Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [54]
His face clouded over again.
‘Time,’ he said. ‘Time…That’s what I can’t afford.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know exactly whether you’ll be able to understand…It’s like this. I can’t really–do my stuff here.’ She frowned.
‘How do you mean?’
‘How shall I put it? I can’t work. I can’t think. In my stuff one has to have a high degree of concentration. A lot of it is–well–creative. Since coming here I’ve just lost the urge. All I can do is good sound hack-work. The sort of thing any twopenny-halfpenny scientific chap can do. But that’s not what they brought me here for. They want original stuff and I can’t do original stuff. And the more nervous and afraid I get, the less I’m fit to turn out anything worth turning out. And it’s driving me off my rocker, do you see?’
Yes, she saw now. She recalled Dr Rubec’s remarks about prima donnas and scientists.
‘If I can’t deliver the goods, what is an outfit like this going to do about it? They’ll liquidate me.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Oh yes they will. They’re not sentimentalists here. What’s saved me so far is this plastic surgery business. They do it a little at a time, you know. And naturally a fellow who’s having constant minor operations can’t be expected to concentrate. But they’ve finished the business now.’
‘But why was it done at all? What’s the point?’
‘Oh, that! For safety. My safety, I mean. It’s done if–if you’re a “wanted” man.’
‘Are you a “wanted” man, then?’
‘Yes, didn’t you know? Oh, I suppose they wouldn’t advertise the fact in the papers. Perhaps even Olive didn’t know. But I’m wanted right enough.’
‘You mean for–treason is the word, isn’t it? You mean you’ve sold them atom secrets?’
He avoided her eyes.
‘I didn’t sell anything. I gave them what I knew of our processes–gave it freely. If you can believe me, I wanted to give it to them. It was part of the whole set-up–the pooling of scientific knowledge. Oh, can’t you understand?’
She could understand. She could understand Andy Peters doing just that. She could see Ericsson with his fanatical dreamer’s eyes betraying his country with a high-souled enthusiasm.
Yet it was hard for her to visualize Tom Betterton doing it–and she realized with a shock that all that showed was the difference between Betterton a few months ago, arriving in all the zeal of enthusiasm, and Betterton now, nervous, defeated, down to earth–an ordinary, badly frightened man.
Even as she accepted the logic of that, Betterton looked round him nervously and said:
‘Everyone’s gone down. We’d better–’
She rose.
‘Yes. But it’s all right, you know. They’ll think it quite natural–under the circumstances.’
He said awkwardly:
‘We’ll have to go on with this now, you know. I mean–you’ll have to go on being–my wife.’
‘Of course.’
‘And we’ll have to share a room and all that. But it will be quite all right. I mean, you needn’t be afraid that–’
He swallowed in an embarrassed manner.
‘How handsome he is,’ thought Hilary, looking at his profile, ‘and how little it moves me…’
‘I don’t think we need worry about that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘The important thing is to get out of here alive.’
Chapter 14
In a room at the Hôtel Mamounia, Marrakesh, the man called Jessop was talking to Miss Hetherington. A different Miss Hetherington this, from the one that Hilary had known at Casablanca and at Fez. The same appearance, the same twin set, the same depressing hair-do. But the manner had changed. It was a woman now both brisk, competent, and seeming many years younger than her appearance.
The third person in the room was a dark stocky man with intelligent eyes. He was tapping gently on the table with his fingers and humming a little French song under his breath.
‘…and as far as you know,’ Jessop was saying, ‘those are the only people she talked to at Fez?’
Janet Hetherington nodded.
‘There was the Calvin Baker woman, who we’d already met at Casablanca. I’ll say frankly I still can’t make up my mind about her. She went out of her way to be friendly with Olive Betterton, and with me for that matter. But Americans