Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (31 page)

“You may,” said Farrell with a grin.

“And on coming back yourselves,” added Carstairs. “I don’t mind telling you that I gave you both up long ago.”

“Did you really!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax in a pleased voice.

“I’m going to call in Bishop now,” went on Carstairs. “He’ll take a few notes but the bulk of it will be put on tape tonight,
the rest of the picture can be filled in tomorrow. I hope a tape recorder doesn’t make you self-conscious?”

“Too tired,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

He nodded. “I think we might give Johnny the rest he needs by letting you do most of the talking, Mrs. Pollifax. Johnny, you join in when it suits you, agreed?”

Bishop had come in, and Mrs. Pollifax noticed that his nostrils looked pinched during the introductions. “It’s the goats,” she told him forgivingly. “Just don’t sit too near me.” Half a day in the waters of Lake Scutari had subdued the smell but it was obvious that only a complete change of clothes and a vast amount of hot water and soap would ever make her acceptable to society again.

“Goats?”
said Carstairs, startled.

She nodded. “Goats. Where would you like me to begin?”

“With your abduction—the rest can be filled in later,” said Carstairs. “Begin with your meeting Johnny. That would be the nineteenth of August?”

She nodded. “
They
gave us soup and coffee too—the men in the shack.” Awkwardly, and then with increasing absorption, she told of their flight to Albania and their subsequent days there, Farrell joining in occasionally to emphasize a point. Carstairs did not interrupt until Mrs. Pollifax mentioned the missile site.

“Missile site!” he exploded. “Missile site?”

“You didn’t already know about this?” asked Mrs. Pollifax demurely.

“Albania is not a country where the CIA is given much scope,” he said dryly. “No, we did not know about this, Mrs. Pollifax. Are you
sure
it was a missile site?”

“No,” she said, “but Colonel Nexdhet was.”

“Who…?”

Farrell grinned. “Let her go on, it gets more and more interesting.”

Mrs. Pollifax continued, eventually concluding, “… and we think the two men were left dead in their boats so we sailed west, straight out to sea, and by that time the Genie—that is, Dr. Howell—was more unconscious than conscious. At first we avoided any boats we saw in the distance but when we finally decided it was safe to be rescued nobody paid the slightest attention to us. We’d wave at them and they’d just wave back.”

“Thought we were out for pleasure,” added Farrell wryly.

Carstairs smiled and flicked off the switch of the tape recorder. “Quite a story.… Let’s let it rest there for the moment. It’s a good place to stop. There’ll be many more details to clear up, more information on General Perdido, for instance, and I’d like that missile site pinpointed on a map if humanly possible. Those stone buildings, too. All this can wait, though. The important item—and after hearing what’s happened to you the most surprising item—is that you’re both alive.”

Farrell said soberly, “You’ve very carefully avoided the beginning of all this, haven’t you? Mexico City, I mean. I take it the whole thing blew up like a bomb and turned into a disaster area for us. They got DeGamez?”

Carstairs sighed. “I’m sorry you ask.” He bent over a cigarette and a lighter, carefully avoiding Farrell’s eye. “One thing lost, one thing found,” he said. “Let’s not underestimate what you accomplished in getting Dr. Lee Tsung Howell back, as well as yourselves.” He put down the lighter and looked directly at Farrell. “Yes, Johnny, DeGamez is dead. He was murdered on the seventeenth of August.”

“Damn,” said Farrell savagely.

Mrs. Pollifax felt a tremor of shock run through her. She said quietly, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry. General Perdido did this?”

Carstairs nodded. “Fortunes of war, Mrs. Pollifax. All our agents know the risk.”

She shivered. “Yes, but he was so kind, he was such a good man, he was such a
gentleman
.”

Carstairs suddenly became very still. Slowly he turned his head to stare at Mrs. Pollifax and his silence had a stunned quality. He said at last, very softly, “But how could you possibly know that, Mrs. Pollifax, when you never met the real Senor DeGamez?”

“Oh, but you see I did,” she told him eagerly. “Not on the nineteenth, of course, but a few days after arriving in Mexico City—well, I had to be sure I could locate the shop, don’t you see? And after finding it I passed it nearly every day. I really grew to think of it as
my
shop,” she confessed with a rueful laugh. “And that’s why—well, after passing it so many times and seeing him there I thought I would stop in one morning and browse around a little. I didn’t think it would hurt,” she added anxiously, suddenly noticing the intensity of Carstairs’ gaze.

“Go on,” he said in a stifled voice.

“So I went inside and we had a lovely chat, Senor DeGamez and I.”

“When? What date?” The voice had urgency behind it.

“When? Why, it must have been—let’s see, it was four days before the nineteenth, I believe. That would make it August 15 when I stopped in. Yes, it was definitely the fifteenth.”

“What exactly did you ‘chat’ about?” demanded Carstairs, and so harshly that Farrell gave him a second glance and narrowed his eyes.

“Why, mostly about traveling alone, and the grandchildren we had, and did I play solitaire. He gave me a book called
77 Ways to Play Solitaire
, and although at the time I didn’t warm to the idea—”

“Mrs. Pollifax,” interrupted Carstairs in a strangled voice.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Pollifax, DeGamez was given your photograph on the ninth of August.”

“My
what
?”

“Mrs. Pollifax, when you walked into the Parrot Bookstore on August 15 DeGamez knew who you were. Do you understand,
he knew who you were?
”

A small gasp escaped Mrs. Pollifax.

“He must also have had very strong suspicions by that date that he was being closely watched. Mrs. Pollifax, I want you to tell me every word he said, and just where I can find that book.”

“Oh, but there was nothing in the book,” she assured him. “They thought there was, I forgot to tell you that, but General Perdido spent days somewhere having it tested. They found nothing.”

Carstairs sat back and looked at her. He said carefully, “If DeGamez had received the microfilms, Mrs. Pollifax, I know that he would have found some way to give them to you on the fifteenth. I want you to think. I want you to go back and reconstruct that visit as closely as possible.”

Very soberly Mrs. Pollifax sent her thoughts back to that morning.

“Describe it, tell me everything that happened.”

Patiently and carefully Mrs. Pollifax began speaking of the morning when she first entered the shop. The book of memoirs. The parrot’s shout. The conversation about Olé, about traveling alone, about American geese, and the presentation of the book on solitaire. “He wrapped both books together in
white paper,” she added, frowning. “But by that time two other customers had come in and so I left.”

“Try again,” said Carstairs.

Again Mrs. Pollifax described her visit, and once again uncovered nothing. “The two other customers had walked in, and he said something to me—in a more public voice, you understand—about wishing me a beautiful visit in his country. And then I—
oh
,” she cried, “the
cards
!”

“Cards,” repeated Carstairs, and leaned forward.

“Yes, of course,” she said in a stunned voice. “How on earth could I have forgotten! It was just as I reached the door. He called out, ‘But how can you play solitaire without the cards, senora’—yes, those were his words—and he threw them to me. Just threw them to me across the store. And he said, ‘How do you Americans call it, on the house?’ and I caught them. I held up two hands and caught them like a ball and tucked them into my purse. But surely he wouldn’t throw anything of value like that, so casually, so impulsively, you don’t think…?”

Carstairs’ voice was filled with suppressed excitement. “That is precisely the way a man who is under surveillance would dispose of something dangerous. Mrs. Pollifax, what happened to those playing cards?”

Farrell said incredulously, “Duchess, that deck you played with in Albania, that’s surely not—?”

“But of course,” she told Farrell. To Carstairs she said, “I have them right here in my pocket.”

Carstairs stared at her in astonishment. “You mean you carried them
with
you? You mean they’re with you
now
? You still
have
them?”

Farrell began to laugh. “Have them! Carstairs, the Duchess here played solitaire with those playing cards day in and day out, endlessly, right under the guards’ noses, and in front of General Perdido, too. Have them! She drove everybody nearly crazy with them.”

Mrs. Pollifax gave him a reproachful glance. Reaching down to her second petticoat she brought out the deck of cards and placed them on the desk. For a long moment Carstairs stared at them as if he could not quite believe they were there. Then he reached out and picked them up and ran his fingers over them. “Plasticized,” he said softly. “They’re enclosed in plastic. Bishop,” he said in a strange voice, “Bishop, take these to
the lab on the double. On the double, Bishop—it’s microfilms we’re after.”

“Yes sir,” gasped Bishop, and the door closed behind him.

Carstairs sat back and stared at Mrs. Pollifax with a look of incredulity.

“I know just how you feel,” said Farrell, grinning. “She’s full of surprises, what?”

“Rather, yes.” Carstairs shook his head, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “And ten days ago I believed I had sent an innocent lamb into a den of wolves. You seem to have great resources, Mrs. Pollifax.”

“It’s my age,” said Mrs. Pollifax modestly.

“And if those cards should turn out to be …” Again Carstairs shook his head. “Why, then, nothing would have blown up in Mexico at all. It’s incredible, absolutely incredible.”

“But I simply can’t think why I didn’t remember about those cards,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “In my mind I always identified them with Senor DeGamez, yet I completely overlooked his tossing them to me like that. Is this what’s called a mental block?”

The phone buzzed and Carstairs picked it up. “Carstairs.” He listened and grinned. “Right. Thanks, Bishop.” Hanging up, he smiled at both Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax. “They’ve found the first microfilm. Tirpak used two packs of very thin playing cards. He cemented the back of one card to the front of another, with the film between, and enclosed each in special plastic.” He added fervently, “If that was a mental block, Mrs. Pollifax, then bless it. Perdido would have sensed at once that you were concealing something—if you had consciously recalled how you received those cards. It very definitely saved your life when you were questioned, and it’s certainly recovered for this country a great amount of invaluable information.” He shook his head. “Mrs. Pollifax, we are in your debt.”

She smiled and said gently, “If I could just have a bath and a change of clothes … I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more.”

Carstairs laughed. “I’ll make certain you have both within the hour. And for you, Johnny—a bevy of beautiful nurses.”

Farrell stumbled to his feet and walked to Mrs. Pollifax. He bent over and kissed her. “I won’t say good-bye, Duchess, I couldn’t. Just don’t you dare leave town without coming to see me on my bed of pain.”

Mrs. Pollifax looked up at him and beamed. “I’ll bring roses, I promise you, my dear Farrell, and just to prove how opinionated and shortsighted you’ve been I’ll also bring a deck of playing cards and teach you one or two games of solitaire.”

He didn’t smile. He said gravely, “A very small price to pay for my life. Duchess.… God bless you and have a
wonderful
bath.”

Mrs. Pollifax put down her suitcase in front of the door to apartment 4-A and groped in her purse for the key. It seemed a long, long time since she had last stood here, and it filled her with a sense of awe that the externals of life could remain so unchanged when she felt so different. Like a kaleidoscope, she thought, her imagination captured by the simile: one swift turn of the cylinder and all the little bits and pieces of colored glass fell into a different pattern. As she inserted her key into the lock a door across the hall flew open, spilling sunlight across the black and white tiles of the floor. “Mrs. Pollifax, you’re back at last!” cried Miss Hartshorne.

Mrs. Pollifax stiffened. She said, turning, “Yes, I’m home again, and how have you been, Miss Hartshorne?”

“As well as can be expected, thank you. You must have had a marvelous trip to stay so long.”

“Yes, marvelous,” agreed Mrs. Pollifax with a faint smile.

“I’ve a package for you, it came this morning and I signed for it.” Miss Hartshorne held up one hand dramatically. “Don’t go away, don’t even move, I’ll be right back.”

Mrs. Pollifax waited, and presently her neighbor reappeared carrying a box wrapped in brown paper and covered with seals. “It came special delivery all the way from Mexico City! I’m giving you last night’s newspaper, too, so you can catch up on our news here.”

“How very kind of you,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea with me?”

Miss Hartshorne looked shocked. “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of bothering you now. As an experienced traveler myself I know how utterly exhausted you must be. But I hope you’ll invite me in soon to see your slides. I trust you don’t mind, I took it upon myself to tell the Lukes and Mrs. Ohrbach that they could see them too. We’re all looking forward to them so much.”

Mrs. Pollifax said quietly, “I’m afraid there’ll be no slides, Miss Hartshorne.”

Her neighbor’s jaw dropped. “No slides? You mean your pictures didn’t come out?” Her glance was stern. “Didn’t you study the lighting charts I gave you?”

You’ve forgotten pi again, Emily
.… Mrs. Pollifax smiled and said gently, “I didn’t take any snapshots, I was too busy.”

“Too busy?” Miss Hartshorne looked horrified.

“Yes, too busy. In fact it might surprise you how busy I really was, Miss Hartshorne.” She added firmly, “I believe I’ll insist that you come in for a cup of tea now if you have the time. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a cup of tea together, have we?”