Free Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

them down to the lobby, the doors slid open and Mrs. Pollifax carried her bloody companion into the lobby.
    The picture they made abolished any need for translations. The desk clerk shouted, rang bells, pressed buzzers; a potential hotel scandal provoked the same reaction in any language and any country. Debby was delivered into the hands of a doctor who arrived breathless and belt-less and still in bedroom slippers. The manager of the hotel followed, and then at last a representative of Balkantourist–but not Nevena, for which Mrs. Pollifax could be grateful.
    It was daylight before it was all over: the setting and bandaging of Debby’s thumb, the stitching of the scalp wound and the questions. It no longer mattered to Mrs.Pollifax how it had all happened. What began to matter very much was her departure for Tarnovo in several hours; this was, after all, the whole point of her being in Bulgaria. “I want to speak,” she told the Balkantourist representative firmly.
    “Yes?”
    “I am due to leave Sofia this morning in my car.”
    “Yes, yes, they have your passport ready to give you,” he said.
    “And the girl is to leave Sofia by plane this morning–”
    “No,” said the Balkantourist representative flatly.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “The doctor says
no
. The doctor is firm. The girl cannot take flight alone. She must be looked after twenty-four hours. She is tired–spent, you know? There is some shock. To wander alone”–he shook his head disapprovingly–“she would cry, maybe faint, go unconscious. She needs the comfort of a presence, you understand?”
    Mrs. Pollifax considered this; he was only too right, of course, but she couldn’t possibly delay her own departure. Yet if she couldn’t leave Debby here alone then there was only one alternative, and this dismayed her because she had no idea what lay ahead of her in Tarnovo. “Is she well enough to do a little driving in a car? In my
presence?
”
    This was queried of the doctor, who smiled warmly, nodding. Mr. Eastlake wouldn’t like this, she thought, but then Mr. Eastlake could be prevented from knowing about it. Tsanko wouldn’t like it either–if they ever made contact–and she was sure that Carstairs would be appalled.
    But she could scarcely abandon the child to a lonely hotel room for several days, and she could certainly not insist that Debby fly off to another lonely hotel room in another strange country. Her limitations as a ruthless agent had never been so pressing. Mrs. Pollifax sighed over them even as she said, “Good. She’ll go with me then.”
    Everyone looked extremely relieved, and Mrs. Pollifax realized that the hotel would be delighted to be rid of her. Just to be sure of this she asked that a basket of fruit be packed for their drive, and two breakfasts be sent to her room.
    It was exactly half-past nine when they drove away from the hotel, and considering the obstacles they’d encountered, Mrs. Pollifax congratulated herself on their leaving at all. Debby was curled up in the rear seat with orders to read road signs, remain quiet and stay warm. In any case Mrs. Pollifax had to concentrate for the first half an hour on getting them out of Sofia, with its maze-like streets leading into broad boulevards whose names all seemed to end in
ev
or
iski
. It was made more difficult by the fact that she wanted to go east on Route One toward Tarnovo, but she had been given detailed directions south, into artery number five, which would take her to Borovets. She was aware by this time of how few people spoke English in Bulgaria–and the perils of getting lost under such conditions–and so she simply followed her printed directions out of Sofia and then detoured north to Route One through a town called–incongruously–Elin Pelin. But all of this added miles to their excursion.
    “There–we have reached Route One at last,” she announced as they bounced onto a paved road. “Thank heaven that route numbers look the same in any