Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

door
opened, startling her. She turned her head to see Peter walk in without
knocking and she was appalled at this breach of manners; not even the
assumption that he might have come to apologize dampened her sense of outrage.
She said angrily, ”Whether you realize it or not, Peter, it’s customary to
knock.”
    He stood there, arrogant, cold, and sulky. He closed the door behind him
and without paying her words any attention he walked across the room and tucked
the curtains more securely around the air-conditioner. Only then did he turn
and say quietly, in a voice she’d never heard from him before, ”I’ve come to
ask if you made contact with Guo Musu today.”

Chapter Seven
     
    M rs. Pollifax stared at him incredulously. ”You?” she gasped. ”You!”
    He stood silent, watching her, waiting.
    ”You’re too young,” she flung at him. ”You’re only twenty-two, how could
you possibly be one of Cars—” She stopped.
    ”One of Carstairs’ people,” he finished for her.
    She stared at him in shock, her mind spinning in an effort to adjust: not Joe Forbes, not Malcolm Styles, not George Westrum. She said,
feeling her way toward something concrete, ”You can’t possibly speak Chinese
or—”
    ”Fluently. Mandarin as well as several dialects.”
    ”There was that grandmother—”
    ”Oh yes, that grandmother,” he said with a faint smile. ”Born in Kansas City , Missouri ,
actually, and the closest she’s come to China is Mah-Jongg.”
    ”What’s more I’ve disliked you,” she told him angrily. ”I didn’t
realize how much until you walked in just now without knocking. Spoiled, sulky,
unappreciative—”
    ”That good, huh?”
    Mrs. Pollifax began to laugh. ”I see... yes. All right—- very good, and I’m acting like an idiot.” She held out her hand to him. ”I’m sorry.”
    His handclasp was firm. ”It was a shock for me when I first saw you
too,” he conceded politely. ”I won’t say where it was, but definitely it was a
shock.”
    ”That bad, huh?” she mimicked, smiling at him. ”Then shall we start all
over again before getting on with the job?”
    ”If there is a job,” he said quietly. ”Look, the suspense has
been damn hard to handle, I didn’t see any barbershop at all near the Drum Tower .”
    She nodded. ”Then I’m delighted to tell you that there was a barbershop
and a Guo Musu, too.”
    ”My God,” he said, staring at her. ”Where?”
    ”Hidden away in that maze of alleys.”
    ”But were you able to—did he—”
    She nodded. ”It’s in my purse, excuse me.”
    ”What’s in your purse?”
    She reached across him to the bedside table, groped for the atlas and
brought it out. ”Page thirty-eight,” she said, opening it and handing it to
him.
    He stared at it in amazement. ”Where on earth did you get a Chinese
atlas?”
    ”In the department store this morning,” she told him. ”Quite by
accident. I pointed to what I thought would be a book of poems and they handed
me this instead. It was a miracle.”
    As he leaned over page thirty-eight Peter’s face was no longer
impassive. ”It’s a miracle all right,” he said, and glanced up at her. ”Have
you looked at this? Guo’s not only marked the location of the labor camp but
he’s added notes.”
    ”Notes?” she echoed, and Guo’s face returned to her again, and that
moment of sharing, of knowing. ”He did that for us, too?” she said, with a
catch in her voice.
    ”I’ll say!” He showed her the page, excited now. ”He’s pinpointed the
labor camp halfway between Urumchi, where we go tomorrow, and Turfan—just off
the main highroad over the Tian Shan mountains. But what’s even more fantastic,
he’s scribbled a footnote explaining the circle he’s drawn, he says it marks a
Red Army barracks some six or eight miles from the labor camp.” He looked at
her and shook his head. ”How did you manage all this? You were missing for only
about forty-five minutes this afternoon. I mean, you’re one hell of a
surprise.’’
    ”Thank you,” she said.
    ”No, I mean it,” he told her. ”To get all this in minutes from an
absolute stranger? Since reaching Xian I’ve been feeling damnably humbled,
wondering how on earth I’d have managed it. I wanted to, you know, I insisted
on doing it myself but Carstairs refused. This morning I realized I’d have
behaved like a bull in a tea shop. Spoken Chinese probably, alarmed Guo Musu
thoroughly, even given the whole show away and