Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Subconsciousness -- Fiction
She placed the depleted Harpers side by side on the lounge, and Marc
and Mr. Culpepper moved to her side. As babies, the erstwhile thieves
were markedly unbeautiful, and Toffee musingly remarked as much. At
this the infant Agatha surprisingly forgot herself and poured out a
string of oaths such as would have done credit to a stevedore on a hot
day. Chadwick continued to blush.
"What are we going to do with them?" Toffee asked. "We can't turn them
over to the police like this."
"Certainly not," Marc agreed. "And we can't keep them around. If my
wife should suddenly come home and find me with a couple of babies...."
He shuddered at the thought. "We'll have to restore them." He turned to
Mr. Culpepper. "We can do that, can't we?"
"Yes!" Toffee cried. "We could bring them back to what they were before
their faces were changed, couldn't we? That would solve everything."
This suggestion provoked a discordant howl from the infant Harpers.
"I don't know," the little scientist mused. "It could be done all
right, but it would have to be done very carefully. We'd have to
give them spirits in exact amounts. A little too much one way or
another...." He stroked the tip of his nose with a slender finger.
"Figuring on the basis of the amounts that you and Mr. Pillsworth
consumed to restore yourselves, I could probably...." He retreated to
the chair behind Marc's desk, tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
"Yes, yes," he murmured dreamily.
"Will you just listen!" Agatha piped. "They're going to work us out a
whiskey formula."
"I don't care what they work out," Chadwick replied, rolling unhappily
over onto his fat little stomach. "I want some clothes. I'm cold and
embarrassed."
"See if you can find something for them to wear," Marc said, turning to
Toffee. "Try the model's dressing rooms in the photographer's studio;
there may be something there." He glanced briefly at Toffee's faintly
obscured figure. "And while you're about it," he added, "you might pick
up something for yourself."
Toffee nodded and left the room. When she returned she was resplendent
in a shimmering ice-blue evening gown that had a very conservative
neckline ... provided a girl's neck, by some freak of nature, commenced
somewhere in the region of her midriff. The glistening material clung
tightly to her body, highlighting its more provocative features. When
she walked she shimmered with a loveliness that seemed almost unreal.
In her hand she was carrying two brief lengths of black velvet. These
she twined haphazardly around the rather brief figures of Agatha and
Chadwick.
"How's that little wretch coming with our formula?" Agatha asked.
"Yes," Chadwick put in, "I could do with a spot or two very nicely just
now."
Toffee glanced at Mr. Culpepper who, for all the world, seemed merely
to be enjoying a sound sleep. His facial muscles twitched occasionally,
though, giving testimony to the experimental processes that were being
accomplished inside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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