"I don't think so. You'd really have to feel mean to say some of the stuff those two was dishin' out to this George." The thug paused and withdrew Toffee's thought gadget from his pocket. "Look what I lifted off the dame in the closet." He placed it on the desk before the congressman. "She's plenty hot to get it back. You'd think it was somethin' worth somethin'."
"What is it?"
"I don't know. Some sort of two-way flashlight, I guess. Just a piece of junk."
The congressman bent his shaggy head close over the gadget and examined it minutely. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, then shrugged and dropped it negligently into his pocket.
"Let's have a look at these two crackpots," he said, rising from his chair. "We'll have to dispose of them, of course."
"Okay," the thug said. "I just hope they've got things settled with this George before we get there."
Back in the storeroom, however, events were lurching ahead in a most uncertain manner. Things had started with an air of mild strangeness and mounted swiftly to a state of wild-eyed madness.
Finding themselves confined and in the hands of blood-thirsting murderers, Marc and Toffee had paused only momentarily to survey their musty prison, the cases of wines, brandies and whiskies stacked along the walls, before returning to the subject uppermost in their minds. Toffee, doubling her fists, addressed herself to the room at large.
"George," she said evenly, "we know you're with us. You gave yourself away in the car when you let that foot materialize, and you'll give yourself away again. And when you do, brother, I'm going to kick your teeth out one at a time and have them made into shirt studs. I'm going to...!"