Mrs. Pollifax Pursued

by Dorothy Gilman

  A few other carnies sat on stools, staring into space, not quite awake yet and not speaking. It was early for them, explained the Professor, and he bade them hurry through their eggs and fried potatoes so Kadi could be rehearsed. "Tatiana," he called to a glorious redhead, "this is the new girl. Come!"

  Redhead yawned, muttered words under her breath, and abandoned her coffee to follow them as the Professor led them out of the cook-house, past the ferris wheel, and down the midway. "By daylight," he said, "it's a bleak and empty piece of earth but just wait 'til six p.m., this place will light up like the 4th of July . ., crowds, music, lights, glamour ... !"

  it did look bleak in the pale sunshine, conceded Mrs. Pollifax, its concession booths shuttered by canvas shades, the sawdust still damp underfoot with dew, and not a soul in sight. The Professor strode ahead of them toward the largest tent on the midway and stopped for them to admire it.

  "This here's the Ten-in-One," he said. "Ten side-shows under one canvas, except we got only eight this month. And the platform's called the bally platform and I'll bet you never saw grander pictures anywhere."

  "No indeed," admitted Mrs. Pollifax, almost assaulted by the gaudy canvases that hung over the platform: THE SNAKEWOMAN OF BORNEO depicted a dark and wild-haired woman wearing snakes on her lap and around her neck; EL FLAMO, FEARLESS FIRE-EATER, had faded somewhat in color but he stood regally in profile, very erect, with flames curling out of his mouth; JASNA THE KNIFE-THROWER ("one miss and he dies") stood poised in tights, knife in hand, while the man at whom she threw them was already framed by knives. The pictures marched side by side in a long line and for just a moment Mrs. Pollifax felt that stir of excitement she'd known as a child when she'd visited a carnival, and looking at Kadi, seeing her eyes wide with wonder, she smiled.

  The Professor led them past the ticket booth and inside. "You believe in magic?" he asked Kadi.

  "Of course I believe in magic," she said earnestly, "but it's impossible to saw a lady in half."

  "Why?" asked the Professor, regarding her with amusement.

  "Because you would no longer have a lady to saw in half for the next performance."

  "Alas, she has the logical mind, but such an innocent! Have you visited a carnival before, young lady?"

  Kadi shook her head. "I grew up in a country without them."

  "What a sad country, I cry for it," he said dismissingly. "Now we practice. Precision is everything! Practice, practice!"

  The space inside the big tent held a line of closed booths, but the main focal point was a stage at one end with several rows of bleachers facing it. The Professor switched on lights and from behind the stage's backdrop he pushed out a platform on wheels. "Who is Kadi replacing?" Mrs. Pollifax called to him.

  "Shirley," he said. "She eats too much. Too big, very uncomfortable for her."

  "Then why do you need Tatiana?" she asked.

  "Ah, the disillusionment," he rued. "Sit—you will be the audience, we will perform for you. Kadi, Tatiana, come. As you see," he announced to Mrs. Pollifax from the stage, "we have two boxes resting on this platform, I slide them apart— they move, you see?" He slid them together. "Note also there are no trapdoors below, no mirrors. Now, Kadi, you will please climb into this box on the top and slide down into the platform under the boxes. See? In you go."

  "That platform's too narrow," protested Kadi.

  "You will go there, it is not too narrow. It only looks too person, it was designed to look too

  narrow—all magic is illusion here! Climb in, please, when the act begins you will already be hidden inside."

  Looking doubtful Kadi climbed into the gaudy box on top of the platform and apparently found a space in which to insert herself because she vanished from sight.

  "Now we begin." He and Tatiana bowed and dramatically unhinged the fronts of each box, dropping them to prove they were empty and without mirrors. With fluttering gestures Tatiana was helped up and into the boxes atop the base where she lay down, after which the Professor closed the hinged sides, leaving only her hands and feet extended at each end.

  "Now, Kadi," he called, "you can hear me?"

  There came a muffled reply.

  "I will commence. I have closed the hinged sides— dramatically, of course—so only Tatiana s head and feet can now be seen. Pay attention, young Kadi, you are hearing me.7 Good. Now Í will turn the platform around—in a big circle—you feel this.7—to show the audience no tricks, no trapdoors, there is only Tatiana, and it is now, as Í turn you on the wheels, and while Tatiana's feet are out of view of the audience, this is the signal for you to slide your feet up through the opening in the base and push them out, you understand.7 At the same moment, as the apparatus turns, Tatiana withdraws her feet, hugging her knees tight in her box, and you become Tatiana's feet, except—mon Dieu—it is good I have many sizes of the same shoes to match. Excellent, your feet have emerged.... Now we are back to our original position; now Í pick up my saw and Tatiana screams, and you, Kadi, wriggle your feet—so—and with cries of terror Í begin sawing."

  Fiercely he sawed the boxes in two, accompanied by screams, until he slid the two boxes apart and the illusion was perfect: Tatiana's head remained at one end, presumably her feet wriggled at the opposite end, and between them there was only empty space.

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed and applauded. "Bravo!"

  "It is good? You see now?" asked the Professor, beaming.

  "I see, yes. Tell Kadi I must go now," she called to him, and still chuckling she left them to their rehearsing and went out to find Willie.

  Once again she sat across from Willie at his desk, this time to deliver her ultimatum. "I was tired last night," she told him, "and my thinking blurred but it is not blurred now. My husband will be returning to Connecticut on Monday from a meeting of the American Bar Association and I have every intention of being there when he comes home. If I'm to be of any help to you for a few days I need a great deal more information, for instance when your carnival opened and when this man Lazlo arrived here, and who might have come after he did, on the assumption that possibly he was followed here."

  Willie leaned back in his chair and stared at her with distaste. "The police have just arrived to ask questions, and now you come to ask questions and speak of Bar Associations and such nonsense?"

  "Yes," she said pleasantly. "Are you a Rom?"

  "What?"

  "Gypsy?"

  His eyes glittered dangerously. "You ask—why?"

  She shrugged. "You have the look. ... I thought so last night, sleepy as I was," she said dryly. "I traveled once with gypsies in Europe."

  "You?"

  She nodded.

  "Such a one as you?"

  She smiled forgivingly. "Such a one as I, yes, and owe them my life."

  He said scornfully, "This is hard to believe. What were the names of these people you profess to know—you, a gajo7."

  "It was in Turkey. . . . There was Goru, and there was Sebastien and Orega, but most of all there was their Queen, a wonderful Zingari by the name of Anyeta Inglescu."

  He stared at her, silent and frowning, and then with a nod he said brusquely, "I will get out my record book." Bringing it from a drawer of his desk he said, "We opened on March 1st in western Massachusetts, in the town of Lanesborough. We winter in Florida, do a few still dates in the South, strictly for Willie's Rich Uncle, you understand, but it's in the East they want us, and the carnival season always opens March 1st." He opened his record book. "Lazlo reached us in Vermont the second week of March, 1 was told to expect him. He came by bus, walking out to us from town."

  "Not by plane?"

  He looked amused. "We are not often so near such a big field to provide a quiet landing, and public airports are conspicuous, often watched, it can be difficult. I don't know why he came by bus, there must have been a reason because he walked in exhausted, with a broken arm."

  "With a what?"

  "A broken arm. We set it for him here, I've done it before. Gus
and Pogo helped, and one of the roustabouts had been a paramedic." Consulting his book again he said, "But I remember we were not fully booked in the Ten-in-One when he came."

  "You book everyone ahead of time?"

  "Most," he said, nodding. "Most are regulars, very loyal, they come every season, the same three foremen and most of the acts and the roustabouts. Pogo and Gertie are the concession managers, I see they added a Spin the Wheel and a Cat-Rack game after Lazlo came. Those two, plus Jasna and her father and the Snake Woman came late. Lubo runs the Spin the Wheel, and Pie-Eye the Cat-Rack."

  Mrs. Pollifax, fascinated by these names, said, "Then four arrived after Lazlo. But if Lazlo was followed here, surely it would be impossible for whoever located him to suddenly set up an act for a carnival?"

  "Not so hard to set up a concession joint," he told her. "Anybody can do that, but harder for one of the Ten-in-One acts, they need talent. But," he added, "you're being naive, because anyone sent to me by Willie's Rich Uncle is big-time, and whoever hunts him or her is big-time, too, and they need only snap a finger to find a killer."

  "Even to find a killer who's a Snake Woman or knife-thrower?" she said dryly.

  He smiled. "You'd be surprised, I'd be willing to bet the man who arranged your coming here—I name no names— could do the same." He returned to his list. "But it would need twenty-four hours at least to set something up, and all of these qualify. I had an ad running in Gibtown," he explained. "We lacked a couple more concessions and I had only six acts for the Ten-in-One. We take the leftovers, you see, the big Expositions get the class acts. You take the Contortionist—his name's Norbert—he's a real class act but you'll notice he's too fond of the booze to make it anywhere but a gilly show like this."

  "And the Snake Woman, and the Jasna act?"

  He sighed. "Jasna's damn good with her knives but somebody may have realized her father's blind and figured it a bit nasty, her throwing knives at a blind man."

  "Blind?"

  Willie nodded. "Lost his sight some years ago, she said. Takes guts standing there and having knives thrown at him, and not even able to duck. As for the Snake Woman, I don't know."

  "At least you've given me four names," Mrs. Pollifax said. "Anyone else?"

  He shook his head, and leaning back in his chair looked her over thoughtfully. "You'll need good cover for asking questions I can't ask, and have no time to ask, anyway. A couple of years back in Vermont we had a feature writer from some newspaper spend a day with us—wrote a nice piece about how a carnival works. What about being here for the same purpose?"

  "Oh, much better than fortune-telling," she agreed. "How soon can you get word around that last night's plane brought a newspaper writer to do interviews?"

  He grinned. "If I tell Boozy Tim, word will get around fast enough. Incidentally, if anyone questions you at the gate tell them you're 'with it,' meaning with the carnie."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded and looked at her list:

  Lubo/Spin the Wheel Pie-Eye/Cat-Rack game ]asna the Knife-Thrower The Snake Woman

  "But if one of them had been planted here to kill Lazlo," she said with a frown, "wouldn't they have made a quick getaway?"

  "Not too quick," he said. "With the police circulating it would have been conspicuous, not to mention suspicious. This would have been a clever killer, a pro, who chose just the right time—a crowd, nobody noticing. He or she would sit it out until the police leave."

  She nodded and rose, and with a faint smile said, "You changed your attitude toward me very suddenly, Willie, may I ask—?"

  He grinned. "Oh, that." Showing her to the door he opened it for her. "I will tell you one day, but I will say now that the name of Inglescu is not unknown to me. Do you know the words in Rom 'ja develesa?"

  She smiled. "Go with God?"

  He nodded. "Ja deveksa, then. And be careful."

  10

  The report on Lazlo had been sent down to Carstairs from Farnesworth's office, and it lay now on his desk in a neat little package that told him the conversation had been taped, for which he was grateful. Helga had put in her calls to France for him and had reached Desforges's residence successfully—he was having dinner with friends and was expected home by nine o'clock, European time. There was other work to do while Carstairs waited but he yielded to temptation and inserted the Lazlo tape on his machine, at the same time scanning Farnesworth's accompanying note: he had scrawled What's up? Herewith Lazlo's phone call to me March 10, from Boston, where tailing a cash courier named Kopcha.

  The tape began.

  "Yes, Lazlo here, calling from downtown, I may have been followed, I'm not sure. As scheduled, I had Kopcha under surveillance when he drove to a shell of a building half boarded up on a mean street, climbed the stairs and entered and after a minute I followed. He went into a third room, the only one with a door, and closed it behind him but there was a small foyer between the hallway and the door and I hid behind a pile of bricks to listen, God knows it looked safe enough with bricks to hide behind."

  His voice, very controlled until now, trembled slightly. "What I heard was three men, two rough-talking but also a voice that spoke with authority, you know? Very smooth, with a French accent, I'm sure of this. They'd been expecting Kopcha and asked if he was interested in making some money on a big job, a cash pick-up—a ransom, they called it—in about a month's time. In April. They needed another man."

  Farnesworth's voice, "Go on."

  "Kopcha treated them with contempt, he was really arrogant. Wasn't interested in any small-time job, he told them scornfully, or working for a foreigner, and he walked out and left, followed by the others, which is when they found me behind the bricks, dragged me back into the room—the man with the French voice had disappeared—and they beat me up. Wanted to know how much, and what I'd heard, and who I was. I got away but one of them, for a couple of blocks, was behind me. Of course I lost Kopcha."

  His voice broke. "I'm not feeling so well, I think my arm's broken."

  The operator's voice broke in asking for more dimes and there was the sound of coins dropping into the slot.

  Farnesworth said, "I'm hearing you, Lazlo. Two questions, fast. Any idea what you stumbled into?"

  "Not a clue."

  "What were these two men like, the two that beat you?"

  "Nasty types. Looked just what Kopcha thought them, small fish with a small job. Shabby."

  "And what do you think?"

  There was hesitation before Lazlo spoke. "Not so sure of that, could be camouflage."

  Again hesitation, and a sound of retching. "Sorry, I got hit in the gut, too. I thought maybe—I was at Willie's some years ago, would he be anywhere near Boston?"

  "Best place for you," Farnesworth said, "Let's see where he is.... Hold on a minute... . Here we are, he's this week in Pownal, Vermont. But you sound in bad shape, Lazlo; if you can make it there fine, but go to a doctor first. I'll notify Willie to expect you."

  "Yes."

  And that was the end of the tape that had been recorded in March, one week after the carnival opened; now it was April and Willie was in Maine. Poor devil, thought Carstairs, he escaped from that situation with a broken arm, only to have a knife plunged into his back weeks later. It could be assumed that he was careless in making his way to Vermont in March, but Carstairs fervently hoped this wasn't the case because he didn't want to consider the possibility of losing Willie's Traveling Show as a safe house.

  On the other hand, he reflected, leaning back in his chair and frowning, if Lazlo had been followed that craftily, that successfully, and for such a distance, it implied that what he had stumbled into on March 10th—what Kopcha had dismissed so casually, and Lazlo, too—was a hell of a lot more important than either of them realized.

  Judiciously he considered Lazlo, born Aziz Kalad, a very experienced and dedicated agent who had spent four years undercover in Iran, risking his life to survive and to smuggle out information. Hard to believe that he wouldn't cover his tracks, and
then Carstairs amended this as he recalled the sound of retching and of nerves gone hellishly ragged. Burnout, he mused; a broken arm, probably a high temperature— yes, they should have insisted he take a vacation. He could have become careless in the route he'd chosen two months ago to reach Willie in Vermont.

  He switched on the machine and played the tape again, this time curious about the job Kopcha had been offered. The word ransom interested him, as did the reference to "next month. In April." It was next month now, and the word ransom loomed very large in the news.

  Helga's voice interrupted his thoughts and brought him back to the present moment. "Your call to France has come through, sir, Mr. Desforges is on line three."

  With an effort, Carstairs removed his thoughts from Lazlo to concentrate them on the country of Ubangiba and a geo-physicist named Rogere Desforges.

  "Monsieur Desforges?" he began.

  The man had a pleasant voice, and once Carstairs had introduced himself Desforges shifted easily into English with only a faint accent.

  Carstairs drew a deep breath. He had the advantage of the man at the opposite end of the line: he knew precisely what he wanted to ask, and he knew the skill with which he must question him, but it held all the elements of a surgical operation with the risk of hitting a wrong nerve and killing communication. "You're aware," he said gently, "that Henry Bidwell has been abducted in the United States?"

  "Yes, I've seen something of it in the newspapers here. Most tragic!"

  Carstairs said carefully, "In our attempts to find out if he had provoked interest from some foreign group we'd be interested in learning of your visit to Ubangiba with him." Ha waited, poised for disappointment, braced for word that Desforges's only connection with Bidwell had occurred in Paris, and that he'd never seen Ubangiba.