Free Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

bandage her torn wrists and soak her bruises in a hot tub. There was, after all, a distinct difference between nearly deciding to step from the roof of an apartment house and in having such a decision wrested from her by men who appeared to be quite brutal. She did not want to die in a strange country and she did not labor under any illusions about Mr. Carstairs or her country coming to her rescue. If life was like a body of water, she had asked that she be allowed to walk again in its shallows; instead she had been abruptly seized by strong currents and pushed into deep water. It was a lonely situation, but Mrs. Pollifax was well acquainted with loneliness and it did not frighten her. What did frighten her was the thought of losing her dignity. The limits of her endurance had never been tested, and she had never met with cruelty before. If her life had to end soon she only hoped that it could end with dignity.
    But she saw no point in saying these things to the man who shared her predicament and who must also be thinking of these matters. He had more to lose than she; his life was only half completed and he would be thinking of the women he would never make love to again, and the children he would never have. A pity about the children, she mused … but in any case she must be very careful not to display any unsteadiness; it was the very least that the old could do for the young. “There’s no point in your being angry at
me
,” she said calmly. Her gaze fell to the seat beside Farrell and she gasped. “Look—my purse! They haven’t taken it away, it’s squashed down between your seat and the next.”
    “Thoroughly searched, of course,” he said, handing it to her. “What’s in it?” He leaned forward to watch as she opened the clasp.
    She, too, felt as if she were opening a Christmas grab bag. “It’s a good deal emptier,” she agreed, peering inside. “Yes, they’ve taken things. Oh dear, my aspirin’s gone,” she said mournfully.
    “Extremely suspect.”
    “And they’ve taken Bobby’s pocket knife—he’s my eleven-year-old grandson,” she exclaimed.
    “No, they wouldn’t approve of that at all.”
    “But the Band-Aids are here, and my wallet and coin purse and lipsticks—oh, and look,” she cried happily, “they’ve left me my playing cards!” She greeted them as old friends, slipping them tenderly out of their box.
    “Small comfort,” growled Farrell.
    “Oh, but you don’t know how comforting they can be,” she told him with the enthusiasm of a convert. “I already know twenty-two games. It’s true there are fifty-five more to learn—I have a book on it, you see—but it’s so relaxing and it will give me something to do.” She was already laying out cards in a circle on the seat beside her for a game of Clock Solitaire. “They left the chocolate bars too,” she said absently. “You can eat one if you’d like.”
    “You’re not particularly hungry, either?” he asked.
    She shook her head, her eyes on the cards.
    He said in a funny voice, “We ought to be hungry, you know. We ought to be terribly hungry.”
    Mrs. Pollifax put down a card and looked at him. “Why, yes, that’s true, we should be,” she said wonderingly. She frowned. “I had breakfast, and then that man’s tea, and nothing until night, and then I had only a slice of bread and a stale tortilla—I ought to be ravenous.”
    He hesitated and then said quietly, rolling up his sleeve, “I’m wondering if you have needle marks on your arm, too.”
    “Marks?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax, and stared in dismay at the arm he showed her. There were several angry red dots there, and a faint outline of gum where adhesive tape had been affixed and then removed. It was all the more unnerving to Mrs. Pollifax because she had been idly scratching at her arm since she awoke. She slipped out of her jacket and stared at her arm. “What are they?” she asked at last.
    “I think we’ve been fed