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 practising 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, there 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 I 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 in 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.”
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