THE LAUGHTER OF TOFFEE
By Charles F. Myers
Marc's troubles began the moment Hotshot
Harold planted the miracle elixir on him. Then
came a bevy of cops—Toffee—and X-ray eyes....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To the casual observer that morning Marc Pillsworth presented only the picture of a rather loose-jointed, yet constrained, businessman on his way to another orderly day at the office. One would hardly have guessed that he was striding forward into the first leg of a journey that was destined to take him on a shrieking, streaking sleigh ride of madness, frenzy and crime. Indeed, Marc himself would never have dreamed that such a thing was even possible.
The trouble was, of course, that this was the first day of spring. The world had finally shrugged itself free of winter and, with a toss of its golden curls, was unmistakably casting about for some sort of foolishness to get into. The sun was burgeoning bright in the sky, green things were intruding their heads impertinently through the warm soil along the sidewalks and the breezes, gentle and flirtatious, were fingering the voluminous skirts of the passing shop girls. The inhabitants of the city, to the man, were feeling pleasantly silly in the head.
To the man, that is, except for Marc.
Marc, founder, president, guiding genius and devoted slave to the Pillsworth Advertising Agency, felt merely dyspeptic. Making his way past the shops with their blossoming window boxes, he loathed the spring. At the moment, in fact, there was only one thing that Marc loathed more than the spring and that was Mario Matalini, the eminent Italian portrait artist.