The barometer of Julie's control registered DANGER just before she struck George squarely on the chin. It was a blow that any professional might have been proud of. And it caused a curious sort of short-circuiting reaction in George. At the precise moment of contact, he vanished completely.
Julie stepped back, aghast. According to her tastes, this sort of thing was happening all too consistently. Then her eyes darted to Marc's hitherto unnoticed form, still crumbled some yards distant.
"Oh, my heavens!" she gasped. "I knocked him clear across the stage!"
At first she started contritely forward, then suddenly she stopped. "Serves him right," she said self-righteously.
"On stage!" a voice yelled, and Julie whirled about. A call boy was hurrying toward her. "Curtain going up on the second scene, Mrs. Pillsworth," he said. "You're supposed to be on."
Julie squared her lovely shoulders, took a deep breath, and started regally stageward. A moment later her voice rang out with a certain deadly sincerity in a song called, "I Wouldn't Give a Dime For the Ten Best Men in Town."
Meanwhile, Toffee, finding herself suddenly rematerialized, gathered up the money bags and the fur coat from a piece of scenery which was now thankfully hidden from the eyes of the audience and started in search of Marc. The redhead was now entirely clothed in the filmy grey dress that had proved the making of her theatrical success. When she found Marc he was sitting up, shaking his head. He looked at her blankly for a moment, then leaped to his feet.
"We've got to get out of here," he said. "George slugged the cop. Incidentally, where is that fiend?"
The fiend obligingly appeared, lengthwise on the floor, looking singularly unfiendish. He was a trifle fuzzy about the extremities, perhaps, but he was all there. He sat up and stroked his chin gingerly.