Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [56]
‘For two days now,’ said Leblanc. ‘Good men, too. It’s a particularly lonely spot, of course, where the plane crashed. It was off its course, by the way.’
‘Which is significant,’ Jessop put in.
‘The nearest villages, the nearest habitations, the nearest traces of a car, all those are being investigated fully. In this country as well as in yours, we fully realize the importance of the investigation. In France, too, we have lost some of our best young scientists. In my opinion, mon cher, it is easier to control temperamental opera singers than it is to control a scientist. They are brilliant, these young men, erratic, rebellious, and, finally and dangerously, they are most completely credulous. What do they imagine goes on là bas? Sweetness and light and desire for truth and the millennium? Alas, poor children, what disillusionment awaits them.’
‘Let’s go over the passenger list once more,’ said Jessop.
The Frenchman reached out a hand, picked it out of a wire basket and set it before his colleague. The two men pored over it together.
‘Mrs Calvin Baker, American. Mrs Betterton, English. Torquil Ericsson, Norwegian–what do you know of him, by the way?’
‘Nothing that I can recall,’ said Leblanc. ‘He was young, not more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight.’
‘I know his name,’ said Jessop, frowning. ‘I think–I am almost sure–that he read a paper before the Royal Society.’
‘Then there is the religieuse,’ Leblanc said, turning back to the list. ‘Sister Marie something or other. Andrew Peters, also American. Dr Barron. That is a celebrated name, le docteur Barron. A man of great brilliance. An expert on virus diseases.’
‘Biological warfare,’ said Jessop. ‘It fits. It all fits.’
‘A man poorly paid and discontented,’ said Leblanc.
‘How many going to St Ives?’ murmured Jessop.
The Frenchman shot him a quick look and he smiled apologetically.
‘Just an old nursery rhyme,’ he said. ‘For St Ives read question mark. Journey to nowhere.’
The telephone on the table buzzed and Leblanc picked up the receiver.
‘Allo?’ he said. ‘Qu’est-ce qu’ il y a? Ah, yes, send them up.’ He turned his head towards Jessop. His face was suddenly alive, vigorous. ‘One of my men reporting,’ he said. ‘They have found something. Mon cher collègue, it is possible–I say no more–possible that your optimism is justified.’
A few moments later two men entered the room. The first bore a rough resemblance to Leblanc, the same type, stocky, dark, intelligent. His manner was respectful but exhilarated. He wore European clothes badly stained and marked, covered with dust. He had obviously just arrived from a journey. With him was a native wearing the white local dress. He had the dignified composure of the dweller in remote places. His manner was courteous but not subservient. He looked with a faint wonder round the room whilst the other man explained things in rapid French.
‘The reward was offered and circulated,’ the man explained, ‘and this fellow and his family and a great many of his friends have been searching diligently. I let him bring you the find himself as there may be questions you want to ask him.’
Leblanc turned to the Berber.
‘You have done good work,’ he said, speaking now in the man’s own language. ‘You have the eyes of the hawk, my father. Show us then what you have discovered.’ From a fold in his white robe the man took out a small object, and stepping forward laid it on the table before the Frenchman. It was rather a large-sized, pinkish-grey synthetic pearl.
‘It is like the one shown to me and shown to others,’ he said. ‘It is of value and I have found it.’
Jessop stretched out a hand and took the pearl. From his pocket he drew out another exactly like it and examined both. Then he walked across the room to the window, and examined them both through a powerful lens.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the mark is there.’ There was jubilation now in his voice and he came