The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Oh, my dear," gasped Mrs. Pollifax after one glance at the bone pushing its way through the skin of Debby's thumb and she hurried to the telephone. There she stopped, remembering that no one would understand her cry for help and that she'd already had a burglar the night before. She turned back. "Debby, we're going to have to get you downstairs to the lobby," she said fiercely.

  "Can you walk? Your scalp wound needs stitches, and your thumb needs a splint."

  "I'll be okay," Debby said in a dazed voice.

  "Lean on me. And tell them you fell into a mirror, do you understand?"

  "But he tried to kill me!" cried Debby.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "Yes," she said, and for just a moment allowed herself to remember what it had felt like to be inches away from his knife. But what troubled her most of all in remembering was that the man had known Debby was in the room with her. There'd been no hesitation at all-and no light shown-before he'd turned from Mrs. Pollifax to the next bed.

  He had planned to murder them both.

  "I don't think we can afford the police," she explained. "Trust me, will you?" Releasing Debby she hurried into the bathroom. The mirror lining the sink was impossible to fall into, but there was a full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. Mrs. Pollifax grabbed Debby's hairbrush and after several attacks succeeded in shattering the glass. "Let's go," she told Debby and they moved slowly out into the hall, a trail of blood taking shape behind them. The self-service elevator bore them down to the lobby, the doors slid open and Mrs. Pollifax carried her bloody companion into the lobby.

  The picture they made abolished any need for translations. The desk clerk shouted, rang bells, pressed buzzers; a potential hotel scandal provoked the same reaction in any language and any country. Debby was delivered into the hands of a doctor who arrived breathless and belt-less and still in bedroom slippers. The manager of the hotel followed, and then at last a representative of Balkantourist-but not Nevena, for which Mrs. Pollifax could be grateful.

  It was daylight before it was all over: the setting and bandaging of Debby's thumb, the stitching of the scalp wound and the questions. It no longer mattered to Mrs. Pollifax how it had all happened. What began to matter very much was her departure for Tarnovo in several hours; this was, after all, the whole point of her being in Bulgaria. "I want to speak," she told the Balkantourist representative firmly.

  "Yes?"

  "I am due to leave Sofia this morning in my car."

  "Yes, yes, they have your passport ready to give you," he said.

  "And the girl is to leave Sofia by plane this morning-"

  "No," said the Balkantourist representative flatly.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The doctor says no. The doctor is firm. The girl cannot take flight alone. She must be looked after twenty-four hours. She is tired-spent, you know? There is some shock. To wander alone"-he shook his head disapprovingly-"she would cry, maybe faint, go unconscious. She needs the comfort of a presence, you understand?"

  Mrs. Pollifax considered this; he was only too right, of course, but she couldn't possibly delay her own departure. Yet if she couldn't leave Debby here alone then there was only one alternative, and this dismayed her because she had no idea what lay ahead of her in Tarnovo. "Is she well enough to do a little driving in a car? In my presence?"

  This was queried of the doctor, who smiled warmly, nodding. Mr. Eastlake wouldn't like this, she thought, but then Mr. Eastlake could be prevented from knowing about it. Tsanko wouldn't like it either-if they ever made contact-and she was sure that Carstairs would be appalled.

  But she could scarcely abandon the child to a lonely hotel room for several days, and she could certainly not insist that Debby fly off to another lonely hotel room in another strange country. Her limitations as a ruthless agent had never been so pressing. Mrs. Pollifax sighed over them even as she said, "Good. She'll go with me then."

  Everyone looked extremely relieved, and Mrs. Pollifax realized that the hotel would be delighted to be rid of her. Just to be sure of this she asked that a basket of fruit be packed for their drive, and two breakfasts be sent to her room.

  It was exactly half-past nine when they drove away from the hotel, and considering the obstacles they'd encountered, Mrs. Pollifax congratulated herself on then-leaving at all. Debby was curled up in the rear seat with orders to read road signs, remain quiet and stay warm. In any case Mrs. Pollifax had to concentrate for the first half an hour on getting them out of Sofia, with its maze-like streets leading into broad boulevards whose names all seemed to end in ev or iski. It was made more difficult by the fact that she wanted to go east on Route One toward Tarnovo, but she had been given detailed directions south, into artery number five, which would take her to Borovets. She was aware by this time of how few people spoke English in Bulgaria-and the perils of getting lost under such conditions-and so she simply followed her printed directions out of Sofia and then detoured north to Route One through a town called-incongruously-Elin Pelin. But all of this added miles to their excursion.

  "There-we have reached Route One at last," she announced as they bounced onto a paved road. "Thank heaven that route numbers look the same in any language."

  "Route One doesn't feel any better," Debby said, sitting up and looking around her. "What are these roads built of?"

  Poplars lined the road, and beyond them stretched fields that carried the eye to the mountains on either side, still clouded by morning haze. The valley was green and rolling, punctuated by tidy haystacks at symmetrical intervals, and here and there low-lying walls of intricately worked stone. They passed a hay wagon and a farm truck and then no one.

  "Of stone," said Mrs. Pollifax in reply. "Rather like those farm walls. You can see it here and there where the macadam's missing-a parquet affect." Waving a hand toward the mountains on their left, she added, "We cross that range further along, at Shipka Pass, where something like twenty-eight thousand Bulgarians died fighting the Turks."

  "Twenty-eight thousand?" repeated Debby disbelievingly.

  "You'll find it on the back of the map, translated into French, German and English. It says there's a monument and a restaurant there. They fought in the dead of winter and when they ran out of ammunition they threw rocks and boulders down the slopes at the Turks. There were eighteen survivors."

  Debby whistled. "That beats Custer's last stand. Twenty-eight thousand and they didn't even win?"

  "I don't think they're on the winning side very often in Bulgaria," said Mrs. Pollifax tartly.

  Debby said, "That's dramatic, you know? I never thought about the places I hiked through this summer."

  "Rather a waste. What did you think about?"

  "Finding other kids. Looking for a piece of the action. That sort of thing."

  "Do your parents know you just wander about picking up rides and people?"

  Debby emitted a sound like "Ech."

  "Do they even know you're in Bulgaria?" she asked in a startled voice.

  This time Debby's comment sounded like "Aaaah."

  Mrs. Pollifax sighed. "Debby, if we're going to be traveling together I really think you'll have to enlarge your vocabulary. I'm sure you'd much prefer to be with people your own age, but for a few days we'll have to accept this situation and lay down some ground rules. Later you can explain what 'aaaah' means, but what on earth is 'ech'?"

  Debby looked resentful. "Dr. Kidd doesn't ask things like that. He's my psychiatrist and he wants me to be spontaneous."

  "Well, I've nothing against psychiatrists or spontaneity," retorted Mrs. Pollifax, "but I do think clear communication simplifies life a great deal. Now. What does ech mean?"

  Debby laughed. "It sounds so funny when you say it."

  "It sounds funny when you say it, too. What took you to a psychiatrist, by the way?"

  "I run away a lot," Debby said vaguely. "And I get attached to too many boys. It upsets my parents. Dr. Kidd says I get devoted to people because they're not. Dr. Kidd says they are,
but I don't believe it. How can they be when they never say no and are scared of me?"

  Mrs. Pollifax deftly supplied her own translation. "You mean you haven't written your parents at all since you left America?"

  "That's right," said Debby. "I'm giving them a restful summer."

  "But don't they mind not hearing? Don't they worry?"

  "You know," she said a little wistfully, "I wish they did sometimes. Just once in a while. They really don't know what to do with me and they always want me to be happy. I'm too old for summer camps now so they said I could go to Europe on my own. Dr. Kidd said maybe I'll find myself by doing it."

  Mrs. Pollifax was silent and then she said lightly, dryly, "I see. Rather like a lost-and-found department."

  But Debby had grown tired of the subject. "I wonder how Phil is today. What's at this Borovets place we're going to visit, or are you going to say I'll find out soon enough?"

  "You would if we were going there," Mrs. Pollifax told her. "But we're not, we're going to Tarnovo."

  For Pete's sake why?"

  "Because I've never had any intention of going anywhere else," said Mrs. Pollifax reasonably. "Debby, look at the map and see if there's a gas station at Zlatica, will you? You'll find tiny red automobiles printed on the map wherever one can buy gas."

  Debby rustled the map. "Yes, there's one at Zlatica. ' Isn't it weird? There aren't many in the whole country. Or cars either."

  Mrs. Pollifax said without expression, "There's been a black Renault behind us on the road for some time. I think we'll have the gas tank filled and let it pass us." She'd first noted the car as far back as Elin Pelin, because of the clouds of dust it had raised behind them on that particular stretch of dusty countryside. Now, some miles later, it was still there and the coincidence made her uneasy.

  Near Zlatica she pulled into the neat cement and grass compound decorated with flower beds and Nempon signs, and two husky women in blue overalls emerged.

  "Oh, wow," said Debby, collapsing into giggles.

  "Sssh," said Mrs. Pollifax, sternly, and after a clumsy exchange of sign language and a great number of titters and smiles, the gas tank was filled, the oil checked and bills counted. More important, the black Renault passed them and disappeared ahead.

  The road carried them along the floor of the valley, the mountains on either side growing sharper as the haze cleared. They passed tiny thatch-roofed farmhouses, each with its yard neatly enclosed by fences made of woven twigs. Sometimes an old woman sat on a bench by the door, a spindle in one hand, a bundle of flax in the other. Once they saw a shepherd standing at a distance on a hill, his watchtower behind him, a marvelous leather cape across his shoulders. "He actually carries a crook" Debby said in awe.

  And then the fields turned into acre after acre of roses, entire hillsides dotted with extravagant pinks and yellows and scarlets. "This must be the Valley of Roses," Debby announced after a look at the map.

  "Debby, I'm thinking about that horrid man with the knife last night," said Mrs. Pollifax abruptly. "Where did you learn to tackle like that, by the way? You were marvelous."

  "Oh that was nothing," Debby said eagerly. "You should see me on the parallel bars and the ropes. I adore phys. ed., it's the only subject I pass in school. What about that man? Do you think he had anything to do with Phil's arrest?"

  "I don't know," said Mrs. Pollifax honestly. "Debby, have you any idea at all why it should have been Philip who was arrested?"

  "Of course not," said Debby. "I wish we could stop at one of those rose places. Want a grape from the basket?"

  "No, and you answered my question much too quickly," she said. "Of course the answer wouldn't be obvious. Tell me what you know about him."

  "About Phil?" Debby was smiling. "Nothing much except I think he's just great. He digs Simon and Garfunkel -and Leonard Cohen-and he's gentle and he listens."

  "Debby."

  "Hmm?"

  "I didn't ask how you feel about him, Fm trying to find out why he was arrested for espionage an hour after he arrived in Bulgaria. Facts."

  "Facts?" echoed Debby blankly.

  "Yes, for instance, where does Philip come from? Where does he live? What do his parents do?" Mrs. Pollifax glanced into the rearview mirror at Debby's face and saw its bewilderment.

  "Oh. Well . . ." Debby began, and floundered. "I only met him three weeks ago," she said indignantly. "Those things don't matter."

  "They matter now," said Mrs. Pollifax firmly. "Think. Concentrate."

  "If you want labels," Debby said scornfully, "he's a sophomore at the University of Illinois."

  "Good! An excellent beginning." She realized that she was asking Debby to violate an unspoken code and she added very gently, "It's this sort of thing, Debby, that could solve the riddle. More, it could help free him."

  Debby said promptly, "Well, I've got some of his books in my pack. Maybe he scribbled his address in one of them."

  Mrs. Pollifax heard rustlings and clankings and smiled as she saw Debby toss out a tin drinking cup, a hairbrush and an assortment of paperbacks. Debby said, "This one's his-and this-and the Kahlil Gibran. Hey," she shouted, "I found something."

  "Hooray," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  "It was stuck in the pages as a bookmark." She handed Mrs. Pollifax a pocket calendar the size of a playing card, a familiar plasticized type distributed by banks and corporations at Christmastime.

  Mrs. Pollifax handed it back. "Read it to me," she said. "I can't read it without stopping the car."

  "It says"-Debby held it up to the light-"in large letters it says trenda-arctic oil company, and under this in small letters, President, Peter F. Trenda, Headquarters Chicago, Illinois; Fairbanks, Alaska, and St. John's, Newfoundland."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "Good for you. I feel better."

  Debby's voice was disappointed. "All it means is that Phil's parents are rich. Filthy rich, possibly."

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced into the rearview mirror at Debby. "Even that's a help," she told her, and then her glance went beyond Debby to the road. A black Renault sedan had just driven out of a side road and was driving at some distance behind them.

  11

  They reached Shipka Pass shortly after noon, having stopped a few minutes to marvel at the Shipka Monastery, with its gold onion domes gleaming softly in the sun like an enchanted fairy-tale palace.

  Once at the summit they parked the car in the broad fiat parking area and Mrs. Pollifax stood a minute listening to the wind. "It sounds like the sea," she said. "As if it's swept thousands and thousands of miles without meeting any resistance." She realized that she was also listening for the sound of an engine behind them, and when no black Renault appeared she sighed with relief. Turning toward the low stone buildings she said, "Let's treat ourselves to a really Bulgarian lunch, shall we?"

  "Great," said Debby. "How far are we from that place you want to go?"

  "About twenty or thirty miles. Not far."

  They lunched on cuzek patladjan and mishmash and misquette grapes under dark murals of the: Battle of Shipka Pass. Mrs. Pollifax produced aspirin from her bag for Debby, whose thumb was beginning to throb, and they bought a few postcards in the lobby. While Debby lingered in the ladies' room Mrs. Pollifax wandered outside just in time to see a black Renault sedan drive out of the parking expanse and head down the mountain toward Gabrovo and Tarnovo.

  She watched it vanish with a worried frown. It was possible that another tourist might drive from Sofia to Shipka Pass along this same route, and at precisely the same hour, but it struck her as exceedingly odd that they reached Shipka Pass at the same time. She had stopped for gas at Zlatica, and had seen the Renault pass them, and then they had stopped at the monastery and had again seen the Renault pass. Yet the Renault had not reached the summit before they did, and now it was just leaving.

  If that's the same Renault, then we're being followed, she thought, naming her fear. But by whom? There had been the small gray man in the gray suit, her mysterious b
urglar of the first evening, the man with the knife last night, and there was the remote possibility that Tsanko could be keeping them under surveillance. She couldn't imagine Balkantourist going to such lengths to make sure that she reached Borovets. Remembering Nevena's character, she thought that Balkantourist would have flagged her down two miles out of Sofia and sternly forced her back on the road southward.

  I don't like it, she thought, remembering that she was here on nothing but faith and a telephone call from a stranger. It was extraordinary, this abrupt order to leave Sofia and drive halfway across Bulgaria. Could Tsanko really be trusted?

  She felt acutely lonely as she stood listening to the sound of the wind. Her only companion was a charming, waif-like child who was more likely to prove a liability in case of untoward circumstances. She herself felt unaccountably frail. She thought it must stem from the odd juxtaposition of the familiar and the sinister; no country so foreign in nature had the right to look so much like the American countryside of New England, with Queen Anne's lace growing along the roads, poplar trees and spruces thickly lining the slopes, and mountains scalloping the horizon at a distance. It was not New England, but its very familiarity blunted all sense of real danger. She had to struggle to remember that this was a police state and a country where almost no English was spoken. What was most provoking of all, the words were so cluttered with consonants that one couldn't even guess their meaning. What could one do with a word spelled CBJIT?

  "Hey-what's the matter?" asked Debby, joining her, "You look spooky."

  "I feel spooky," admitted Mrs. Pollifax with a frown. "I don't know why, either, except I have the feeling we shouldn't have stopped here for lunch."

  "It must be the ghosts of Shipka Pass," Debby said. "You know-those twenty-eight thousand Bulgarians tilled here fighting the Turks."

  "Of course," said Mrs. Pollifax lightly. "Shall we go now?"

  They had traveled only a few miles down the mountainside when the brakes failed. The road was steep and curving, with a precipitous drop on the right and a precipitous slope on the left. As Mrs. Pollifax stamped helplessly on the brake pedal again and again the car only gathered momentum. Furiously she tugged at the emergency brake; for just a second it caught, lessening their speed, and then the emergency snapped under the strain and came away in her hand. ' "What is it?" cried Debby.