Destination Unknown

by Agatha Christie

  Oddly enough, Hilary found the game enjoyable. It was half past eleven when their third rubber came to an end, with herself and Dr. Barron the winners.

  "I enjoyed that," she said. She glanced at her watch. "It's quite late. I suppose the V.I.P.'s will have left now - or do they spend the night here?"

  "I don't really know," said Simon Murchison. "I believe one or two of the specially keen medicos stay over. Anyway, they'll all have gone by tomorrow midday."

  "And that's when we're put back in circulation?"

  "Yes. About time, too. It upsets all one's routine, this sort of thing."

  "But it is well arranged," said Bianca with approval.

  She and Hilary got up and said goodnight to the two men.

  Hilary stood back a little to allow Bianca to precede her into the dimly lit dormitory. As she did so, she felt a soft touch on her arm.

  She turned sharply to find one of the tall dark faced servants standing beside her.

  He spoke in a low urgent voice in French.

  "S'il vous plait, Madame, you are to come."

  "Come? Come where?"

  "If you will please follow me."

  She stood irresolute for a moment.

  Bianca had gone on into the dormitory. In the communal living room the few persons left were engaged in conversation with each other.

  Again she felt that soft urgent touch on her arm.

  "You will follow me please, Madame."

  He moved a few steps and stood, looking back, beckoning to her. A little doubtfully Hilary followed him.

  She noticed that this particular man was far more richly dressed than most of the native servants. His robes were embroidered heavily with gold thread.

  He led her through a small door in a corner of the communal living room, then once more along the inevitable anonymous white corridors. She did not think it was the same way by which they had come to the Emergency Wing, but it was always difficult to be sure because of the similarity of the passages. Once she turned to ask a question but the guide shook his head impatiently and hurried on.

  He stopped finally at the end of a corridor and pressed a button in the wall. A panel slid back disclosing a small lift. He gestured her in, followed her, and the lift shot upwards.

  Hilary said sharply:

  "Where are you taking me?"

  The dark eyes held hers in a kind of dignified reproof.

  "To the Master, Madame. It is for you a great honor."

  "To the Director, you mean?"

  "To the Master..."

  The lift stopped. He slid back the doors and motioned her out. Then they walked down another corridor and arrived at a door. Her guide rapped on the door and it was opened from inside. Here again were white robes, gold embroidery and a black, impassive face.

  The man took Hilary across the small red-carpeted anteroom and drew aside some hangings at the further side. Hilary passed through. She found herself, unexpectedly, in an almost oriental interior. There were low couches, coffee tables, one or two beautiful rugs hanging on the walls. Sitting on a low divan was a figure at whom she stared with complete incredulity. Small, yellow, wrinkled, old, she stared unbelievingly into the smiling eyes of Mr. Aristides.

  Chapter 18

  "Asseyez vous, chère Madame," said Mr. Aristides.

  He waved a small clawlike hand, and Hilary came forward in a dream and sat down upon another low divan opposite him. He gave a gentle little cackle of laughter.

  "You are surprised," he said. "It is not what you expected, eh?"

  "No, indeed," said Hilary. "I never thought - I never imagined -"

  But already her surprise was subsiding.

  With her recognition of Mr. Aristides, the dream world of unreality in which she had been living for the past weeks shattered and broke. She knew now that the Unit had seemed unreal to her - because it was unreal. It had never been what it pretended to be. The Herr Director with his spellbinder's voice had been unreal too - a mere figurehead of fiction set up to obscure the truth. The truth was here in this secret oriental room. A little old man sitting there and laughing quietly. With Mr. Aristides in the centre of the picture, everything made sense - hard, practical everyday sense.

  "I see now," said Hilary. "This - is all yours isn't it?"

  "Yes, Madame."

  "And the Director? The so-called Director?"

  "He is very good," said Mr. Aristides appreciatively. "I pay him a very high salary. He used to run Revivalist meetings."

  He smoked thoughtfully for a moment or two. Hilary did not speak.

  "There is Turkish Delight beside you, Madame. And other sweetmeats if you prefer them." Again there was silence. Then he went on, "I am a philanthropist, Madame. As you know, I am rich. One of the richest men - possibly the richest man in the world today. With my wealth I feel under the obligation to serve humanity. I have established here, in this remote spot, a colony of lepers and a vast assembly of research into the problem of the cure of leprosy. Certain types of leprosy are curable. Others, so far, have proved incurable. But all the time we are working and obtaining good results. Leprosy is not really such an easily communicated disease. It is not half so infectious or so contagious as smallpox or typhus or plague or any of these other things. And yet, if you say to people, 'a leper colony' they will shudder and give it a wide berth. It is an old, old fear that. A fear that you can find in the Bible, and which has existed all down through the years. The horror of the leper. It has been useful to me in establishing this place."

  "You established it for that reason?"

  "Yes. We have here also a Cancer Research department, and important work is being done on tuberculosis. There is virus research, also - for curative reasons, bien entendu - biological warfare is not mentioned. All humane, all acceptable, all rebounding greatly to my honour. Well-known physicians, surgeons and research chemists come here to see our results from time to time as they have come today. The building has been cunningly constructed in such a way that a part of it is shut off and unapparent even from the air. The more secret laboratories have been tunnelled right into the rock. In any case, I am above suspicion." He smiled and added simply: "I am so very rich, you see."

  "But why?" demanded Hilary. "Why this urge for destruction?"

  "I have no urge for destruction, Madame. You wrong me."

  "But then - I simply don't understand."

  "I am a business man," said Mr. Aristides simply. "I am also a collector. When wealth becomes oppressive, that is the only thing to do. I have collected many things in my time. Pictures - I have the finest art collection in Europe. Certain kinds of ceramics. Philately - my stamp collection is famous. When a collection is fully representative, one goes on to the next thing. I am an old man, Madame, and there was not very much more for me to collect. So I came at last to collecting brains."

  "Brains?" Hilary queried.

  He nodded gently.

  "Yes, it is the most interesting thing to collect of all. Little by little, Madame, I am assembling here all the brains of the world. The young men, those are the ones I am bringing here. Young men of promise, young men of achievement. One day the tired nations of the world will wake up and realise that their scientists are old and stale, and that the young brains of the world - the doctors, the research chemists, the physicists, the surgeons, are all here in my keeping. And if they want a scientist, or a plastic surgeon, or a biologist, they will have to come and buy him from me!"

  "You mean..." Hilary leaned forward, staring at him. "You mean that this is all a gigantic financial operation?"

  Again Mr. Aristides nodded gently.

  "Yes," he said. "Naturally. Otherwise - it would not make sense, would it?"

  Hilary gave a deep sigh.

  "No," she said. "That's just what I've felt."

  "After all, you see," said Mr. Aristides almost apologetically, "it is my profession. I am a financier."

  "And you mean there is no political side to this at all? You don't want World Powe
r -?"

  He threw up his hand in rebuke.

  "I do not want to be God," he said. "I am a religious man. That is the occupational disease of Dictators: wanting to be God. So far I have not contracted that disease." He reflected a moment and said: "It may come. Yes, it may come... But as yet, mercifully - no."

  "But how do you get all these people to come here?"

  "I buy them, Madame. In the open market. Like any other merchandise. Sometimes I buy them with money. More often, I buy them with ideas. Young men are dreamers. They have ideals. They have beliefs. Sometimes I buy them with safety - those that have transgressed the law."

  "That explains it," said Hilary. "Explains, I mean, what puzzled me so on the journey here."

  "Ah! It puzzled you on the journey, did it?"

  "Yes. The difference in aims. Andy Peters, the American, seemed completely Left Wing. But Ericsson was a fanatical believer in the Superman. And Helga Needheim was a Fascist of the most arrogant and Pagan kind. Dr. Barron -" she hesitated.

  "Yes, he came for money," said Aristides. "Dr. Barron is civilised and cynical. He has no illusions, but he has a genuine love of his work. He wanted unlimited money, so as to pursue his researches further." He added: "You are intelligent, Madame. I saw that at once in Fez."

  He gave a gentle little cackle of laughter.

  "You did not know it, Madame, but I went to Fez simply to observe you - or rather I had you brought to Fez in order that I might observe you."

  "I see," said Hilary.

  She noted the oriental rephrasing of the sentence.

  "I was pleased to think that you would be coming here. For, if you understand me, I do not find many intelligent people in this place to talk to." He made a gesture. "These scientists, these biologists, these research chemists, they are not interesting. They are geniuses perhaps at what they do, but they are uninteresting people with whom to converse."

  "Their wives," he added thoughtfully, "are usually very dull, too. We do not encourage wives here. I permit wives to come for only one reason."

  "What reason?"

  Mr. Aristides said drily,

  "In the rare cases where a husband is unable to do his work properly because he is thinking too much of his wife. That seemed to be the case with your husband, Thomas Betterton. Thomas Betterton is known to the world as a young man of genius, but since he has been here he has done only mediocre and second class work. Yes, Betterton has disappointed me."

  "But don't you find that constantly happening? These people are, after all, in prison here. Surely they rebel? At first, at any rate?"

  "Yes," Mr. Aristides agreed. "That is only natural and inevitable. It is so when you first cage a bird. But if the bird is in a big enough aviary; if it has all that it needs; a mate, seed, water, twigs, all the material of life, it forgets in the end that it was ever free."

  Hilary shivered a little.

  "You frighten me," she said. "You really frighten me."

  "You will grow to understand many things here, Madame. Let me assure you that though all these men of different ideologies arrive here and are disillusioned and rebellious, they will all toe the line in the end."

  "You can't be sure of that," said Hilary.

  "One can be absolutely sure of nothing in this world. I agree with you there. But it is a ninety-five per cent certainty all the same."

  Hilary looked at him with something like horror.

  "It's dreadful," she said. "It's like a typists' pool! You've got a pool here of brains."

  "Exactly. You put it very justly, Madame."

  "And from this pool, you intend, one day, to supply scientists to whoever pays you best for them?"

  "That is, roughly, the general principle, Madame."

  "But you can't send out a scientist just as you can send out a typist."

  "Why not?"

  "Because once your scientist is in the free world again, he could refuse to work for his new employer. He would be free again."

  "True up to a point. There may have to be a certain - conditioning, shall we say?"

  "Conditioning - what do you mean by that?"

  "You have heard of lobotomy, Madame?"

  Hilary frowned.

  "That's a brain operation, isn't it?"

  "But yes. It was devised originally for the curing of melancholia. I put it to you not in medical terms, Madame, but in such terms as you and I understand. After the operation the patient has no more desire to commit suicide, no further feelings of guilt. He is carefree, conscienceless and in most cases obedient."

  "It hasn't been a hundred per cent success, has it?"

  "In the past, no. But here we have made great strides in the investigation of the subject. I have here three surgeons: one Russian, one Frenchman and an Austrian. By various operations of grafting and delicate manipulation of the brain, they are arriving gradually at a state where docility can be assured and the will can be controlled without necessarily affecting mental brilliance. It seems possible that we may in the end so condition a human being that while his powers of intellect remain unimpaired, he will exhibit perfect docility. Any suggestion made to him he will accept."

  "But that's horrible," cried Hilary. "Horrible!"

  He corrected her serenely.

  "It is useful. It is even in some ways beneficent. For the patient will be happy, contented, without fears or longings or unrest."

  "I don't believe it will ever happen," said Hilary defiantly.

  "Chère Madame, forgive me if I say you are hardly competent to speak on the subject."

  "What I mean is," said Hilary, "that I do not believe a contented, suggestible animal will ever produce creative work of real brilliance."

  Aristides shrugged his shoulders.

  "Perhaps. You are intelligent. You may have something there. Time will show. Experiments are going on all the time."

  "Experiments! On human beings, do you mean?"

  "But certainly. That is the only practical method."

  "But - what human beings?"

  "There are always the misfits," said Aristides. "The ones who do not adapt themselves to life here, who will not co-operate. They make good experimental material."

  Hilary dug her fingers into the cushions of the divan. She felt a deep horror of this smiling, yellow-faced little man with his inhuman outlook. Everything he said was so reasonable, so logical and so businesslike, that it made the horror worse. Here was no raving madman, just a man to whom his fellow creatures were so much raw material.

  "Don't you believe in God?" she said.

  "Naturally I believe in God." Mr. Aristides raised his eyebrows. His tone was almost shocked. "I have told you already. I am a religious man. God has blessed me with supreme power. With money and opportunity."

  "Do you read your Bible?" asked Hilary.

  "Certainly, Madame."

  "Do you remember what Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh? 'Let my people go.'"

  He smiled.

  "So - I am Pharaoh? - And you are Moses and Aaron in one? Is that what you are saying to me, Madame? To let these people go, all of them, or just - one special case?"

  "I'd like to say - all of them," said Hilary.

  "But you are well aware, chère Madame," he said, "that that would be a waste of time. So instead, it is not your husband for whom you plead?"

  "He is no good to you," said Hilary. "Surely by now you must realise that."

  "Perhaps, it is true what you say, Madame. Yes, I am very much disappointed in Thomas Betterton. I hoped that your presence here might restore him to his brilliance, for undoubtedly he has brilliance. His reputation in America leaves no doubt as to that. But your coming seems to have had little or no effect. I speak not of my own knowledge, of course, but from the reports of those fitted to know. His brother scientists who have been working with him." He shrugged his shoulders. "He does conscientious, mediocre work. No more."

  "There are birds that cannot sing in captivity." said Hilary. "Perhaps there are scientists who
cannot attain creative thought under certain circumstances. You, must admit that that is a reasonable possibility."

  "It may be so. I do not deny it"

  "Then write off Thomas Betterton as one of your failures. Let him return to the outer world."