Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [73]
‘Let me leave this place–’ Hilary stretched her hands out to him. ‘Oh, let me go away. Let me leave with you when you go. Please! Please!’
He shook his head gently. His expression was indulgent, but there was a faint touch of contempt behind it.
‘Now you are talking like a child,’ he said reprovingly. ‘How could I let you go? How could I let you spread the story round the world of what you have seen here?’
‘Wouldn’t you believe me if I swore I wouldn’t say a word to anyone?’
‘No indeed I should not believe you,’ said Mr Aristides. ‘I should be very foolish if I believed anything of the kind.’
‘I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to stay here in this prison. I want to get out.’
‘But you have your husband. You came here to join him, deliberately, of your own free will.’
‘But I didn’t know what I was coming to. I’d no idea.’
‘No,’ said Mr Aristides, ‘you had no idea. But I can assure you this particular world you have come to is a much pleasanter world than the life beyond the Iron Curtain. Here you have everything you need! Luxury, a beautiful climate, distractions…’
He got up and patted her gently on the shoulder.
‘You will settle down,’ he said, confidently. ‘Ah yes, the red-haired bird in the cage will settle down. In a year, in two years certainly, you will be very happy! Though possibly,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘less interesting.’
Chapter 19
I
Hilary awoke the following night with a start. She raised herself on her elbow, listening.
‘Tom, do you hear?’
‘Yes. Aircraft–flying low. Nothing in that. They come over from time to time.’
‘I wondered–’ She did not finish her sentence.
She lay awake thinking, going over and over that strange interview with Aristides.
The old man had got some kind of capricious liking for her.
Could she play upon that?
Could she in the end prevail upon him to take her with him, out into the world again?
Next time he came, if he sent for her, she would lead him on to talk of his dead red-haired wife. It was not the lure of the flesh that would captivate him. His blood ran too coldly now in his veins for that. Besides he had his ‘young girls’. But the old like to remember, to be urged on to talk of times gone by…
Uncle George, who had lived at Cheltenham…
Hilary smiled in the darkness, remembering Uncle George.
Were Uncle George and Aristides, the man of millions, really very different under the skin? Uncle George had had a housekeeper–‘such a nice, safe woman, my dear, not flashy or sexy or anything like that. Nice and plain and sane.’ But Uncle George had upset his family by marrying that nice, plain woman. She had been a very good listener…
What had Hilary said to Tom? ‘I’ll find a way of getting out of here?’ Odd, if the way should prove to be Aristides.
II
‘A message,’ said Leblanc. ‘A message at last.’
His orderly had just entered and, after saluting, had laid a folded paper before him. He unfolded it, then spoke excitedly.
‘This is a report from one of our reconnaissance pilots. He has been operating over a selected square of territory in the High Atlas. When flying over a certain position in a mountainous region he observed a signal being flashed. It was in Morse and was twice repeated. Here it is.’
He laid the enclosure before Jessop.
COGLEPROSIESL
He separated off the last two letters with a pencil.
‘SL–that is our code for “Do not acknowledge.”’
‘And COG with which the message starts,’ said Jessop, ‘is our recognition signal.’
‘Then the rest is the actual message.’ He underlined it. ‘LEPROSIE.’ He surveyed it dubiously.
‘Leprosy?’ said Jessop.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Have you any important leper settlements? Or unimportant ones for that matter?’
Leblanc spread out a large map in front of him. He pointed with a stubby forefinger stained with nicotine.
‘Here,’ he marked it off, ‘is the area over which our pilot was operating. Let me see now. I seem to recall…’
He left the room. Presently he returned.
‘I have it,’ he said. ‘There is a very famous