Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (22 page)

“Trusting, always trusting,” pointed out Colonel Nexdhet from the floor. “Now you are crazy.”

Farrell’s lips thinned in exasperation. “There’s another point, Duchess. If he doesn’t speak English he doesn’t understand that we’re escaping. When he does realize it he’s likely to let out one long bloody yell at the wrong moment. He may not
want
to escape.”

“Nonsense, everybody wants to escape,” said Mrs. Pollifax scornfully.

“Have you explained the odds to him? He just may not want to end up in front of a firing squad,” pointed out Farrell.

“Defeatist.”

“Her conscience again,” Farrell explained wearily to Nexdhet.

“You must put him back in his cell at once,” warned Nexdhet. “And remember, I know who he is.”

“You won’t tell us?”

“Absolutely not.” On this matter Nexdhet sounded unequivocal.

Both regarded him thoughtfully until Farrell, rousing, said, “Oh, to hell with it, Duchess, this whole thing is insane, anyway. Bring him along, damn it, we haven’t all the time in the world.”

Mrs. Pollifax wordlessly handed him the two pistols and helped him tie the last knot and stuff the gag in the colonel’s mouth. “Okay, let’s go,” Farrell said crisply, and they moved out into the hall with Mrs. Pollifax hanging on to the sleeve of
her genie. Carefully Farrell locked the door of the cell behind them and restored the keys to Mrs. Pollifax’s purse. “Get rid of them later,” he told her, and limped into the guardroom. “What do we call this—this lamentable mistake of yours?”

“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.

“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 into 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 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. Pollifax, 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 Genie 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.