Toffee Haunts A Ghost

By CHARLES F. MYERS

Having Toffee the "dream-girl" around was bad enough for Marc, but a ghost named George was just too much.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Adventures November 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

As a rule, in moments of acute peril, most faces can be relied upon to arrange themselves into the traditional expressions of open-mouthed, pop-eyed terror. Not so, however, the willful countenance of Marc Pillsworth. The lean Pillsworth phiz, openly disdainful of the accepted manifestations of fear, regally side-stepped into something that looked curiously like tight-lipped primness. At the moment it had tied itself into such a knot of horror as to appear downright priggish. As the sidewalk split under Marc's feet, throwing him against the unforgiving granite of the Regent Building, the only expletive vigorous enough to force its way through his tightly pursed lips was a sadly depleted, but nonetheless determined "damn."

What had just transpired was extremely upsetting, also quite impossible. Now, if Marc had been careless about looking where he was going. But he hadn't. He had been fully aware of the suspended safe ... an object of considerable tonnage by the look of it ... and its precarious position outside the sixth story window. Dangling threateningly out over the street like that, how could he have missed it? He had even taken special care to keep well outside the roped-off safety area. And yet, when the pulley had slipped, and the safe begun to fall, it was as though the great hand of Satan, himself, had taken hold of it and hurled it directly at Marc. It had missed him not by inches, but by the merest fraction of an inch. It was impossible that it should have happened that way; all the laws of physics forbade it. However, for Marc, the morning was already fairly bristling with impossibilities, and while this was not the least of them, neither was it the greatest. Staring apprehensively at the great black lump, now embedded in the sidewalk, he wondered if it were going to leap from its resting place and crush him against the wall. He wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if it had. In the last few hours he'd come to expect almost anything.

"Damn," he repeated breathlessly.

"You hurt, Bud?"

Marc directed bewildered eyes toward 

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