Elusive Mrs. Pollifax Read Free Page A

brown travel coat that she intended to wear on the trip.
    About the hat she was as doubtful as he. Every design that he sketched looked top-heavy and he agreed this would be a problem. “You’ll be carrying almost fifteen ounces in the hat,” he pointed out. “Distributed, of course. Pillbox? Derby?” He sighed. “It offends the aesthetics.”
    “What will you do?”
    “The hat itself must be very light in weight, yet look heavy enough–complicated enough–to explain its odd bulk. Perhaps a wire structure with two-inch roses covering it?”
    Mrs. Pollifax winced.
    “A polyethylene motor helmet?” he suggested, pencil flying, and then after a glance at Mrs. Pollifax–her cheerful round face, bright eyes and unsubdued fly-away white hair–he sighed and discreetly put that idea aside. “Will you trust me?”
    “I don’t want to,” Mrs. Pollifax told him frankly, “but I’m due at the Art Association lunch in half an hour. I shall have to trust you.”
    He left with relief, carrying measurements and notes.
    On the following day there were fresh instructions from Carstairs–really Mrs. Pollifax had not felt so popularsince she’d won a first prize for her geraniums.
    “We’ve come up with something to help blunt Balkantourist’s interest in you,” he said. “At least we think it may if you can wangle it. There’s a chap in Sofia you might try to hire as private guide on your arrival.”
    Mrs. Pollifax frowned. “I don’t understand. Won’t Balkantourist object to my doing this?”
    Carstairs’ voice was dry. “They’ll probably find it amusing. This man has worked for them on a number of occasions, but he drinks too much to be reliable. Our newsmen often use him when they pass through Sofia. His name is Carleton Bemish.”
    “Bemish,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, writing it down.
    “He’s an Englishman–an expatriate–who’s lived in Sofia for years and speaks the language fluently. He’s even married to a Bulgarian. Technically he’s a free-lance correspondent–does pieces for the London papers when there’s a Balkan crisis–but actually he’s one of those alcoholic hangers-on who can never go home again because of some tawdry scandal or another.”
    “He doesn’t sound very appetizing,” commented Mrs. Pollifax.
    “Of course not. From what I’m told he’d sell his own mother, but he’ll be a helluva lot easier to lose than Balkantourist when the time comes for you to make contact. By the way, we’ve decided you should rent a car for your stay in Sofia. That might entice Bemish, too–he doesn’t have one. Is your license up to date?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Try to get Bemish,” he said, and rang off.
    Mrs. Pollifax added his name to her list and continued her research on Bulgaria, impressed and surprised to learn that it had been free of Turkey’s oppressive rule for only some eighty years. It was the Russians who had helped liberate Bulgaria from Turkey, and it was the Russians who had liberated them later from the Nazis. It suggested a much more congenial relationship thanshe’d expected, and a difference from other satellite countries that intrigued her.
    There was one visitor to Mrs. Pollifax’s apartment, however, that she had not expected. She came home one afternoon to find her door ajar and the lock so jammed that she could not turn the key in it. Yet so far as Mrs. Pollifax could discover nothing at all had been taken. “But just see the lock,” she told the policeman when he arrived.
    “You’re sure nothing was stolen?” he said skeptically.
    “I looked very carefully while I waited for you,” she told him. “The only jewelry of any value is still in the box on my bureau. I have about thirty dollars in bills and small change lying here on the bookcase–in plain sight–in the Mexican pottery bowl. Even my television set’s untouched, and it’s portable.”
    “Odd,” said the policeman, looking as baffled as Mrs. Pollifax felt. “Let’s make a few