Free Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico

a sufficiently reassuring one. They were mostly middle class or elderly people with a few groups wearing special badges to identify them on a trip to confirm the Soviet Paradise as well as a few worker types, probably, Mrs Harris thought, shop stewards going over to get their instructions for making more trouble for British industry. Mrs Harris’s politics were those of her clients.
    The inspection of passports at immigration was cursory but then they found themselves guided by several airport hostesses off to one side and a door leading to an enclosure before the departure lounge. There was a long counter in the room, a number of uniformed police and two policewomen. It took only the first glimpse of the blue to set Mrs Butterfield off again and clutching Ada by the arm she quavered, ‘It’s the police. What’s ’appening? I told you, they know about that bloody letter. We’re for it.’
    Ada shook her off and whispered, ‘Shut up, Vi, it ain’t us. It’s the syme for everybody. Carn’t you see? There’s nuffink to be afraid of.’
    Although Mrs Harris had never before been through one of these airport frisks she was knowledgeable from complaints of some of her employers as to what a bore it was to travel by air these days. Indeed the inspection was routine and one which by now has become familiar to every airline traveller who, unless he is packing a .38 or a hand grenade, goes through it with resigned patience and even a sense of relief that precautions are taken to make sure that the party sitting next to them isn’t loaded for bear.
    Handbags, briefcases, airline overnight carryalls and packages were given a swift but thorough inspection and then returned to their owners who were then guided along to pass between two uniformed technicians who, holding electronic metal detectors in their hands, passed them over the contours of the passengers which would signal the presence of any untoward hardware concealed about their persons. One man going through elicited a faint piping from one of the gadgets but, asked to turn out his pockets, proved to be carrying nothing more lethal than a rather over-large bunch of keys.
    However, the effect upon Mrs Butterfield when the inspector opened Mrs Harris’s handbag and the fatal letter showed between the brochures wasshattering. Her tiny mouth quivered, her round florid face was drained of all colour and gobbets of perspiration gathered on her forehead. If the police were looking for anyone acting in a suspicious or agitated manner they had a beauty right under their noses.
    Still, the searchers merely dug their fingers into the corners feeling for small calibre artillery and not finding any in the property of the two ladies handed the bags back.
    In her agitation Mrs Butterfield at first did not take notice that she had been given Mrs Harris’s handbag while Ada had hers. It was not until she reached the men with the gadgets that she realized that it was now she who carried the letter.
    Thus she arrived before them in a state of abject terror which was wholly justified apparently by the results, for as the technicians performed their little contour pantomime rather exaggeratedly around the outlines of her rotund figure both the gadgets gave forth loud and high-pitched screams of triumph.
    From Mrs Butterfield emerged one anguished moan. ‘Oh my Gawd, the bloody letter.’ She then melted to the floor in a dead faint. Even from that distance the metal detectors continued to cheer.
    Mrs Harris stared horrified at her friend. Would she have been so foolish because of what she had been told of Mr Geoffrey Lockwood as to haveconcealed a lethal weapon upon her person? But no, she had only known about the letter in the very last moment.
    The police were quietly efficient. They surrounded Mrs Butterfield. Smelling salts were produced. When she returned to life the two uniformed policewomen raised and escorted her into a side