They didn't see the sacks approaching; the fearful things were just there at their feet all of a sudden, having arrived with a sickening plop. The car door on Toffee's side swung open, and there was suddenly another depression in the seat. The door closed again just as the taxi pulled out toward the intersection. Apparently the driver hadn't noticed. "Thought I'd never catch up with you two," George's voice said breathlessly and pleasantly. "It was all a lot of fun, of course, but a bit fatiguing, don't you think?" With a soul-searing groan Marc closed his eyes and sank deeper into the seat. "Go strangle yourself," Toffee suggested waspishly. But George's high spirits would not be quashed. "I really fixed things up, didn't I?" he asked proudly. The money bags leaped from the floor and deposited themselves in Marc's shrinking lap. "How's that, old man?" Marc responded to this inquiry with a brief strangling noise. His face was turning crimson. "What's the matter with him?" George asked. "Something disagree with him?" "I think it's money poisoning," Toffee said dully. "Well," George sighed, "now that I've set things right, I guess I might as well just relax and enjoy myself from now on. It's only four o'clock. That leaves me sixteen whole hours just to have fun. Until tomorrow noon. All's well that ends well, eh?" Marc said a very singular and unprintable thing. The driver turned and regarded Marc interestedly. "How come?" he asked. "You been blabbin' your head off and that's the first time you moved your lips. I been watchin' in the mirror. You a ventriloquist?" "Yes," Toffee answered for Marc. "He throws his voice like crazy." Apparently, the driver was not the sort to ask too many questions. He accepted the fact of Marc's voice tossing accomplishments on Toffee's say-so. And his attitude toward his customers instantly warmed. Confiding rather bashfully that he'd always thought of his own singing voice as something rather special, he burst into an unsolicited rendition of "Mexicali Rose" that had his helpless audience cringing in their seats. A truly ghastly moan issued from George's vicinity. And it was a moan that Marc would certainly have echoed had he been able. He was wondering if a sort of plague of theatrical ambition had descended on all humanity. Thoughts of Julie and the imminent opening of "Love's Gone Winging" crept despairingly through his mind. He tried to console himself with the old bromide that things were always darkest before the dawn, but he couldn't help wondering where fate had stumbled onto this newer, darker shade of black and why the nights of misfortune had to be so interminably Alaskan.