She switched off the flashlight and stood up, the darkness was engulfing, and with the cessation of running water the silence proved to be as taut and alive as a scream. Somewhere in the three offices that lay between her and the Hydrothérapies room this silence was shared by another human being. Someone else listened to the emptiness and knew he wasn't alone: she had just told him so by turning off the water.
Marcel's murderer.
She stood irresolute. Into the silence there crept the faintest stirring of movement in the next room, a whisper of cloth against cloth, of protesting floorboards, he was returning. Marcel's murderer was coming back to see who was here.
She shivered, she did not believe she had been seen or heard earlier, she had come downstairs silently, the stairs were heavily carpeted and on her feet she wore the heavy knitted bedsocks that Miss Hartshorne tirelessly made for her every Christmas, she doubted that he even realized she had entered the room as he left it, but certainly he had heard the water stop splashing into the tub, he was coming back to learn who was here, and a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. For her.
She looked around her, she was isolated in this small room next to the brightly lighted lobby. Behind the murderer, on the other hand, lay three offices and a gymnasium-size room, giving him considerable space in which to move about and hide, apparently his curiosity outweighed his caution and he felt impelled to search and to identify, she did not care to explore the reasons behind his logic because if he discovered her, then she discovered him as well, she did not believe he would accept such mutuality.
She must not be found here.
Quietly she backed to the door by which she had entered the room, she opened it and assessed the distance across the lobby to the staircase. Impossible, in such a bright light he would clearly see her before she gained the stairs, she turned back and pointed her flashlight at the door across the room, waiting for him to enter, a very small idea had occurred to her.
Slowly the knob began to turn. Matching her movement to his she left as he entered, fleeing into the hall—but not to the stairs, she rushed headlong to the utility room around the corner and flung herself inside, there she ran her flashlight over the fuseboxes: they were labeled in French, in English, and by number, she tugged at the circuit-breakers for the ground floor and a second later saw the light under the closed door vanish.
The silence was frightening, a door closed. Footsteps moved across the lobby to the foot of the stairs, and for that moment the two of them were separated only by the wall of the closet, she held her breath, he would be holding his breath, too, she thought, scarcely daring to expel it lest he miss some small, stifled sound, he was going to begin stalking her now like prey in an attempt to rush her out of hiding, and while they both waited, their thoughts screaming in the emptiness, he moved again.
He walked past the closet and down the hall toward the gymnasium, giving her just one fragile unguarded moment of hope. When she heard the doors to Hydrothérapies swing open she slipped out of the closet and raced to the stairs, snatching up the scintillator counter from the floor where she had left it.
When she reached the Reception floor level her heart was thudding ominously and her throat ached from dry-ness, she felt almost sick with horror, she stopped to catch her breath and saw the elevator still idle; on impulse she entered it. For a second she hesitated over the panel and then she punched the button for the floor above her own, he must not learn which floor was hers.
But he had heard the sound of the elevator in motion, for as she ascended with frustrating slowness she recognized the sound of feet pounding up the stairs below her, she realized he was racing up to cut her off, and his determination to find and identify her was terrifying. Slowly the elevator rose toward the fourth floor and slowly the doors opened, she stepped out, another moment and she would be trapped unless—
Robin, she thought. Robin had said he was in the room exactly above hers, she ran down the hall, found room 213, discovered the door unlocked and stumbled inside.
Robin was sitting up in bed with a book on his knees, he looked at her in astonishment. "My dear Mrs. Pollifax," he said, and then seeing her face he gasped, "My God, what on earth?"
She shook her head, placed a finger to her lips and retreated into the darkness of his bathroom, there were advantages in appealing to a cat burglar; Robin responded at once by reaching for his bedside lamp and plunging the room into darkness. In silence they listened to footsteps walking down the hall toward the solarium. Softly the footsteps returned, after a short interval the elevator doors slid closed and the elevator hummed as it descended.
Slowly Mrs. Pollifax expelled her caught breath.
Robin went to the door and opened it, looked up and down the corridor and then closed and locked the door and walked across the room to draw the curtains of the window. Turning on a light he said pleasantly, "We're having a party in my room tonight?"
She left the darkness of his bathroom and found him rummaging in his wardrobe closet. "There's a bottle of Napoleon brandy here somewhere," he said. "Ah, here we are. Beautiful. I have never felt that cocoa measures up to brandy in a crisis." He poured an inch into a bedside glass and handed it to her. "Drink it down, you look like hell."
She nodded gratefully.
"And while you're thawing out," he continued pleasantly, "you'll no doubt think up some outrageous lie to explain why you've been playing hide-and-seek with someone in the halls at this ungodly hour, but don't—don't try —because I won't believe you. When you stumble into a man's room in the middle of the night, looking as if you'd just seen a corpse, and carrying of all things that damn jewelry case—" His eyes narrowed as he sprang to his feet.
"Robin!" she cried sharply.
He picked up the box and carried it to the light. "Sorry, milady," he said. "Curiosity killed the cat but never a cat burglar, as you call it. I've been curious about this thing all day, and obviously you're not what you appear to be. Let's see what you really are." She sat mute as he opened the case. "Let's see, if I designed this—oh, it's very well done—I'd put the lock in one of these hinges, I think, and—" He triumphantly pressed the hinge on the right and removed the tray.
There was silence as he peered down at what he'd unearthed. "Good God, not the Queen's jewels, a—surely not a Geiger counter?" He stared at her disbelievingly.
She sighed and put down the emptied glass of brandy. "As a matter of fact, yes. Did you really expect stolen goods?"
He looked bewildered. "I don't know, I expected something illicit, although you don't look illicit. But a Geiger counter? What on earth are you looking for, uranium?" He thought he was making a joke.
Mrs. Pollifax considered him, hesitated and then made a decision. "Plutonium, actually."
"Plutonium?"
"Yes." There was a welcome impersonality about plutonium. It did not bleed, it was a metallic object without hopes, dreams, fears, or a throat that could be cut, at the moment plutonium seemed much less dangerous than Marcel's body lying in the Unterwasser Massage tub, and she did not want to speak of Marcel, she had sought sanctuary in this room, and Robin had saved her from being discovered and possibly killed. For this she owed him something, even truth, but if Robin was to be involved then let him be involved in an abstract without personality. Marcel's murder was too dangerous to share.
"Interpol is in this," she told him gravely, "and my government is in this, and yours, too."
He shuddered. "That's a bit thick." He stared ruefully at the scintillator counter in his lap. "My God, I've opened Pandora's box, haven't I? You're involved with my mortal enemies and I'm sitting here listening to you." He shook his head. "Damn it, I wish I'd allowed you to think up that outrageous lie."
"You didn't give me time," she reminded him.
"Plutonium ... It would have to be stolen plutonium, of course."
"Yes. Presumed to have been sent here."
"Pretty damned clever sending it here." He began to look interested. "Not
a bad drop-off point at all. I don't have to ask what your precious authorities are afraid of, of course, but they're not going to relish your telling me this, are they? Why did you?"
She thought about this a moment, a little startled herself at her openness. "‘ find no evil in you," she said at last, very simply. "It's true that you have a somewhat distorted sense of morality in one area but I'm looking for someone with no morality at all. Someone"—she shivered—"completely amoral, without scruples or fear or compassion or decency."
"Here?" he said in astonishment. "Among the patients?"
"Perhaps."
He looked at her. "So that's why you were relieved to find me only a thief, and tonight? What did you find tonight? Who was it out there?"
"I wish I knew. I wish I'd had the cunning to find out." The memory of Marcel intervened and she steadied herself. When she replied it was casually. "I was downstairs on the ground floor when I found myself playing cat-and-mouse with someone in the dark. I reached the Reception floor and the elevator was standing there and so I slipped inside, planning to walk down a floor to my room, you see, but ‘ could hear whoever it was running upstairs after me, so I was cut off and—"
"And popped in here." He studied her face shrewdly. "If that's your story I won't do any more prying, but to be perfectly frank with you that little anecdote doesn't begin to match the look on your face when you burst into my room. Do you think whoever it was is still out there waiting for you?"
He had caught her off guard; she realized that she'd not thought of this yet.
Robin shook his head. "You don't have a poker face tonight, Mrs. Pollifax, I frightened you with that question." He regarded her curiously. "All right, I said I wouldn't pry but let's proceed as if you've stolen the Queen's jewels and the police are lurking. Can you manage a drop of eight feet on a rope?"
She brightened. "Over the balcony?"
He looked amused. "Yes, my dear Mrs. Pollifax, but don't look so eager. Have you ever before gone up or down a rope?"
"Yes, once in Albania—" She stopped. "Oh dear, I am tired, I should never have said that."
He looked her up and then down, taking in her height, her weight, her flyaway hair, the voluminous robe and woolly bedsocks, and he grinned. "I didn't hear you say it. I wouldn't believe it if I did hear it, especially knowing that Americans are not allowed in Albania. Who would believe it anyway, I ask you." He removed a coil of efficient-looking rope from his suitcase. "Mountain climbing rope," he explained, patting it lovingly. "The very best. By the way, there's nothing to this, there's no ledge at all on this floor but a perfectly splendid one on yours below so there'll be something under you all the way. I'll go first and check you out." Over the coil of rope he studied her and frowned. "You know, it terrifies me discovering who you are, but it's equally alarming to think your superiors may have sent you here alone and unprotected. I daresay it's the most absolute effrontery to offer my services but if anything comes up—" He looked embarrassed. "Well, hang it all, I'm already indebted to you, and if you should need a gentleman burglar—"
"I can't tell you how much I appreciate that," she said warmly.
"Oh?" He looked startled. "Well, do keep it in mind,
then. By the way, is your balcony door locked?" She nodded and he added a circle of keys to his belt. "Full speed ahead then." On the balcony he tied the rope to the railing, fussed over the knots, tested the railing and glanced up. "All set?"
It was dismayingly dark out here but she reflected that this had the advantage of blotting out the garden four stories below. "I'm ready."
"Good. Give me your jewelry case. Once over the railing lean out a bit, rope in hand, and then slide down and in."
"In," she repeated.
He disappeared and Mrs. Poll ¡fax found herself hesitating until she remembered the lighted halls and the shadowy solariums where anyone could hide, she climbed over the railing and grasped the rope. Closing her eyes she murmured a brief prayer and let go.
"Good girl," said Robin, catching the rope and guiding her in close to the balcony. "With a little training you'd make a splendid burglar." He helped her over the railing, turned his pencil-thin flashlight on the door to her room and a moment later it stood open. "I trust you locked your other door, the one into the hall?"
She shook her head. "No, I thought I might have to retreat in a hurry."
"Then I'd better take a look around and make sure nobody else used it for a hasty retreat." He followed her inside and while she put away the scintillator counter he glanced under her bed, into her closet and then disappeared into the bathroom, she heard him swear softly and then he sputtered angrily, "What the devil!"
She turned questioningly toward the door just as he reappeared pushing a frightened Hafez in front of him. "Behind your bathtub curtain," he said grimly. "Hiding."
Ten
Hafez stood very still in front of her but there was no quietness in him; he was taut with anxiety, he had been crying, of this there was no doubt, because his eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks still damp. "Where have you been?" he cried despairingly. "I came to find you and you'd gone and I waited for you so long."
"Behind the shower curtain?" inquired Robin dryly.
"No, no, monsieur, in that chair over there—for fifteen minutes—but then I heard your voices on the balcony and I was afraid."
"But why?" asked Mrs. Pollifax softly. "Why aren't you in bed asleep?"
He hesitated, looking at Robin.
"I think you can regard him as a friend," Mrs. Pollifax told him.
Hafez looked doubtful.
"Try," begged Mrs. Pollifax.
"If you say so, madame," He turned back to her. "I have come to take you to my grandmama, she is awake now. Please," he urged, "you will come with me quickly?"
"At two o'clock in the morning!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.
Robin said flatly, "Nonsense, lad, Mrs. Pollifax isn't going anywhere except to bed."
Watching Hafez, Mrs. Pollifax realized that she had heard of people turning white but she had never seen it happen before, the color literally drained from Hafez's face, as if his whole world depended upon her coming with him and Robin, as judge and jury, had turned down his appeal, she was touched and astonished. Rallying, she said, "On the contrary, it needn't take long." Turning to Robin she explained, "It's not as if his room is on another floor, it's just down the hall at the other end."
Robin said angrily, "Are you mad?"
"Probably."
He sat down in the chair by the desk and mutinously folded his arms. "Well, I'm staying right here, I'm not leaving until I see you settled for the night. Damn it, that's why I escorted you, remember?"
She gave him a forgiving glance. "I won't be long."
He added furiously, "If you're not back soon I'll turn the whole Clinic upside down. What's the room number?"
"It is 150, monsieur," said Hafez, regarding him with awe.
Robin nodded and Mrs. Pollifax gave him a last thoughtful glance as she gathered up her skirts. His attitude struck her as exaggerated, considering how little he knew about the events of her evening, and she wondered what caused it. "Let's go, Hafez," she said quietly, and heard him sigh with relief.
The hall was mercifully empty. Hafez tiptoed ahead of her and Mrs. Pollifax, who had only slightly recovered from her last venture into the halls, was happy to tiptoe with him. Down near the end of the hall Hafez stopped and drew a key from his pocket. Unlocking the door he beckoned her inside the dimly lit room. Somewhat nervously she stepped across the threshold and hesitated.
The normality of the scene reassured her. This time there was no Serafina, and the door to the adjoining rooms was closed, a small lamp burned at the night table, throwing shadows against the wall and a circle of light across the bed in which Madame Parviz sat braced against a number of pillows, she wore a rough homespun robe with a hood that shaded her face but even at a distance Mrs.
Pollifax could see an uncanny resemblance to Hafez, a
pair of brilliant dark eyes watched her approach; in the dim light they glittered under deeply cut lids but as Mrs. Pollifax drew closer she was shocked to see dark shadows under the eyes, like bruises. It was a ravaged face, once exotic, still handsome but drained of all vitality now. Only the essence of a strong character remained, and a certain imperial air that she shared with her grandson.
"Grandmama," said Hafez quietly, "here is my friend Madame Pollifax."
"Enchanté," murmured the woman in a low voice, and one hand lifted to indicate the chair next to the bed, her voice when she spoke was filled with exhausted pauses, as if a great effort was being made. "I understand you—paid me—a call yesterday. When I was—asleep."
"Yes, Hafez and I have become friends," said Mrs. Pollifax, smiling. "You've a very charming grandson, Madame Parviz, I've been enjoying him." Her own voice sounded alarmingly healthy and she lowered it.
Madame Parviz did not respond to the pleasantry; her eyes remained fixed upon Mrs. Pollifax with an intensity that was embarrassing. "May I—ask a favor, then, Mrs. —Pollifax?"
The abruptness was startling in a woman so obviously gracious. Mrs. Pollifax glanced at Hafez, standing at the foot of the bed, and saw that he was watching her with the same intentness. "But of course," she said, suddenly very still and alert. "Of course."
"If I may ask—one thing Hafez—cannot do, a cable— sent from the village?"
"A cable," repeated Mrs. Pollifax.
"Not from—the Clinic."
"I see," said Mrs. Pollifax, almost holding her breath now. "You'd like me to send a cable for you but not from the Clinic." Turning practical she reached for her purse. "I've pencil and paper. If you'll dictate what you'd like—"
Hafez said quickly, "It is already prepared, madame."
And this was true: from beneath her blanket Madame Parviz drew a sheet of Clinic stationery and offered it to Mrs. Pollifax. "Please—you will read it?"
The silence as Mrs. Pollifax accepted it was heavy with suspense and she realized it was because two of the three people in this room were holding their breath, the mood was contagious and she heard herself read it aloud in a low, conspiratorial whisper. "To General Mustafa Parviz, Villa Jasmine, Sharja, Zabya: hafez and i safe and well love zizi."
A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax Page 8