stairs. With the gun still in his hand, he looked like a noble suicider. "I'll return," he said frigidly, "after I've put on some trousers." Then he stopped and regarded Toffee's transparent tunic with slow deliberation. "And while we're on the subject," he added quietly. "You might just try to do something about your own nakedness. It's revolting!"

Marc pulled on a discreetly colorful sport jacket and glanced at himself in the mirror. With the exception of a worried expression, everything he wore was in neat, conservative good taste. He sighed, left the room.

Downstairs, he crossed the reception hall, careful to give the closet a wide berth, and made his way into the darkened living room. He felt his way to a floor lamp and turned it on. Immediately, a bright circle of light spread over the thick carpet like ink through a blotter. Noting this common phenomenon without interest, he turned away, then stopped as the door at the opposite end of the room opened. Toffee, resplendent in a cunning arrangement of the dining room drapes, moved sinuously into the room with all the unconscious grace of a stalking panther.

The drapes, a bold flowery design on a background of white, had been fashioned into a bare midriff evening gown of truly provocative design. The two parts, obviously disdainful of each other, contrived to leave a maximum of midriff, while doing little or nothing toward covering their assigned portions. The skirt was widely split at one side, exposing an exquisite leg, like a diamond in a show case. Toffee's nod to decency had been most perfunctory indeed.

"Like it?" she asked, smiling radiantly. "You'd never dream that it used to cover windows, would you?"

"I'd never dream it ever covered anything," Marc replied amazedly. "And if it ever had any ambitions along those lines, they're certainly shot now."

"It was just an idea I had," Toffee replied proudly.

"In night clubs all over the country," Marc commented dryly. "Thousands of girls have that same idea three times nightly, only they get paid for their nakedness ... or hauled into night court by the decency squad."

Fortunately, any further discussion of Toffee's "creation" was suddenly forestalled by the unexpected sound, from outside, of tires leaving pavement and turning grindingly onto gravel. Marc and Toffee ran swiftly to the window, where they vied athletically for a view of the drive; each for his own separate reason. Marc was having 

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