"Better stay out of this, fatso," Toffee cooed. "You might get your girdle fractured."
The woman turned red. Then she swung around and continued abruptly down the hall. "Little monsters!" she snorted. "Hope they break their dirty, little underprivileged necks!"
Away from the building and in the car, the two inadvertent juveniles found themselves at sharp odds with the mechanical age. Squatting on the floor, Toffee attempted to operate the foot mechanisms while Marc knelt on the seat and tried his small hand at manipulating the steering apparatus and gear shift. After much concentrated effort and grinding of gears they managed jointly to smash the fender of the neighboring sedan. There the operation ended in dismal failure. Time was running out like water in a hair net. Memphis, in the company of two uniformed companions, was gesticulating wildly from a fourth story window.
"Delinquents!" she yelled. "Juvenile fiends! Now they're stealing his car!"
"Duck down!" Toffee rasped. She reached up and pulled Marc down beside her. "Stay out of sight!"
"They've already spotted us," Marc returned. "They'll be down here in a moment." He reached past her and opened the car door. "Crawl out," he instructed. "I'll follow. We can crawl along under the cars."
Like a couple of bemused slugs, they scooted out of the car, under the sedan of the abused bumper and started on a scenic tour of gravel and axles. They had removed themselves from the convertible by only five cars when the sound of flat feet scraping over gravel sullied the quiet afternoon air. Toffee, leading the way, peered fearfully from beneath the fender of their current refuge.
"They're closing in," she said. "They've searched your car and now they're fanning out. What'll we do?"
Marc thrust his wide-eared countenance next to Toffee's and surveyed the situation. The policemen, under the supervision of Memphis, were embarked upon a campaign to beat every inch of automotive brush in the entire parking lot. Currently, however, these activities had been arrested by the arrival of the parking lot attendant who, quite understandably, was wanting to know just what was going on. Still the situation looked grim for Marc and Toffee once the search was resumed ... as it would be in only a second ... the jig was up. Marc glanced quickly around for possible avenues of escape.