Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  The woman held out Mrs. Pollifax’s purse to her, her fingers stroking the soft dark-blue calfskin. On impulse Mrs. Pollifax opened it, extracted the pistol and its clips, the compass, the map, the food and her pack of playing cards, and gave the purse back to the woman. “Keep it,” she said, smiling. “It doesn’t go with these new clothes. I’ll use the pockets instead, there are so many of them. One in each petticoat,” she told Farrell in an aside. She showed the woman how to zip and unzip the purse, a feat that brought surprise and then delight to the woman’s face. Her smile was beautiful and Mrs. Pollifax realized that in years she was still only a young woman. She also pressed the Guatemalan jacket on her, hoping she would not wear it outside the han for a good many months.

  Now it was the boy who flung back the goatskin at the door, and Mrs. Pollifax saw that his father had not gone to report them but to assemble his goats for the day. He had driven them to the door, where they were milling about bleating rudely and with no sense of direction or intelligence. With his shepherd’s crook the man prodded them even closer to the door. The boy turned to the three of them and with an eager face began explaining in pantomime what the family had decided. First he pointed to the cliff and crossed himself, grimacing, so that Mrs. Pollifax understood that General Perdido’s mountain eyrie was known and disliked in the neighborhood. Then he pointed to the sun and appeared to be emphasizing the need for them to go quickly, before men came to the han. In their new clothes—he pointed to them and rubbed a piece of Mrs. Pollifax’s skirt between his fingers to prove he meant clothes—they might be able to reach the road unaccosted.

  “Road?” said Farrell, startled.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “It can’t be seen from here but I’ve spotted it from the cliff. It runs across the plain from south to north about five miles from here, I’d say.”

  The problem was in getting unobserved to the floor of the valley but the boy had not finished. The pastures around them could all be seen very clearly from the buildings above—a fact to which Mrs. Pollifax could testify—and someone might be watching, perhaps even with binoculars. Here the boy made circles with his fingers and squinted through them. Today his father had decided to drive his goats beyond this pasture and down to the one nearest the valley. If Mrs. Pollifax and the Genie would become goats they could move with the herd and not be seen from above.

  “Become goats,” said Mrs. Pollifax dazedly—obviously she had misunderstood his gestures. But again he dropped to his hands and knees, this time crawling into the center of the thickly clustered herd.

  “Good heavens,” said Mrs. Pollifax faintly.

  Scrambling to his feet again the boy pointed to Farrell’s leg and shook his head, seized his father’s crook and placed it in Farrell’s hand. The father in reply got down on his hands and knees.

  “Well, I never,” breathed Mrs. Pollifax.

  Farrell was grinning. “You really ought to see your face, Duchess. Do you get the same message I do? From the cliff above it will appear that Mac here and his son are taking their herd of goats out, as they do every morning at this hour. One man and a boy going out, one man and a boy coming home. But going out I will be the goatherder while he joins you and the Genie and the goats—pretty damn noble of him, I have to add—and in some convenient place we are left behind.”

  Mrs. Pollifax found herself wishing she were back on the ledge. On the ledge she had wished herself back in her cell. What, she wondered crossly, must she endure next? She made only one comment and it was succinct. She said clearly and irritably, “Damn.”

  “Acquiring some downright bad habits, Duchess,” grinned Farrell. “They’ll be blackballing you at the Garden Club this winter, won’t they? Hurry now, I think they’re waiting for you.”

  The Genie was already crouched down among the goats, apparently undismayed by this new development; he glanced once over his shoulder, his eyes bright, twinkling and as interested as usual. Gingerly Mrs. Pollifax sank to her knees and crawled in among the beasts. “For heaven’s sake move them slowly,” she cautioned.

  Farrell grasped the shepherd’s crook and the boy called out something in the high clear air and prodded the goats in the front. The herd, with Mrs. Pollifax, the Genie and the shepherd as its nucleus, began to move slowly out into the pasture.

  The boy did most of the work, running backward and forward to keep the goats in a tight cluster. But it was the tightness of the cluster that soon became Mrs. Pollifax’s major concern, for although she had not crawled on hands and knees since she was a child—and never for any distance—it was the goats that proved especially unnerving. They stepped on her, they bleated alarmingly in first her left ear and then her right ear, they playfully nipped her, and over and above these hardships there was their smell. She had never thought of goats as smelling; she had never thought of goats at all, but of course no one bathed goats and this was the dry season. They had a particularly obnoxious odor, and she was surrounded by, and distressingly intimate with, an entire herd of them. From time to time Farrell and the boy would halt the procession so that the three humans in their midst could catch their breath, but Mrs. Pollifax found that catching her breath was the very last thing she wished to do. It was during these resting intervals that the goats butted her, licked her and stumbled over her. Nor was this all, for as the ground slanted more and more perceptibly the soft grass became thinner, to be replaced by pebbles that cut her knees, and once they left the shadow of the cliffs the sun beat down on them mercilessly. To walk on all fours was difficult enough for a child, but for a woman of her age it was quite mad. Yet as their queer progress continued and the time spent on hands and knees grew longer and less bearable all early reactions faded, even thought faded as Mrs. Pollifax’s mind fixed itself upon the next rest when she could throw herself full-length on the earth, indifferent at last to how many goats stepped on her. The slow, gradual descent into the valley must have taken them an hour, but after a long time Mrs. Pollifax became aware that the herd had come to a standstill and that she was being lightly touched by a shepherd’s crook. She looked up to see Farrell standing over her. “You can stand up now, Duchess,” he told her. “We’re hidden from the top of the cliff, we’ve reached the valley.”

  He looked drained and white and Mrs. Pollifax realized that a shepherd’s crook was not the same as a crutch; he must have had to place his weight on a leg broken in two places, poorly set and unmended yet, and all this on a rocky downhill terrain. Pity brought her to her feet. “Where’s your crutch?”

  “The man has it.”

  The Genie’s head popped up from among the goats and he joined them looking so untouched and cheerful that Mrs. Pollifax began to feel almost hostile toward him. She took a step forward and almost fell, regained her balance and glanced furiously at her knees. But she had always been a gracious hostess; she tottered forward to wring the hand of the boy and his father who had helped them at so much risk to themselves.

  “Det,” the man kept saying over and over again, pointing westward.

  Mrs. Pollifax recalled that this word meant sea, and nodded, smiling. Farrell also shook their hands and the Genie, odd little man that he was, went into his bowing and nodding routine. Then the man and the boy strolled away toward the goats that had fanned out across the pasture, and Mrs. Pollifax, Farrell and the Genie were alone.

  They were standing in the center of a dried-up brook bed at the base of the last terrace. Behind them rose scallop after scallop of rocky pasture culminating in the towering cliff above. In front of them stretched the flat dry valley, already shimmering in the morning heat. To the south, barely visible, lay a cluster of objects that might be tall rocks or a village. There were almost no trees. “Well,” said Mrs. Pollifax doubtfully, and then because it all seemed so overwhelming she suggested they sit down and rest.

  “Not on your life,” said Farrell flatly. “They must be combing the mountains for us, they’ll be getting to the valley next.”

  She nodded wearily. There se
emed nowhere to hide in this naked countryside and she was bone-tired but they had come this far and somewhere to the west lay a road. She glanced at the Genie and he vivaciously smiled at her. Farrell, following her glance, sighed heavily. “Not a brain in his head, is there? You certainly picked a lemon, Duchess.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know, sometimes there seem to be flashes of intelligence there.”

  “An intelligent man would be tired or scared stiff. All this guy does is smile.”

  “But the Chinese are always polite, aren’t they?” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax. “He may be just a little eccentric.”

  “Eccentric!” barked Farrell. “Well, we’re stuck with him, anyway. Let’s get moving.”

  They clung to the security of the creek bed, knowing without mentioning it that although they wore native clothes they were still three in number, and it was three for whom the general would be searching. The sun was searingly hot, for it was at least midmorning, and Mrs. Pollifax’s knees did not grow any more reliable. She stumbled along in the prison of her woolen dress and two petticoats, the old numbness reasserting itself. She longed for water—they had none—and for something green to look at, anything but this tawny, rocky, dusty hot August landscape around them. She was aware, too, of Farrell’s hobbling as she plodded. Only the Genie had the resilience to give the appearance of a man out for a morning stroll. She was beginning to feel very sorry that she had liberated this annoyingly tireless man.

  They came in sight of the road very suddenly, so suddenly that Farrell, glancing up, gave a sibilant hiss through his teeth and dropped quickly to the ground behind a rock. The Genie promptly imitated him and Mrs. Pollifax gratefully sat down beside them. The road was still some distance away, perhaps half a mile, but it was overrun by men. These men, wearing the striped suits of prisoners, were spread out along the road for nearly a mile, listlessly splitting rocks and carrying them to the roadbed. What was most alarming was the number of guards posted near them; she could identify them because they were seated on the rocks with rifles across their knees, and several of them were sprawled in the shade of a large black car. The road ran in a straight line across their path, vanishing in the south against the horizon, while in the north it lifted gradually to begin a spiraling toward the cliffs from which they had escaped. This was the road by which the general had come from the airport, but with so many people rimming it the road might as well have been an unsurmountable wall. “What can we do?” whispered Mrs. Pollifax helplessly.

  Farrell ran a dusty hand across his eyes. He was terrible to look at with his week’s growth of beard, bloodshot eyes and a dreadful pallor that was new today. Mrs. Pollifax noted that his hand trembled and she shuddered at what he must be enduring. He said in a cracked, furious voice, “What rotten luck, we’ll have to wait until dark to cross the road. Spend a whole bloody day here without water? God.”

  Dear Farrell, she thought, poor Farrell, and then she glanced beyond him and stiffened. Her look of horror caused both Farrell and the Genie to look too. Men—half a dozen of them—were crossing the plain behind them, clearly visible in the brilliant sun and less than a mile away. What had first caught her eye, however, was the flash of a mirror that was shortly answered from a tree-lined foothill up on their right. The search for them was under way, obviously a methodical daylight search leaving no margins for error, one group combing the cliffs, the pastures and the foothills, another group taking the valley. She wondered if they had already been seen, she wondered if the message flashed from the hill was in fact reporting three suspicious shapes crouched beside a rock.

  The Genie suddenly stood up.

  “Hey,” yelped Farrell, reaching for him.

  “Down—get down!” cried Mrs. Pollifax, forgetting that he couldn’t understand.

  But the Genie backed away from their groping hands, jumped over the rock and began running toward the road and the men there. “What on earth,” faltered Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I told you I didn’t trust him,” snarled Farrell. With an oath he fumbled in his pocket for the pistol and drew it out. His shaky hands fumbled with the safety catch and Mrs. Pollifax, befuddled by sun, thirst, exhaustion and panic, watched him steady the gun on the top of the rock. Dimly she realized that she ought to stop him; they were already trapped on three sides and it was senseless to take the man’s life now. Yet she made no move to halt Farrell. The Genie was racing to betray them, he was running over to the enemy and because it had been her idea to bring the Genie with them it made his betrayal the more personal. She had no right to halt his execution; she could even share some of Farrell’s rage and frustration that all their suffering came to nothing. All wasted.

  Farrell swore again and dropped the pistol. “Too late,” he groaned. “My hand shakes, damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  She thought from his voice that he might be crying, so she was careful not to look at him. Instead she stared out across the dust and the heat at the Genie, who had slowed to a walk as he approached the guards. He was in conversation with them now. “Of course—he’s Chinese,” she remembered bleakly. This was a country controlled by the Chinese, naturally the guards would treat him with respect; perhaps they were Chinese too. She glanced behind her and saw the men in the valley walking with more purpose now, a few of them running. Her eyes moved to the hillside and she could see the men who had flashed the message; they, too, were hurrying down the slope toward the valley. She realized that within a few minutes the two groups would converge upon them.

  “Well?” said Farrell grimly, holding up the pistol in a meaningful way and lifting his brows at her.

  She said steadily, “Yes—yes, it’s really the only thing left to do, isn’t it. Except—I’m sorry but I’m afraid I couldn’t, you’ll have to be the one to—the one to—”

  He said harshly, “I understand. But for God’s sake, Duchess, you realize it’s only to spare you worse. Tell me you understand that.”

  “I do realize it, of course I do.”

  “Because I’ve grown damnably fond of you, you know.”

  “Thank you,” she said gravely. The Genie and a guard with a rifle were climbing into the big dusty black car parked beside the road, the guard taking the driver’s seat, the Genie sitting beside him. The car started with a jerk, turned and left the road to bounce over the dry earth toward the rock that sheltered them. “They’re coming,” she said quietly. “They’re coming in the car, the Genie and another man. I think you’d better hurry.”

  Farrell nodded and ran his tongue over parched dry lips. With one hand he lifted his gun, trying to steady it as he aimed at Mrs. Pollifax’s heart. “Is that really the best place?” she asked curiously. “Isn’t the brain faster?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” groaned Farrell, the pistol wobbling. “Just don’t talk, will you do me that favor please?”

  Mrs. Pollifax sat up straight and primly folded her hands in her lap—as if she were about to be photographed, she thought—and waited patiently for oblivion. Again Farrell lifted the pistol and took aim. She did wish he would hurry because the car was racing toward them in a cloud of dust, but she feared reminding him of this lest she disconcert him again. Farrell carefully steadied his shaking hand and his lips thinned with the concentration this took. She could see the perspiration beading his nose and brow and watched a drop fall from his temple. Farrell lifted an elbow to clear his eyes and patiently took aim a third time.

  But it was too late. The car was already upon them, and the Genie leaped from the opened door and knocked the pistol out of Farrell’s grasp. It fell into the dust, to be retrieved in an instant by the Genie. With a low moan Farrell hid his face in his hands, utterly drained and exhausted. It was the Genie who brandished the pistol now, gesturing them both into the car.

  Mrs. Pollifax sat and regarded him without expression, her mind sifting a thousand reproaches and a few epithets, but if he was Chinese he would understand none of them. And if he was Chinese he could not really be called a trait
or either, nor could she call him a fool when she had proven the greater fool. Silently and wearily she climbed to her feet and bent over Farrell. “Come, they want us in the car,” she said, and then in a whisper, “I still have the Beretta, you know.” Without looking at the Genie she walked past him and climbed into the back seat. It was a Rolls, she noticed, looking over the accouterments that reminded her of childhood rides in the park with an aunt. “A very ancient one,” she amended. “Highly appropriate for funerals.”

  Farrell sank down beside her in the rear seat and the guard slammed the door. This time the Genie slid behind the wheel of the car and started the engine while the guard climbed in beside him and propped his rifle between his legs. With the motor idling the Genie turned his head and smiled at the guard, his eyes bright and fathomless.

  “Snake-in-the-grass,” thought Mrs. Pollifax, watching him.

  With one smooth and effortless movement the Genie lifted the pistol he had taken from Farrell and astonished Mrs. Pollifax by shooting the guard between the eyes. As the guard slumped in his seat the Genie leaned across him, opened the door and pushed the man’s body into the dust. Slipping back behind the wheel he said over his shoulder in clipped, perfect English, “I think we’d better get the hell out of here, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 19

  Their shock was so complete that for a moment neither Mrs. Pollifax nor Farrell could utter a word. Then something like a small gasp escaped Mrs. Pollifax, and from Farrell came a brief, violent grunt. The Genie abruptly backed and turned the car and the sudden movement brought them to life. “Who the devil are you?” demanded Farrell.

  “And why didn’t you tell us you speak English?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.