The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  "Our Genie," said Mrs. Pollifax at once. "He reminds me of the one in Aladdin. Smaller, of course."

  "Our Genie with the light-brown hair," quipped Farrell and ignored her cross glance. Leaning on his crutch he unlocked and pulled open the door to the outside. "Only two lights shining in the big building," he said. "Shall we go?"

  With charming gallantry he held open the door for Mrs. Pollifax and her charge, and they walked past him into the sultry night air. "We're outside, we're free, we're no longer prisoners," thought Mrs. Pollifax, and she drew a long deep breath. She was in the process of expelling it when a voice to her right said unpleasantly, "Well, well, my three prisoners, and no guard in sight! It seems that I have returned from Peking just in time."

  General Perdido had come back.

  Seventeen

  "Back—into the guardroom!" barked General Perdido, drawing the gun from his belt holster. "I'll have Vassovic's head for this. Lulash, see what they've done with Vassovic. At once."

  As the general shouted orders, his attention distracted for a second, Mrs. Pollifax lifted her arm and threw the cell keys far into the night. She thought somewhat hysterically, "I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I know not where," and she tried not to wince as she heard the sound of metal against rock. But neither her gesture nor the noise appeared to have been noticed by anyone, and Mrs. Pollifax began to feel more confident. She could not have said exactly why her courage revived except that two such unusual occurrences really ought to have been noticed by the general, and somehow this proved that he was not superhuman. A man who barked and shouted and popped up out of the dark could easily acquire such a reputation, she reflected; but these particular keys to the cells he would not get, and if there were duplicate keys they would require time to find.

  And so, quite ignominiously, they were back in the guardroom, the three of them standing like naughty children before the desk at which the general had seated himself. Desperately Mrs. Pollifax tried to think: the electricity was primitive— only one line, the major had told her; it would be marvelous if she could hurl herself at the one power line and plunge the building into darkness. Unfortunately she was again without a knife, and totally without knowledge of power lines.

  "What fools you are," hissed the general. "I would never have believed it of you. I will take great delight, Mr. Farrell, in punishing you for this. As for you, Mrs. Pollifax—yes, what is it, Lulash?"

  Lulash appeared in the hall, his eyes anxious as they encountered Mrs. Pollifax's glance. "I can't get in," he said. "The doors to the cells are locked."

  The general muttered an oath and irritably opened one desk drawer after another. "They're not here, one of these three must have them. Search them!"

  Mrs. Pollifax's heart sank, because a search of their persons would reveal two pistols. She said defiantly, "I was carrying the keys, but I threw them away. Outside, in the dark."

  The general stood up and walked around the desk to Mrs. Pollifax. He slowly lifted one arm and with precision struck her across the cheekbone.

  Lulash looked stricken. Farrell cried angrily, "Hey!"

  Mrs. Pollifax, reeling and a little faint, heard the general promise that this was only the beginning of what lay in store for them. The Genie spoke then, too, his eyes darting with interest from Mrs. Pollifax to the general. The general answered him in fluent Chinese, the Genie appeared satisfied and nodded.

  "Go ahead, Private Lulash—search them," said General Perdido harshly.

  Lulash exchanged a long glance with Mrs. Pollifax, but she could not tell whether she read apology or a plea in that glance. He moved carefully to Farrell and stood before him. "Turn to the wall, please, and place your hands against the wall."

  It took a second before Mrs. Pollifax realized that Lulash stood squarely in front of Farrell, concealing him from General Perdido as well as protecting him from the general's gun. There was a curious smile on Lulash's lips as he looked into Farrell's eyes. "Faster," he said, "or I will shoot you."

  Farrell understood. One hand moved swiftly to his pocket, the other seized Lulash. Over Lulash's shoulder he fired his pistol at the general, and then lightly tapped the guard on the head with the butt. The sound of the pistol's discharge in the small room was deafening. Both Lulash and the general had fallen to the floor.

  "Let's go," said Farrell, and headed for the door on his crutch. But the Genie reached it first and the three of them fled into the night. Or perhaps fled was not precisely the word, thought Mrs. Pollifax, as Farrell stumbled and tripped over the uneven rocks, muttering a variety of oaths at his clumsiness. She went back and took his arm and they struggled toward the fir trees. "I'm afraid I only winged him," Farrell said furiously through his teeth. "I meant to kill him, but damn it I think I only got his shoulder or his arm."

  "He fell to the floor," Mrs. Pollifax reminded him. "He disappeared behind the desk."

  "Pure instinct. Self-preservation. Give him a few minutes to stop the bleeding and catch his breath and he'll be after us."

  "Yes," Mrs. Pollifax said grimly, and realized that without Farrell to deter them they would already have reached the sanctuary of the fir trees. She took a long glance at this thought, examined it with brutal honesty, measured the difference this would make in both their small chance of escape and in their lives, and allowed herself one brief pang at being who and what she was. Then she put aside the thought forever. "Here we are," she said with relief as they reached the thin cover of firs.

  "My God, the donkeys," gasped Farrell. "Look!"

  Now that her eyes had adjusted themselves to the darkness Mrs. Pollifax could see at what he pointed: two donkeys were tied to a tree and were nibbling at the slender thread of green that separated the rocks from the forest of boulders beyond. "Luck," she whispered.

  "Plain bloody miracle," growled Farrell, hobbling toward the animals. "Except of course with the general just arriving the donkeys had to be somewhere."

  "But we don't have a knife to untie them," wailed Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Feels like a square knot," murmured Farrell, working at it. "Tackle the center."

  The Genie stood back, not helping. When the donkeys were freed he stepped forward and put out his hand for the two ropes, gesturing to Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell to mount. At the same moment Mrs. Pollifax heard the sound of a gunshot behind them and she froze. "They're after us!"

  "Don't panic, it could be someone signaling for help from the main building. For God's sake jump on and let's go."

  Mrs. Pollifax unfroze. She heard herself say calmly, "No, I will not mount one of these dreadful beasts again, I refuse. I believe the path or whatever it is lies to our right so we mustn't go that way and how could I ever make the Genie understand this? He must climb on, I'll do the leading. We have to find the edge of the cliff and follow it—it's our only hope." She was already tugging at the ropes and telling the Genie in frenzied sign language that he was to take her place. He climbed on at last, and with the two lead ropes in her hand Mrs. Pollifax set out to find the cliff and orient herself. There was now very little time left them—she could already hear shouts being exchanged behind them. The donkeys moved with maddening slowness. Without a flashlight Mrs. Pollifax could distinguish only the larger boulders, and her feet kept stumbling over those half buried in the earth. There was no moon; the stars covering the sky did no more than give her the ability to distinguish between a rock and a tree. Mrs. Pollifax was painfully aware of this, and of the fact that behind them a chase was being efficiently organized. The precipice, which they certainly ought to have reached by now, failed to materialize, and the rocks proved so abortive, so inconveniently placed, that Mrs. Pollifax soon wondered if in skirting the large boulders she might have begun circling back toward their starting point. It was not a happy thought.

  No one spoke. At best they were only a few thousand yards from the main building and recklessly moving at right angles to it instead of away from it. "Where was that damn edge," thought Mrs. Pollif
ax, and was appalled at her choice of language. She tugged mercilessly on the donkeys' halters and quickened her step. It proved an ill-timed moment to increase her speed. Mrs. Pollifax's right foot moved out into space, sought reassurance, came down in anticipation of solid earth or rock and found neither. With a startled gasp Mrs. Pollifax pitched forward, guide ropes still in her hand, and meeting no resistance that would save her she catapulted into space, the men and donkeys dragged with her.

  It was not a long fall. Just as she assumed that the end had come, her jacket was seized by something knifelike, her fall suddenly broken and Mrs. Pollifax discovered that she was ignominiously straddling a creaking, groaning tree branch that threatened to break at any moment Mrs. Pollifax had found her cliff and walked over it. Mercifully she had also found a stunted tree branch that had grown perpendicular to the sides of the precipice. But where she was to go from here, and where Farrell, the Oenie and the donkeys had gone, she had no idea.

  "Well!" exclaimed a voice nearby.

  "F-F-Farrell?" gasped Mrs. Pollifax in astonishment

  "Good God, you're here too?"

  At the same moment she heard both the melodious voice of the Genie, a trifle reproachful, and the faint, anguished bray of a donkey. "But where are we?" cried Mrs. Pollifax.

  "I don't think we should try to find out," Farrell told her fervently. "And I think the first thing you'd better do is join us. There's rock under me but what's under you?"

  Mrs. Pollifax said nervously, "A tree branch and—and really I don't think there's anything else. Only air."

  "Keep talking. Let me find you—this damn darkness—and I'll see what I can do."

  Mrs. Pollifax began reciting poetry, first Wordsworth's "Daffodils" and then "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner," and tried not to consider her predicament if the branch broke or Farrell could not rescue her. When she felt a hand clutch her ankle a little sob of relief escaped her.

  "You're lying straight out on a branch," he told her, as if she didn't already know this. "I want you to very carefully, very gingerly, start shinnying in the direction of my voice. Don't try to sit up and don't move hastily. I'm going to keep my hands on your ankles and very gently pull. If the branch starts to go I think I can still hang on to you."

  "Think?" repeated Mrs. Pollifax, and felt like laughing hysterically because, of course, if the branch went, taking her with it, her brains would be dashed against the rock below no matter how tightly her ankles were held. But she obeyed, and thereby learned how subtly and sinuously a person could lift and move his hips if life depended upon it. After what seemed like hours her toes met the solid rock platform on which Farrell was kneeling. When at last she knelt beside him she allowed herself the luxury of feeling faint.

  "It seems to be a small ledge we fell onto," Farrell explained.

  "You didn't hurt your leg again?" she dared ask.

  "I fell on one of the donkeys. The Genie wasn't so lucky, he fell on the first donkey and then the second donkey fell on him, but he's all right. Crazy. But from the feel of our fall I'd say we fell only about twenty feet or so."

  "Only that," marveled Mrs. Pollifax, and then stiffened as she heard voices above.

  "Back," whispered Farrell urgently. "There's a shallow overhang, and a hollow in the cliff. Find one of the donkeys and hold his mouth together, or whatever donkeys bray with. I'll take the other."

  "The Genie?"

  "Blast him, he doesn't understand English so he can't help. If we could see him I'm sure we'd find him bowing and scraping again."

  Mrs. Pollifax found a donkey and by the touch system managed also to find its lips and encircle them with both hands. The two donkeys had crawled into the shallow indentation of rock, leaving no room for humans; Mrs. Pollifax did all but climb on top of them for shelter as she heard the general's voice querulously shouting orders. So Perdido was still alive—Farrell had been right about that. A powerful searchlight was turned on from above and directed downward, and Mrs. Pollifax closed her eyes, hoping this would make her even smaller as she pressed against the donkeys. Then the light moved farther along the cliff's edge and the voices of the men diminished as they moved away. Mrs. Pollifax relaxed, and presently fell sound asleep.

  It was the Genie who awakened her with a tap on the shoulder. Her head had been pillowed on the abdomen of a donkey, and when she lifted it she was startled to discover that she had slept through the whole night—the sky was perceptibly lightening in the east. In this first light of dawn she could see the appalling smallness of the ledge upon which they had fallen: it was no more than a lip on the side of the precipice, extending a bare seven feet from side to side. Below her, virtually at the edge of her shoes, lay a drop into the valley that turned her blood cold. Even the tree branch that had caught her looked no sturdier than an arm, and Farrell, noting her face, grinned. "The gods were with us, eh?"

  Mrs. Pollifax replied with a shudder.

  "The Genie donated his sleeves to tie up the donkeys' mouths," he pointed out. "Voices were heard now and then until about an hour ago. They're probably wirelessing the news of our escape all over Albania now. We'd better move in a hurry, before it gets light and the search begins again."

  "Move!" repeated Mrs. Pollifax incredulously. "Move? Move where?"

  He said mockingly, "Well, we absolutely can't move up. Did you really plan to spend the rest of your life here? Besides, I'm getting hungry."

  "Hungry?" Mrs. Pollifax automatically groped for her purse, but stopped when she saw Farrell shaking his head.

  "Your purse wasn't so lucky," he told her. "I've already looked, it's gone. Down there, presumably."

  "I wish I could brush my teeth," Mrs. Pollifax said suddenly and fretfully, thereby expressing her complete dissatisfaction with the situation. She leaned forward just a trifle— heights always made her dizzy—and looked down into the valley. Her first thought was that Farrell was feeling suicidal to believe they could ever negotiate such a cliff, but her resistance to the idea was inevitably overcome by curiosity and then interest. The cliff did not drop to the valley like a plumb line; it slanted almost imperceptibly, with avalanchelike beds of gravel and rock, then short drops, then more beds of stone gravel until it reached a green terrace below, the same pasture where on her walks she had seen goats grazing. "But you couldn't make it with your leg," she protested. "Absolutely not."

  Farrell smiled. "Look, you've forgotten something. Walking's hard for me, but nobody walks down a cliff. One slides down backward, using arms and hands, not legs. Come on, let's go."

  "Oh, these happy morning people," thought Mrs. Pollifax, and then she realized that it was not simply a matter of temperament but of age; Farrell was younger and more flexible; Mrs. Pollifax at this moment felt unutterably weary and ancient. To be shot by a firing squad appeared absolute luxury compared to crawling down a precipice, even if it did slant. She had left a cell which from this distance appeared a haven of safety, had stumbled into space from the top of a cliff, been mercifully caught by good luck and a slender tree branch, and had endured the suspense of creeping inch by inch to this cliff ledge. What she wanted now was a great deal of reassurance, a hot bath, clean clothes and sleep. What Farrell wanted of her was more.

  Very coldly she said, "All right, who leads the way, you or the Genie?"

  Farrell said casually, "Neither, which brings up another subject. I don't trust the Genie."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake!"

  Farrell shook his head. "He jolly well may have come along as a spy, and I won't have you trusting him, either. I don't speak his language, I don't know what he said to General Perdido back there in the guardroom, I don't know anything about him. All I know is, he's here and we're stuck with him. You go first, then the Genie, and I'll go last because I still have the gun."

  Preposterous, absurd, decided Mrs. Pollifax furiously. Gritting her teeth she inched her body forward and dangled her feet over the edge of the cliff.

  "Not that way, backward," Farrell told her ju
st as coldly. "Hang from the tree branch with your face to the cliff and reach with your feet for a toehold on the jut below."

  She said bitterly, "Great—I can join the circus when I get home."

  "If you get home," Farrell pointed out curtly, and this had a galvanizing effect. She told herself that scarcely anyone died as dramatically as they wished and that her being shot by a firing squad had been no more than a wistful dream after all. Her anger gave her the recklessness to place both hands around the tree branch and to anxiously let her body swing in space—and there was a great deal of space. There she hung for a sickening moment, with Farrell hissing directions to her from the ledge. "There—now you've got it," he said.

  What she had gotten, as Farrell put it, was one foot on an outcropping of rock below her, but she could not share his jubilance over this. She glanced under her at the rock, then below to the valley, thought of depending upon that rock for her life and clung harder to the tree branch. "No, no, you've got to let go," he told her.

  "That rock will not support me," she said furiously.

  "It will if you move your hands to that stubby little root growing out of the rock over there."

  "I prefer staying with this tree branch, thank you."

  Farrell said nastily, "For how many years, Duchess?"

  She saw his point; she had to go up or she had to go down, and since either course could bring about her violent demise she might as well try going down. She felt for the root with one hand, the other still grasping the branch, and closed her eyes. "One for the money," she whispered, "two for the show, three to make ready and four to. . . ." She dropped her left hand from the branch, stoically endured that ghastly second when her weight was neither here nor there, and then she was clinging with both hands to the root, her feet braced on the rock jut below. Cautiously she opened her eyes to discover that she was still safe. What was more, her position had vastly improved, for instead of hanging from the branch, with nothing below her but ugly space, her body was now pressed tightly against the face of the cliff wall, which was just diagonal enough to give her some reassurance. She was even able to note a small hole in the cliff into which her hands could fit for the next move. Mrs. Pollifax was beginning to understand the mechanics of cliff-scaling.