Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  Colin said doggedly, “They undoubtedly speak Bulgarian—no mean accomplishment—since they came from across the border. Of course they speak Romany, and probably some Hungarian as well, and a little Turkish. But even if they understood some English our dear old friend Dr. Belleaux got here first.”

  “But why would we come here to the gypsies at all—with Magda—if we’d beaten and drugged her?”

  “For the same reason Dr. Belleaux came here: to get from the gypsies what Magda left here with them. In his case before she wakes up and calls him a bloody liar.”

  “If only she would—right now!” said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling. “She’d give one long loud scream at sight of him, and tell these people who he is in their own language, and—but will Dr. Belleaux allow her to wake up?”

  “No, but he can’t very well kill her in plain sight of her friends.” He added wryly, “At the moment I’m more worried about us. Nobody here would mind seeing us killed, and we haven’t one single state secret up our sleeves to prolong our living. He can keep Magda drugged while he goes to work on the gypsies but we’re only nuisances. I keep remembering Sebastien. He was going to hitch up his wagon, feed his dancing bear and follow us, remember?”

  Mrs. Pollifax said gloomily, “But he didn’t expect to find us before dawn, and it can’t be midnight yet, can it? And it’s more likely he fed his bear and then decided to curl up and sleep for a while. I’d rather put my money on Sandor, who at least—”

  She stopped. The gypsies were bringing Sandor back into camp. One large and muscular gypsy carried him slung across his back like a slab of venison. In a long procession the men crossed their line of vision, passed the campfire and disappeared. “Unconscious,” she said despairingly. “Not even capable of explaining in Turkish to the gypsies who we are!”

  Colin said soberly, “What do you think Dr. Belleaux has in mind—that is, if you can enter that mind of his at all?”

  Mrs. Pollifax considered. “I can at least guess. With Magda he has two possibilities: either he will fly her off to Russia with whatever papers he mentioned, or he will kill her and fly off to Russia himself with the mysterious papers. He has that helicopter. I daresay it’s provided him by the Russians, and he need only radio ahead and cross the border at some prearranged spot with very little risk of being shot down.”

  “Either possibility disposes of his pleasant life in Istanbul at least!”

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed. “Don’t be naïve, my dear Colin. He can easily salvage his pleasant Istanbul life by saying that I murdered Magda.”

  “And risk a trial?” asked Colin. “Or am I being naïve again?”

  “Yes, you are, really,” Mrs. Pollifax told him. “Because by that time he will have seen to it that the gypsies kill me. Stone me to death, no doubt,” she said tartly.

  Stefan and Assim reappeared suddenly, carrying a trussed-up but still breathing Sandor. They knotted him to the tree as well—it was becoming heavily populated. Stefan said with a grin, “The gypsies hunt well for us, eh? We’ll even let them kill you soon.”

  “Bring that other man here, too,” said Dr. Belleaux, strolling in from the shadows. “The tall thin one. What is his name?” he asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell you,” she said coldly.

  He shrugged. “It scarcely matters in any case.” He regarded the tree with interest. “Perhaps this tree is the best solution of all for your demise, certainly less tedious than simulating knife murders for you all by the gypsies. A little kerosene sprinkled at the base of the tree, a match, a flaming tree and there would be no embarrassing traces left at all. The Turkish police,” he added, “will be here by dawn. It is so very difficult to puzzle out how to dispose of so many of you.”

  Mrs. Pollifax said coldly, “You’re very disappointing, Dr. Belleaux, you appear to have the mentality of a Neanderthal man—except I rather imagine I’m insulting the defenseless Neanderthal. I had expected something a little more imaginative, discriminating and subtle from a man of your obvious taste and background. You must be growing quite desperate.”

  Dr. Belleaux nodded. “It is a matter to which I must still give careful attention, Mrs. Pollifax,” he admitted. “To me also it feels unpleasantly primitive. I naturally prefer the gypsies to kill you, as I think they will. But you have to be dealt with by dawn, which accelerates the pace. In any case you may rest assured that I will evolve a way of disposing of you all that will suit my own welfare—not yours,” he added with a charming, if pointed smile. “Ah, you have the fourth one, Stefan—good! He is beginning to stir, and he speaks Turkish, so gag him as well, please. Check all the knots, Assim, and then back to the helicopter.”

  Mrs. Pollifax said indignantly, “You must realize that Magda will never give you what you want.”

  Dr. Belleaux smiled. “Of course not, but the gypsies will. They believe what I tell them.”

  “I find it rather depressing to have been right about that,” Mrs. Pollifax said to Colin.

  Dr. Belleaux glanced at his watch. “I advise you to say your prayers,” he concluded. “I shall be speaking again now by radio to the police in Istanbul, and by dawn the police should be rendezvousing here from all points of Anatolia.”

  “And you?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I will be—elsewhere.”

  The three of them walked off into the darkness and vanished. The boy guarding them also got up suddenly and ran off into the shadows, leaving them alone.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Colin,” Mrs. Pollifax said with a sigh.

  “If you’re going to say what I think—don’t,” he told her coldly. “I was never—at any point—your responsibility, and you know that. I chose to come along, and I simply won’t have you going all bleary and sentimental about me now.”

  She said gently, “And if I do, dear Colin, precisely what can you do about it?”

  He said stiffly, “Well, I shall certainly think the less of you. I’ve no complaints—it’s been a bit of a romp, you know.”

  She turned her head and looked at him. “I trust that you have the intelligence to realize that you’re not a coward, and never have been!”

  He grinned. “That’s rather choice, isn’t it? And how else would I have found out?”

  The boy was returning. Again he came across the turf but this time he walked up to Mrs. Pollifax and looked into her face searchingly, and then from his pocket he drew out a small knife, leaned over her and cut the ropes at her ankles and wrists.

  Colin said in astonishment, “I say—am I imagining things, or did he just—”

  The boy fiercely shook his head, pressing one finger to his lips. As Mrs. Pollifax stared at him blankly he beckoned her to follow him.

  “But the others!” protested Mrs. Pollifax, pointing to Colin and Sandor and Mr. Ramsey.

  The boy shook his head. His gestures grew more frantic.

  “Go with him for heaven’s sake,” Colin said in a low voice. “You’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, are you? If you make a scene he’ll tie you up again!”

  Torn between loyalty and curiosity Mrs. Pollifax followed him. Once she looked back, and at sight of her friends tied helplessly to the tree she would have gone back to them if the child had not tugged furiously at her baggy pants. What did he want, wondered Mrs. Pollifax and why was he doing this? She limped with him past the horses, around rocks and wagons—he was obviously hiding her from the other gypsies, and her curiosity had become almost intolerable when ahead of her she saw a tent pitched between two boulders. It was the only tent that she had seen in the camp. A light inside faintly illuminated its ragged edges and spilled out from its base. The boy pulled aside a curtain and gestured to Mrs. Pollifax to enter.

  Mrs. Pollifax walked in. A lantern hung suspended from a tent pole, and seated cross-legged on a pillow beneath it was a square-shouldered gypsy woman. Hair threaded with silver hung to her shoulders, framing a square, high-cheekboned dark face. The eyes in the lantern light smol
dered under heavy lids, and now they pierced Mrs. Pollifax like a laser beam.

  The boy spoke rapidly to the woman, and she nodded. He beckoned Mrs. Pollifax to sit down in front of the gypsy, and Mrs. Pollifax stiffly lowered herself to the hard earth.

  “Give me your hands,” the woman said abruptly.

  Mrs. Pollifax gasped. “You speak English!”

  “Yes. The boy understands some but cannot speak it well.”

  Mrs. Pollifax’s relief was infinite. “Thank heaven!” she cried. “I have tried—”

  The woman shook her head. “Just give me your hands, please. Everything you wish to say is written in them, without lies or concealment.”

  “Without—” Mrs. Pollifax stretched out her hands, suppressing a desire to laugh hysterically. “If you insist,” she said. “But there is so little time—”

  “The boy tells me he has listened to you speak, and that my people have been lied to.” She was gently examining the palms of the hands. “Your wrists are bandaged?”

  “Yes. Like Magda’s. The man in the white goatee did this.”

  “Hush.” The woman closed her eyes, holding Mrs. Pollifax’s hands in silence, as if they spoke a message to her. “You speak truth,” she said abruptly, and opened her eyes. To the boy she said. “Bring Goru here at once—quickly! This woman does not lie, she lives under koosti cherino, the good stars.” As the boy ran out she smiled at Mrs. Pollifax. “You are skeptical, I see.”

  “You can see this in a hand?”

  “But of course—lips may lie but the lines in a hand never do, and I have the gift of dukkeripen. You are a widow, are you not? Your hand tells me also that you have begun a second life—a second fate line has begun to parallel the first one.”

  “All widows begin second lives,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax gently.

  The woman smiled into her eyes. “With so many marks of preservation on that second line, showing escape from dangers? And a cross on the mount of Saturn, foretelling the possibility of violent death at some future date?” She allowed Mrs. Pollifax to withdraw her hand. “But I am clairvoyant as well,” she went on. “When I hold a hand I get pictures, as well as vibrations of good or evil. I feel that you have come to this country only days ago—by plane, I believe—and I get a very strong picture of you tied to a chair—this is very recent, is it not?—in a room where there is straw in one corner, and a door that has been bricked-over.”

  “How very astonishing!” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  The woman’s smile deepened. “You see the waste of words, then. But here is Goru.”

  Goru was enormous—it was he who had carried Sandor back to camp slung over his shoulder—and he was made even larger by the bulky sheepskin jacket he wore. As the woman talked to him he looked at Mrs. Pollifax with growing surprise, and then with humor. He made a magnificent shrug, snapped his fingers and grinned. With a bow to Mrs. Pollifax he hurried out.

  The woman nodded. “We shall have some sport with that gorgio,” she said in contempt. “The man descended on us like a bird in his machine, and spoke knowingly and urgently about Magda. He knew everything! How is that?”

  “He drugged her earlier tonight, with the kind of drug that produces confession,” explained Mrs. Pollifax. “You will help us now?”

  The woman’s lip curled. “Wars. Assassinations. Drugs that make even a Magda speak—” She shook her head. “I do not understand this civilization of yours. Do not look so anxious for your friends, my dear—trust Goru. You came to this country to help Magda?”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “But I can tell you nothing that Dr. Belleaux has not already said—except,” she added with dignity, “that Magda was not drugged when she spoke to me of going to Yozgat to find the Inglescus.”

  The woman smiled. “I am Anyeta Inglescu.”

  “Are you?” Mrs. Pollifax was pleased, and put out her hand. “I’m Emily Pollifax.”

  “The name of Inglescu was not mentioned by the man with the goatee,” the gypsy added. “But I do not understand why he goes to such trouble to speak lies, to try and fool us.”

  Mrs. Pollifax said bluntly, “He wants the document Magda escaped with.”

  “Document?” said the woman curiously.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Whatever it is that Magda brought with her out of Bulgaria and entrusted to you.” She gestured helplessly. “Microfilm. Microdots. Code. She has told me nothing except that she preferred risking death to abandoning it.”

  Anyeta Inglescu laughed. “I see.” Lifting her voice she called out, and the boy who had brought Mrs. Pollifax to the tent came inside. “Come here,” she told him gently, and taking his hand said to Mrs. Pollifax, “This is what Magda brought out of Bulgaria and left with us.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Pollifax blankly.

  “You did not know that Magda has a grandchild? This is Dmitri Gurdjieff. She smuggled him out of Bulgaria, and entrusted him to us when she went to Istanbul to get help.”

  “Grandchild?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax. “Dmitri?” She stared incredulously at the boy and then she began to smile and the smile spread through her like warm wine until it merged in a laugh of purest delight. She understood perfectly: she was a grandmother herself. But what exquisite irony for Dr. Belleaux, she thought, that the treasure Magda had smuggled out from the iron curtain was her grandson! “But this is marvelous!” she cried. Gesturing toward the darkness beyond the tent she explained, “Out there secret agents are fighting, bribing, even killing in their greed to learn what Magda brought out with her—and it’s a small boy! Nine or ten?” she asked.

  “Actually he is eleven,” Anyeta said.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I have three grandchildren myself, and you?”

  Anyeta laughed. “A dozen at least.” They both regarded the boy tenderly, and he smiled at them. “His father is a high Communist official, very busy, scarcely known to the boy, and now he has remarried. Perhaps you did not know that Magda had a daughter born of her first marriage. The daughter died last year. Magda could not leave without the child.”

  The boy suddenly spoke. “Is not all so.”

  “What is not all so?” asked the gypsy.

  “There is more.” He had grown quite pale. Reaching inside his ragged shirt he said, “Is time maybe to speak, Anyeta. There is more.”

  He pulled out a blue stone tied to a coarse string around his neck. “This.”

  Anyeta smiled and shook her head. “That is your Evil Eye, Dmitri. It’s only part of your disguise. Turkish children wear them to ward off evil.”

  The boy stubbornly shook his head. “It’s more, Anyeta. Grandma gave it me in Sofia.”

  Anyeta’s eyes narrowed. “In Sofia?” she said in a surprised voice.

  “Da. Is hollow inside—for secrets.”

  Anyeta drew in her breath sharply. “Allah protect us!” she said in amazement. “I see, I begin to understand … but what can it be?”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “Her social security, I think,” she said, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  CHAPTER 16

  Suddenly Goru was back in the tent, speaking rapidly to Anyeta in an excited breathless voice. Anyeta’s eyes narrowed, she nodded and turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “The man with the goatee has finished his work with the radio in the plane and is starting back to the camp. Goru asks you to return quickly to your friends and be tied up again.”

  In spite of Mrs. Pollifax’s horror of being tied again she responded to the firmness and the urgency in the woman’s voice. At the door of the tent she turned; Anyeta Inglescu had not stirred from her position. “You’re not coming?” she asked.

  The gypsy woman smiled. “I cannot walk,” she said with a shrug of regret. “I have not walked in fifteen years.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Pollifax, surprised.

  Goru had vanished; the boy Dmitri tugged at her arm nervously, and he guided her through the rocks back to the tree.

  “What the devil!” cried Colin, s
eeing her. “Didn’t you make a dash for it? Mrs. Pollifax, why the hell didn’t you try to escape?”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right, Colin—really.”

  “All right? He’s tying you up again!”

  “Yes, I know.” She turned and said carefully. “Listen but don’t say anything, Colin, there isn’t time. This boy understands English.”

  “He does?”

  “Ssh,” said Mrs. Pollifax as Dr. Belleaux came striding back.

  He went first to the campfire and looked down at Magda, then he leaned over, felt her pulse, nodded and straightened. Seeing the gypsies emerge silently from their wagons he gestured them closer and began speaking to them. Eloquently he spread his arms, smiled, frowned, pointed to Magda, then to Mrs. Pollifax and Colin, his voice becoming increasingly edged with contempt and indignation. It was surprising, thought Mrs. Pollifax, how much could be communicated without a single word being understood.

  “Born orator,” growled Colin. “Real Hyde Park material.”

  “Can you catch any of it at all?”

  “Just the word kill, which occurs with monotonous frequency,” said Colin dryly.

  Beckoning his audience closer Dr. Belleaux drew them away from the campfire toward the small group at the tree. Within minutes Mrs. Pollifax was surrounded closely and in danger of developing claustrophobia. At this point Dr. Belleaux suddenly drew out a knife; he seemed to be challenging one of the gypsies to use it, and to Mrs. Pollifax’s surprise Goru stepped forward and grasped the knife, the gypsies cheering with approval at his move.

  Goru ran his fingers over the knife’s edge and tested it lovingly. The expression on his face made Mrs. Pollifax shiver. She looked up into the stolid faces of the gypsies and then at the triumphant smile on Dr. Belleaux’s lips and she experienced the first chill of doubt. She realized that she had allowed herself to be tied up again, and that she was helpless. She remembered the money taken from her by the gypsy youths … it was so very much money. Now that Magda had been returned to the gypsies of what value really was she, or Colin, or his uncle or Sandor, compared to the wealth they had brought into the camp? It was wealth that would have to be given back if the gypsies chose to save them. She had trusted Anyeta but the woman was an invalid—had she really any influence? What if Goru chose to disbelieve or to ignore her? For the first time she realized that her being persuaded back to the tree could be a cunning trick, and she a fool to have trusted the persuaders.