves one a trifle dizzy."
"Whirl?" Marc asked. "How do you mean?" Recent events had slipped from his mind in the interval between awareness and slumber.
"The bombs," Toffee said. "The politicians—" she held up her hand and displayed the ring "—and this."
Memory jarred back into place. "Oh, my gosh!" Marc cried. "All those congressmen! And the President! They're all back there...! And you're here...! How'll you ever get them straightened out?"
Toffee laughed. "I won't. There's going to be a terrific run on the Washington doctors for a while, that's all. Anyway, it'll do the old tubs good, give them something to think about next time they start getting gay with the public's time—and redheaded women."
"Anyway," Marc said. "At least it proves that a well-placed jolt in the right place is a lot more powerful than any bomb. I was right in the first place. When warfare gets personal it loses its attraction. I suppose they'll be busy developing more and worse bombs as soon as the shock wears off, but at least the people in the world will have another chance to try and prevent them."
Toffee shrugged lightly. "It just goes to show that world politics are really childishly simple when someone comes along with a firm hand."
"Are you going to keep the ring?" Marc asked.
Toffee shook her head. "I think I'll just dematerialize it; I never did care about gems." She regarded him slowly from the corner of her eye. "I have just one last use for it first."
"Yes?" Marc asked with a note of apprehension. "What's that?"
"Just this," Toffee said. She slid her arms around his neck and drew him close. "One twitch of resistance and I'll double you up like a pretzel."
Marc sighed helplessly. "When you put it that way, what can I do?" he asked, and submitted unflinchingly to her kiss.
It was just as she drew away, just as she brushed her hand over his shoulder, that the ring exploded.
Actually it was only a burst of vibrant green light, but it was so intense that it blinded Marc, blocking Toffee and the valley from sight. Marc squinted against the brilliance and waited for it to die. But when it did there was only an infinite blackness where it had been.
"Toffee?" Marc called tentatively. "Toffee, where are you?"
"Goodbye, Marc," Toffee's voice said through the darkness. "Goodbye, you old reprobate."
Marc moved a bit to one side and felt of the softness beneath him before he opened his eyes. Then he opened them half fearfully, wondering where he was. He looked about slowly, then suddenly sat upright. He was home, in his own room, in his own bed.
But it was dark outside, and the lamp was on. He had passed out on a street in Washington, if he remembered correctly. He was sure that was right, but he couldn't think how he had gotten home. Then he held his thoughts in abeyance and listened; there was the sound of a voice—a man's voice—and it seemed to be coming from downstairs....
"As each bomb bursts and casts out its power for destruction the burden becomes just so much lighter in the hearts of men all over the world. Tonight the bombs send out their light against the darkness, not as instruments of death and hate, but as multi-beamed beacons pointing the way to world peace. This is one of the greatest nights in human history!"
Marc leaped from the bed, drew on his robe which was lying across the bed, and ran out into the hallway. He was nearly to the head of the stairs when he stopped to listen again.
"The mystery surrounding the House of Congress since early today when the order for demobilization was issued from there by the President remains unsolved. Guards have been placed by presidential order at all entrances and exits, and no one, not even the President, has left the inner chamber. The press and other officials have been strenuously barred from entry, even at gun point in some instances. However a number of physicians have received calls from within the chamber and have been escorted into the room. A rumor persists that one of the members—Congressman Wright of Maine—was stricken with the mumps during today's session, placing the entire Congress in quarantine...."
Marc hurried down the stairs and into the living room. He stopped short at the sight of her.
"Julie...!" he cried.
She rose quickly from her chair and switched off the radio.
"I had it fixed," she said. "I was so ashamed." Then her face lighted with joy. "Oh, darling, there's the most wonderful, wonderful news! The President ordered...!"
"I know," Marc said. "I ... uh ... I heard it just now coming down the stairs." He went to her and drew her into his arms, and for a moment they were both still, just holding each other.
"Julie...?" Marc said, and she nodded. "When did you come back?"
"The same night I left, of course," Julie smiled. "I only got as far as the station and I got to thinking that if anything happened ... and we weren't together.... Anyway, I turned right around and came back. I was nearly frantic when you weren't here. I just sat here and cried and blamed myself."
"I see," Marc said. "And ... uh ... how did I get back?"
"The taxi driver brought you. He found your address in your wallet."
"All the way from Washington?"
"He said there was a young lady he wanted to see here anyway, and he only charged half fare." She put her hand to his cheek. "Oh, I was so relieved when I found out you'd only been on a bender. In fact I was a little flattered that you were that desperate without me." She drew closer. "Oh, darling, we both behaved so childishly. We deserved just what we got—a good swift kick in the...."
But Marc kissed her quickly—and for a long time—until he was sure a new topic for conversation had come into her mind....