Front matter

Marc Pillsworth thought that certain laws were futile and should be repealed—such as gravity—which he annihilated!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Adventures June 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Standing in the center of the basement laboratory, Marc Pillsworth held the vial up to the light and carefully poured out a small portion of the liquid so that the measure would be exact to the final degree.

Certainly, if he had known that the thing he measured was destruction, intrigue and madness, he would have hurled the container and its greenish contents to the floor. But he did not know, or even dream....

Assured that the amount was correct beyond question, he turned with the vial, poised it over the small vat on the work table, and poured.

Chaos!

The room screamed with brilliant light as the vat erupted and vengefully spat its contents to the four walls. The wall at the end of the room shuddered and shrugged away a great, irregular section of concrete so that the night gushed inside and swallowed up the light. Caught in the tide of the rushing darkness, Marc felt himself lifted helplessly from his feet, hurled upward to a great height, then plunged downward headfirst.

He fell endlessly, it seemed, down and down. And the darkness droned in his ears and in the pit of his stomach as he fell—deeper and deeper into a region of black strangeness. Fear grew inside him, writhing, coiling and recoiling like a great venomous snake in the depths of his stomach. He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound died in his throat as the darkness rushed inside him and caused the metallic taste of panic.

And then it was over.

He had arrived, but how and where and for what precise reason he couldn't imagine. But, oddly, it didn't seem to matter. There was no reason for it to matter now. None that he could think of at the moment. His thoughts moved so slowly, it seemed.

It was as though he had lain down to rest, limply and gently, in a soft coolness. A languor seeped through him, and he fell easily under the spell of a dreamy quietude. What could any man conceivably have to worry about when he felt like this?

Marc stretched his arms up over his head, then brought them down and clasped his hands at the back of his neck. He was suddenly swept with a mood of utmost felicity. Everything was so unreasonably wonderful! Mother, he thought, pin a rose on me! He grinned happily at his own urbanity.

And then the darkness began to pulse with a faint light which grew steadily stronger with each successive impulse. Slowly, vague outlines began to rise out of the dimness and form a horizon. And then the light became a steady glow, and the forms moved in closer and were distinct. Marc sat up and looked about him with astonished eyes.

A soft emerald greenness stretched beneath him in all directions, lifting softly from rise to rise in the distance, gently sloping into cool shadows. Behind him a knoll rose above the others, and along its side stretched a grove of tall feathery trees which were graceful beyond description. A soft breeze coiled through the trees trailing a shimmering blue mist, like a scarf, capriciously upward and out of sight beyond the rise.

Everywhere was a muted beauty that did not trade in harsh contrasts. Strangely, Marc could not bring himself to wonder at his being here in this impossible region; it was enough that he simply was here. He lay back again and gazed into the sky, noting without surprise that the clear blueness was unmarked by any brash and orthodox ball of sun.

His mind wandered free, along heretofore untrodden paths of melody, color and form. Had there ever been a time for making worrisome decisions, for seeking the multi-sided answer to the human equation? It didn't seem likely. This is Eternity, Marc thought, Eternity is like this. Throwing his arms free, he stretched his lean length to its utmost.

Eternity ended abruptly.

"Well, I'll be damned!" a voice said distinctly. "I'll be damned and broiled over a slow flame!"

Marc swung up into a sitting position, and his eyes raked the scene behind him. He froze.

His mouth formed a soundless whistle as he looked up to see the scantily clad Toffee smiling down at him.

Even in that first moment of confused surprise, Marc was quite well aware that no girl had ever eyed him with such undisguised pleasure—or such frank intent. Certainly no girl as beautiful as this one, at any rate. Perhaps, if she'd just done something about getting dressed.... He'd never seen a more top notch pair of legs.

Disconcertingly, the girl had chosen to place between herself and the raw elements only a slight green tunic of a consistency comparable to that of the airy mists on the slope. Considering this, Marc felt keenly that the situation called for, in full voice, a hasty apology and the quick slam of a door; he was terribly aware that there wasn't much more between him and this alarming newcomer than the atmosphere and a very pregnant silence. He couldn't understand how the girl could be so unconcerned about it.

"I'm sorry...!" Marc said quickly. "I...."

"I'm delighted," the girl said. She smiled softly, in a way that suggested great intimacy.

"I think I'll scream," Marc said weakly, "if you're not going to."

"I'm not going to," the girl said. "Not a chance."

Marc reflected erratically that this creature, in spite of her loveliness, was surely a traveler from hell; the fires of that region danced unmistakably on the surface of her soft red hair and in the depths of her vivid green eyes. His unbelieving gaze left her pert young face and helplessly traveled the course of her supple body. It was a disturbing trip; unhurried curves moved indolently outward and took their time about coming back. And then, as the girl started forward, Marc glanced up to discover that her gaze had followed his own. He looked away sharply and was aware of a feverish sensation about the neck and cheeks.

"There's no need to blush," the girl laughed.

"There's every need in the world," Marc said uneasily. "A crying need."

"If you're embarrassed," the girl said, "you've no one to blame but yourself."

Marc turned back, careful that his gaze went directly to her face and remained there. "Are you trying to suggest that it's my fault that you're naked?"

"Of course it is," the girl said. "It's all your fault, now that you bring it up. After all, I'm your exclusive creation. You dreamed me up, curve for curve, line for line, and if the job seems a little immoderate, you should have thought of that sooner." She moved lightly to where he was sitting and lowered herself to the ground beside him. She crossed one slender leg over the other in the manner of a gem broker displaying a stock of crown emeralds on a length of black velvet. "Not that I'm complaining, you understand. Personally, especially after your bug-eyed reaction, I regard myself as a pretty piece of merchandise."

Marc flinched slightly at the directness of this self-appraisal, but found it hard to find a point of disagreement. Though the girl's nearness had done much to impair his mental processes, he was all too aware of the merchandise at hand and an unspoken invitation to feel the superior quality of the goods. He breathed deeply and edged away.

"What do you mean, I dreamed you up?" he asked.

The girl sighed despairingly. "I had hoped," she murmured, "that we wouldn't have to waste time on anything so dull as pedigrees. However, I can see that you're the fretful type." She shrugged. "I'm Toffee." She leaned back and gazed at Marc from the corner of her eye with an expression that plainly indicated that she had revealed "all."

Marc tried to think. He repeated the name several times to himself. Toffee.... Toffee.... Toffee.... It didn't mean a thing to him....

"Well?" the girl said.

"Well?" Marc echoed faintly. The look in her eyes made him warmly uncomfortable.

"If you're going to start making passes at me," the girl said, propping herself up on one elbow, "I think I ought to say right now that there will be the usual hollow pretense of resistance." She smiled slowly. "But my heart won't be half in it, and that's a fact." She reached down and smoothed the tunic over the curve of her perfectly formed hip. "I just thought I'd mention it."

"Oh, my gosh!" Marc gasped. "Do I understand you correctly?"

"If you don't," the girl said with a twinge of impatience, "I might as well pick up my drawing pencils and go home. Why are we wasting all this time and energy?"

"Don't you have any repressions at all?" Marc asked.

"Of course not," the girl answered. "That's the way you made me."

"The way I made you?"

The girl nodded and leaned toward him. "I told you, I'm Toffee." She studied his face for a moment, then sat up. "Say, don't you recognize me?"

"I've never set eyes on you before in my life," Marc said emphatically. "Maybe that's because I don't habitually frequent burlesque theatres."

"Now, look here, you withered old goat!" A flame of annoyance flickered brightly in the green eyes. "Just where do you get off, making cracks like that? I've been in the back of your mind for years. You've dreamed me up, hip, thigh and shoulder, just the way I am. Don't think you're going to get away with pretending you're above it all now."

Realization blanked Marc's expression. "You mean you're a product of my subconscious mind?"

"Now you're getting it," the girl said. She swept a hand at the slopes behind them. "This is the valley of your mind. I've been languishing in this trap for years. If I've grown a little eager in the meantime, it's only natural. It puts an awful strain on a girl to have what I've got with no market for outlet. I'm just a bundle of frozen assets."

Marc smiled, and his manner became a bit less constrained. "Then all this is only a dream, and you're strictly an imaginary figure."

"You could put it that way," the girl nodded. However, there was a note of reservation in her voice. "Of course, it works two ways really. You might say that you're only in my imagination too. Up till now, that is." She surveyed his sprawled length with critical interest. "And, believe me, you're getting all the best of the bargain. If I'm a dream come true, you're a moaning nightmare. I'll bet you're nothing but a mess of knobs and angles under those baggy clothes of yours."

"We'll just skip my knobs and angles," Marc said distantly, "if you don't mind."

"I do mind," the girl said, looking a trifle alarmed. "I mind like all get-out. Why should I want to skip the awful things? Do you mean I'm to pick them up all in a string and play jump rope with them?" She shuddered delicately. "Is that what you have in mind?"

"Of course not," Marc said. "I merely mean to say that my knobs and angles do not constitute a matter for your concern in the least. I'll be more than happy if you'll just ignore my knobs and angles altogether. Just pretend they aren't there."

"What an awful picture that brings to mind," the girl said. "Without your knobs and angles you'd be even worse than you are already. Besides, they're of utmost concern to me. Heaven knows they're nothing to boast about, or even mention, for that matter, but they're the only ones handy, and I've been waiting for years to get my hands on a working set of knobs and...."

"That's enough," Marc broke in. "I wish you'd stop going on about your sordid-minded desires. I don't want to hear about them. And get away from me!" He started violently. "Leave my knobs and angles alone!"

But it was too late to protest. Already the girl had twined her arms tightly about his neck and was drawing him toward her.

"This," she whispered with soft intensity, "is an angle of my own."

Marc struggled for a moment under the knowing pressure of her lips, but the period of resistance was short lived. He yielded quickly to the coolness of her arms about his neck and the warm brush of her hair against his cheek. He had actually begun to aid and abet the effort before it was over. Toffee released him and leaned back.

"That," she said, "is the introductory offer, merely a sample to bring the product to your attention. The objective, in case you're somewhat hazy, is to create a large and steady demand for the brand."

Marc was more than hazy. "Oh, my gosh!" he breathed. "I feel completely demoralized!"

"Fine," Toffee said blandly. "It takes a heap of demoralizing to make a man a man. We're on the right track and proceeding with a steady speed. We'll build up steam as we go along."

"Oh, no we won't!" Marc said getting uncertainly to his feet. "We won't build up anything, you and I. We'll put an end to this dream before we both have something to regret. If I dreamed you up, I can get rid of you too."

Instantly the girl was on her feet beside him. "Of all the gall!" she said. "Of all the slithering, dripping gall!"

Marc winced. "You're affecting my stomach," he said.

"And that's not all I'm going to affect before I'm through with you! I'm going to affect you from end to end and border to border! You leave me stumping it around in this air tunnel head of yours all these years, and then dream me up just to throw me over!"

"Wait a second...!"

"Be quiet," Toffee snapped. "Wait till I'm through. This goes on for some time." She gazed tragically into the distance and resumed in a mellowed tone: "That's all I ever was to you, a plaything to be used and cast aside when you've grown tired of me." Her voice broke with emotion. "Now that I'm old and ugly, you're ashamed of me.... This is even better with violins."

"Stop that," Marc said. "Don't be ridiculous. There's no need for dramatics. You're far from old and ugly, and as for...."

But suddenly the girl had fastened herself to him for the second time. "Then you really do think I'm a little sensational after all?" she cried ecstatically. "Kiss me! I'm yours!"

"No!" Marc cried. "I didn't say that! I didn't even mention...!"

"Yes, you did," the girl breathed in his ear, and drew her mouth quickly to his.

"Wait a minute!" Marc objected, forcing her from him. "This sort of thing has got to stop!"

"Why, for heaven's sake? I think it's perfectly divine."

Marc stopped to consider her question. Actually, why did it have to stop? There was a reason, a good reason, if only he could think of it. And then something stirred in the far reaches of his mind and drifted slowly forward.

Julie!

"Holy smoke!" Marc cried. "Julie. I have a wife!"

"Of course," the girl said. "But what difference does that make? I don't mind in the least. I'm terribly broad-minded. Besides, it happens that your wife isn't in this dream. Why drag her into it and spoil everything?"

"No!" Marc said excitedly. "No. You don't understand. I just remembered. There was an explosion. Julie was in the house—and a lot of her friends. Heaven only knows what happened. Oh, my gosh!" He drew away from the girl and glanced desperately around. "I've got to get out of here!"

But even as he spoke another matter rose for his immediate attention. All of a sudden the little valley had been seized with a shuddering convulsion. The greenness underfoot began to tremble violently. As Marc looked frightenedly about, the trees on the knoll commenced a weird seesawing, weaving back and forth in mad counter rhythm. Then, with a great roar of agony, the quiet valley began to crumble apart beneath their very feet. Everything dropped away into blackness....

Falling, Marc was only incidentally aware of the tightening pressure of the girl's arms about his neck. And then the frightened words came breathlessly, close to his ear: "Marc! Marc! Don't leave!"

"Please, Marc! Open your eyes!"

The imperative note of command sang hollowly in the depths of his subconscious, echoed back in some small chamber of his awareness. He stirred.

"Open your eyes, darling. Look at me."

Marc clawed at the edge of darkness, caught hold, and pulled himself upward toward the lighter region of consciousness. He struggled to the brink, caught a measure of leverage, and opened his eyes....

Julie's face peered down at him duskily, her blue eyes bright with fear even in the dim moonlight. A whisp of blonde hair had gone astray across her forehead.

"Marc!" she cried. "Marc!"

Marc tried his reflexes and sat up. "Julie," he murmured. "What happened?"

"Never mind, dear," Julie said. "Are you all right?"

Marc considered the matter of his all-rightness. He let his enfeebled concentration travel the circuit of his body. There were no sharp pains or ominous numbnesses.

"I think so," he said. "I think I'm all right. I had a dream...."

"Here," Julie said, with a sigh of relief. "Let me help you up." On his feet, Marc tested the working parts of his rangey anatomy and found them all in an operative condition. He glanced around and for the first time since his awakening realized that he was still in the basement laboratory. In the dim moonlight that filtered through the hole in the wall, it was evident that the place had been ruined. The upper end, however, leading away into the wine bins had apparently been spared. The explosion rose and happened again in his memory.

"Well," he sighed, turning to Julie, "it turned out a real bust, didn't it?"

Julie gazed at him for a long moment and suffered a nasty transformation. Her eyes no longer reflected concern, solicitude or even slight affection. To the contrary, they expressed extreme annoyance. Evidently, now that she was certain he was all right, she was prepared to blame him for all the foul acts of man since the first dawn of time.

"Just what went on down here?" she inquired with tense hostility. "Do you realize, Marconi, that you nearly blew the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia right out the front door?"

Marc's thoughts turned to a picture of the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia being blown out his front door, and he experienced a sudden glow of inner warmth.

"And what were the old hens banded together on the same roost for this time?" he asked acidly. "Getting up funds to lay linoleum in the huts of African bushwhackers?"

Julie's blue eyes grew wide with surprise. That Marc had any feeling except awe for her club ladies had not occurred to her. "Marc Pillsworth!" she exclaimed. "The coffee urn upset on Mrs. Beemer and ruined her dress!"

"The old trull's figure did more to ruin that dress than any dozen coffee urns ever could," Marc said levelly. "As a matter of fact, I'm enormously pleased it happened. It's my fondest dream come true. I've been longing to hit Mrs. Beemer with a coffee urn ever since I first set eyes on her. Right now I'm going upstairs to bed and I don't want to hear any more about it. My head hurts."

For a moment Julie stood still before him, transfixed with astonishment. Then suddenly, drawing her hand tremblingly to her mouth, she made a small whimpering sound, turned, and fled up the steps.

Marc remained where he was, listening to her hurried footsteps as they sounded through the upper hallway, and on the stairs leading to the second floor. There was a moment of silence, then the slam of a door. Marc shrugged.

He glanced at the ruins. The floor was littered heavily with rubble. None of the equipment had survived, that was obvious even in the dark. Well, he'd have to start all over again. He turned and started toward the steps. Then he stopped short and glanced sharply in the direction of the wine bins.

He could have sworn he'd caught a flash of movement there from the corner of his eye. He waited, peering into the darkness, but there was nothing. He smiled wryly and turned back again to the steps.

"Just nerves," he murmured to himself. And then his thoughts reverted momentarily to the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia. "Wish I'd blown the old dragons out the front door and into the gates of Hell," he said.

With that warm thought he drew a deep breath and started up the stairs. Curiously, the explosion had left him with a great sense of exhilaration....

CHAPTER II

Marc awoke.

A drift of silver moonlight spilled through the window to the carpet and across the foot of the bed. Marc lay still and let his thoughts shift effortlessly with the warm breeze that riffled the curtains. He was curiously alert to the night, its mood and quality. There was a strange clarity here, and he had a feeling he'd been awakened to it for a definite purpose, though he couldn't imagine at the moment what that purpose might be. He listened for a sound from Julie's room across the hall, but there was none.

He pondered his exuberance at having spoken harshly to Julie after the accident. After all, he didn't really want to hurt her. They did love each other, he and Julie, and that was the plain fact of the matter. But now that he thought of it, perhaps that was just the trouble; perhaps the fact was so terribly plain that it wasn't even of interest any more.

Certainly, it had never occurred to Marc to be jealous of Julie. Never once had he been distressed at the thought that she might be flirting a hip at the stable boy while he was away at his office in town. Indeed, if the idea had occurred to him at all, he'd have laughed at it. It was true that there was a certain amount of comfort in this, but not one iota of excitement.

Most depressing, though, was the thought that Julie, in her turn, was not jealous of him. It didn't seem to distress her in the least that, as owner and head of one of the most successful advertising agencies in the nation, he was daily in close contact with the most deadly and devastating models in the business.

Of course Julie had every reason to take confidence in her own cool blonde beauty, but on the other hand there was the thoroughly distressing thought that perhaps she felt Marc could be trusted with these gilt-edged females simply because they could be trusted with him. No man likes to feel that his wife is sure of him not because of his own sterling qualities, but because no other woman could conceivably be so desperate as to find him attractive. Julie's bland confidence in his fidelity, Marc felt, tended to make things terribly dull in the neighborhood of the parlor, bedroom and bath.

Marc looked to himself for the cause of his unhappy state of affairs. The decision was neither for nor against. Perhaps he wasn't handsome, but then he wasn't hideous either. His face actually had a rather nice angular plainness about it, and his grey eyes were undeniably kind and could, on occasion, be extremely humorous.

He was a bit too thin for so tall a man, but there was a suggestion, at thirty-three, of a litheness and youth about his figure that was not unattractive. His sandy hair at least had the virtue of unobtrusiveness without any such vulgar ostentations as polished slickness or gleaming ringlets. On careful and unprejudiced analysis, Marc felt that as an example of his sex he was neither such a one as to send a woman wilting to the carpet with palpitations or screaming to the medicine chest for the salts. The clue to the rising becalmment of his marriage, then, had to lie in another quarter. But Marc was at a loss to determine its direction. What he did not realize was that, from the outset, he had allowed Julie the exclusive management of their life together without reserving for himself even the right to veto.

The truth was that Marc was shy with women to the point of reticence. Too busy and too earnest in the struggle to establish the agency in the early, salty days of his youth, he had simply missed all of the ordinary experiences, the fretful trials and errors, due the average young man bent on gaining a solid footing in life's more fundamental departments. In effect, Marc had never taken the time to brace himself against the Indian hand wrestle that sex can often become in this civilized world. He could never be a rake, either at home or abroad, simply because he hadn't had time to practice.

Not that Marc didn't have the impulse for rakishness. It had merely come too late. He had always suspected that there was a more satisfactory and satisfying way of life than his, but only vaguely. There were even moments when he yearned for it desperately, without ever rightly knowing precisely what it was he yearned for.

At the time when he asked Julie to be his wife, he believed that he was at last making the proper step towards a new kind of life. After all, in spite of all the tons of fiction to the contrary, it is still not considered entirely orthodox for a business executive to marry his secretary. Marriage with Julie had seemed, to Marc, to offer the sort of life he coveted. Then, she had been as casual and convention-free a girl as any man would care to split a pint of gin with in a butler's pantry. Not that Marc ever had, however.

Even then, though, had Marc been better schooled in matters of maids, mates and matrimony, he might have recognized in the cool blue of Julie's eyes, in the precise way she carried her statuesque body, the seeds of wedded woodenness. As it was, the revelation did not occur until after that fatal moment at the altar.

The wedding ceremony had worked a magic in Julie that, to Marc's mind, was as black as pure onyx. Instantly, she had become a rigid suburban matron, corseted tightly in all the whale-boned dictates of suburban respectability. Under Julie's efficient supervision Marc had found himself settled down with a thud that was almost audible.

Julie took up club work with a fire and fervor that was truly frightening. She ran for election to committees and officerships with a wind and stamina that would have been admirable in an Olympic torchbearer. She sat on more boards than a lumber mill laborer at lunch time. Every book of etiquette written by man, woman or child found its way into her library, and she stuck to the rules with all the tenacity of an umpire on a World Series game. Worst of all, though, she took to brewing weak tea and making watercress sandwiches. Briefly, Julie had become that odious thing: the perfectly terrible perfect wife.

If Marc grew sallow and sullen under this regime, Julie's smiling and well-modulated suggestion was that he take up a hobby and turn his mind to something constructive. To her own purposes, as well as everyone else's, she might have done better to keep her pretty mouth shut. It was this suggestion that gave birth to the basement laboratory and the madness that followed....

It is difficult to believe that any man of so steady a nature as Marc Pillsworth would seriously conceive the idea of chemically treating metals and other weighted materials in such a way as to make them lighter than air. Yet, that precisely is the madness that wormed its way into Marc's mind.

The idea had developed slowly. For almost a month, from his office window, Marc had watched the construction of the building across the street. The main difficulty, as the building stretched lazily upward, obviously was the transportation of the heavier materials. That was the thing that made the work so slow.

A bit at a time, the idea took hold of Marc that the job could be immensely facilitated if only the steel girders, the sections of concrete, could be made buoyant ... at least temporarily ... so that they might be floated into position rather than lifted. Eventually came the time when the idea had lain long enough in Marc's mind that it seemed to make sense. Of course it was a fantastic idea, but the really fantastic thing about it was that no little men in white jackets arrived on the scene to carry its originator gently but firmly away to some quiet institution.

And yet time proved Marc to be not quite so mad as he seemed. Subsequent experiments testified to his rather extraordinary if distorted vision. In a year's time, hit and miss, he had managed to reduce the weight of scraps of iron and steel by actual test ... and this without diminishing their bulk by so much as a fraction of an inch. Of course, Marc had to admit, both of these materials had clung doggedly to a nasty disinclination to actually defy the laws of gravity, but he was convinced that he was well on the way to breaking their will in the matter.

Months of paper work followed, tedious calculations, corrected formula. At last he was ready to prepare what he was positive would be his final and conclusive experiment. Ingredients were carefully distilled and combined, in exact amounts and weights. And then, on the very night that Julie had manoeuvered the exclusive Daughters of the Golden Gardenia into her living room with an eye to arranging a society bazaar, Marc retired to his basement sanctuary, carefully closed the door, added the final chemical to the growing mixture, and blew the bejesus out of everything. If the laws of gravity had finally been broken it was only by virtue of rude detonation. The experiment, in its major aspect, was a dud.

All these things passed fluidly through Marc's mind as he lay awake gazing into the silver clarity of the night. He wondered at his own serenity in the face of so much disappointment and could not account for it. A strange faith in the future, unnourished by tangible fact, had begun to grow within him, a definite, thriving growth sustained by the night and the moonlight.

How could he know it was the weed growth of violence?

Then Marc stirred and turned his head at a listening angle. The night was no longer silent; the stillness had been broken by a strand of distant melody. Faintly, a voice had begun to sing, weaving a curious, indistinct thread of song into the illusive fabric of the night. For a moment Marc wondered if he only imagined it, but when he covered his ears with his hands, the melody stopped. He listened again. Slowly, the song grew louder, more distinct.

Marc sat bolt upright in bed. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said.

He was sure of it; the singing was actually coming from somewhere inside the house. And if the voice had a strange, illusive quality it was only because it was patently alcoholic. Obviously some drunken woman was lurching about below stairs singing her vaporish head off. Marc threw back the covers and swung out of bed. What if his harshness had driven Julie to drink!

In the hallway outside his room, Marc paused to listen. The voice was gaining wind and growing louder by the second. Marc started indignantly; the song, if he wasn't mistaken, was at least badly soiled if not downright filthy. It had something to do with the lurid misadventures of a loose moraled sturgeon named Gussie during the spawning season. At least it couldn't be Julie. Fumbling with the sash of his robe, Marc went to the stairs and marched determinedly downward.

In the lower hall he paused by the door to the living room to take a sounding. Sighting on a distant burp, he started toward the rear of the house. He had just passed the study when the singing suddenly stopped. Marc stopped also, waiting for the voice to continue. He moved slowly in the direction of the kitchen, careful that his own footfall did not disturb the silence. The kitchen, brilliant with moonlight, was uninhabited. Marc slipped back to the hallways and waited. Suddenly a new series of sounds were unleashed on the night; the clinking of bottles, a light giggle and a subdued hiccough.

Marc, certain now of his destination, whirled about, went to the basement door and threw it open. No longer cautious, he stepped into the darkness and started down the steps with a tread that bespoke his outrage.

There was no question in his mind; some neighborhood swain, in an amorous mood, had enticed the giggling and subnormal object of his sordid affections to the wine cellar. No doubt the pair were fairly wallowing in depravity amongst the bins at this very moment. The cheek of the young devil! And the girl! Getting drunk on wine that was not hers and singing about it! Certainly she was no better than she should be, and probably so much worse as to be beyond conception.

Marc quitted the steps, picked his way over a heap of rubble and presented himself solidly in the ragged patch of moonlight that described the hole left in the wall by the explosion. He planted his feet ominously apart and doubled his fists.

"All right, you two," he said in a level, distinct voice. "Show yourselves. If you're in any condition."

The silence filled in quickly in the wake of his voice. Marc pursed his lips and peered into the deep shadows of the wine cellar.

"If you don't come out," he said, "I'll damn well come in here and drag you out. How would you like that?"

Then he started as his question was answered with a muffled giggle.

Marc bristled. "Very well," he announced, "here I come!"

He strode to the wine cellar and presented himself firmly in the doorway. "One last chance," he said. "Are you coming out?"

He waited in the ensuing silence, suddenly assailed by a strange feeling of indecision. Then he cried out with dismay as a slender arm suddenly darted out into the moonlight and coiled gracefully about his neck.

"Now, just a minute!" Marc gasped.

But the arm did not hesitate. Tightening about his neck, it drew him toward the darkness. Instantly, a pair of warm lips pressed down on his own.

Marc struggled to free himself, but the mouth was extraordinarily tenacious. And another arm had joined the other about his neck. Then Marc freed his mouth and sputtered with objections.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

A winey breath impressed itself on Marc's nostrils. "Don't you know?" a voice murmured softly. "You should."

"Let go of me," Marc said stiffly.

"Not in a million years," the voice replied huskily. "I'm going to stick to you like skin. Forever and ever and ever and...."

"We'll see about that," Marc grated. "Whoever you are, you're trespassing. In more ways than one."

Reaching up he grasped the arms about his neck and attempted to disentangle them. They only tightened their hold. He tried to duck under the arms, but they moved downward as he did. For a moment Marc and his amorous captor crouched together in the dark, literally cheek by jowl. The other giggled.

"I'll bet we look terribly funny," she said.

"Stop that damned giggling," Marc fumed. "Things are bad enough without that."

He had decided on a strategy to free himself. In one quick movement he straightened up and stepped backwards. It might have worked perfectly if he hadn't stumbled over a piece of wreckage. As it was he suddenly sprawled backwards and fell to the floor in the exact center of the patch of moonlight. His winey companion, true to her promise, accompanied him in his downward plunge with skin-like precision. She landed against Marc's chest with a sigh of satisfaction.

"May I take this as capitulation?" she asked. "Or was it only an accident?"

"Don't be so disgusting," Marc said. Then, gazing upward, he suddenly blanched. His mouth fell slack. The girl had loosened her hold on his neck and was sitting up, gazing down at him. In his confusion Marc didn't even notice that the thing she was sitting on was his stomach. The girl was the same one in the dream. The girl was Toffee!

"Oh, Lord!" he moaned. "You're...!"

"Of course," Toffee said brightly. "I made it. I'm here."

"Then this is really a dream," Marc said dazedly. "I'm still in bed asleep. I only dreamed I woke up and came down here."

"Wrong, son," Toffee said briefly. "This is no dream. This is for real."

Marc stared at her in disbelief. "Wait a minute ..." he breathed. Then he reached out a hand, touched her, and quickly drew it away.

"That's the general idea," Toffee said.

Marc drew back with a gasp. "You're really here!"

"I have other ways of proving it," Toffee said. She leaned toward him.

"No!" Marc cried. "But ... but ... how...!"

Toffee smiled. "It's very simple. You've projected me through your awareness. I guess I must have made quite an impression on you in that dream. Heavens knows I tried, but I didn't think I was really getting any psychic cooperation. Anyway, I managed to stick to the conscious part of your mind instead of the subconscious, and you projected me into reality."

"Oh, no!" Marc gasped. "No! This can't happen! I didn't mean it! You've got to go back!"

"Too late now," Toffee said. She removed herself from Marc's middle and plumped herself down beside him. "There's no use fighting it. You can't control it. Of course I'll disappear and return to your mind whenever you go to sleep. You'll stop projecting me then. But I'll be right back again the moment you wake up." She sighed happily. "I'm so tickled I could pop."

"Don't!" Marc cried. Anything was easily within the realm of possibility now. "What am I going to do with you?"

Toffee cast him a sidelong glance. "I could make a list of suggestions," she murmured, "and we could run through them in the order named. And if there are any terms you don't understand I'll explain them."

"Holy smoke!" Marc said, staring at her. "Haven't you any sense of decency at all?"

"None worth mentioning," Toffee answered. "Should I have?"

"No one ever needed anything worse," Marc said emphatically.

Toffee glanced curiously about her. "This place is a mess," she commented. "Is your whole world as shabby as this?"

Marc shook his head, explained briefly about the explosion.

"I don't understand about human beings," Toffee said. "The minute they get their hands on anything they have to start changing it so that it serves a purpose exactly opposite what it was intended for. What goes up must come down, what goes down must come up. You're all perfectly mad, all of you. Are you happy that you've managed to make heavy things light?"

"What?" Marc asked absently.

"I asked you if you were happy now that you've managed to make all that stuff behave contrary to its nature, rather indecently I might add."

"What are you talking about?" Marc asked.

"All that stuff floating around on the ceiling," Toffee said. She pointed.

Marc whirled about to gaze in the direction she indicated. Then he sucked in his breath with a sharp gasp. Toffee had spoken the truth. Slowly, the rubble was rising from the floor of the basement to the ceiling. Some of it had already described the full journey and was hovering about the ceiling. Chairs, pieces of desk, desk drawers, fragments of equipment, scraps of metal were bobbing about next to the ceiling like apples in a washtub on Hallowe'en. Marc suddenly felt very lightheaded. In a matter of minutes the world had become an unfamiliar place; reality quickly slipped away from him and he was caught for a moment in a spell of moon-splashed madness.

"My God!" he whispered. "I did it!"

"You certainly did," Toffee said. "Now how are you going to get all that stuff down again?"

Unexpectedly, Marc jumped to his feet, made a quick lunge toward a small black book that was rising rapidly toward the ceiling. But he was too late; it moved beyond his reach and came to a solid rest against the ceiling.

"Damn!" Marc said.

"What is it?" Toffee asked.

"The book that I recorded my formulas in," Marc said. "I have to have it. When this gets out...."

Toffee rose to his side and placed her arms around his neck.

"For heaven's sake!" Marc said. "Can't you think of anything else?"

"It's difficult," Toffee said. "But at the moment I'm trying to help you. Lift me up and I'll reach the book for you."

"Oh," Marc said. He held his hands down for her to step into, then boosted her up. As she rose above him he was surprised at how light she was. He glanced up. One hand on his shoulder, Toffee was stretching the other toward the wayward book. She didn't quite make it. She glanced down at Marc.

"Hold steady," she said. Then she let go of his shoulder and stood upright, depending entirely on his hands for support. She reached out, caught hold of the book, and smiled down at him. It was just as she was bending down again that she lost her balance.

In the next instant Marc's head and shoulders became the center of what seemed to be a dozen flailing arms and legs.

In an effort to save the situation, Marc stepped back and held out his arms, just in time for Toffee to strike him solidly on the chest. In the tangle that followed they both tumbled to the floor. When Marc looked up Toffee was once more seated comfortably and safely on his stomach. She looked down at him and laughed.

"Does it strike you that a certain monotony has come into our relationship?" she asked.

"It strikes me that a certain pain has come into my stomach," Marc wheezed. "Would you be kind enough, I wonder, to take a seat elsewhere for a change? Or am I going to have to wear you like a watch fob from now on?"

Toffee eyed his mid-section with scorn. "If you think that shriveled bladder of yours is so comfortable, you just ought to try sitting on it sometime."

"That would make an interesting spectacle," Marc commented acidly. "If I'm not comfortable to sit on it's probably because you landed on me so hard you're on my spine. Get off."

"A pleasure," Toffee said and slid to the floor beside him. "Here's that silly book of yours." Without thinking, except to express her contempt for Marc's central region as a seating arrangement, she tossed the book in his direction. The book described a small arc toward Marc, then promptly swooped upward in rapid ascent.

"Oh, my gosh!" Marc said. He sat up and grabbed just in time. "Let's not...!"

Suddenly he stopped as a series of footsteps sounded on the floor above.

"Julie!" he hissed in a stage whisper. "My wife!"

"Marc!" Julie's voice called distinctly. "Marc! Where are you? What was all that noise?"

Marc turned to Toffee. "Go!" he said. "Vanish!"

Toffee gazed blandly on his distress. "I can't," she said, "unless you go to sleep, of course. I couldn't if I wanted to. Which I don't."

"Oh, Lord!" Marc groaned. He stood for a moment, torn.

"Marc!"

Julie was approaching the basement doorway now.

"I've got to go," Marc rasped. "You stay here. Promise?"

Toffee smiled and nodded. "Sure," she said. "But you'll come back, won't you? Because if you don't I'll stir up enough hell down here to raise the dead."

"I'll come back," Marc promised desperately, and started rapidly toward the steps.

"Just a minute," Toffee said. She held her arms out to him. "Kiss me goodbye."

"No," Marc said.

"I'll scream," Toffee said coolly. "I'll yowl like a banshee."

Marc went quickly back to her. "It's not as though I won't be right back. Just a little while...."

"That's all right," Toffee murmured. She slid her arms smoothly around his neck. "This is just so you won't forget."

"Marc!" Julie called from upstairs. "Where are you? What are you doing? Answer me!"

CHAPTER III

Marc stepped into his room and closed the door, but gently, leaving it still open just a crack. He listened. Across the hall, Julie went into her room, closed the door. There was an interval of silence, then the sound of restless movement inside.

Julie's manner downstairs had been tentative, apprehensive and almost frighteningly gentle. She had seemed to believe Marc's story about investigating noises but she had asked once too often if he was feeling well, if the explosion hadn't left him with a terrible headache.

Marc closed the door all the way, went over to the bed, and sat down to wait; she'd settle down in time and then he could return to the basement. He looked around absently and as his gaze passed the window he noticed that the first faint wash of day had come into the sky outside. He reached to the nightstand, picked up a cigarette and lit it. He took a deep draft and blew the smoke out thinly, thoughtfully. With worried bewilderment he considered the fading night's absurdities.

It was as though, in creating the explosion and upsetting the laws of gravity, he had thrown all the processes of the universe out of kilter—as though all the natural laws were balanced precariously one atop the other, so that when one was broken or removed, all the others came tumbling down to shatter at your feet in consequence. A redheaded dream could come to life and laugh and sing and guzzle your wine and raise hell in general all over the lot. Things that were never meant to could begin to float through the air. It was a disconcerting state of affairs just to contemplate, let alone experience. Nature had certainly gone on a bender tonight and no mistake. If these things could happen what else might not be possible? Marc dreaded to think.

If Marc had been able to look into the unknown regions beyond the universe he might have had a quick answer to his question. But not a reassuring one....

In a timeless, unboundaried place, an entity sat cross-legged on a drifting piece of atmosphere and gazed with jaundiced and disconsolate eye toward the regions of Eternity. He looked unhappily on the undiscovered planets whirling and drifting in the distance and said an extremely vulgar and basic word. He plucked a handful of atmosphere from the piece on which he sat, untangled his long legs from beneath his misted robes, and, in a modified way, drop-kicked it into the hereafter. He repeated the word.

George Pillsworth, the spirit of Marc Pillsworth, was bored to the socks with the world beyond. He frowned, and the face of Marc Pillsworth expressed disfavor. He leaned forward and dangled his hands between his knees, and it was the lean body of Marc Pillsworth that leaned and the thin hands of Marc Pillsworth that dangled. There, however, the resemblance rocked to a jarring stop.

The message vibrations came trembling across space again, but George didn't bother to listen to them. It was probably just the message center at its eternal business; probably another relay broadcast forwarding the same old answers to the same old mediums down on earth. The question came constantly for the upper level spirits: Are you happy, Uncle Howard? Are you happy, Sister Martha? Always the same silly question. The devil of it was that no one was ever allowed to give them a truthful answer; the News Control Board took care of that. The answer was always the same ... probably recorded, George suspected ... transmitted from the message center: I am in a beautiful place. I am very happy.

Very happy, indeed. In this place? George didn't know about the Kingdoms; maybe they were all right, but this place was.... Well, no, it couldn't be that. But why didn't they tell the truth for once: I'm in the dullest place in time, and if I had any blood I'd open my veins.

The thought of transmitting such a message to those bothersome earthly mediums pleased George immensely. That would rock them back on their heels and stop their silly questions. He leaned back on his atmosphere ledge and smiled for the first time in several days. Then suddenly he sat up as the transmitted vibrations grew more intense, and his own name sounded across time.

"George Pillsworth! George Pillsworth! Report instantly to the High Council! Instantly! Shake a leg, you shabby spook!"

George's expression was instantly troubled. "Now what have they found out about?" he sighed.

George paused to recount in his mind his more recent sins. Last week he had heard that humans often became quite rich by distilling spirits and had tried the process on a few of his friends. He had come close to narrowing the circle of his acquaintances to a positive noose. But they'd already had him on the carpet for that. All in all, a muggy affair. He shrugged resignedly, dissolved and concentrated his impulses toward the ...

Council Chambers....

An instant later George rose through the grey mists of the Chamber. He looked tentatively at the Council and quickly averted his gaze; to an entity, the Council stared back at him without affection or beauty. George cleared his throat nervously.

"George Pillsworth, spiritual part to the mortal Marc Pillsworth, reporting as instructed," he said.

"And not a moment too soon," the Head commented bleakly. "Face the Council, please. If you've the gall."

Guardedly, George raised his eyes to the Council. The sight was not heart-warming. The Council, under the very best circumstances, was not attractive. In a nasty mood it could be inconceivably ugly. Comprised of five members who prided themselves on being only concerned with the most profound matters of Eternity, the Council was not given to pursuits of vanity. It looked like hell and was proud of it.

The Head had not been misnamed. An entity who functioned entirely on an intellectual plane, his body had dwindled through the years while his head had become enlarged. Now he was the proud possessor of the biggest, shaggiest, most formidable top-piece extant. The others were of a similar stamp, but to a lesser degree. Two of them had fairly well developed arms and shoulders but they did their best to hide the fact beneath their robes since it was a clear indication of inferior mentality. The one who was unfortunate enough to be cursed with rather a good set of legs was obviously to be regarded as not much of an intellect at all, a mere messenger boy or literally a leg man. To face the Council, then, was quite a lot to ask. Almost too much, as far as George was concerned.

"He's got the gall for anything," one of the armed intellects commented nastily. "Remember when he was caught selling bogus passports to ascending spirits?"

George blanched. He wished they would concentrate on the present and stop dragging up the past.

The Head cleared his throat with a formidable rattle. "I think we can adhere to the matter at hand without involving personalities," he said. "The fact that the Pillsworth entity is a spirit of the utmost depravity has already been established in this Council so often that the whole subject begins to take on the aspect of a broken record. We'll come to that later if we must." There was another clearing of the throat. "The entity will approach the Council."

"Forgive me, your honor," one of the minor members of the Council intercepted. "But do you think that's really wise? I know it's part of the prescribed procedure, but mightn't we leave it out, just this once? I don't trust him a step nearer than he is already."

"I don't trust him that close," another of the members put in. "Couldn't we reverse the procedure and have him go away from the Council?"

The Head nodded. "You have a point there," he said. He looked at George. "Pillsworth, retreat three steps backwards and stand at attention."

"I meant go away altogether," the member murmured disappointedly. "I was hoping we could forget the whole thing."

George took three steps backwards and assumed what he supposed could pass for a position of attention. He tried to look alert.

"Is this correct, sir?" he asked.

"The entity will remain silent until requested to speak!" the Head thundered. "We'll tell you when you're wrong. Oh, brother!"

"Yes," said one of the others. "For heaven's sake don't let him get started. He'll be talking us into giving him a down payment on the acres of Heaven."

"Yes," the Head agreed. "And now to the business at hand." He regarded George with even less approval than before. "It is the custom of the Council to advise and instruct every entity before he or she is released to the world below. He is to be charged here with his allotment of ectoplasm and called upon to swear from memory to the ten fundamental oaths as set down in the Haunter's Handbook and Guide. Do you feel that you are prepared for the ceremony, Pillsworth, or would you like to request a delay for study and contemplation?"

George shifted excitedly. He could hardly contain himself. This was the moment for which he had been waiting through all these eternal years. At last he was to be released to Earth. His heart fairly sang. From all he'd heard, Earth was precisely the place where his talents and aptitudes would find their proper market. He was so choked with emotion he could hardly answer.

"I am prepared," he said weakly.

"However," the Head continued with new emphasis, "there is considerable doubt as to the status under which you shall be released to the Earth ... that, not going into the Earth's fitness to rise to the occasion of your arrival. It appears that your earthly past, Marc Pillsworth, has departed life, but there is a small degree of uncertainty about the whole affair. It is known that Marc Pillsworth was caught in a violent explosion in the basement of his home, and since then his cosmic radiations have broken. It is possible, considering the nature of the explosion, that there may be a chemical interference involved here if the chemical processes of Pillsworth himself have undergone some sort of change. However, it's not likely.

"At any rate, no request for reservations has been received under the name of Pillsworth in any of the upper planes, and this has caused us to be uncertain. Still, we cannot risk the possibility of a slip-up. When a mortal dies his haunt must be dispatched instantly to his friends and loved ones. It's always been that way." The Head eyed George and suddenly looked sad. "It just happens that the Pillsworth's are unlucky."

"I will endeavor ..." George began earnestly.

"Silence!" The Head bellowed. "We know what you'll endeavor to do, you devil. Anyway, it has been decided, against all reason and better judgment, that you shall be dispatched to Earth as per schedule. But only on a probationary and exploratory basis. In other words, it will be your mission to go to earth and determine whether Marc Pillsworth is really dead or not. If he is, you will remain and perform your duties according to the code. If, however, he proves still to be alive—and let me emphasize this—you will depart the earth and return instanter. And not a moment later. Do you understand?"

George stood meekly in the cloud-mists while the Council discussed his case....

"Yes, sir," George offered timidly.

"And now," the Head continued, "there is the matter of your character. If it deserves the name. Actually, you are the most characterless spirit I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. In you are combined all the base qualities which we strive so hard to fight in this region. Sometimes I find myself looking on you as a sort of trash dump in which are collected all the vile qualities which we have managed to cleanse from the other spirits. But that's only desperate rationalization. How you happen to be as you are I have never been able to figure out. It appears that for every virtue your earthly part has acquired you have embraced an additional evil. At any rate, you are no angel, and that's the very least I have to say on the matter.

"The point is that we do not dare to hope that you will stick to the accepted and orthodox procedures of haunting, let alone be even the least bit of consolation to Pillsworth's survivors. We only ask—no, we demand—that you do not disgrace the fine traditions of haunting. It will be plainly understood that you may be recalled and punished at any time should you get so far out of line as to be an embarrassment to us. In other words, Pillsworth, watch your step. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," George said mildly. He gazed down at his toes, dissolved them nervously. "Yes, indeed, sir."

"Very well, then," the Head said. "You will prepare to take the oath by swearing from memory to the ten rules. Raise your right hand." He turned to one of his colleagues on the bench. "If this isn't a hollow mockery, I've never seen one," he muttered.

The favored entity nodded. "As hollow as Aunt Maggie's bustle," he said. "And twice as tacky."

George raised his right hand and solemnly lifted his eyes in a heavenward direction. The ten rules, transcribed there sometime before in hopeful anticipation of this moment, had remained quite legible on the sleeve of his atmospheric robe.

Fully dressed now and returned to the edge of his bed, Marc watched the first faint beginnings of night's evolution into day. Since he had kindly been spared any knowledge of the other force which had been released by the explosion in the basement, his thoughts concerned themselves with the staggering circumstance of Toffee and the buoyant debris. He rose, crossed to the door, and listened for any sound from across the hall. It was quiet there now.

Leaving the door, he went to the bureau at the far side of the room, cautiously opened the top drawer, careful to keep his hand over the opening, and caught the little black book as it gained freedom and shot upward. He put it in the breast pocket of his jacket and fastened it there by clasping his pen over it. Then he crossed quickly to the wardrobe, took out a light topcoat, draped it over his arm, and returned to the door. He paused again to listen, then shoved the door open and stepped silently out into the hallway.

In the basement, at the bottom of the steps, he paused and glanced tentatively about, braced himself against an attack from the redhead. He waited a moment, then called Toffee's name.

There was a moment of quiet, then a slight rustling as Toffee appeared from the shadows of the wine bins. She raised her arms above her head and stretched with a languorous yawn. In the grey light of early morning her apparel, or rather the lack of apparel, was even more startling than it had been during the night. Marc glanced quickly away and held out the coat.

"Here," he said distractedly. "Put this on. And button it up all the way down."

Toffee looked at the coat without interest. "What for?" she asked with bland innocence. "And, besides, how can I button it up and down at the same time?"

"Never mind," Marc said. "Just cover your nakedness."

"My nakedness?" Toffee said. "Why in the world would I want to cover it? What's wrong with it? I have a perfectly divine nakedness. I'll match my nakedness with yours any time...."

"No!" Marc broke in. "Don't go on."

"Well, with anyone's nakedness, then, if you're going to be edgey. I haven't anything to be ashamed of."

"If you did," Marc said bitterly, "you wouldn't have the decency to be ashamed of it. Put the coat on and stop wasting time."

Toffee shrugged bewilderedly and took the coat from his outstretched hand. "Oh, well," she said, slipping it on, "if you're going to make a scene about anything so silly. Where are we going?"

"T wish I knew," Marc said wearily. "Anywhere away from here. Obviously, you can't hang around here where Julie will run into you."

"No," Toffee said mildly. "I suppose not. Though it would be fun to see her reaction. Might do her a world of good." She waved a hand at the wreckage clustered on the ceiling. "What about that? What are you going to do about your experiment?"

Marc shrugged. "I have to think about that later, when I've got you out of my hair."

Together, they proceeded to the hole in the wall. Marc lifted Toffee out, then boosted himself after. Toffee reached down to give him a hand.

"Don't look so glum," she said. "Nothing really awful has happened. Not yet."

"Be quiet," Marc said.

He led her to the garage at the back of the house, cautiously lifted the door and indicated a large green convertible. "Get in," he instructed.

"I am your slave," Toffee said with mock subservience. "Take me where you will." She got into the car.

Mincing slightly, Marc slid into the seat beside her. "Be quiet," he said. "Let's try to get out of here without waking up Julie."

It was unfortunate that Marc, in his haste to remove Toffee from the premises, did not have the foresight to raise the top of the convertible. With that one small act of protection he might have secured a clean getaway. As it was, with him and Toffee exposed and plain to the eyes of the world, he threw the convertible into gear and backed out of the garage toward just about the most slipshod escape ever enacted by man.

As the car slid smoothly down the drive, Marc switched off the ignition so that it might coast soundlessly past that part of the house which held the window to Julie's room. It was precisely at this point, of course, that tragedy befell. The black book twisted itself lose in Marc's pocket and suddenly shot upward.

"Oh, good grief!" Marc said. He put on the brakes.

As he and Toffee watched, the book sailed higher, flitted a bit to one side and lodged itself in a cross-section of trellis precisely next to Julie's window.

"What are you going to do?" Toffee whispered.

"Climb up and get it, I suppose," Marc said wretchedly. "I can't leave it there." He got out of the car, then turned back. "Don't you make a move while I'm gone."

Toffee nodded vigorously and pulled the collar of her coat up around her face. "I'll be positively furtive," she giggled.

Marc made his way to the trellis, tested it with his foot, and started up. Several feet up, he paused to listen. Then, reassured, he continued upward. A moment later he was within reaching distance of the book. He sighed with relief.

Down in the car Toffee watched without great concern. However, she was anxious to be away; it was dull just sitting there. She looked around for some way to hasten matters. It was then that she conceived the idea of starting the car so that they could continue their flight the moment Marc returned to the ground. She glanced at the profusion of knobs on the elaborate dash board, thoughtfully selected the prettiest, and twisted....

It was in the same moment that Marc reached for the little book and caught hold of it, that the early morning suddenly thundered with a booming rendition of "Anchors Aweigh!" performed by a marine band. All at once, drums throbbed, cymbals clanged and bugles blared with all the crashing enthusiasm that a hundred healthy seagoing men could muster.

Marc whirled about, clinging to the trellis, and stared down at Toffee in horror. But Toffee was too busy frantically twisting knobs to notice. The music swelled and became louder as windows began to fly open all over the neighborhood. On the trellis, Marc was assailed with a chill feeling that there were eyes on the back of his neck. As he turned about, his nose came within a fraction of brushing Julie's.

"Oh, Lord!" he moaned in belated prayer.

"Marc Pillsworth!" Julie shrieked, leaning further out the window. "What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?" Then her astonished gaze moved to the car and Toffee. "Who is that woman?"

Marc glanced distractedly down at Toffee, as though seeing her there for the first time. "That's nobody," he murmured feebly.

And the next instant it seemed that he had almost spoken the truth, that indeed the car, Toffee and the pounding radio had never actually been there at all. As a unit, as Toffee's frantic hand quickly selected another button and pressed it, they all shot backwards out of the drive and out of sight. Toffee's shriek of dismay was added discordantly to the moan of a naval tuba and the scream of racing tires. Marc glanced desperately at the stunned, sleep-stained faces peering from the houses across the street and shudderingly closed his eyes. With the others, he waited for the sound of the crash. But it did not come.

"Marc Pillsworth...!" Julie began, then stopped as Toffee and the green convertible suddenly reappeared as swiftly and sensationally as they had departed. Still travelling backwards, the car shot into the drive with a spray of gravel and headed toward the house like a thing possessed. Toffee was wildly manipulating the wheel on a hit or miss basis.

"Help!" she screamed.

"Turn right!" Marc yelled from the trellis. "Turn right!"

Automatically, Toffee followed instructions. She grasped the wheel with both hands and pulled to the right. The car swerved, crashed over a flower bed and headed for the lawns. There, pawing turf like a reversed bull, it described a wide circle and started back for the drive.

Toffee waved elatedly to Marc over her shoulder. "Now I've got it!" she cried. "It's easy!" Apparently, she did not realize that she had learned to drive backwards, that there was another way of directing the mechanism.

Racing the car to the area in front of the garage, she whipped it around down the drive again. She looked up at Marc.

"Jump as I come past!" she yelled.

"Who is that?" Julie shrieked, finally recovering her voice. "Answer me! Marc Pillsworth, stay right where you are!"

"Jump!" Toffee yelled. "Now!"

Marc landed on the seat beside Toffee and felt himself borne, as if by the wind itself, down the drive.

The band swung into a booming arrangement of "Don't Give Up The Ship!" as, hind bumper first, they skidded into the street and sped away....

CHAPTER IV

The towers of the Wynant Hotel, a snobbish establishment whose austere front hulked over the general public with stoney aloofness, marked the center of the city.

Within, the Wynant shed upon its cowed clientele all the warmth and home-like comfort of a walk-in freezing unit. The personnel had obviously been trained to regard the paying guest as a fraud, a vandal and a momentary fugitive from social and moral levels so low as to be mainly inhabited by gophers.

As to decor, the Wynant had permitted itself only a single divergence from the completely austere. In the center of its vast foyer there was a fountain and pool, topped with the marble figure of a woman in the final stages of dishabille. The lady in question, however, was of a classic pedigree and, therefore, her condition of undress was permissible; one was allowed to look upon her classic charms without fear of suspicion from the bellhops. If the guests of the Wynant, who stayed there mainly for the dubious purposes of prestige, felt a certain affection for the lady of the fountain, it was because she, in her classic security, was accomplishing for them the very thing they had always longed to do themselves; she had presented herself solidly in the very center of the Wynant and caused an area of dampness thereupon. It did not matter that the lady clutched her nakedness to her in a fit of modesty; the guests of the Wynant knew what she really had on her mind and loved her for it with a devout intensity.

Marc had always considered the Wynant a veritable bully of a place, and this opinion was generally shared by a multitude of others. On the one occasion when he had gone to the Wynant to attend what was unanimously conceded to be the most stultifying businessmen's luncheon in the annals of human commerce, he had vowed never to set foot in the place again. However, there always comes a time to break even the most solemn of vows.

It was logic of a sort that caused Marc to bring Toffee to the Wynant; if there was any atmosphere chill enough to conquer the irrepressible redhead's wayward disposition, the Wynant had just such an atmosphere to offer in aces and spades. It was Marc's rather naive thought to banish Toffee to the more elevated regions of this spiritual salt mine and leave her there until, out of sheer, screaming boredom, she made up her mind to disappear to the place from whence she had come. Thus he would be free to make his peace with Julie and set his house in order in the several ways that it now required.

Noting the doorman's glance of disapproval as they entered, Marc carefully jockeyed himself into a position in front of Toffee so that she might be hidden from view. The top coat, several cuts too long both in the sleeves and the skirt, did little to give the girl an air of refinement. As rapidly as he could, Marc led her across the broad foyer to the desk at the opposite side of the room. Toffee flapped obediently along behind him, but her gaze moved curiously toward the fountain and its unclad mistress.

"Is that one of the guests taking a bath?" she asked innocently.

"Certainly not," Marc said. "It's a statue. That fact is quite evident."

Toffee's eyes narrowed suspiciously on the statue. "She looks awfully lifelike to me."

"Don't worry," Marc said. "You won't have to take your bath in public."

"I wasn't worried," Toffee said absently.

They proceeded to the desk and were instantly greeted by a clerk of a precise black-and-white perfection. Though the man was shorter than Marc he still seemed to look down on him from a great height.

"Yes?" he asked with a slight reptilian hiss.

Marc had prepared his story in advance. "I'd like a suite for my niece," he said.

The clerk regarded Marc's "niece" and her costume and notched up the last small measure of slack in his eyebrows.

"I'm Marc Pillsworth," Marc said hopefully, "of the Pillsworth Advertising Agency."

The clerk regarded Marc with a cool steadiness that indicated all too plainly that anyone engaged in advertising, in the opinion of the Wynant, was nothing more than a not-so-high-class ballyhoo artist. Then he glanced down at the polished surface of the counter As though expecting to see three shells and a pea suddenly appear there.

"And your niece's luggage?" he asked.

"My niece was in an accident," Marc said quickly. "Her luggage was lost, burned. She's in town to replace the things that were destroyed."

"I see," the clerk said, obviously mulling over the very interesting fact that Toffee had managed to be caught in the accident in nothing but a genleman's topcoat.

"It was so embarrassing," Toffee put in tragically.

"I daresay," the clerk said sourly. He turned back to Marc. "I'm afraid the hotel is completely filled."

Marc sighed. Now he would have to discover some other disposition for Toffee. But suddenly he was too tired to even think. All at once he was overcome with such a feeling of fatigue that he could hardly restrain himself from leaning down to rest his head on the desk counter. He was exhausted beyond belief. He tried to turn away, but he hadn't even the strength for that. And then his eyes began to play tricks. As he looked at them, the clerk, Toffee, the desk blurred and became hazy. He felt that he was slipping into unconsciousness but he had no sensation of falling. Rather, it was as though he were simply floating away from reality. Reality dimmed, faded away and was gone.... Then suddenly everything jumped back into place with startling clarity. It was as though he had traveled a long, long journey in a space of seconds.

"Marc!" Frightenedly.

It was Toffee who had screamed, and Marc turned quickly toward her. Then he came close to screaming himself. Something had happened to the She had grown so terribly short all of a sudden! And the clerk too. Neither of them rose to a height quite even with his waist. They were both staring up at him in open-mouthed horror.

"What's happened to you?" Marc gasped.

"To us!" Toffee cried. "It's you! What are you doing up there?"

"Up where?" Marc asked. Then suddenly he glanced about him, and his breath made a startled rattling sound at the back of his throat.

At once, Marc could neither deny nor believe what he saw. A dreadful confusion crowded his senses as he regarded the space of thin air that stretched between his feet and the floor. Impossibly he had elevated to a height of about three feet. And he was still rising!

"Oh, Lord!" he yelled.

"Please keep your voice down," the clerk said desperately. "It's bad enough what you're doing, without yelling about it. If this is some advertising stunt...."

"Keep my voice down?" Marc said unhappily. "I can't even keep myself down!"

"It's the explosion!" Toffee cried with sudden realization. "All that stuff floating around in the basement! Now you're doing it, too!"

"Oh, my God!" Marc cried. The exclamation was prompted simultaneously by the terrible realization of his condition and the fact that even while they had been talking he had risen an additional foot into the air.

"I'm going higher!"

The clerk steadied himself uncertainly against the counter. "Please, sir!" he quavered. "You'll have to stop that at once. I'll give you a room, a whole floor, if you'll only stop!"

"You shut up, you quivering ninny," Marc gritted. "Do you think I actually want to do this sort of thing?"

"I don't know," the clerk said uncertainly. "I can't think why you should. I'm sure I'd hate it myself."

"Here!" Toffee yelled. "Take my hand! I'll pull you down!"

Marc reached out to Toffee, but too quickly; the sudden movement caused him to veer away from her. He drifted to one side, revolved helplessly, then moved away.

"Help!" he yelled. "For Pete's sake, help!"

Toffee stood staring at him, too terror stricken to move. She watched, transfixed, as he soared drunkenly across the broad foyer, apparently marking the tide of the air conditioning.

"Oh, Mona!" she murmured. "He's sailing like a kite in an autumn wind!"

Up till this time the foyer had remained blissfully deserted, but this was not a condition destined to endure. At the worst possible moment, just as Marc drifted wordlessly past the doorway, a company of diners entered from the dining room. Four in all, two men and two women, they walked into the room, stopped, observed a figure going past overhead, floating lazily in mid-air like an agonized leaf on the tide, and fell into a tense silence. All four of them stared hauntedly into space for a time. Then one of the ladies, of a lesser fortitude than the others, reached out and took her companion's arm in a death grip.

"I could have sworn I saw...!"

The man, a portly individual with a grey, senatorial mane, reached out and, without hesitation, clapped a hand over the lady's mouth.

"No, you didn't, dear," he said quietly, "we just won't speak of it."

Together, the four turned and silently filed back into the dining room.

"I'd like to enquire about the brandy sauce," the old gentleman said through clenched teeth. "I may sue this place before I'm through."

In the meantime, Toffee had taken out in hot pursuit of Marc. "Grab something!" she panted, running along beneath him. "Grab something and hold on!"

The words came dimly to Marc through the pounding panic in his mind, but he obeyed them automatically. He reached out and felt frantically for something to take hold of. He had risen by now to a height of about eight feet and was circling toward the fountain. It was destiny that guided him to the statue.

He caught hold of the stone lady and grappled to make his grasp firm. If at this point in the proceedings the mistress of the fountain did not reach out and slap Marc it was more because she was made of stone than because of the place where he grabbed her. The effect bordered narrowly on the obscene and became even more questionable as Marc took a toe hold on the lady's mid-section. It was precisely at this moment that the elevator doors directly across from the fountain slid open and a delegation of conventioning club ladies arrived.

As a unit the ladies quitted the car, started forward, then stopped short. Twenty-two well-padded bosoms rose and fell sharply and twenty-two discreetly tinted mouths opened on a single gasp of horror.

"Would you look at that!" one of the ladies blurted.

"I'm trying not to," another answered in a shocked whisper. "What is he trying to do to her?"

"I shudder to think. But look where he's got hold of her!"

"I can't," another moaned, closing her eyes tight. "It's too awful! If anyone ever grabbed me like that...!" Her voice shuddered away into silence.

"Police!"

So soon did the others pick up the cry, there was no way of telling which of the ladies had started it. Suddenly, the foyer shrieked from end to end and top to bottom with a call to all officialdom to come and defend the honor of the besieged statue. The ladies, milling frantically among themselves, were screaming themselves into a fair frenzy.

At the fountain Toffee was lending her voice to the general confusion. The sight of Marc clinging to another woman, whether of stone or flesh, did not set well with the redhead.

"You stop that!" she snapped, from the edge of the pool. "You let go of that marble huzzy before I come up there and knock her block off!"

"Don't be silly!" Marc called back unhappily. "She's not real. Besides, I can't let go!"

"I don't care about that," Toffee said. "What burns me up is what you're probably thinking up there."

"Good grief!" Marc cried. "I'm not thinking anything!"

"Oh, no?" Toffee sneered. "No man on earth could grab a woman the way you've grabbed that one and not be thinking something."

"Stop blathering nonsense," Marc said furiously, "and do something. Help me get down from here."

"You bet I will," Toffee said grimly. And with that she stepped lightly to the wall of the pool, peeled off her coat and stepped down into the water.

"No!" Marc yelled. "No!"

"Oh, my land!" one of the club ladies shrieked above the others. "Now there's a naked woman swimming around in the pool!"

"It's probably that poor statue trying to get away!" one of her sisters replied.

As Toffee swam toward the pedestal and the statue, the doors of the Wynant became crowded with shoving spectators who had been attracted by the din inside. The foyer began to fill rapidly. Behind the desk, a door opened and the manager of the Wynant ran to the desk clerk. He was a plum-cheeked, small man with dark hair and, at the moment, an extremely florid complexion. He grabbed the clerk by the shoulder and swung him around.

"What's going on here?" he demanded. He glanced toward the statue. "Who is that man up there? What is he doing? And that woman?"

The clerk trembled under his grasp. "I don't know," he said weakly. "I told them they couldn't stay here."

"Do something!" the manager piped. "This isn't a fun house!"

"Would you swear to it?" the clerk pleaded.

It was just as Toffee had reached the pedestal and was starting upward toward Marc and the statue that the elevator door slid open for a second time, and Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright, a small invalid of advanced years and means, manoeuvered her wheelchair into the tumultuous foyer. Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright had occupied the Wynant penthouse suite for almost twenty years now. Starting across the foyer, she braked her chair to a sudden stop and observed the activity at the fountain with an interested but unperturbed eye. She turned to the manager.

"Well, I'll be damned," she commented dryly. "It's about time this place got a floor show." She looked back at the statue. "You've got to give him credit for spunk. But I'll lay odds on the statue."

But the manager did not hear her. He only knew that the impossible had happened; the reputation of the Wynant had been placed in jeopardy. It had to be stopped at any cost. Shoving the trembling clerk aside, he dodged around the end of the desk and forced his way through the crowd to the brink of the pool. He climbed quickly to the wall of the pool just as Toffee reached Marc and went determinedly about the business of trying to dislodge him from his curvesome anchorage.

"There's no cause for excitement!" the manager yelled, turning to face the crowd. "It's really nothing!"

"Maybe you call it nothing," one of the club ladies snorted with fiery indignation.

"No! No!" the manager yelled. He held up his hands for quiet. "Listen to me! You don't understand! Nothing wrong is going on here!" It was better to defend these demented vandals than have the good name of the Wynant soiled. "These people are only cleaning the statue!"

"Oh, yeah!" a small, shabby-looking man sneered. "That statue'll never be clean again as long as she lives!"

The manager glanced wretchedly behind him and shuddered as he realized that current activities did nothing to substantiate the lie he had just told; never had so many pairs of grappling arms and legs combined themselves in one place to give such a glaring picture of pure, wanton abandon. With Marc clutching the statue, and Toffee clutching Marc, the statue seemed to be clutching herself with a new desperation that could never possibly have been achieved by mere chiseled stone; the poor dumb thing seemed suddenly to realize that not only her modesty but also her honor was at stake.

"Let go of her, you debauched floater!" Toffee hissed in Marc's ear. "Let go of her before I tear you apart!"

"I can't!" Marc panted, hanging on for dear life. "Do you want me to get spiked on the chandelier?"

"Better that than atrophied to this naked trollop!" Toffee said.

"If I were that statue," one of the club ladies whispered, "I'd never be able to face my friends again."

"Oh, I don't know, lady," said a rather dapper but vague-looking gentleman. "You know how statues are. They're always standing around without any clothes on and leering at each other. In that statue's crowd this sort of thing is just child's play."

"What kind of children play like that?" the woman snapped.

"What kind of children? Do I look like the kind of a man who goes around prying into the affairs of children?" He drew himself up. "Lady, are you trying to trap me into an argument about children?"

In the meantime the manager had turned his efforts from the outraged crowd to the entangled couple clinging to the statue.

"Come down from there!" he bawled, "Come down this instant!"

Almost as though at his command, the struggle on the statue came to an abrupt end. Marc, with a cry of warning, suddenly lost his grip and lurched to one side. Toffee tightened her hold on his neck and clung fast. In the next instant, entirely under the pull of Toffee's weight, they plunged together downward and into the pool below. There was a murmur from the crowd. Then there was a brief scream from the manager as, in jumping to avoid the splash, he lost his footing and joined the pair in the water.

The crowd watched tensely as the three heads disappeared beneath the surface of the pool, then soggily reappeared. A murmur of comment rose throughout the room, then suddenly silenced with a gasp.

One of the heads was not behaving at all as it should; it not only reappeared, but continued to move higher and higher into the air, dragging its lank and dripping body after it.

Slowly, Marc rose entirely out of the pool, hovered for a moment, and then came to rest, his feet resting lightly and exactly on the surface of the water. The soaking he had just received had provided him with enough extra poundage that his buoyancy had been somewhat tempered but not entirely destroyed. A smothered cry of dismay echoed around him as he stood blandly on the surface of the pool, then leaned forward to knock the water out of his ears.

The other two heads swiveled about to regard him with contrasting degrees of interest. For a moment the manager stared at Marc, then slowly sank out of sight again beneath the green obscurity of a lily pad.

Toffee turned graciously to the sea of gaping faces around her.

"Give me a hand someone," she said.

"Not me, lady," a man near the edge said. "With the company you keep, I wouldn't give you so much as a clipping off my fingernail."

Toffee glanced around for a volunteer, then suddenly dived down to join the manager beneath the lily pad.

Help was on its way at last and it wore a dark blue uniform. For the first time since its erection the lofty ceiling of the Wynant echoed back the firm and hurried tread of flat feet.

Across the room Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright wheeled her chair back into the elevator and smilingly plucked at the operator's sleeve.

"Remind me to renew my lease on the penthouse this week, Joe," she said. "After twenty years this place is beginning to be interesting."

CHAPTER V

Meanwhile, Julie Pillsworth had not only lost her poise, but a shocking amount of bodily moisture; a good full-lunged cry in the private confines of her bed had done nothing to erase the memory of her husband disporting himself loosely about the landscape with a strange redhead under the very noses of their neighbors.

Julie dared not draw any conclusions concerning the affair of the trellis; there were too many emotions involved, and she, having formed her marriage on what she firmly believed to be a solid foundation of logic and sound theory, was not practiced in the ways of emotion. Suddenly, emotionally, Julie was in a strange land without a guide, at a ball game without a program, up a creek without a paddle. Briefly, she was no end confused and upset.

Perhaps Julie might have eventually reached the right conclusion and even done the right thing, for in the back of her mind was the vague feeling that Marc's sudden burst of misbehavior was the result of some obscure failing in herself. She might have, that is, if May Springer and Jewel Drummer hadn't appeared on the scene just as her thoughts were turning in that direction.

May was a small, bird-boned, heron-faced woman with a voice as slight and chirping as the mentality which it served. Jewel was the other side of the picture: dog-jawed, thunder voiced and overwhelmingly double-breasted. These two had long since elected themselves to be Julie's "best friends," and now that Julie was in trouble they had come to help. In short, this was just the chance they had been waiting for.

The three women watched tensely as the maid left the tea things on the table and departed from the living room through the hall. Julie instantly returned her tear-stained face to her handkerchief. May and Jewel exchanged a look and hitched themselves forward in their chairs in the manner of a pair of ditch diggers rolling up their sleeves to go to work.

"I wouldn't hesitate a second," May piped. "I'd start divorcing the bum right now. The time to let him have it is the first minute you hear about the other woman. And, honey, you saw her! I did too for that matter. When that awful clatter started, and I looked out of my window and saw your husband with that woman...! Well! I'll testify, honey! They'll never shut me up."

"Me too, dear," Jewel put in heavily from beyond the rolling hills of her bosom. "Of course I didn't actually see anything, but I heard it all. The only thing for you to do is just close up the house and go to Reno while it's all fresh in your mind. And let your lawyer do the talking. Remember that."

"I know you feel better, now that you've decided," May said. "Jewel and I will help you get your affairs with the house straightened up." She leaned forward and tapped Jewel lightly on the knee. "Won't we, Jewel?"

Julie looked up moistly from her handkerchief. "But I haven't decided," she wailed. "That's just it; I can't seem to decide anything. Marc has never done anything like this before. All of a sudden he just blew up the basement and started acting strange. I just can't get over the feeling that maybe it's partly my fault somehow...."

"Ridiculous!" Jewel snorted.

"Of course!" May chimed.

"Oh, I don't know," Julie said hopelessly. "I just have a feeling that Marc isn't to blame, that something strange is happening to him, and he can't help himself. Maybe he needs me very badly right now."

"What's happened to him isn't so strange," Jewel pronounced. "It's just that lousy male chemistry at work. The devils all get that way sooner or later. Men are just a bunch of brutes, all of them. If there's anything mysterious about all this it's only how you manage to feel so damned charitable about it."

Albeit unwittingly on this occasion, Jewel, in all her history of premeditated lies, had never spoken a greater untruth. There was something far more mysterious going on than just Julie's feeling of charity. It wanted only a trip to the basement to be discovered.

The thing that was taking place in the subterranean regions of the house was stranger than either truth or fiction and twice as paralyzing.

The fact of the matter was that George had finally arrived on earth. Starting logically at the beginning, with the first principle of haunting as set down in the Guide, George had descended to the place of his earthly part's untimely demise. Here, according to the rules, there were certain procedures of investigation to be followed; but George was far too excited with his sudden condition of release to be bothered with those. Like a giddy school girl with her first party dress, he could hardly wait to try on his ectoplasm. Even in this, however, there were difficulties involved.

Unfortunately, as George saw it, the process of ectoplasmic materialization depended largely upon the concentration of the entity involved; first he had to thoroughly picture in his mind the earthly form that he was to assume, and then, from that mental image, shape his earthly manifestation. The trouble was that George's powers of concentration had never been anything to brag about.

George's observance of the human form had always been extremely sketchy at best. Faced with the problem of shaping such a form for himself, he was somewhat at a loss. Pressing his memory to the limit he could only recall that there were such things as arms, legs, head and torsos, but the exact number and arrangement of these appointments completely escaped him. Try as he would to think, nothing very clear came to mind. Finally, in desperation, he decided just to give it the old trial-and-error and make it up as he went along. He might have done better to find himself an anatomy chart.

George decided on an arm and a hand to begin with; they seemed a rather utilitarian item to have in the event that you wanted to go around picking things up. He gave his thoughts over to that appendage.

The process worked with surprising facility. In the very next moment an arm, neatly tapering off to a hand, promptly appeared, balanced on the elbow, on the basement floor. George looked at it and felt a thrill of pride at the accomplishment; it didn't matter that the thing was rather starkly at loose ends with itself.

Glowing with the success of his first venture, George decided on a head as the subject of his next efforts. Without a moment's hesitation, but several feet above the arm, a head appeared in thin air, bearing a duplicate face to the one of Marc Pillsworth. It was wonderfully lifelike. It turned, looked down at the arm, and frowned.

Now George wasn't so sure; somehow things didn't seem to be shaping up quite as he'd expected. He shrugged. Probably matters would be improved when everything was more connected together. He thought for a moment and remembered the matter of legs.

A moment later a leg and accompanying foot popped into being, but oddly it appeared in a position near the head, a bit to one side with the foot leading off rakishly toward the ceiling.

The head turned and regarded this phenomenon with worried interest. Definitely, things weren't balancing out at all well. But what was there to do but to go on with it now that it had gotten this far? And then the head smiled; George had remembered. There should be two arms and two legs in place of just one. In the grisly moment that followed, the arm on the floor was joined by a mate, as was the leg hovering in the air by the head.

The head peered with unwarranted pride from between the floating legs and smiled on its accomplishments. Now George felt he was really getting somewhere. There remained only the torso to be materialized. George thought about this and wished it into being.