Elusive Mrs. Pollifax Read Free Page B

inquiries. Maybe someone noticed a stranger on the premises. Your burglar may have been frightened away before he got inside.”
    The only person who had seen anyone at all in the hall that day was Miss Hartshorne, whose apartment lay across the hall. “Yes, I saw a stranger,” she said. “I’d been downtown, and was having a little trouble finding the key in my purse. So I took longer than usual, and the elevator door opened and …”
    Mrs. Pollifax was listening, as well as the policeman, and she smiled reassuringly at her friend. “But who was it?” she asked.
    “Oh, he couldn’t have been your burglar,” Miss Hartshorne said flatly. “He had such a good face. Cheerful. He was whistling as he came out of the elevator.”
    Mrs. Pollifax said firmly, “Grace, some of the most fiendish murderers have kind, cheerful faces. What man?”
    “The young man who was delivering your cleaning. He held it up rather high as he came down the hall. It was on a hanger wrapped in that transparent plastic, youknow. He said ‘Good afternoon,’ and I said ‘Good afternoon’ and then I found my key, unlocked my door and went in. He walked on to your door.”
    “What on earth made you think he went to
my
door?” asked Mrs. Pollifax. “Did you actually see him?”
    Miss Hartshorne looked reproachful. “No, but I knew he was going there because he was carrying your coat, Emily. That quilted brown raincoat you wear. The new one. I could see it very clearly through the plastic.”
    Mrs. Pollifax looked at her thoughtfully, and then at the policeman, who had written all this down, and who now thanked Miss Hartshorne for her help. She did not say anything. She went back alone into her apartment to wait for the locksmith, but she remained thoughtful for a long time because she had not sent her quilted brown coat to the cleaner. She opened the closet door and looked inside. The coat hung there without any transparent wrappings. She took it out and examined it, then put her hand into each pocket. From one she drew out a wrinkled handkerchief with the initials EP, and from the other a bus token. She carried the coat to the window and studied it more carefully in the sunlight, but nothing appeared to be different. She put it on and observed it in the mirror. For a moment she thought it might be a shade longer than she remembered it, and then she chided herself for imagining things. She returned it to the closet.
    But still it remained something of a mystery, not totally to be dismissed and apparently not to be solved until Miss Hartshorne changed her mind about its being this particular coat she’d seen.
    A week later Mrs. Pollifax left for the Balkans wearing the coat and her new custom-made hat. She had misjudged Osmonde. He had produced a marvelously imaginative hat, and just the kind that she enjoyed most. It was an inflated, cushiony bird’s nest made out of soft woven straw with a small feathered bird perched at thepeak. It was true that it had a tendency to tilt, but Mrs. Pollifax skewered it sternly in place with three stout hatpins.
    “You
what?
” said Bishop incredulously. He had been on vacation for a week–his first vacation in five years–and he had returned only the day before. Now a cable had arrived from Bulgaria that was utterly mystifying to Bishop. It lay on the desk between them in Carstairs’ office. It read:
    COAT FOR 10573 CLEARED OKAY AND IN POSSESSION, WILL PROCEED AS DIRECTED .
    10573 was Mrs. Pollifax’s file number.
    Carstairs sighed. “I told you, it’s this damn economy drive. Upstairs insisted. Budgetwise, it took two experienced men a week to forge those passports, and then there were Mrs. Pollifax’s travel expenses, not to mention Osmonde’s bill for the hat. As they pointed out Upstairs, we get nothing but good will out of sending eight forged passports into Bulgaria. It’s not enough to justify the expense. I was told this
flatly
. I had to share my courier.”
    Bishop said accusingly,