Amazing Mrs. Pollifax Read Online Free PDF Page B

was! A neat sign over the bell said RAMSEY ENTERPRISES LTD. A small dusty sign below it read R AMSEY D OCUMENTARIES IN R EAR (Documentaries! thought Mrs. Pollifax); a third sign read H UBERT L UDLOW R AMSEY , E SQ . Mrs. Pollifax pushed the bell. Nothing happened. Sounds of traffic came dimly to her ears, and among the wilting bougainvillea a bee droned monotonously. From the other side of the alley’s wall came shouts of muffled argument, and from a distance the sound of a muezzin’s chant. Mrs. Pollifax turned her back on the front door and walked firmly down the narrow, beaten-earth driveway toward R AMSEY D OCUMENTARIES IN R EAR .
    She came out upon a small cobbled courtyard walled with bougainvillea. A dusty van was parked here beside an equally dusty old jeep, and beyond them lay a series of small cement-block buildings, obviously quite new: a garage, a building with two skylights, and a small office bearing a sign
RAMSEY ENTERPRISES
. The door to this office stood open, and as Mrs. Pollifax approached it she heard someone swearing—steadily and scathingly—in English.
    “Good afternoon,” called out Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully.
    The swearing immediately broke off, and a round, owlish face peered around the door. “What the devil!” exclaimed the young man in baffled astonishment, and then, “I say—I’m awfully sorry, you overheard the swearing?”
    “Every word,” said Mrs. Pollifax amiably. “Is it a habit of yours?”
    “It’s rapidly becoming one,” he said crossly from somewhere inside (“I’m putting on a shirt,” he explained in an aside). “I’m swearing because I’ve been doing some filming while my uncle’s away and not one damned frame has come out yet. My uncle will have my head for it. No, he’ll probably fire me.”
    “Why didn’t the pictures come out?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax curiously.
    His voice drew closer. “Because yesterday I left the lens cap on, and today they’re all light-struck.” He suddenly appeared in the door, a small, compact young man wearing a fierce scowl, dusty khaki shorts, dusty shirt and dusty boots.
    “Then you must be Colin Ramsey,” said Mrs. Pollifax warmly, extending her hand. “You have to be Colin Ramsey.”
    “I don’t have to be but I am,” he said suspiciously. “Are you a friend of Uncle Hu’s?”
    “No, of your sister’s,” she told him. “That is, I flew from London to Athens with her today—my name’s Mrs. Pollifax—and if I had time she asked me to stop in and give you both her love and this ring.”
    His face brightened. “Did she really! I say, that’s decent of her.” He took the ring and looked at it. “Beautiful Mia—what on earth is she doing in Athens! I suppose she’s left school again?”
    “I didn’t hear anything about school; she’s modeling.”
    He nodded, still staring down at the ring. “Funny,” he mused, “this came from Uncle Hu when we were still in the nursery, I’d forgotten its source until this minute. He gave it me, said it was magic or some such bit of whimsy, and for years I wore it faithfully on a string around my neck. That’s how it all started, and here I am working for Uncle Hu now, and the ring’s here, too.” His laugh was so bitter it startled him as well as Mrs. Pollifax and he glanced up. “It’s really decent of you to have bothered with this, and I’m being terribly rude, boring you with my blighted life. May I offer you a lemonade?”
    “You weren’t being rude, you were feeling sorry for yourself,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax firmly. “And yes it
was
decent of me, except that I had too much time for just eating and not enough time for sleeping because of having to beback at the hotel before eight. Also I was curious. Yes, I will have a lemonade, thank you.”
    “Curious because of Mia?” he asked.
    “Not entirely. I thought it restful—soothing, you know—to have a small errand to run, and the name and address of someone here, in a strange city and strange