A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  One

  It was morning and Mrs. Pollifax was seated on the floor of her living room, legs crossed beneath her as she tried to sustain the lotus position, she had been practicing Yoga for a number of months now, she could almost touch her forehead to her knee, she could roll over backward into a ball, and once—propped up by Miss Hartshorne—she had stood dizzyingly on her head. But she could not manage the lotus position for more than a minute and she had begun to despair of becoming a Contemplative.

  "I'm too cushiony, I can't fold," she sighed, and rued the more than sixty years in which she had sat on chairs, couches, stools, and pillows but never on the floor, at the moment this mattered a great deal to her but the moment passed. It was, after all, a delightful and sunny day, mere was work to do and at noon a meeting of the Save-Our-Environment Committee, as she climbed to her feet she heard Miss Hartshorne calling her name from the hall, and a moment later her neighbor in 4-C reinforced the summons with a loud knock on the door.

  Mrs. Pollifax padded across the room in her leotards. It was only 9:15 but the middle of the day for Miss Hartshorne, who took brisk walks at six, and Miss Hartshorne's energy could be devitalizing. Mrs. Pollifax braced herself.

  But her neighbor was not disposed to linger this morning. "I was just leaving the building," she cried breathlessly, "when a special delivery came for you, Emily, and knowing you probably aren't even dressed yet"—here her voice wavered between disapproval and tolerance of a friend's eccentricities—"I took the liberty of signing for it"

  "Kindness itself," said Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully. "Going shopping?"

  "Oh dear no," said Miss Hartshorne, shocked. "It's Tuesday." And presenting Mrs. Pollifax with the letter she hurried away.

  "Tuesday," repeated Mrs. Pollifax blankly, but having no idea what that meant she turned her attention to the letter. It was postmarked Baltimore, Maryland, and she wondered who on earth she knew in Baltimore who would send a letter both airmail and special delivery. It implied a distinct note of urgency. Baltimore . . , urgency .., at once Mrs. Pollifax found herself recalling certain small, secret trips she had made in the past for a gentleman named Carstairs, and the cover address in Baltimore that she had twice been given, she felt a catch of excitement. Closing the door she slid a finger under the flap of the envelope and drew out a sheet of paper emblazoned with the letterhead of one William H. Carstairs, Attorney-at-Law, The Legal Building, Baltimore, Maryland.

  "Attorney-at-law indeed!" she sniffed, and sat down. "What on earth—!" The letter appeared to be a carbon copy of the original but the address to which it had been sent was carefully deleted, across the bottom of the page, in red pencil, Carstairs's assistant had scribbled, We need you, what are you doing on Thursday?

  Mrs. Pollifax began to read the letter:

  Dear M. Royan, it began. In reply to our telephone conversation of this morning I am enclosing the suggested deposit of five hundred dollars for the convalescence of my mother-in-law, Mrs. Emily Pollifax ...

  "Mother-in-law!" said Mrs. Pollifax in a startled voice. "Convalescence?"

  .., at your Hotel-Clinic Montbrison. It is of the utmost urgency that she be given rest and treatment...

  The telephone began to ring and Mrs. Pollifax edged toward it, her eyes on the letter. Plucking the receiver from its cradle she said, "Yes, yes, I'm here," in an absent voice . . , and ‘ shall persuade her to place herself entirely in your hands. I am delighted to hear ...

  "Mrs. Pollifax?"

  "Speaking, yes." . ., that room 113 will be reserved for her with its private bath and view of the lake...

  "Mr. Carstairs's office calling, will you hold, please?"

  "Oh, gladly," she cried in relief and put down the letter, thoroughly alert now, her heart beating rapidly because both letter and telephone call meant that her life was about to accelerate again, adjust to that fine edge of danger which—like eating fish riddled with small bones— exacted the most scrupulous awareness hi order to survive.

  The next voice on the phone belonged, not to Carstairs, but to Bishop, his assistant "He's already left for the airport," Bishop told her. "He's hoping you can meet him in New York at twelve o'clock noon at the Hotel Taft. If you can't manage this I'm to intercept him at the airport, but since it takes so damn long to get to the airport these days—"

  "It's that important?" breathed Mrs. Pollifax.

  Bishop sighed. "Isn't it always?"

  "I have this letter, it just arrived and I was reading it"

  "Damn, it should have arrived yesterday," said Bishop. "I insisted Carstairs give you some advance notice this time, well, hang onto it, that's clue number one for you. I haven't asked how you are yet, Mrs. Pollifax, but I will as soon as I hear whether you can possibly get to New York this morning."

  "Yes, I can. Let me think," she said. "It's just 9:45 here—"

  "Here, too," put in Bishop helpfully.

  "And there's a train at—I can be there by noon, yes," she said. "If I hurry."

  "Then I won't ask how you are," Bishop said frankly. "You're to go directly to room 321 at the Taft, have you got that? Don't stop at the desk to ask, we'd rather you didn't I hope to hell your telephone isn't tapped."

  Mrs. Pollifax said in a shocked voice, "Why ever should it be?"

  "God knows. Have you joined anything lately?"

  "Only the Save-Our-Environment Committee."

  "Bad," he said gloomily. "Room 321," he repeated and hung up.

  "Well," thought Mrs. Pollifax, "I daresay whatever Mr. Carstairs has in mind helps save the environment, too. Loosely speaking," she added, and hurried into the bedroom to exchange leotards for a suit "Wrinkled," she noted crossly as she glimpsed herself in the mirror, and sighed over the multiplying hobbies—environment, karate, Garden Club, Yoga, a little spying now and then— that left her so little time for grooming, she solved the immediate problem by jamming her newest hat over her flyaway white hair, telephoned for a taxi and several minutes later was descending by elevator to the front door of the Hemlock Arms.

  At 11:58 Mrs. Pollifax stepped out of the elevator at the third floor of the Hotel Taft and walked down a carpeted hall, the door of room 321 stood wide open, and for just the briefest of moments Mrs. Pollifax entertained thoughts of skulduggery, of Carstairs lying inside in a pool of blood, perhaps, and then a white-jacketed waiter backed into view; behind him stood Carstairs, tall, leaner than ever and very much alive.

  "Hello there," he said, glancing up, and after tipping the waiter he shook hands warmly with her. "I ordered coffee and sandwiches—it is good of you to hurry. Come inside so we can talk."

  "You've grown sideburns!"

  "One must move with the times," he said modestly, closing the door behind them, he turned and studied her with equal frankness. "You look splendid, as a matter of fact much too healthy for what we want White powder," he mused. "A cane perhaps?" He shook his head over her hat. "Wild. Sit down and have some coffee."

  Mrs. Pollifax sat down and he wheeled the cart toward her, pouring coffee for them both,

  "Bishop says you received a copy of the letter?"

  "This morning,” she acknowledged. "Something about becoming your mother-in-law and convalescing from some nameless disease but no hint as to where the letter or I would be going."

  "Exactly," he said. "The sandwiches, by the way, are bacon, lettuce, and tomato." He seated himself nearby, coffee cup in one hand. "That letter was supposed to have reached you yesterday, damn it. Because if you can do this job for us you'll have to leave day after tomorrow, on Thursday."

  "If?" she inquired with a lift of an eyebrow.

  "Yes." He hesitated. "We need you but I have to warn you this assignment is different from the others. It's
not a courier job."

  Mrs. Pollifax put down her sandwich and looked at him. "I'm being promoted!"

  He laughed. "Promoted to new hazards is more like it Mrs. Pollifax, I have to ask if you're still open to these insane games of Russian roulette or if your sentiments on that score have changed."

  "You mean the dangers," she said, nodding. "But of course it isn't at all like Russian roulette," she added earnestly. "Not at all. I always enjoy myself so much—quite selfishly, I can assure you—and meet the most astonishing people. In any case it's difficult to look ahead, isn't it? I can only look back to previous trips, in which there were a number of risks—"

  "To put it mildly," agreed Carstairs.

  "—but they never seemed excessive at the time, or less than worthwhile. No, my sentiments haven't changed, Mr. Carstairs."

  "Thank God," he murmured, and then with a snap of his fingers, "I forgot Bishop!" Jumping to his feet he hurried to the telephone and Mrs. Pollifax saw that during their conversation the receiver had been removed from its cradle and propped against the lamp. Picking up the receiver Carstairs said, "You heard, Bishop? Call Schoen-beck in Geneva and set things in motion. Have him deliver my letter within the hour and remind him to double-check those postal markings." He hung up. "Now you know where you're going. Switzerland."

  She brightened. "Oh, how nice! I did hope I wasn't going behind the iron curtain again, after being expelled from Bulgaria—"

  He grinned. "Well, it's not every member of the New Brunswick Garden Club who can be expelled from Bulgaria, is it? Ushered to the airport and told to get out and stay out, forcibly and irrevocably. Let's see what you can do with Switzerland. I want to place you in the Hotel-Clinic Montbrison as a patient, but while you're there under medical observation, so to speak, you will in turn please observe the Clinic."

  "Is it a clinic or a hotel?" asked Mrs. Pollifax, puzzled.

  "We're not accustomed to the combination in America," he admitted, "but European habits differ. Montbrison is a medical clinic to which the wealthy of the world repair for treatment, to rest, convalesce, lose weight, that sort of thing, the hotel concept makes it all palatable and exceedingly pleasant and I'm told the food is superb. It has a considerable reputation internationally, drawing people from the Middle East as well as Europe."

  "But you're not sending me there to rest," she said tactfully.

  Carstairs shook his head. "No indeed." Returning to his chair he sank into its depths to ponder her over steepled fingers. "We're in trouble, Mrs. Pollifax," he said at last bluntly. "I can't tell you all the facts, it's classified information and since it now involves Interpol it's not my story to tell. To wrap it up in one sentence, however, there have lately been two small, very alarming thefts of plutonium, the first one here in America, the more recent in England."

  "Plutonium!" echoed Mrs. Pollifax. "But that's used in—"

  "Exactly, the stolen pounds add up to a dangerous amount when put together—almost enough, in fact, to make a small atom bomb. Plutonium is man-made, you know, it's processed in a nuclear reactor. This has kept it a toy of the moneyed countries and completely inaccessible to any underdeveloped countries—or was," he added savagely. "The two thefts took place within the same month and with uncanny efficiency, we think they're related, we've no idea who's behind them but we've reason to believe that one of the shipments was sent by mail to the Hotel-Clinic Montbrison."

  "Can something like that be sent through the mail?" said Mrs. Pollifax incredulously.

  "Oh yes. To make that one small atom bomb, for instance, you need only eleven pounds of plutonium. Which is what terrifies us," he added pointedly. "So far nine pounds are missing, and if you've managed a package of that weight you know it's relatively light, you could carry it easily in a suitcase. Damnable business, as you can see." He moved to a leather case on the table and drew out a slide projector. Wheeling the table to the center of the room he said, "Mind turning off the switch just behind you?"

  With the room in twilight he turned on the projector and a square of white light appeared on the opposite wall, a moment later it was occupied by a close-up of a small wooden crate. "This is how we think the shipment looked," said Carstairs, "or so we've deduced from the information we have. Black letters stenciled on each side of the box saying MEDICALS-HANDLE WITH CARE. On the top, stenciled in red the words MEDICAL SUPPLIES—FRAGILE."

  "That's not the actual box?"

  Carstairs shook his head. "A reconstruction from a description given us, but how accurate it is we don't know. It's believed to have been shipped Airmail-Special Delivery-Special Handling. It would have been delivered to the Clinic—unless it was intercepted on the way—nine days ago."

  "Would it still be there?" asked Mrs. Pollifax in surprise.

  "We can't be sure. Interpol put one of their men into the Clinic as a waiter, with the co-operation of the Swiss police. This man—his name is Marcel, by the way, and he's still there—found no traces on the premises, after his search produced nothing the British sent one of their Intelligence people in as a patient, a man named Fraser." He hesitated and then said quietly, "Unfortunately Fraser had an accident, Mrs. Pollifax, there's no possible way of describing it without sounding ridiculous but two days ago Fraser fell off the mountain near the Clinic, he was dead when they brought him out of the ravine."

  "Oh dear," said Mrs. Pollifax. "Under the circumstances it sounds more suspicious than ridiculous, don't you think?"

  He nodded grimly. "We thought so, yes, we'd nearly crossed the Clinic off our list when that happened but Fraser's death made it a whole new ball game." He frowned. "I should add that we've not been completely frank with the people at the Clinic."

  "Oh?"

  "They've been told it's hard drugs that we're investigating, and that some kind of surveillance would be set up, they asked only that we be discreet, which is quite understandable, but we've not taken them into our confidence about Fraser or Marcel, we won't about your presence, either." He added dryly: "After all, it could be someone closely connected with the Clinic who's using the place for illegal activities."

  "So they don't know."

  "They don't know, and now Fraser*s dead. It could have been a freak accident or he could have stumbled onto something. In that case—" He tactfully refrained from completing the sentence and said instead, "You have me to blame, Mrs. Pollifax, for recommending you and volunteering your services, the Swiss are co-operating in every way they can. Interpol is, of course, heavily involved, as well as the American government—and therefore my department—and the English have a stake in this, too."

  The compliment was unspoken but obvious; Mrs. Pollifax leaned forward and said doubtfully, "But do you really think that I—?"

  He threw up his hands. "I can think of at least ten agents of mine who are well-trained, experienced and Gung Ho, and I'm sure the English can, too." He frowned. "But aside from your record, which is startling, I have a feeling that this situation needs something more than training and experience. It needs a rare kind of intuitive-ness, a talent for sniffing out what others miss. You're rather good with people and you simply don't act or react like a professional agent." He added abruptly: "What we are looking for—aside from stolen plutonium, Mrs. Pollifax—is evil in its purest form."

  "Evil," she mused. "That's an old-fashioned word."

  "Positively Biblical," he agreed, "but you have to remember that stolen plutonium is not quite the same as stolen money, Mrs. Pollifax, the uses to which illicit plutonium can be put are very limited but one of its uses is hideous to contemplate."

  "Hideous," she said, nodding.

  He leaned over his slides again. "I think you'd better see what was inside that crate. It's quite unlikely you'll discover any of these items sitting about on someone's desk as a paperweight but one never knows, here we are —exhibit number one."

  Mrs. Pollifax studied the innocent-looking object projected on the wall. "Thats plutonium?"

  "Yes, shaped into a
metal button weighing about two kilograms. Not very prepossessing, is it?" He switched to another slide. "Each button was then individually packed into a plastic bag—there's your plastic bag—and then," he added, changing slides, "the bag was placed in a can filled with inert gas, which in turn was placed inside this odd-looking contraption they call a birdcage, probably because—"

  "Because it looks like a birdcage," finished Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes. Five pounds of plutonium were in the crate stolen from England. If you come across any of these items, don't touch. If you have to touch, use surgeon's gloves." He shook his head. "If you find anything. If it's there. If more should be sent If, if, if." He sighed and returned to the projector. "Now I want to show you a diagram of the Hotel-Clinic Montbrison before we conclude this. You recall it's room 113 that's been reserved for you."

  "Any special reason?"

  "Oh, yes. From the balcony of room “3 you’ll have a marvelous view of Lake Geneva. You will also be able to see from your balcony, on your left, a narrow, very primitive dirt road, incredibly steep, that winds and circles up the next mountain. From any other floor it's screened by the trees." He flicked on a new slide, a larger diagram that showed the terrain surrounding the Clinic. Standing up he pointed to a small X. "There's your road, off on this mountain here. Every night at ten o'clock—it's quite dark by then—there'll be a car parked at a point on the road that you can see from your room. You'll signal from your balcony with a flashlight, that will be your contact with the outside world."

  She frowned. "Won't anyone else see me signaling?"

  He shook his head. "Room “3 is quite high, actually it's on the third floor because the Clinic's built into the mountainside, the massage and treatment rooms are on the ground level, the reception and dining rooms are on the next level, and the patients' rooms begin above that, as soon as you've signaled each evening the car will turn on its lights—you'll be able to see that—and proceed down the hill. You'll flash your light twice if all's well but if you've something urgent to report you'll blink your light four times."