The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  and he is perhaps all of these things, but I completely missed the truth in him: namely that he is all of these things and yet none of them."

  To Farrell she said simply, "You are very brave."

  He lifted an eyebrow mockingly. "Not at the moment, Duchess, not at the moment. You see, I can't allow General Perdido to question me. You understand what I've got to do, don't you?"

  "What do you mean?" faltered Mrs. Pollifax.

  "I mean that no one can hold out indefinitely against their methods of torture, and the general is considered an expert in the field. I mustn't be taken alive into that building."

  As the meaning of his words penetrated Mrs. Pollifax became very still.

  Farrell got to his feet and began pacing the floor. "For me it's part of the job," he said, "but I hate leaving you in the lurch. It's not very gallant of me, but under the circumstances—"

  Mrs. Pollifax said breathlessly, "You mustn't concern yourself with me at all. Please. But what do you intend to do?"

  He shrugged. "Whatever presents itself. Try to break away between here and the other building and hope they'll shoot me. Throw a rock at somebody." He shrugged again. "Che sera, sera, as they say—except I must not enter that building and meet General Perdido."

  "You can't think of any other way?" she asked anxiously. "You don't think the general... ?"

  He smiled cryptically. "Not on your life, Duchess, not on your life."

  She averted her eyes so that she need not embarrass him with her compassion. She thought of her son Roger and daughter Jane, of Miss Hartshorne in apartment 4-C, and of the simple life she herself had lived, and then she thought of men like Farrell who for years must have been dying in queer parts of the world without her ever knowing of their existence. Life was certainly very strange, she reflected, but in spite of its uncertainty she was extremely grateful to have known Farrell.

  "I don't know how to advise you," he continued, pacing and frowning. "There's no possibility of your getting away or being rescued. I hate deserting you. If I just didn't know so much—but Carstairs would never approve of my staying alive, there's too much at stake." Hearing the guard at the door he stamped his cigarette out on the floor. "Take what's left of them," he said, handing her the flattened pack. "You never know who's bribable in this world."

  "Thank you," said Mrs. Pollifax, standing up, and as the door opened she and Farrell gravely shook hands.

  This time the two guards were heavily armed. Major Vassovic had come as well to superintend Farrell's removal. "It's been so nice meeting you, Major," said Farrell as he went out

  "God go with you," whispered Mrs. Pollifax, staring after him.

  Major Vassovic pointedly coughed. "The—uh—order has been received now. One aspirin for you, to be taken in my presence. Come."

  Mrs. Pollifax realized that her headache had returned doublefold. She humbly followed the man into the guardroom and stood patiently while he brought her a cup of water and the pill. As she placed the tablet on her tongue her gaze came to rest on the collection of weapons on the wall, a number of guns and knives beautifully decorated with carved-silver ornamentation. They were works of art belonging in a museum and she told the major so.

  "The long guns are called pushkas," he said gruffly. "The sabres we call yataghans in this country."

  There were also an assortment of undecorated and very lethal-looking pistols and revolvers but she ignored these, her glance falling to the three drawers set into the base of the gun rack. One of them held a key in its lock; a small brass key, really quite distinctive. She kept her glance riveted to this, every nerve in her body waiting. "I am admiring a brass key," she told herself. "I am in Albania and presently Farrell will be killed and I mustn't think about it." She did not have long to wait. Her concentration was interrupted by harsh shouts from outside the building, and then by the sound of guns being fired. Mrs. Pollifax very carefully placed the cup of water on the major's desk and was pleased to see that her hand was not trembling. "I mustn't look," she told herself. "I don't want to look. There was nothing else for him to do."

  At the sound of firing Major Vassovic uttered an explosive oath. After one glance from the window he said, "Back— back," and roughly pushed Mrs. Pollifax down the hall to her cell and slammed the door upon her. The firing had not continued beyond that one frenzied burst. There was only silence now in the building. Mrs. Pollifax sat down on Farrell's cot and said in a quiet voice, "I didn't look." For some reason this was very important to her. "I didn't look," she repeated in a louder voice, and fumbling in her purse she brought out a handkerchief and angrily blew her nose. Then she resolutely shuffled her deck of cards and laid them out for a game of Spider.

  Mrs. Pollifax had played for several minutes, the silence like a shroud in the stone cell—like Farrell's shroud, she thought bitterly—when slowly her thoughts became diverted by a small sound emanating from the wall behind her. She turned her head to hear it better. It was not a metallic noise, it was more like a clenched fist rhythmically striking the stone wall. Recalling the second iron door set into the hall outside Mrs. Pollifax frowned. Kneeling on Farrell's cot she tapped with both hands. Immediately the sound stopped, as if in astonishment, and just when Mrs. Pollifax decided it must be someone repairing a drain, the fist beat an excited staccato reply. This fist had a personality all its own, thought Mrs. Pollifax in surprise; at first it had seemed to be hitting the wall in a monotonous rhythm of despair, then finding itself answered the Fist had panicked and stopped, afraid. But perhaps the Fist had remembered that another cell stood between it and Major Vassovic, for after its hesitation it had replied with joy.

  "Yes with joy," repeated Mrs. Pollifax firmly, and reflected that if this were anything but real life they would now exchange urgent messages in Morse code. Unfortunately Mrs. Pollifax knew no Morse. She tapped again once more and received a reply, but it was a little like communicating with a newly born infant or someone who spoke only Swahili; once the initial greeting had been made there was really not much more to manage. Besides, her mind was on Farrell and she returned sadly to her game of solitaire.

  It seemed a long time later when the building filled with noise again. A number of booted feet tramped down the hall and Mrs. Pollifax heard Major Vassovic issuing orders in an irritable voice. He sounded like a frustrated and angry man. Mrs. Pollifax placed a black ace on a red two and waited for the inevitable grating of the key in the lock—it was a sound she was beginning to dread. The door swung open. Mrs. Pollifax looked up and the cards slipped from her hand to the floor.

  "Farrel!" she gasped.

  He was propped between two guards, one leg dangling uselessly, his clothes smeared with blood. At her cry he lifted his head and opened one eye. "Goofed again, Duchess," he said, and as the men lowered him none too gently to the cot he added peevishly, "Damn cliff. If you jumped from a hundred-foot cliff wouldn't you bloody well expect to be killed?" Having delivered himself of this diatribe he fell back unconscious on the bed.

  Ten

  The two slits in the wall of the cell gradually darkened as night fell. Mrs. Pollifax sat beside Farrell and listened to his ravings as he slipped in and out of feverish dreams. She knew his leg was broken in two places and she had neither water nor bandages for him. There was a great deal of blood all over him, but as far as she could see only one bullet had entered his body and this was embedded in his right arm above the elbow. She had staunched the bleeding by removing the coarse blanket from her cot and using it as a tourniquet. When General Perdido arrived she had worked herself into a cold fury over the cruelty of the situation and her own helplessness. "Good evening," she said icily.

  The guard accompanying Perdido carried a candle which he inserted into a metal ring set into the wall for this purpose. The general walked over to Farrell and looked down at him contemptuously. Clearly he, too, was furious.

  Mrs. Pollifax said coldly, "I have asked for water and bandages and no one brings them. If I may be so presumptuo
us as to make a suggestion, General, why don't you shoot Mr. Farrell? It would be much more efficient because he is making a great deal of bothersome noise and what's worse he is bleeding all over your furniture."

  General Perdido turned on her angrily. "I find you insolent, Mrs. Pollifax."

  "I feel insolent," retorted Mrs. Pollifax. "Perhaps you would like to shoot me as well."

  For a moment she thought that General Perdido was going to strike her. She almost hoped that he would for her rage was nearly unobtainable and she would have welcomed violence, even if directed at herself. But his hand fell. He glared again at the moaning Farrell and turned on his heel. At the door he said to Major Vassovic, "Give the woman the water and bandages she asks for. Perhaps she can revive the prisoner for questioning." He turned and gave Mrs. Pollifax a tight, sadistic smile. "For questioning and other things." With this he marched out.

  Major Vassovic looked doubtfully at Mrs. Pollifax. "Water? Bandages? You are a nurse?"

  "No, a human being," she snapped, and sat down again beside Farrell's cot.

  The major returned with strips of cloth and a pitcher of water. He stood and watched while Mrs. Pollifax moistened Farrell's lips and untied the tourniquet. "You have been loosening it?" he asked.

  She nodded. The bleeding had stopped; Mrs. Pollifax placed the blanket to one side and walked over to her cot and rolled back the mattress. The cot was made of wood, with rough slats to support the thin hard mattress. She removed two of the slats and carried them back to Farrell's bed.

  "What do you do now?" asked Major Vassovic curiously.

  "I intend to set his leg."

  Major Vassovic looked astonished. "Zott! You know how?"

  "No," replied Mrs. Pollifax, "but someone has to. I'm hoping you will help me."

  He said stiffly, "I have no orders."

  "But you are here, and you are a man and he is a man, and do you think any leg should look like that?"

  "I have no orders," he repeated, and went out.

  Mrs. Pollifax felt suddenly very tired. She looked at Farrell and she looked at his leg and she knew that she would bungle the job alone. Gritting her teeth she leaned over him and began ripping away his trouser leg. "I will not faint," she told herself, "I will not, I will not. Surely I can push one of those bones back myself. It certainly ought to be done now, while he's unconscious." She stood back and looked at the leg, already swollen and red and turning black and blue, and she thought forlornly, "I wish I had another aspirin."

  The door behind her opened so quietly that Mrs. Pollifax started when a low voice said, "Lulash."

  She turned. One of the guards stood there, his finger to his lips, nodding and smiling nervously. "My name is Lulash."

  "I see," said Mrs. Pollifax blankly. "Lulash. Well, how do you do, Mr. Lulash."

  He tiptoed back to the door, listened a moment and gently closed it. "The major has gone for the night. He sleeps."He walked to the cot and stared down at Farrell. "I have worked in hospital," he said suddenly. "I can set this man's leg. Zott, but it looks bad."

  Mrs. Pollifax's eyes weakly filled with tears at this offer of help. "He jumped from the cliff," she explained in a strangled voice. "He was trying to kill himself."

  Lulash only nodded. "I wish him better good fortune the next time." He leaned over to examine Farrell's leg more closely. "Zott, but this is not good."

  "But you can do something?"

  "Something, yes. Better a doctor, but they will not bring a doctor. I do my best." His eyes fell to the slats that Mrs. Pollifax still held in her arms. He took them from her and leaned them against the wall. "Later," he said. "Now you must sit on the man's chest and hold him down. I bid you do it." Numbly Mrs. Pollifax obeyed.

  Ten minutes later Farrell's leg was set and Mrs. Pollifax, feeling shaken and a little ill, sat on her cot and watched Lulash bind the slats against Farrell's straightened leg. After one enraged scream Farrell had lost consciousness again, and he was still unconscious. Lulash placed a hand on Farrell's heart and then on his pulse, counting the beat. With a nod he came to sit down beside Mrs. Pollifax and mop his brow with a soiled handkerchief.

  "Would you like an American cigarette?" asked Mrs. Pollifax humbly. She brought from her purse the crumpled pack that Farrell had given her.

  "Thank you."

  "We are both Americans," said Mrs. Pollifax, with a nod toward Farrell. "Do you think—that is, is it all right for me to ask if this is Albania?"

  The guard shrugged. "We call it Shkyperi, which in your language would mean Land of the Mountain Eagle. But yes, it is called Albania."

  "Where did you learn to speak such fine English? Do all the Albanians speak it? Major Vassovic does, and you."

  "I was brought here two days ago because I speak the English. Before then I was in Sarande. It was the same with Major Vassovic, who came from Tirana. They went searching for those of us in the Sigurimi who speak your language."

  "The Sigur—what?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "That is the name of the secret police in this country."

  Mrs. Pollifax gasped. "That means that you—I mean—"

  He shrugged. "The time is very difficult here. Those of us who can read and write have two choices, to join the Sigurimi or not to join. Those who do not join can usually be seen on the roads any day. They smash rock. They carry rock. They have no hope."

  "I'm sorry," said Mrs. Pollifax. "It sounds quite sad." She looked at him with curiosity, studying him carefully because of his extraordinary kindness to Farrell, but unable to find anything in his face to explain him. It was a dark, secretive face with pointed features: black brows, a long, thin nose, a sharp thin jaw, a thin sharp mouth. She would not have taken him for a kind man or an unselfish one, and yet he had flouted orders to help a sick man.

  "It was not always this way," he said. "Albanians are a proud, fiercely independent people. But without luck," he added. "First the Turks ruled us, then the Russians, now the Chinese. Whatever the master the country stays the same. Poor, primitive, frightened too."

  "You speak English so well," she pointed out.

  His face brightened. "My cousin and I learned the English as children from a man who had come here to write a book about the country. He was a travel man, you know. He wrote the book the year I was born but each year he came back to visit my father. It pleased him to teach us. He was friend to all the tribes, a very good man."

  •Tribes?" said Mrs. Pollifax.

  He nodded. "You know nothing of our country?"

  "Nothing at all, I'm afraid," she admitted.

  "The most beautiful country in the world," he said firmly. "Here the rocks and the high mountains, below the flatlands, the valley, the rivers. And oh, the sea," he added with nostalgia. "Patrolled now, of course. But the Adriatic is the most beautiful sea in the world."

  "Yes, I've heard that," said Mrs. Pollifax quietly.

  "This man, this Mr. Allistair, gave us the book he wrote of my country. He loved it too." He pinched out the cigarette and placed the butt carefully in the pocket of his shirt. "Your friend is stirring, I will find for him one aspirin."

  He got up and opened the door to the hall and stood there, waiting. Mrs. Pollifax realized that he was waiting for her to accompany him, Surprised, she followed him out, quite touched by his trust. Once in the guardroom he began opening and closing drawers of the desk while Mrs. Pollifax stood beside him. She heard his murmur of satisfaction as he brought up a flask containing what looked to be brandy. While he attacked a new drawer Mrs. Pollifax's glance wandered and came to rest, mesmerized, upon the gun rack behind the desk. The little brass key to the drawer in the gun rack was still there in its lock.

  What, she wondered, would people keep in the drawer of a gun rack?

  "If they put ammunition there they certainly wouldn't be so careless as to leave the key in the lock," she reflected. "It's probably filled with paper clips or something idiotic. Except, why paper clips in a gun rack?"

  It was an in
teresting thought. If it was a drawer for ammunition a person could steal the key and hide it and later hope to come back and remove whatever was there. Then perhaps some use could be made of it, or a gun taken from the rack—

  She looked at Lulash, at his narrow back bent over the bottom drawer. Still watching him she took several steps backward, until she felt the gun rack between her shoulder blades. Fumblingly she tugged at the drawer and felt it slide open. Lulash was still leaning over the desk and she quickly turned and glanced down. She had been right about its holding ammunition: the drawer was filled with neat stacks of bullets, cartridges and clips, all of them unwrapped and accessible. She slid the drawer closed and placed her fingers around the key. Then she hesitated.

  "I can't" she thought bleakly. "I just can't.

  "Lulash would be blamed," she realized. "It wouldn't be fair. He would be blamed for its loss and punished and he has just set Farrell's leg and now he is going to give him brandy and an aspirin.

  "I am an utter failure as an agent," she decided with anger. "It should have occurred to me before that I would have to be ruthless and unscrupulous. These people are planning to kill me and still I can't steal this key or so much as a bullet because this man has helped me and would be blamed for it."

  Lulash stood erect, brandishing a bottle of white pills and smiling at her. Automatically she smiled back, her mind totally occupied with her defeat. Lulash found a paper cup and drew water from the cooler and she accompanied him back to her cell.

  "What goes?" asked Farrell shakily.

  "This gentleman set your leg," she told him, patting his arm. "We've brought you some brandy for your nerves, and aspirin for your fever. Could you manage to sit up just a little if I help?"

  Farrell struggled to one elbow. "I hope I haven't given away any state secrets. I have the feeling I've been talking like an idiot."

  She smiled faintly. "Exactly like an idiot, but not like any friend of Mr. Carstairs."

  "Thank God for that." He swallowed some brandy, winced, and saluted Lulash with a wave of a hand. "Does he speak English?"