The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  "I can't say very much for him, either," said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling. "I think that Mr. Carstairs would be extremely surprised by what we've seen tonight, too."

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Carstairs is the gentleman who—uh—arranged my coming here."

  Colin said with a crooked smile, "To have sent you he must have a real sense of humor. There's the warning bell— come along to the front of the van, we're almost there."

  "Oh," said Mrs. Pollifax in a hollow voice, turned off the flashlight and crept back into the passenger seat.

  The ferry nudged its way into the slip, chains rattled, gates opened and engines warmed up. The cars ahead began to move, and Colin inched the van forward. Slowly they drove off the ferry and into the night: no police whistles shrilled, no one ran toward them shouting at them to halt. They had crossed the Bosporus and left the peninsula of Istanbul behind without incident. "Now where are we?" inquired Mrs. Pollifax and brought out her guide book.

  "No need for that," said Colin. "This is Uskudar, formerly Chrysopolis, and noted mainly as a suburb and for its enormous Buyuk Mezaristan, or cemetery."

  "Cemetery!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax thoughtfully.

  Colin looked at her. "You can't possibly—"

  "But we must find somewhere appropriate to leave Henry."

  He groaned. "You look so extremely respectable, you know."

  "I have a flexible mind—I believe it's one of the advantages of growing old," she explained. "I find youth quite rigid at times. Why not a cemetery?"

  Colin sighed. "I daresay there's a certain logic there. You're not—uh—thinking of burying him as well?"

  "That would be illegal," she told him reproachfully, "and scarcely kind to Henry."

  "Sorry," he said. He peered out at a sign, and nodded. "This is the avenue—I think we're driving alongside the cemetery now. Watch for an entrance, will you?"

  Several moments later they left the world of trams, lights and occasional automobiles and entered a subterranean night world of awesome silence. "This is the cemetery?" faltered Mrs. Pollifax.

  "It's a cypress grove, quite huge. There's a sultan buried in the old part. I'd call the new part spooky enough."

  "But what curious headstones!"

  "They're Moslem, of course. The steles with knobs on the top represent women, the ones with turbans are men. Then there are variations—I've forgotten them—for priests and those who've gone to Mecca."

  The van bumped to a jarring halt and he cut the motor. At once the silence was filled with an overwhelming drone of chirping grasshoppers and shrilling cicadas; the volume was incredible, as if they had entered a jungle. The headlights picked out tangles of sinister dark undergrowth and the silhouette of hundreds of headstones leaning in every conceivable direction. The moon, dimmer now and trailing clouds behind it, sailed over the forsaken scene and added a ghostly pallor to the tombs. When an owl hooted mournfully Mrs. Pollifax jumped.

  "Well," said Colin, and flicked off the headlights.

  "I suppose you had to turn off the lights?" said Mrs. Pollifax as both darkness and insect noises moved in on them.

  "I really don't think we're supposed to be here," Colin pointed out reasonably.

  "I can't think why not," she said bravely, and climbed down from her seat.

  Clumsily, laboriously, they carried Henry from his hiding place and lifted him down to the damp grass. "Where do you want him?" asked Colin.

  Mrs. Pollifax ignored the irony in his voice. "Over by that larger stone, I think, we want him to be noticed soon but not immediately. Do you think those horrid men took his identification?"

  "Probably," gasped Colin as they carried Henry across a path that felt like a brook bed, up a small slope and to the larger, paler headstone that had caught Mrs. Pollifax's eye. "Don't show a light!" he said sharply.

  'Tm writing his name and the name of his hotel on a slip of paper," she explained. "There! Henry Miles, care of Oteli Itep." She leaned over and tucked it into the pocket of his dark jacket. "I should like someone to do as much for me," she said firmly. She stood a moment looking into the eerie black shapes of gnarled tree trunks, creeping shrubbery and mooncast shadows. "He was a very nice man," she said at last. "Now, do let's leave."

  "What did you do—roll 'im?" said a deep, lazy, amused voice from the darkness.

  Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw a shadow detach itself from the darkness of the tomb. A giant of a man arose, stretched himself calmly, yawned and strolled nonchalantly toward them. In the dim light he looked seven feet tall but this was a trick of shadows—Colin turned on the flashlight, and he shrank to a more reasonable six feet. His face was swarthy, with dirty scraggly hair and a stubble of a beard. He wore filthy sailors' pants, a jacket that had once been white, a frayed turtle-neck sweater. His feet were shod in a pair of old sneakers with a hole in each toe.

  Colin said bravely, "Who the devil are you, and what are you doing behind that gravestone?"

  "Sleeping," said the man, looking down at them. 'Til you drove in and woke me up." He put his hands on his hips and surveyed Mrs. Pollifax with interest, his eyes moving appreciatively over the flowered hat, lingering on her face, then smiling as they took in the navy blue suit, white blouse and shoes. He shook his head. "Now I seen everything!" He dropped to the ground and peered at Henry. "He's dead," he said. "You shoot him?"

  "No."

  "Then what the hell."

  "Someone else shot him," Colin said crossly.

  "We didn't know what else to do with him," explained Mrs. Pollifax. "Since we just happened to be passing by— why are you here?" she asked sternly.

  "That's my business." He stood up and looked at them. "A couple of tourists dropping off a guy with a bullet hole in his chest!" He shook his head. "Now wouldn't the police like to hear about that?"

  Mrs. Pollifax stiffened. "Nonsense. I very much doubt that you can afford to talk to the police."

  He laughed; his guffaw threatened to awaken even the dead. "You got a suspicious mind. Okay, so I'm sleeping in a graveyard. So I'm broke. So you got a corpse, it makes us even. You also got a truck and you're gonna drive it out of here. I need to get out of here. I had it in mind we might make a deal." His voice caressed the last word. "Wotthehell, how about it? I'll take a lift if you're going in the right direction."

  "Which direction is that?" asked Colin cautiously.

  Cunningly the man replied, "Which direction you heading?"

  Mrs. Pollifax realized that she wasn't certain of this herself. "How do we proceed?" she asked.

  "Toward Ankara."

  "Perfect!" said their new companion, beaming at them. "Got a friend there that owes me money."

  "Have you a passport?"

  "Of a sort."

  "What's your name?"

  "Sandor's enough. Just Sandor."

  "Greek?"

  "Of a sort."

  "A sailor?"

  The man was clearly laughing at them now. "Of a sort."

  "Can you drive?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "I can drive."

  Mrs. Pollifax exchanged glances with Colin. "An unholy alliance," commented Colin.

  "Sheerest blackmail, of course," said Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully.

  "But mutual," pointed out Colin with a faint smile. "All right, Sandor, we'll give you a lift."

  "Of course," he said. "But on a condition."

  Mrs. Pollifax stiffened. "Oh?"

  "No monkey business—no stops. I don't want no welcoming committees in Ankara."

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "That—uh—fits our plans quite well," she conceded graciously. "You know a way to Ankara that avoids—uh—welcoming committees?"

  "Know the city like the back of my hand!"

  "A veritable jewel," she murmured.

  As they walked back to the van Colin said in a low voice, "Of course you realize he's wanted by the police."

  "Then he's in good company," she pointed out in a kind voice. "What would you guess his crime to be?"

/>   "Smuggling's big along the coast, and if he's been a sailor he's probably been involved in smuggling. Opium, probably."

  "Opium," repeated Mrs. Pollifax, and smiled. "So now we have joined the underworld! How very surprising life can be ... 1"

  8

  They Drove Alono nibbling at the grapes with which Sandor had equipped himself for his night in the graveyard. Following his initial shock at discovering they already had a passenger—"She dead, too?" he had asked with professional interest—Sandor announced that he was going to sleep before he did any driving. "But I'll know if you stop," he said, drawing a serviceable gun from a pocket. "I'll sleep on the floor. Any monkey tricks and I'll shoot."

  "Why didn't you show your gun earlier?" asked Mrs. Pollifax curiously.

  His glance was withering; obviously he felt that his wits and his tongue were sufficient for gullible foreigners. "Did I need to?" he asked with a shrug. "Now, drive." Whereupon he lay down on the floor of the van, curled up and began snoring.

  The moon that had perversely haunted them hours earlier now disappeared just when it would have been the most appreciated, and to further depress Mrs. Pollifax the road to Izmit was bumpy. At first the Bay of Kadikôy cheered her with its cluster of lights, and later there were sustaining glimpses of the Sea of Marmora but presently a light rain began to fall, blurring all the lights and with it any hope of sightseeing. Mrs. Pollifax's thoughts darkened equally: she had neither slept nor eaten anything of substance since her arrival in Istanbul and she was beginning to feel the lack of both: lemonade and grapes served only as an appetizer for a dinner that moved increasingly out of reach. She was also beginning to feel the irregularity of her situation: having never in her life received so much as a parking ticket she was under suspicion by the police in this supposedly friendly country, and presently she might even become the subject of a nationwide alarm. She had arrived in this country with Henry, and Henry was dead. There was no one at all to whom she could appeal—certainly not to Dr. Belleaux now— and her companions in exile were a young British misfit and a disreputable blackmailer acquired in a cemetery.

  It was difficult to figure out just how it had all happened. Perhaps I'm too flexible, she thought, and turned to scrutinize Colin beside her. She was not a fool. There were high stakes involved in this assignment, and many crosscurrents which she would probably never know about. It had already occurred to her that Mia Ramsey could have been artfully placed on the plane beside her to girlishly suggest looking up Colin. But there had been no certainty that Mrs. Pollifax would contact Colin at all, and several hours later it was Colin who had saved Magda by concealing her from the police. If he were part of a vast and sinister scheme it was doubtful that he would have telephoned and left a message asking Mrs. Pollifax to retrieve her lost friend; Magda would instead have disappeared forever. No, she had to regard Colin as a small miracle.

  The van's headlights picked out pretty little suburban villas and strange place names: Kiziltoprak, Goztepe, Cad-debostani Erenkoy, Saudiye, Bostanci. At a town called Maltepe the road met the sea again and followed it on to the seaside port of Kartal. To keep Colin awake Mrs. Pollifax read the road directions from the small guide book she had purchased in London. When this palled she read from the same book brief histories of the Ottoman and then the Seljuk Empires until a listless Colin complained that Sandor's snoring was more stimulating than ancient history. They then argued whether, once past Izmit, they should drive to Ankara by way of Bolu or Beyzapari.

  "Which is the route people usually prefer?" she asked.

  "Bolu. The road's excellent."

  'Then I think we should go by way of Beyzapari."

  They were still arguing this when they reached Izmit at half-past three in the morning. As they crossed the railroad tracks to leave the town they saw the first brightening of the horizon in the east, and seeing it Colin nodded. "All right, Beyzapari. The thought of getting to Ankara quickly is very tempting—after all, it's 292 miles and we've gone only sixty— but if dawn's coming, and the police will be looking for the van, then 1 concede we might not get to Ankara at all if we go by Bolu. By the way, what exactly do you expect—being an experienced undercover agent," he added dryly.

  "I am not an undercover agent," said Mrs. Pollifax tartly. "I'm a courier. As to what I expect I would say just about anything, but that's because of Dr. Belleaux, you see."

  Colin said wryly, "You've not yet found that rational explanation for Magda's being carried off to his house?"

  "No I haven't," she said frankly, "and the really frightening part of it all is that he's a man whom everyone trusts. Carstairs told me he enjoys the confidence of the Turkish and American governments and you've described him as being a consultant to the police here and enjoying everyone's confidence. I seriously doubt that Carstairs would even remotely consider Dr. Belleaux's being involved in any treachery."

  Colin said dryly, "Which leaves us the only two people who think otherwise? Damn it, that's a horrible thought!"

  "Yes it is," said Mrs. Pollifax, and shivered. "But no matter how kind we try to be to Dr. Belleaux there's no getting around the fact that while he gives parties in his downstairs livingroom there are two chaps upstairs drugging a defenseless woman."

  "Definitely a double standard there," agreed Colin.

  She nodded. "His reputation makes it so patently unfair! There's no way to fight him—except to run, and I'm not sure that running is sensible, either, since it leaves him with an absolutely free hand. Just think of the possibilities open to him!"

  "It's better you don't," Colin said gently.

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. He was quite right: they would be rendered helpless, like the tiger in a tiger hunt, with the police and Dr. Belleaux—separately or even together—beating the bushes in a steadily diminishing circle until they were isolated and then flushed out. "At least I have Magda," she said, but since she did not have the slightest idea of what to do with Magda, or how to get her safely out of the country before the police found them, this was not essentially comforting.

  "Could you get word to your friend in Washington?" Colin asked.

  "I don't know," she said slowly. "I was given strict orders not to. I was also given strict orders never to contact Henry; but then I did, you see, in order to warn him he was being followed, and you know what a monstrous mistake that was. I led Stefan straight back to Magda. A cable to Mr. Carstairs might do the same thing. Do you need to show a passport to send a cable?"

  "Probably. I have mine with me but of course by the time we get to Ankara the police may very well be looking for me, too."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pollifax in a depressed voice, and resumed staring out of the window.

  Beyond Izmit the road dipped down to Gcyve and then wound up again through hills covered with fields of wheat and tobacco. Dawn found them on a high plateau beyond Goynuk, and then they reached a pass and coasted down into a plain. Beyond the town of Nallihan Colin suddenly pulled the van off to one side of the road and braked to a stop. "We've gone nearly a hundred and sixty miles and I'm tired," he said, mopping his forehead with his sleeve. "Sandor's going to have to pay his way now. Sandor," he called. "It's morning—half-past seven—and your turn to drive."

  "What the hell," said Sandor, making a great deal of noise yawning. "This lady back here is staring at me," he complained. "Is there breakfast?"

  "There's a camp stove somewhere," said Colin, "and the water jug is full, I filled it myself—Uncle Hu is always very fussy about that. And I believe there are bouillon cubes, dusty but soluble."

  "But that's wonderful," said Mrs. Pollifax with feeling. She crawled back to Magda who was staring at the roof of the van with a puzzled expression. Seeing Mrs. Pollifax she said in a weak voice that bore a trace of irony, "Where am I now?"

  "It's a little difficult to explain."

  "Who was that man who snores so dreadfully?"

  'That's even more difficult to explain. How are you feeling?"

  "Weak and very
thirsty. I have been drugged again?"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "It might be wise for you to get some fresh air now. It's very hot back here. Colin is making broth for you."

  "Colin! That funny young man is still here?"

  "The situation is extremely fluid and unconventional," Mrs. Pollifax told her, "but we are moving in the direction of Yozgat." She helped her to her feet, and out of the van to the roadside where Colin had set up his sterno.

  Colin was saying, "Presently we'll be crossing the Anatolian plain and there will be even more sun, wind and dust." The water he was nursing came to a boil, he stirred bouillon into it and carefully divided it among four battered tin mugs. "Here you are," he said.

  Never had Mrs. Pollifax tasted anything kinder to her palate: at first she rolled the broth on her tongue, savoring its wetness, and then she drank it greedily. "Purest nectar," she said with a sigh, and saw that color was coming back into Magda's white face for the first time. "At what hour do you think we will reach Ankara?" she asked.

  Sandor was noisily smacking his lips. "With me driving we go like the wind. Another forty miles to Beysapari, beyond that sixty maybe." He was studying the van. "She has a Land Rover body?"

  Colin nodded. "She's a rebuilt Land Rover, yes. Four-wheel drive and all that."

  Sandor nodded. "Very good! By early afternoon we get there, or near enough. Then we go by back roads. They are very bad," he added regretfully, "but very very private."

  "You are wanted by the police?" inquired Mrs. Pollifax companionably.

  Sandor grinned. "You are a nice lady but you ask too many questions. In Ankara I have fine friends and I let you go free."

  "Free?" said Mrs. Pollifax with amusement. "I didn't realize we'd been captured."

  He patted his pocket with meaning. "I have you under guard, beware. Now wotthehell, let's go."

  For some moments Mrs. Pollifax had been aware of a small piper cub plane drifting lazily along the horizon at a distance; she had watched it as Sandor talked. Now with one foot on the running board of the van she said in an alarmed voice, "Colin, look!" For the plane, having momentarily disappeared behind a ridge ahead of them, had suddenly reappeared now and was flying toward them at a shockingly low altitude. Colin stood behind her carrying the camp stove and squinting at the sky. The sound of the plane's engine grew frighteningly loud and for a moment Mrs. Pollifax wondered if they were going to be strafed: the plane passed so low that she could clearly see the face of the pilot, who in turn looked down at them; and then just as abruptly the plane's nose lifted, it climbed and began a long circle that carried it over the ridge again and away toward Ankara.