Lord! he thought. Was all this a--a dream?

Sweat oozed out on his clammy forehead. That stuff of Herman's that he
had drunk during the game--it had had a rank taste, but he wouldn't have
thought anything short of marihuana could produce such hallucinations as
he had just had. Wild conjectures came boiling up from the bottom of
Miller's being.

How did he get behind the counter? Who was the woman he was waiting on?
What--

The woman's curious stare was what jarred him completely into the
present. Get rid of her! was his one thought. Then sit down behind the
scenes and try to figure it all out.

His hand poised over the cash drawer. Then he remembered he didn't know
how much he was to take out of the five. Avoiding the woman's glance, he
muttered:

"Let's see, now, that was--uh--how much did I say?"

The woman made no answer. Miller cleared his throat, said uncertainly:

"I beg your pardon, ma'am--did I say--seventy-five cents?"

It was just a feeler, but the woman didn't even answer to that. And it
was right then that Dave Miller noticed the deep silence that brooded in
the store.

Slowly his head came up and he looked straight into the woman's eyes.
She returned him a cool, half-smiling glance. But her eyes neither
blinked nor moved. Her features were frozen. Lips parted, teeth showing
a little, the tip of her tongue was between her even white teeth as
though she had started to say "this" and stopped with the syllable
unspoken.

Muscles began to rise behind Miller's ears. He could feel his hair
stiffen like filings drawn to a magnet. His glance struggled to the soda
fountain. What he saw there shook him to the core of his being.

The girl who was drinking a coke had the glass to her lips, but
apparently she wasn't sipping the liquid. Her boy friend's glass was on
the counter. He had drawn on a cigarette and exhaled the gray smoke.
That smoke hung in the air like a large, elongated balloon with the
small end disappearing between his lips. While Miller stared, the smoke
did not stir in the slightest.

There was something unholy, something supernatural, about this scene!

With apprehension rippling down his spine, Dave Miller reached across
the cash register and touched the woman on the cheek. The flesh was
warm, but as hard as flint. Tentatively, the young druggist pushed
harder; finally, shoved with all his might. For all the result, the
woman might have been a two-ton bronze statue. She neither budged n