Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [70]
‘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 Power–?’
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 civilized 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