"All right," Cecil said, "get back in the car and wake up Gerald."
For a moment Marc and Toffee stood motionless, gazing at the fanatic gleam in Cecil's eyes. Then slowly they turned and started toward the car. Both of them knew very surely that the little man would hesitate considerably less than a second at the act of murdering a man ... or a city....
CHAPTER XI
Though it couldn't possibly have been more than a couple of hours, it seemed that they had been twisting and turning through the night for eternities. Long ago the lights of the city had slipped away into the darkness behind them. Marc had completely lost track of where they were.
George, the unpredictable ghost, after a brief narrative about how he had fender-hopped his way back into Marc and Toffee's company, had drifted off into unconcerned and discordant slumber. Between snores, made forgetful by sleep, he had fully and completely materialized. If the Blemishes noted the exactness of the ghost's features to Marc's they didn't bother to comment on it; apparently the brothers, in their feverish dementia, were perfectly willing to credit anything as natural.
Gerald sped the car through a long wooded lane, then turned sharply to the right into a private drive. At last, for better or for worse ... with the balance heavy on the less attractive side ... Marc and Toffee arrived at the destination chosen for them by their crazed captors.
As the car ground to a stop Marc and Toffee peered fearfully out the window and were greeted by the sight of an enormous, turreted old house that loomed in the night like a preposterous, rococo mountain. It was the sort of place that the newspapers would surely describe as a 'mystery manse.' Neither Marc nor Toffee felt called upon to make any comment as to the majesty of the structure or the loveliness of the gardens that surrounded it. Cecil nudged his gun in their direction.
"Get out," he said. "This is it."
"Yes," Toffee said glumly. "But what is it?"