Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [91]
‘But this knowledge of yours means you could save the world!’
The man in the chair made a curious noise. It was laughter. Laughter of a crippled man.
‘Save the world. Save the world! What a phrase! That’s what your young people are doing, they think! They’re going ahead in violence and hatred to save the world. But they don’t know how! They will have to do it themselves, out of their own hearts, out of their own minds. We can’t give them an artificial way of doing it. No. An artificial goodness? An artificial kindness? None of that. It wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t mean anything. It would be against Nature.’ He said slowly: ‘Against God.’
The last two words came out unexpectedly, clearly enunciated.
He looked round at his listeners. It was as though he pleaded with them for understanding, yet at the same time had no real hope of it.
‘I had a right to destroy what I had created–’
‘I doubt it very much,’ said Mr Robinson, ‘knowledge is knowledge. What you have given birth to–what you have made come to life, you should not destroy.’
‘You have a right to your opinion–but the fact you will have to accept.’
‘No,’ Mr Robinson brought the word out with force.
Lisa Neumann turned on him angrily.
‘What do you mean by “No”?’
Her eyes were flashing. A handsome woman, Mr Robinson thought. A woman who had been in love with Robert Shoreham all her life probably. Had loved him, worked with him, and now lived beside him, ministering to him with her intellect, giving him devotion in its purest form without pity.
‘There are things one gets to know in the course of one’s lifetime,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘I don’t suppose mine will be a long life. I carry too much weight to begin with.’ He sighed as he looked down at his bulk. ‘But I do know some things. I’m right, you know, Shoreham. You’ll have to admit I’m right, too. You’re an honest man. You wouldn’t have destroyed your work. You couldn’t have brought yourself to do it. You’ve got it somewhere still, locked away, hidden away, not in this house, probably. I’d guess, and I’m only making a guess, that you’ve got it somewhere in a safe deposit or a bank. She knows you’ve got it there, too. You trust her. She’s the only person in the world you do trust.’
Shoreham said, and this time his voice was almost distinct:
‘Who are you? Who the devil are you?’
‘I’m just a man who knows about money,’ said Mr Robinson, ‘and the things that branch off from money, you know. People and their idiosyncrasies and their practices in life. If you liked to, you could lay your hand on the work that you’ve put away. I’m not saying that you could do the same work now, but I think it’s all there somewhere. You’ve told us your views, and I wouldn’t say they were all wrong,’ said Mr Robinson.
‘Possibly you’re right. Benefits to humanity are tricky things to deal with. Poor old Beveridge, freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from whatever it was, he thought he was making a heaven on earth by saying that and planning for it and getting it done. But it hasn’t made heaven on earth and I don’t suppose your benvo or whatever you call it (sounds like a patent food) will bring heaven on earth either. Benevolence has its dangers just like everything else. What it will do is save a lot of suffering, pain, anarchy, violence, slavery to drugs. Yes, it’ll save quite a lot of bad things from happening, and it might save something that was important. It might–just might–make a difference to people. Young people. This Benvoleo of yours–now I’ve made it sound like a patent cleaner–is going to make people benevolent and I’ll admit perhaps that it’s going to make them condescending, smug and pleased with themselves, but there’s just a chance, too, that if you change people’s natures by force and they have to go on using that particular kind of nature until they die, one or two of them–not many–might discover that they had a natural vocation, in humility, not pride,