Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read Online Free PDF Page A

reached a decision and he knew it. “Bishop,” he said, “it’s unorthodox even for this unorthodox department, but damn it—order an immediate, top-priority security check run on”—he consulted the chaste white card on his desk—“on Mrs. Virgil Pollifax of the Hemlock Apartments in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I want the results before eight o’clock tomorrow morning. And when you’ve done that, Bishop, start praying.”
    “Praying, sir?”
    “Yes, Bishop. Pray that she’s never unwittingly contributed to subversive organizations, voted Socialist or entertained a Red bishop for dinner. After that,” he added flatly, “you can tell Mason to send Miss Webster home.”

CHAPTER 3
    “Flight Number 51 loading at Gate Four.… Flight Number 51 … to Mexico City loading at Gate Four.…”
    Mrs. Pollifax found her seat on the plane and sat down feeling suffused with an almost unbearable excitement. For days she had been practicing the inscrutable look of a secret agent, but now she found it impossible to sustain; she was far too enraptured by the thought of her first visit to Mexico and her first trip anywhere by jet. And it was just as well, she told herself sternly, for Mr. Carstairs had emphasized that she was not a secret agent but an American tourist. “You are to be yourself,” he had told her firmly, and had added, with a faint smile, “If I thought you capable of being anyone else I would never have given you this job to do.”
    Mrs. Pollifax had listened to him with shining eyes.
    “You will arrive in Mexico City on the third of August and you will check in at the Hotel Reforma Intercontinental. The reservations were made an hour ago, in your name. You will be Mrs. Virgil Pollifax, visiting Mexico for three weeks, and you will behave like any other tourist. Where you go is entirely up to you. You will be on your own completely, and I assume you’ll visit the usual tourist places, Taxco, Xochimilco, Acapulco, and so on—whatever is of interest to Mrs. VirgilPollifax. But on August 19, without fail, you will visit this bookstore on the Calle el Siglo in Mexico City.”
    He handed Mrs. Pollifax a slip of paper. “I want you to memorize this address before you leave the building,” he said quietly, and Mrs. Pollifax’s heart beat a little faster.
    “You will not see me again but you will be visited once before you leave by one of the men in my department who will make certain you’ve forgotten nothing.”
    Mrs. Pollifax had looked at the words on the piece of paper.
    El Papagayo Librerí (The Parrot Bookstore)
    Calle el Siglo 14,
    Mexico City
    Senor R. DeGamez, Proprietor—Fine Books Bought & Sold
    Carstairs had continued, “On the nineteenth of August you will walk into the bookshop and ask for Dickens’
A Tale of Two Cities
.”
    “The nineteenth,” Mrs. Pollifax repeated eagerly.
    “The gentleman there, whose name as you can see is Senor DeGamez, will say with regret that he is very sorry but he does not have a copy at the moment.”
    Mrs. Pollifax waited breathlessly.
    “Whereupon you will tell him—with the proper apology for contradicting him—that there is a copy in his window. You will then go to the window with him and he will find the book there and you will say, ‘I think Madame Defarge is simply gruesome, don’t you?’ ”
    Mrs. Pollifax repeated the words under her breath.
    “These identifying phrases are a nuisance,” Carstairs told her. “The gentleman will be expecting you about ten o’clock in the morning, but it is always wiser to have a double check set up for you both. Your asking for
A Tale of Two Cities
and your reference to Madame Defarge are the important things to remember.”
    Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “And that’s all?”
    “That is all.”
    “And whatever I’m to bring you will be in the book?” she asked, and instantly covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh dear, I should never have asked that, should I.”
    Carstairs smiled. “No, and I would not