The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  "But it isn't a knife," she pointed out. "It's true that you could blow the top of the tree off with a pistol but you can't make a crutch with a pistol."

  "Nevertheless, you can't imagine how much more secure I feel," said Farrell. "Get me the cartridges and I'll load it." She gave him the two Nambu clips and he grinned. "You're turning into quite a scavenger, you know. How was the party?"

  "Quite dismal, really. Except for Lulash." Mrs. Pollifax smiled reminiscently. "Lulash would like a George Washington for Albania."

  "You haven't been planting seeds of insurrection, have you, Duchess?"

  "Well, it's a change from planting geraniums," she retorted.

  He finished loading the pistol, patted it lovingly and slipped it beneath his mattress. "I strongly advise getting some sleep now, considering what's ahead of us."

  The effects of the raki were wearing off, leaving Mrs. Pollifax depressed. "Sleep?" she said resentfully. "Why?"

  "Because if we're going to be shot tomorrow trying to escape I'd much prefer dying with someone who can say something jaunty, like 'I regret that I have only one life to give for my country,' or—"

  "Jaunty!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax, but she was smiling. "That's all very well but I didn't bring Bartlett's Quotations with me, you know."

  "A pity. Do come up with something magnificent, though, will you? Surprise me," he suggested with mischief in his eyes.

  At that moment Colonel Nexdhet walked in, but Mrs. Pollifax's sense of humor had returned—Farrell had seen to this—and she realized that she could face the next day, if not with equanimity, at least with a philosophic stoicism. Then she realized that Farrell was pointedly staring at her and she raised her eyebrows questioningly. Slowly and deliberately his glance moved to Nexdhet, who was removing his jacket in preparation for a night's sleep. Mrs. Pollifax's eyes followed and abruptly widened. Colonel Nexdhet was wearing a knife strapped to a sheath on his belt.

  "Our third miracle," said Farrell quietly.

  Mrs. Pollifax could scarcely believe it, but being of a practical mind she at once said, "You or me?"

  Farrell gestured ruefully toward his leg. "You, I'm afraid."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. She put away her table, yawned elaborately, scratched her leg—lice, obviously—and lay down. "Good night. Colonel Nexdhet," she said sweetly. "It was a lovely party, wasn't it?"

  "Oh?" He looked surprised. "Oh yes, good night." He nodded curtly to Farrell and stretched himself full length on his cot. It really was a pity, thought Mrs. Pollifax, that he had to continue sleeping in the cell with them; at his age he must long for clean pajamas, a comfortable mattress and a private room. Then she remembered that at least he had bathroom privileges, and this cut short her pity and she lay on her side with her eyes fixed upon the knife and tried, through the gloom, to figure just how it was affixed to his belt.

  Farrell began to snore gently—she did not believe for a moment that he was sleeping—and Nexdhet began to snore loudly. There were no sounds from the hall or the guardroom. Mrs. Pollifax slowly sat up, the mattress producing even more ominous rustlings than usual, which only substantiated her suspicion that it was filled with corn husks. Once in a sitting position she remained so for a few minutes to make certain the snores continued. She stood up and waited again before moving slowly toward Nexdhet's cot. She was nearly there when she was attacked by an almost irrepressible urge to giggle; she had just remembered that when she was a child she had been given a part in a school play where she had to glide like a wraith. After it had been explained to her just what a wraith was the result had been this same gliding, tight-hipped movement. Firmly she controlled herself and leaned over Nexdhet. Neither his breathing nor his snores changed. Her hands moved to his belt and she fumbled with the strap on the sheath, gently drawing it up and out. When this had been accomplished she sank to one knee, and with one hand steadying the bottom of the sheath she placed the other on the handle of the knife and pulled. The knife came out easily. Still Nexdhet had not stirred, and after a moment's hesitation Mrs. Pollifax glided, still wraithlike, to Farrell's cot.

  He was still snoring softly but his left hand reached out, open-palmed, to accept the knife that she placed in it; then he turned on his side, his back to her, and Mrs. Pollifax knew he was hiding it under his mattress. She returned to her own cot and sank upon it with relief, corn husks and all. Two minutes later she was asleep.

  Sixteen

  In the morning when Mrs. Pollifax awoke she realized at once that a fateful day was beginning. She lay and thought about this dispassionately, almost wonderingly, because to every life there eventually came a moment when ore had to accept the fact that the shape, the pattern, the direction of the future was entirely out of one's hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. There was nothing to do but accept, and from this to proceed, doing the very best that could be done. Without knowing the end, reflected Mrs. Pollifax; like being wheeled into an operating room and wondering if one would ever see this or any other ceiling again. Twenty-four hours from now would she and Farrell be staring at these same stone walls, or would they be free, or would they even have survived to see that next day?

  Farrell was sleeping soundly. She momentarily begrudged him such discipline until she remembered that he did his exercising at night. Colonel Nexdhet was sleeping too, and suddenly she remembered the knife she had taken from him and was afraid. He would wake up soon and find it gone and know at once that she or Farrell had taken it—who else could have stolen it from him while he was asleep in a locked cell? She wondered why on earth they hadn't thought of this last night. They had so badly wanted a knife and Nexdhet had walked in wearing a knife and it had seemed like their third miracle.

  "When actually it may prove our undoing," she thought

  As if he had felt her thoughts Nexdhet sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. Meeting her gaze he nodded, and one hand went to his sweeping white moustache to smooth it. Mrs. Pollifax fought to keep her eyes from dropping to the empty knife sheath; she prayed that Colonel Nexdhet's talents did not include mind reading. Nexdhet's second move was to stand up and stretch, and then his hand went out to his jacket at the foot of the bed. While Mrs. Pollifax watched with alarm he lifted the jacket, patted one pocket and shrugged his arms into the sleeves. At least he had not seen the empty sheath, she thought wildly, and waited next for him to feel for the knife's presence. But he didn't. He leaned over and began tying his shoes.

  Farrell sat upright. He, too, glanced quickly at Colonel Nexdhet and then anxiously at Mrs. Pollifax, who shook her head. At the same moment steps echoed in the hall, keys rattled, the door opened and the guard named Stefan walked in carrying breakfast trays. Nexdhet spoke curtly to him in Albanian, and then walked out.

  "Bathroom privileges," muttered Farrell darkly.

  "You don't suppose there's a bathtub on the premises?" asked Mrs. Pollifax breathlessly.

  "A shower maybe."

  Mrs. Pollifax closed her eyes and thought yearningly of hot water coursing down her body and taking with it the accumulation of dirt and dust, and then, most voluptuous of all, the feeling of being clean again and not itching. life was incredibly simple when stripped to its essentials, she reflected, and for a moment her thoughts lingered on luxuries taken for granted during a long life. Except it was not really a long life, she amended, certainly not if it was to end today, and she began to feel quite angry with these people for wanting to kill her. "After all, it's my life, not theirs," she thought peevishly, "and all I did was . . ."

  All she had done, she added more reasonably, and with a faint wry smile, was to walk into CIA headquarters and offer her services as a spy. This made her at once feel better, since it was obviously a spy they would wish to kill rather than Emily Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey. Somehow this knowledge made it less personal; women were always so sensitive to snubs.

  Stefan backed out, leaving the trays. Farrell whispered, "He doesn't know it's missing?"

 
; "No, not yet. And now that he's out of here he can't blame it on us."

  "Hooray for our side." Farrell stood up, wobbled dangerously but waved her away. "Let me show you what I did last night while you were sleeping." He half crawled, half limped to the tree that leaned so idiotically against the wall. Grasping it at the top he neatly removed the last twelve inches like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

  "Why, for heaven's sake," Mrs. Pollifax said in pleased surprise.

  "I hollowed one end and sharpened the other so the two pieces fit into each other. It's a beginning, anyway, and just the right height now to fit under my arm. Later we'll rip and cut the branches off. Think you can collect some padding?"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "There's a very nice hole in my mattress. Not nice for sleeping but nice for taking out what's inside. Did you know we've been sleeping on horsehair? It may be why I itch." She was already extracting it from the mattress and making a bundle to fit the top of his crutch-stick.

  "What will you wrap it in?"

  "My petticoat—and therein lies a tale."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Pins," said Mrs. Pollifax. "I never was good at sewing and both straps are pinned together."

  "I bless your sloppiness," said Farrell reverently.

  "If you're going to call me sloppy I refuse to lend them to you," she told him indignantly.

  "All right then, your charming lack of housewifery."

  Much better. Now if you'll turn your head I'll remove my petticoat."

  "My head is turned. Better give me the stuff to work with, though, you may be summoned for your walk at any time."

  "You can turn around now," said Mrs. Pollifax, and she presented him with slip, pins and horsehair, whereupon they both sat down to eat their breakfast, the bread and cheese disappearing automatically into Mrs. Pollifax's handbag, leaving them only a thin porridge with which to begin their day. What was most nourishing, however—to Mrs. Pollifax at least—was the realization that this was the day they were going to do something about their fate. They were going to act. Her fears had evaporated now. She had faced them, made her obeisance to them and now she could dismiss them. Anything was preferable to submission, and now she began to feel almost reckless at the thought of their attempt at freedom. She cleared her throat. "You still feel we should wait for dark?"

  "From what I remember of the terrain it struck me that anything else would be suicidal."

  Mrs. Pollifax put down her spoon and nodded. "Quite true. But in which direction should we head? Right away, I mean. They'll expect us to leave the way we came, won't they?"

  "Yes, but can you think of anything better?" asked Farrell, and there was irony in his voice.

  Mrs. Pollifax concentrated firmly on prospects she had entertained only lightly before, and she began to understand his irony. It would be very clever of them to head east, away from the sea, and throw General Perdido off the scent for a while, but eventually they would have to double back, either this way or through the valley, and in the end they would only have added extra miles to their journey. Farrell could never endure this. In fact it was doubtful whether he had the stamina to go anywhere at all, but the thought of leaving him behind was untenable; they had to try together or not at all. Then there was the mountain behind them, and the forest in which they could hide, but here, too, Farrell's condition prevented them from going far and General Perdido would be very aware of this.

  She said sadly, "No, I can't think of anything better."

  "So all we need is darkness and a great deal of luck." He smiled at her. "It's not too late to change your mind, you know—about including me in this wild venture, I mean. I would feel a great deal of relief if you left me behind."

  "Absolutely not," said Mrs. Pollifax flatly. "If I made it alone, which I doubt, I would only be extremely unhappy when I got there, which would defeat the whole purpose." She rose to her feet as the door swung open and Lulash walked in. "Good morning, Lulash, I may go outside now?"

  "Yes, Zoje Pollifax. It was a good party last night, was it not?"

  "Every minute of it," she told him with more cheerfulness than she possessed. "And you're looking very well in spite of so much raki."

  "You make all of us feel like human beings again, Mrs. Pollifax."

  From his cot Farrell said, "Beware, Lulash, that is a very bad way to feel in a place like this."

  There was no one to guard her this morning, and it occurred to Mrs. Pollifax that she might try to find the missile site again and observe more closely how it fitted into the cliff. In some ways it made her uneasy to be given such freedom; it was pleasant to be considered harmless, but it also proved how secure her captors felt. She wondered whether she or her captors were the more naive, but unfortunately this would not be discovered until the escape had been committed. Life had never looked better than when death was imminent, and Mrs. Pollifax found herself looking long and ardently at earth, sky and clouds.

  She cut across the seam in the rocks and climbed doggedly toward the slanting pines in the wood. Once she had reached the trees she stopped to recapture both her breath and her sense of direction; she and the colonel had entered the woods at this point, and gradually made their way downhill to meet the cliff again a half mile beyond; she would therefore follow the course that Colonel Nexdhet had set. Patting her moist temples with her handkerchief Mrs. Pollifax resumed her walk. She had moved only a few hundred yards deeper into the trees when she began hearing a very peculiar noise ahead. It was a familiar sound, but not customarily heard in a forest, so that she could not for the life of her identify its source. The feverish crackling sound came from between two large boulders that leaned toward each other up ahead.

  Deeply curious, Mrs. Pollifax hesitated and then tiptoed across the fallen pine needles to the rocks. At once a voice broke the stillness of the woods but the crackling sounds continued without interruption.

  "Static!" thought Mrs. Pollifax, brightening. Of course, it was static and someone had carried a radio here into the woods.

  The canned voice stopped speaking, and to Mrs. Pollifax's amazement a live voice began talking from behind the rock. Mrs. Pollifax poked her head between the two rocks and stared through the gloom at the man seated on the ground facing her in the small cavity there. "Why, Colonel Nexdhet!" she faltered. He was speaking into a telephone—no, a walkie-talkie, she recalled—and at the sound of her voice he dropped the mechanism as if it were a live coal.

  "Mrs. Pollifax!" There was no doubt but that she was interrupting something clandestine; his eyes were blazing. He picked up the fallen walkie-talkie, spoke a stream of foreign words into it, and then placed the instrument in a hole of the rock.

  "What are you doing here? Why are you allowed in the woods this morning?" he barked, crawling from the hole and standing beside her.

  She said scornfully, "So this is how you report to General Perdido! And if you come out here to do it secretly then you must inform not only on Mr. Farrell and myself but on General Hoong as well. You're nothing but a paid informer, Colonel Nexdhet! Shame."

  He glanced back once among the rocks and then firmly grasped Mrs. Pollifax by the arm. "I will take you back to your cell," he said firmly.

  "I trust you told General Perdido that Mr. Farrell is in glowing health, and can scarcely wait to see the general again? And that a party took place last night, with subversive songs being sung under the influence of raki? You quite disillusion me, Colonel Nexdhet!"

  He remained silent, his mouth in a grim line. They reached the edge of the wood and emerged into the blinding sunshine. He helped her over the stones toward the two buildings, his hand tight on her arm. Both Lulash and Major Vassovic were in the guardroom but he did not so much as look at them. He marched Mrs. Pollifax straight to her cell, closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. She heard him issuing curt orders in the guardroom.

  "He sounds peeved about something," said Farrell pleasantly.

  Mrs. Pollifax said indignan
tly, " "Colonel Nexdhet is nothing more than a paid informer. A spy on his own men. An informer on everyone."

  Farrell said mildly, "What on earth makes you say that?"

  "Never mind, just beware of him. He's not to be trusted."

  She added in a kinder voice, "I'll tell you about it when we

  get out of here—if ever we do. Just remember he's not to be trusted."

  "But I never did trust him," pointed out Farrell logically. "He's a colonel in their secret police, isn't he?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pollifax forlornly. She sat down on her cot and stared into the long, desolate and nerve-racking day that lay ahead of them and she wanted to cry. Instead she brought out her deck of playing cards and shuffled them.

  At noon it was not Lulash who brought lunch to them but the guard who did not speak English, and when he left he carefully locked the door behind him. Nor did anyone else come. The afternoon wore on, hour by hour. Mrs. Pollifax played every game of solitaire that she had learned, and then played each one again, and then chose her favorites and played them until she was tired to death of cards. She reflected that Senor DeGamez could certainly not have foreseen the conditions under which she would play his cherished game, and remembering his kindness she thought of him for a moment. He had been a spy too; perhaps he had played his games of solitaire under precisely such conditions. She did hope he was in good health because obviously Mr. Carstaira' friends proved very poor insurance risks.

  The dinner trays arrived, and with them Colonel Nexdhet. "Good evening," he said in a pleasant voice, as if nothing unusual had happened. "We are getting ready for General Per-dido's return, he arrives by plane about half-past eight and should be with us by nine or half past."

  "That's interesting," said Mrs. Pollifax politely. It would be quite dark by then—good! "What time is it now, Colonel Nexdhet?"

  "Half-past six."

  She looked at him in surprise. "I always thought we ate at five although I never really knew. Is it really so late?"

  He said primly, "Usually the trays are brought to you by five, yes. We are late tonight because we are understaffed. General Hoong and Lulash have gone to meet General Perdido, leaving only myself, Major Vassovic and Stefan here, and two guards in the other building."