Mrs. Pollifax Pursued

by Dorothy Gilman

  He decided that in the morning he would arrange for someone to interview Claiborne-Osborne International and learn just what they planned to develop there. Until he knew what lay behind those concealed trips to the country, there had to remain the suspicion that Bidwell's abduction was somehow tied to Ubangiba.

  He knew better now than to question his curiosity; there was something about Bidwell's secret 1192 flights that troubled him, and he had no idea why.

  Bishop, more knowledgeable, would have said it was what made him special, an almost psychic quality that led him to follow his instincts against all reason.

  6

  Descending at top speed into the tiny lobby of the Bide-A-Wee, Mrs. Pollifax flung bills and key at the desk clerk just as a cab drove up to the lighted entrance. "In you go," she told Kadi, and opening the taxi door, "Nearest hospital, please— in a hurry!"

  The driver glanced at Kadi and said, "Right on, lady." As he headed out into the street Mrs. Pollifax glanced back and saw two shadowy men approach the lighted entrance. It was too dark to see their faces but she and Kadi had been seen entering the cab. She knew this because the two figures abruptly halted in surprise and, as the cab drove away, she saw them race back toward their own car .., to follow.

  Kadi said, "But Mrs. Pollifax, a hospital!"

  "Trust me," she said.

  The taxi drew up to the huge lighted entrance. "City Hospital, ma'am. Five bucks."

  "Yes," she said, fumbling for bills. "Where are we, what corner is this, what streets?"

  "Chandler and Park, ma'am."

  They hurried up the steps to the admissions entrance and through the doors, where Mrs. Pollifax led Kadi to the long row of chairs along one wall and said firmly, "Sit."

  "But where are you going?"

  "To that public telephone over there."

  She was quite familiar with the number by now. It might be midnight, but in the Baltimore offices of William Carstairs, attorney-at-law, the lights would be on all night, and someone always at the switchboard.

  A bright voice answered almost at once. "Legal office," it chirped.

  "Is this Betsey?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes it is, but who—Mrs. Pollifax?

  "Yes, and I'm in trouble, Betsey, I need help, is there someone—someone—to talk to?"

  "I'll put you through at once," she said efficiently, and a moment later a sleepy voice said, "Bishop here," and yawned into the receiver.

  "Bishop, it's me—Emily Pollifax—and I need help," she told him. "Badly. I can't explain why because I don't know, but my house has been searched and I've been chased across Connecticut and they're still following. Do you have any safe place for us to go—what you call a 'safe house' for hiding?"

  At the Department people did not ask unnecessary questions. Bishop merely said, "Where are you at this precise moment, Mrs. P.?"

  "In Worcester, Massachusetts, at City Hospital, corner Chandler and Park, with a companion feigning appendicitis, but we came in a taxi and they may have followed us here, too."

  Bishop said, "Give me the number you're calling from, I'll get back to you in five minutes. Can you hang on?"

  "There are lights and people here," she told him, but her voice trembled a little from tiredness and the beginnings of a fear that she couldn't name.

  "Five minutes," Bishop told her reassuringly.

  She hung up and looked around her. Finding Kadi, she smiled as cheerfully as she could but refused to relinquish her position by the telephone to join her. She thought it the longest five minutes that she had lived through in a long time, and when the phone rang she interrupted its first ring.

  "Bishop here," he said.

  "Yes."

  "Stay where you are, near people. Inside of thirty minutes a young man named Pete will meet you there, he has your description, and he'll be wearing a black leather jacket and red sweater. We've found a 'safe house' for you—a rather odd one but safe."

  "Bless you, Bishop," said Mrs. Pollifax, and marveled at his asking no questions because she had absolutely no idea what she could have said in reply.

  "But who did you call?" asked Kadi wonderingly as she joined her.

  "A friend," said Mrs. Pollifax. "There'll be a man coming for us in half an hour, wearing a black leather jacket and red sweater, and Kadi, I want to know—I must know about your friend Sammy now. Can you believe him, can you trust him, and all that he implied? That he's in danger?"

  Kadi gave her a startled glance. "Yes, I believe him, and yes, I trust him, and if you doubt me I can tell you what my father said of him, and my father taught him at the missionary school, and loved him like a son. He said, 'Young Sammy will be a good leader of his people, there's no cruelty in him, and he is bright, very bright.' But his eyes were no longer bright when I met him," she said sadly.

  "Leader? What do you mean leader?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Well," explained Kadi earnestly, "Ubangiba used to be a kingdom, it was one of the last countries to gain its independence, which is when the King decreed that it would be a democracy, and he set the date for elections. But then he died, you see, he was very old but—" She frowned. "But also very wise, I think. His son was very popular and he was expected to be elected President, and he was, but five months later he died quite mysteriously—they think poisoned."

  "Oh dear," said Mrs. Pollifax. "And then?"

  "Then no more elections," Kadi said sadly. "Mr. Chinyata took over and made himself President-for-Life and nearly ruined what was left of the country. There were food riots, people were hungry, and after that there was another coup— which," said Kadi, her voice trembling a little, "was when my parents were shot. It was General Simoko who next made himself President-for-Life, except really he is a dictator."

  "Your parents shot!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax, startled. "My dear, I'm terribly sorry to hear that—but Kadi, I have to ask you what connection this has with your friend Sammy."

  Kadi sighed. "Well, you see, Sammy's grandfather was King Zammat VIII, back when there was a King, and it was Sammy's father who became the first and only elected President and then died. And Sammy dropped the Z to be Sammat."

  Mrs. Pollifax sat very still, absorbing this startling fact so casually tossed at her. Not Sammy but Sammat, she thought, and felt glimmerings of understanding. She did not know what she understood yet—it all sounded very exotic and foreign to her—but vague possibilities occurred to her, unclear as yet, and convoluted, but spelling wickedness. "So he is not just Sammy," she murmured, "but Sammat, grandson of a King and son of a President. Who sent him to Yale, Kadi, do you know?"

  "I don't know," Kadi said miserably. "But he is there, with a roommate who isn't a roommate."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "And who presumably has you followed," she added soberly. "It's a pity we couldn't have stopped in New Haven and kidnapped Sammy."

  "Could we go back?" Kadi asked eagerly. "Could we rescue him?"

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. "You've become dangerous to them, Kadi, presumably because you're a friend of Sammy's. Besides, it's too late," she told her, seeing a tanned young man in a black leather jacket and red sweater approach them. "We can only find safety for you just now."

  Planting himself in front of her the young man said, "I'm Pete, any luggage?"

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. "No luggage."

  He glanced curiously at Kadi. "Car's just outside, slide fast into the back seat."

  There was a driver already at the wheel, making their getaway very fast, the car in motion the moment the doors slammed. But looking back Kadi said, "They're there, Mrs. Pollifax, they must have found out from the cab driver where he took us."

  "Being followed, are we?" said Pete, glancing back.

  "Green sedan."

  He nodded. "Okay . . , this is Tom, driving, we'll try to lose them but it doesn't matter now if we don't."

  "Doesn't matter?" echoed Mrs. Pollifax. "Where are we going?

  "A small private airport. Orders are to tuck you
away safe—you must have clout, lady."

  Kadi gave her a quick, puzzled glance but said nothing.

  They had left the city behind them when the car turned down a narrow road, its headlights picking out a field and several small planes grouped around a hangar. They were deposited next to a helicopter with its motor already idling. Mrs. Pollifax and Kadi were ushered out by Pete, the car turned and sped away.

  "In you go," said Pete, boosting them up into the helicopter.

  "You too?"

  "I'm the pilot," he told her with a grin, and latching the door behind them he took his place at the controls. The rotoblades began to turn faster and faster, and suddenly they were being lifted from the earth into the night sky.

  "Mrs. Pollifax," said Kadi in a small voice, "am I being kidnapped?"

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced at her tired anxious face and said calmly, "I think we both are. I admit that I didn't expect this, either, but I trust my friend and you must, too. Difficult as it may be at this moment," she added dryly.

  Kadi said wonderingly, "Your friend must be very powerful, Mrs. Pollifax."

  "Well, you see," Mrs. Pollifax told her with a smile, "I send him a fruitcake every Christmas."

  Kadi laughed shakily.

  The earth lay below them like a patchwork quilt of flickering lights followed by great dark spaces of land. Presently Kadi fell asleep, which Mrs. Pollifax thought a great blessing; she would have preferred to sleep, too, but it was night, which she had always found the least secure season of the day for confronting Unknowns, and she was too tired to sleep. She had to remind herself that she really could never, never have abandoned this girl to the thugs pursuing her, and that wherever they were going it had been arranged by Bishop, but it was necessary to hold firmly to this because it was taking a very long time to reach whatever safe place he'd found for them.

  Too long a time, she thought, after a glance at her watch told her that it was past one o'clock in the morning of a new day, and that they were into their second hour of flight.

  Responsibility, she sighed, naming it.... I have made myself responsible for this Kadi who spent two days and nights hi4ddkd in our closet out of fear.

  Obviously she was not going to be present at the afternoon's Garden Club meeting.

  She began to think of Kadi's Ubangiba and what it might be like. Africa was such a huge continent and she had seen only one African country, and that had been on the Zambezi River. She supposed there were similarities nevertheless: the attractive capital with its villas and its roads laid out by early colonialists, and beyond this elegance the shanty towns, and then the countryside where women, erect, barefooted, and proud, walked along the roadside carrying huge baskets on their heads filled with kindling or food, and there were glimpses through the trees of dirt paths leading to thatch-roofed villages. She wondered if Kadi's Ubangiba had baobab trees silver in the sunlight, and towering anthills as high as a man's waist.

  She realized the helicopter was flying lower now and beginning its descent. Peering out of the window she saw a blaze of light ahead in the dark countryside and wondered what it could possibly be: surely not another airport, she thought with a sinking heart. She nudged Kadi and said, "We're landing, Kadi."

  The helicopter banked and turned and she lost sight of the cloud of brightness until it reappeared in the window across the aisle, but at a distance; the helicopter was coming down now, making its uncanny horizontal drop to the earth. They landed with a slight jarring in the middle of a dark field.

  "Where are we?" asked Kadi, rubbing her eyes.

  "We're here," Pete told her. "Don't worry, you're expected." He crawled past them, unlatched the door, and jumped down to help them out.

  With the opening of the hatch a flood of noise rushed at them: muted shouts and screams, and underlying these the sounds of rollicking music, while—emerging out of that distant brilliance—Mrs. Pollifax saw a man with a flashlight making his way toward them across the dark field.

  She said in consternation, "But where are we?"

  "Rural Maine," said Pete. "You'll have to move back, I'm taking off again now."

  Bewildered, Mrs. Pollifax said, "But have you brought us to the right place? This surely can't be a safe house."

  "Nothing beats it," Pete said.

  "But that's merry-go-round music—it's a carnival!" shouted Mrs. Pollifax.

  "You got it," grinned Pete, and with a flip of his hand he closed the hatch and, a moment later, at the controls again, he set the rotoblades turning. The helicopter rose in a gust of cold wind, leaving them standing in the middle of the dark field waiting for the man with the flashlight.

  7

  A light was turned on each of their faces, and behind its blinding flash Mrs. Pollifax could see the shape of a burly man and the outline of a limp, wide-brimmed hat.

  "Name's Willie," he said without preamble. "Watch your step, follow me."

  He guided them across untilled earth toward the blaze of lights. Ahead of them, rising out of its brilliance like a great spider web, Mrs. Pollifax saw a towering ferris wheel that slowed and then stopped, its pause eliciting a fresh burst of screams from those at the top, but even these couldn't blot out the undercurrent of noise from below that sounded to Mrs. Pollifax like a buzzing swarm of angry bees in a hive. She could see nothing more of the carnival than the ferris wheel because a cluster of trailers intervened, and it was toward one of these that Willie led them. Emerging into the dimly lighted circle of trailers they paused and she saw Willie's face for the first time, and Mrs. Pollifax, in the act of yawning, promptly closed her mouth. She was startled: his was a broad Slavic face, high cheekboned, the muscles smooth and hard as the burl of a tree, and his skin dark as a gypsy's. Not a man to cross in an argument, she was thinking, and in no way did he resemble a manager in his faded jeans and shirt, yet the sign on the door of the trailer read manager. He opened it and stood back for them to enter.

  They walked into a warm, over-furnished living room where Mrs. Pollifax counted two couches and a startling number of lamps and overstuffed chairs; on one wall hung a gaudy poster advertising Willie's Traveling Amusement Shows, and next to it a picture of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet. With a nod to a dazed-looking Kadi he said, "Your daughter can wait here, I'll ask you kindly to step into my office, I've a few words to say." He spoke with a faint accent that Mrs. Pollifax couldn't identify but struck her as familiar, if she could only think where she'd heard it before.

  "Not my daughter," explained Mrs. Pollifax. "Her name is Kadi, spelled K-a-d-i."

  He gave her a sharp glance. "African name, isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Kadi, surprised.

  Mrs. Pollifax was surprised, too, and looked at him with sudden respect.

  He led her into an office where he pulled out a chair for her at one side of the large desk while he seated himself behind it and returned her frank stare with ironic interest. With a glance at the clock on the wall, he said, "I won't keep you long, it's nearly two o'clock, the carnival closes at two."

  She said incredulously, "But—a carnival?. Run by the Department?"

  He looked pained. "Never say that, ever. When bankruptcy threatens it's Willie's Rich Uncle who rescues. No Department, no names. Willie's Rich Uncle. Remember that."

  "Yes," she said meekly, and stifled another yawn. "But it's certainly inventive."

  Studying her face he frowned. "They tell me you're experienced." He said bluntly, "You don't look experienced. They want you to help."

  She said politely, "That was very kind of Bish—of Willie's Rich Uncle," and then, sharply, "What do you mean 'help?

  "We've had an accident here," he said. "A few minutes after midnight, too late to stop you coming, you were already on the way. I had to make a call to Baltimore—"

  Poor Bishop, thought Mrs. Pollifax, twice interrupted in his sleep.

  "—because of the accident."

  "Accident," she repeated, stifling another yawn.

  "A very suspici
ous one. It's been suggested you help while you're here."

  Mrs. Pollifax was not so sleepy that she didn't understand the inference. She said quickly, "Oh, but I can't stay, it's Kadi who was in danger, we only met this morning—no, yesterday morning, and thanks to Bishop—"

  "Willie's Rich Uncle," he pointed out.

  "No, BISHOP" she said flatly, in revolt now. "Thanks to Bishop we were lifted completely out of a dangerous situation but I didn't expect this. My only interest is in seeing Kadi safe. I mean—" She stopped and fumbled for words, realizing that she'd not given a thought to anything but getting away from the Chigi Scap Metal people, and what had she expected? "I assumed I'd go home tomorrow," she told him. "Even Kadi could go back to her New York art school now. At least," she added doubtfully, "they couldn't trace her there. I don't think."

  "You don't think," he mocked.

  "I'm tired," she admitted, "it's been a long day. I must get in touch with—all right, Willie's Rich Uncle tomorrow about some help for Kadi. You do have a phone?"

  "A temporary link-up, yes," he told her. "Of course—we're a business."

  "You were saying there was an accident?"

  He nodded. His skin had a luster to it in the light of the desk lamp like highly polished wood, and there was a gap between his two front teeth when he spoke. These details she noted from habit, just as he too, she knew, was taking pains to read her face and learn who and what she was. "Yes," he said. "To Lazlo, sent here for protection—like you and the girl."

  "That's a calculated hit," she told him.

  He suddenly smiled, and she realized that she might eventually like him.

  He leaned forward across the desk to emphasize his words. "So I'll tell you.. .. Sometime after midnight there was a shout of 'Hey Rube,' which—" he explained, seeing her look blank, "is the signal in any carnival for trouble. Like everybody else Lazlo picked up a tent stake and joined the others down by the gate. And that," he said heavily, "is where somebody in the crowd stuck a knife in his back."

  "Stuck a—was he killed? Is he alive?"