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."