Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  It was as if she had abruptly cut the switch on an unwinding reel of film. Magda lay across a chaise lounge like a bundle that had been flung there, and Stefan, leaning over her, looked up in the act of withdrawing a hypodermic needle from her arm. Otto stood on guard a few feet from Mrs. Pollifax, his mouth open as he stared at her. He was the first to react: he moved so swiftly, so menacingly, that without a second to think about it Mrs. Pollifax lifted her right hand, flattened it as Lorvale had taught her, and dealt Otto a crisp karate chop to the side of his throat. He stared at her in astonishment and then his eyes closed and he sank slowly to the floor. Behind her Colin gasped, “Mrs. Pollifax!”

  “Get his gun,” said Mrs. Pollifax crisply.

  Colin stooped and plucked it from the floor, pocketing his own wooden prop. Holding the live gun he gestured Stefan away from Magda. “Against the wall,” he ordered, waving the gun with growing enthusiasm.

  Mrs. Pollifax, her flowered hat only a little askew, went at once to Magda, who was trying to stand. “Can you walk?”

  “I’m drugged,” she said in an anguished voice. “Hurry!”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded, and, grasping her arm, led her to the door. Colin followed, walking backward with his gun pointed at Stefan. But Stefan refused to remain abjectly against the wall: he took one step and then another, following Colin with a nasty grin on his face.

  “There’s no lock on this door!” Colin said desperately, trying to slam it in Stefan’s face.

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced back over her shoulder. Magda had already begun to sag and it was doubtful that she would remain upright if Mrs. Pollifax withdrew her arm to help Colin. Obviously Stefan was determined to follow them; he knew the gun was loaded because it was Otto’s, but he was not going to make it easy for Colin, who was so patently an amateur. To hesitate for long would risk their having to literally carry Magda out of the house in their arms. “If he comes too close, shoot him,” she said calmly, and headed down the hall to the stairs.

  But at the top of the rear staircase Mrs. Pollifax stopped in dismay, for the downstairs hall and entrance that had been deserted ten minutes ago was now aswarm with workers. The screen door through which they had entered was propped wide open. Buckets of ice were being carried in and empty trays wheeled out to a waiting truck. A heavy-set butler stood at the bottom of the stairs calling out orders and completely blocking the exit. He did not look as if he would give ground easily, or let them through unchallenged.

  Mrs. Pollifax turned away. They had to get out of the house quickly, before Magda lost consciousness, and there was no alternative now but to use the main staircase. Propping up Magda she half-carried her to the stairwell, grasped the banister and began a step-by-step descent. They made a ludicrous procession, she thought, herself and Magda clinging together in the vanguard, followed by Colin walking backward and brandishing a pistol at Stefan, who continued to leer and follow three paces behind. As they descended Mrs. Pollifax could look down and see the massive oak door at the foot of the stairs. She knew that beyond, parked in the street, stood Colin’s van; if they could just get through that door …

  The piano playing came to a sudden halt. Slowly the murmur of voices subsided into startled silence and Mrs. Pollifax found herself in full view of Dr. Belleaux’s party; she was in fact staring down into dozens of gaping faces. She supposed that two women on the stairs might have gone unnoticed but that the sight of Colin holding a gun made for a certain conspicuousness. Rather wearily—it had been a long and violent evening—Mrs. Pollifax lifted her wooden gun and addressed the sea of faces below her. In her most imperious voice she said, “I will shoot the first person who tries to stop us.” It was a phrase culled from the late late movies but it was the best that she could manage under the circumstances.

  Someone said, “Get Dr. Belleaux!”

  Mrs. Pollifax reached the bottom of the stairs and pulled open the door, holding it wide. As Colin backed into her, stepping painfully on her ankle, she said in a low voice, “Take Magda and run.”

  He nodded and pressed the functioning gun into her hand. “Thanks—I couldn’t possibly shoot it,” he admitted.

  “I can,” she said calmly. “Just get her out, she’s going under.”

  It was now Colin who bore the sagging Magda into the night and down the path, and Mrs. Pollifax who faced Stefan. “I am going to shoot the first person who walks through this door after I leave,” she called out, only a little embarrassed by her clichés. To her left, from a corner of her eye, she saw several people move apart, and for just one moment she allowed her glance to leave Stefan: she looked into the livingroom and into the eyes of the party’s host who had suddenly appeared. She thought, Dr. Belleaux, I presume, and then her glance swerved back to Stefan, she saw him coiled to jump at her and she fired the gun at the ceiling above him. Slamming the door behind her, she ran.

  Colin was bundling Magda into the van across the street but unfortunately Henry was already there, which had led to difficulties. When Mrs. Pollifax reached the van Colin was starting up the engine with a dead Henry at his elbow and an unconscious Magda in the passenger seat. “Jump in somewhere—anywhere,” he cried in a harassed voice. “Try the floor or sit on Henry. Or Magda.”

  Mrs. Pollifax climbed in and fell across Magda just as the van began to move and a second before it raced down the street. “I’m heading for the ferry, I’m going to get you out of Istanbul right now, before all hell breaks loose,” he said, and he turned on the van’s lights as they reached the corner. “You can’t go back to your hotel, and the first place Stefan will look for you is Ramsey Enterprises, and after that they’ll begin watching the ferries and the airport. There’s not a minute to lose; the ferries don’t run as often at night.”

  “I’m a wanted citizen,” Mrs. Pollifax said in a surprised voice.

  Colin looked at her and grinned. “Well, look at the facts, Mrs. Pollifax,” he suggested. “The police have your passport and will be looking for you, Stefan and Otto will be looking for you, you’ll be wanted for burglarizing—not to mention kidnapping—and have you noticed the interesting passengers we’ve acquired? At the moment I can’t think how to explain a dead man with a hole in his chest or a woman who’s been heavily drugged.”

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at him. “Colin,” she said accusingly, “you enjoyed it!”

  “Good God, it was terrifying,” he said. “What I am experiencing is the absolute relief at still being alive. Who would ever have believed we would get away with it! I say,” he added, “shouldn’t you do something about Henry before we reach the ferry?”

  Mrs. Pollifax agreed; and as the van careened through the empty streets she alternately tugged and pulled Henry into the darkest shadows of the van.

  CHAPTER 7

  At the Kabatas landing stage they encountered their first stroke of luck: a ferry was being readied to leave its slip. Ropes and chains were being cast off, but the gates had not yet closed. With a flourish Colin drove the van onto the ferry; only one more car followed and the gates swung shut. “But there are telephones?” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax bleakly.

  “There are telephones, yes. Keep your fingers crossed that no one will be waiting for us on the other side!”

  As they crossed the Bosporus they undertook a frenzied and certainly bizarre housecleaning of the van’s rear, which had been casually equipped for living purposes. Under Colin’s tutelage they set up a battered old army cot and chained it to the wall, placed a still heavily drugged Magda on it and covered her with blanket. They rolled Henry under the one piece of built-in furniture in the van: a high workbench which Colin explained was used for developing photographs, cooking meals on a sterno and even, in emergencies, as a bed. “Do you think the people at Dr. Belleaux’s party saw the van clearly enough to describe it?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, covering Henry with a blanket, too.

  “From the window anyone could have seen the shape of it,” Colin said. “But the license or its color, no. It was too dark—the neares
t light was far down the street. But you know they need only inquire what vehicles belong to Ramsey Enterprises to learn the registry number and description. There’s the jeep, and this van, and then the second van that Uncle Hu’s taken to Erzurum. Do you think Stefan overheard Magda insisting on going to Yozgat?”

  Mrs. Pollifax said in a dismal voice, “Probably.” She sighed. “It does seem the most wretched luck that Magda’s drugged again and can’t explain more. My orders were to get her out of Turkey quickly—to save her life at any cost—and I don’t like this Yozgat business. I’ve finally found her, and it would still be relatively simple to put her on a plane, whereas Yozgat—” Her voice trailed off uncertainly and she shook her head. “I don’t even know where it is yet!”

  “I don’t mind dropping you off there,” Colin said. “I’ve thought about it, you know. I can’t go back to Istanbul until this blows over and I’ve decided to keep going and find Uncle Hu. He’s the only person who can untangle all this—for me at least—and he should be starting back from Erzurum tomorrow morning.”

  “Colin—”

  He smiled. “I know, I know, you hate to see me involved. It’s purest chivalry, of course—I’m cursed with it. I was raised on King Arthur.”

  “I think that’s rather charming,” said Mrs. Pollifax thoughtfully, “but you’re taking me on face value alone which alarms me.”

  “Rum, isn’t it?” he said smiling, and shrugged. “I can’t possibly explain it—call it a hunch or an instinct. Or put it this way: How can I possibly drop all this now and never know how it turns out? Good God, the thought appalls me. And do you realize that tonight—for the first time in my life—I’ve been involved in something I actually pulled off successfully? It’s positively dazzling. In the meantime your friend Magda seems to attract the most unwholesome bunch of toughs I’ve ever seen, and I can’t say very much for your other friend—I mean Dr. Belleaux, of course.”

  “I can’t say very much for him, either,” said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling. “I think that Mr. Carstairs would be extremely surprised by what we’ve seen tonight, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Carstairs is the gentleman who—uh—arranged my coming here.”

  Colin said with a crooked smile, “To have sent you he must have a real sense of humor. There’s the warning bell—come along to the front of the van, we’re almost there.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax in a hollow voice, turned off the flashlight and crept back into the passenger seat.

  The ferry nudged its way into the slip, chains rattled, gates opened and engines warmed up. The cars ahead began to move, and Colin inched the van forward. Slowly they drove off the ferry and into the night: no police whistles shrilled, no one ran toward them shouting at them to halt. They had crossed the Bosporus and left the peninsula of Istanbul behind without incident. “Now where are we?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax and brought out her guide book.

  “No need for that,” said Colin. “This is Uskudar, formerly Chrysopolis, and noted mainly as a suburb and for its enormous Buyuk Mezaristan, or cemetery.”

  “Cemetery!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax thoughtfully.

  Colin looked at her. “You can’t possibly—”

  “But we must find somewhere appropriate to leave Henry.”

  He groaned. “You look so extremely respectable, you know.”

  “I have a flexible mind—I believe it’s one of the advantages of growing old,” she explained. “I find youth quite rigid at times. Why not a cemetery?”

  Colin sighed. “I daresay there’s a certain logic there. You’re not—uh—thinking of burying him as well?”

  “That would be illegal,” she told him reproachfully, “and scarcely kind to Henry.”

  “Sorry,” he said. He peered out at a sign, and nodded. “This is the avenue—I think we’re driving alongside the cemetery now. Watch for an entrance, will you?”

  Several moments later they left the world of trams, lights and occasional automobiles and entered a subterranean night world of awesome silence. “This is the cemetery?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax.

  “It’s a cypress grove, quite huge. There’s a sultan buried in the old part. I’d call the new part spooky enough.”

  “But what curious headstones!”

  “They’re Moslem, of course. The steles with knobs on the top represent women, the ones with turbans are men. Then there are variations—I’ve forgotten them—for priests and those who’ve gone to Mecca.”

  The van bumped to a jarring halt and he cut the motor. At once the silence was filled with an overwhelming drone of chirping grasshoppers and shrilling cicadas; the volume was incredible, as if they had entered a jungle. The headlights picked out tangles of sinister dark undergrowth and the silhouette of hundreds of headstones leaning in every conceivable direction. The moon, dimmer now and trailing clouds behind it, sailed over the forsaken scene and added a ghostly pallor to the tombs. When an owl hooted mournfully Mrs. Pollifax jumped.

  “Well,” said Colin, and flicked off the headlights.

  “I suppose you had to turn off the lights?” said Mrs. Pollifax as both darkness and insect noises moved in on them.

  “I really don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” Colin pointed out reasonably.

  “I can’t think why not,” she said bravely, and climbed down from her seat.

  Clumsily, laboriously, they carried Henry from his hiding place and lifted him down to the damp grass. “Where do you want him?” asked Colin.

  Mrs. Pollifax ignored the irony in his voice. “Over by that larger stone, I think. We want him to be noticed soon but not immediately. Do you think those horrid men took his identification?”

  “Probably,” gasped Colin as they carried Henry across a path that felt like a brook bed, up a small slope and to the larger, paler headstone that had caught Mrs. Pollifax’s eye. “Don’t show a light!” he said sharply.

  “I’m writing his name and the name of his hotel on a slip of paper,” she explained. “There! Henry Miles, care of Oteli Itep.” She leaned over and tucked it into the pocket of his dark jacket. “I should like someone to do as much for me,” she said firmly. She stood a moment looking into the eerie black shapes of gnarled tree trunks, creeping shrubbery and mooncast shadows. “He was a very nice man,” she said at last. “Now, do let’s leave.”

  “What did you do—roll ’im?” said a deep, lazy, amused voice from the darkness.

  Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw a shadow detach itself from the darkness of the tomb. A giant of a man arose, stretched himself calmly, yawned and strolled nonchalantly toward them. In the dim light he looked seven feet tall but this was a trick of shadows—Colin turned on the flashlight, and he shrank to a more reasonable six feet. His face was swarthy, with dirty scraggly hair and a stubble of a beard. He wore filthy sailors’ pants, a jacket that had once been white, a frayed turtle-neck sweater. His feet were shod in a pair of old sneakers with a hole in each toe.

  Colin said bravely, “Who the devil are you, and what are you doing behind that gravestone?”

  “Sleeping,” said the man, looking down at them. “Til you drove in and woke me up.” He put his hands on his hips and surveyed Mrs. Pollifax with interest, his eyes moving appreciatively over the flowered hat, lingering on her face, then smiling as they took in the navy blue suit, white blouse and shoes. He shook his head. “Now I seen everything!” He dropped to the ground and peered at Henry. “He’s dead,” he said. “You shoot him?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell.”

  “Someone else shot him,” Colin said crossly.

  “We didn’t know what else to do with him,” explained Mrs. Pollifax. “Since we just happened to be passing by—why are you here?” she asked sternly.

  “That’s my business.” He stood up and looked at them. “A couple of tourists dropping off a guy with a bullet hole in his chest!” He shook his head. “Now wouldn’t the police like to hear about that?”

  Mrs. P
ollifax stiffened. “Nonsense. I very much doubt that you can afford to talk to the police.”

  He laughed; his guffaw threatened to awaken even the dead. “You got a suspicious mind. Okay, so I’m sleeping in a graveyard. So I’m broke. So you got a corpse, it makes us even. You also got a truck and you’re gonna drive it out of here. I need to get out of here. I had it in mind we might make a deal.” His voice caressed the last word. “Wotthehell, how about it? I’ll take a lift if you’re going in the right direction.”

  “Which direction is that?” asked Colin cautiously.

  Cunningly the man replied, “Which direction you heading?”

  Mrs. Pollifax realized that she wasn’t certain of this herself. “How do we proceed?” she asked.

  “Toward Ankara.”

  “Perfect!” said their new companion, beaming at them. “Got a friend there that owes me money.”

  “Have you a passport?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sandor’s enough. Just Sandor.”

  “Greek?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “A sailor?”

  The man was clearly laughing at them now. “Of a sort.”

  “Can you drive?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I can drive.”

  Mrs. Pollifax exchanged glances with Colin. “An unholy alliance,” commented Colin.

  “Sheerest blackmail, of course,” said Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully.

  “But mutual,” pointed out Colin with a faint smile. “All right, Sandor, we’ll give you a lift.”

  “Of course,” he said. “But on a condition.”

  Mrs. Pollifax stiffened. “Oh?”

  “No monkey business—no stops. I don’t want no welcoming committees in Ankara.”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “That—uh—fits our plans quite well,” she conceded graciously. “You know a way to Ankara that avoids—uh—welcoming committees?”