Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman Read Free Book Online

moved stealthily away from the foot of the bed and went toward the closet, where he turned on a small flashlight. He leaned over the lock, his back to her.
    If he wasn’t Tsanko, she thought indignantly, then he must be a plain, old-fashioned burglar, and without stopping to consider the risks Mrs. Pollifax slid out of her bed and stood up. Carefully tiptoeing along the wall she came up behind the man, flattened her right hand and delivered a medium karate chop to the side of his neck–atleast she hoped it was only a medium blow–and watched him sink to the floor.
    Switching on the lights she saw there was no doubt at all that the man was a thief because he held her brown quilted coat in his arms. He lay on his side, half of the coat trapped under him, a relatively young man wearing a black suit and black tie. Stepping over him she went to the telephone and picked up the receiver. “I have a burglar in my room,” she told the desk clerk coldly.
    The reply was depressing and sounded like,
“Murdekoochinko lesso razenum.”
    “Burglar. Thief!” she said. “Does anyone speak English?”
    “Anglichanin? Ameryerikanski?”
    Mrs. Pollifax grimly put down the phone, stepped again over the man and opened the door. She peered outside; the halls were deserted. Leaving her door open she walked down to the elevator, but there was no one there either. With a sigh she stepped into it and descended to the lobby.
    There were two men at the desk, and it was a full two minutes before they were able to control their surprise at seeing Mrs. Pollifax emerge from the elevator in flowered pajamas. It was at least another several minutes before they understood that she wanted them to return to her room with her, and this appeared to induce in them an even deeper state of shock. Neither of them spoke English and it was necessary for them to identify her by their desk records. When this had been done they telephoned Balkantourist.
    A peevish Nevena was reached at last. “It is 3 A.M. ,” she announced furiously.
    “I have a burglar lying on the floor of my hotel room,” Mrs. Pollifax told her.
    This was translated by Nevena to the room clerk, who stared at Mrs. Pollifax incredulously.
    The phone was handed back to Mrs. Pollifax. “We donot have thieves in Bulgaria,” Nevena said coldly, and then with outrageous illogic, “You should not encourage such matters by not locking your closet and your door.”
    “I locked both the doors to the closet and the door to my room,” said Mrs. Pollifax crisply. “I placed the key to the closet under my pillow and slept on it. But the man had already broken into the closet because he had my brown quilted coat in his arms. I saw it.”
    Orders were given to the hotel clerks, one of whom gestured Mrs. Pollifax to the elevator and returned with her to the sixth floor. He accompanied her to her room, where the door remained open. He first looked inside, cautiously.
    Mrs. Pollifax followed him in. The room was empty.
    “He’s gone,” she said indignantly. “He’s gotten away.”
    The desk clerk pointed to the door of the closet and looked at her questioningly. For a moment Mrs. Pollifax didn’t understand, and then she saw that the door was locked. She went to her pillow. The key had not been touched, and removing it she returned to the closet. With the desk clerk watching she unlocked and opened the door.
    Her coat was hanging in the closet, as well as her clothes. The hat was on the shelf. Nothing had been touched.
    In open-mouthed astonishment–for she had just seen her coat
out
of the closet–she turned to the desk clerk. It needed only one glance to understand what he thought. “Amerikanski,” he muttered indignantly, and left.
    What Nevena’s reaction would be to the locked closet taxed Mrs. Pollifax’s imagination. This time before retiring, however, she placed two chairs in front of her door and hid the key to the closet under the mattress.
    On first encounter Nevena gave no