"You permit, Madame?"
Hilary responded politely.
Taking out his cigarette case he offered her a cigarette. She accepted and he lit one himself also.
"It pleases you, this country, Madame?" he asked after a moment or two.
"I have been here only a very short time," said Hilary. "I find it so far quite enchanting."
"Ah. And you have been into the old city? You liked it?"
"I think it is wonderful."
"Yes, it is wonderful. It is the past there - the past of commerce, of intrigue, of whispering voices, shuttered activities, all the mystery and passion of a city enclosed in its narrow streets and walls. Do you know what I think of, Madame, when I walk through the streets of Fez?"
"No?"
"I think of your Great West Road in London. I think of your great factory buildings on each side of the road. I think of those buildings lit throughout with their neon lighting and the people inside, that you see so clearly from the road as you drive along in your car. There is nothing hidden, there is nothing mysterious. There are not even curtains to the windows. No, they do their work there with the whole world observing them if it wants to do so. It is like slicing off the top of an anthill."
"You mean," said Hilary, interested, "that it is the contrast that interests you?"
M. Aristides nodded his elderly, tortoise like head.
"Yes," he said. "There everything is in the open and in the old streets of Fez nothing is a jour. Everything is hidden, dark... But -" he leant forward and tapped a finger on the little brass coffee table "- but the same things go on. The same cruelties, the same oppressions, the same wish for power, the same bargaining and haggling."
"You think that human nature is the same everywhere?" Hilary asked.
"In every country. In the past as in the present there are always the two things that rule. Cruelty and benevolence! One or the other. Sometimes both." He continued with hardly a change of manner, "They have told me, Madame, that you were in a very bad airplane accident the other day at Casablanca?"
"Yes, that is true."
"I envy you," M. Aristides said unexpectedly.
Hilary looked at him in an astonished manner. Again he waggled his head in vehement assertion.
"Yes," he added, "you are to be envied. You have had an experience. I should like the experience of having come so near to death. To have that, yet survive - do you not feel yourself different since then, Madame?"
"In a rather unfortunate way," said Hilary. "I had concussion and that gives me very bad headaches, and it also affects my memory."
"Those are mere inconveniences," said M. Aristides with a wave of the hand, "but it is an adventure of the spirit you have passed through, is it not?"
"It is true," said Hilary slowly, "that I have passed through an adventure of the spirit."
She was thinking of a bottle of Vichy water and a little heap of sleeping pills.
"I have never had that experience," said M. Aristides in his dissatisfied voice. "So many other things, but not that."
He rose, bowed, said, "Mes homages, Madame," and left her.
Chapter 8
How alike, Hilary thought to herself, all airports were! They had a strange anonymity about them. They were all at some distance from the town or city they served, and in consequence you had a queer, stateless feeling of existing nowhere. You could fly from London to Madrid, to Rome, to Istanbul, to Cairo, to anywhere you liked and if your journey was a through one by air, you would never have the faintest idea of what any of these cities looked like! If you caught a glimpse of them from the air, they were only a kind of glorified map, something built with a child's box of bricks.
And why, she thought vexedly, looking round her, does one always have to be at these places so much too early?
They had spent nearly half an hour in the waiting room. Mrs. Calvin Baker, who had decided to accompany Hilary to Marrakesh had been talking non-stop ever since their arrival. Hilary had answered almost mechanically. But now she realised that the flow had been diverted. Mrs. Baker had now switched her attention to two other travellers who were sitting near her. They were both tall, fair young men. One an American with a broad, friendly grin, the other a rather solemn looking Dane or Norwegian. The Dane talked heavily, slowly, and rather pedantically in careful English. The American was clearly delighted to find another American traveller. Presently, in conscientious fashion, Mrs. Calvin Baker turned to Hilary.
"Mr -? I'd like to have you know my friend, Mrs. Betterton."
"Andrew Peters - Andy to my friends."
The other young man rose to his feet, bowed rather stiffly and said, "Torquil Ericsson."
"So now we're all acquainted," said Mrs. Baker happily. "Are we all going to Marrakesh? It's my friend's first visit there -"
"I, too," said Ericsson. "I, too, for the first time go."
"That goes for me too," said Peters.
The loud speaker was suddenly switched on and a hoarse announcement in French was made. The words were barely distinguishable but it appeared to be their summons to the plane.
There were four passengers besides Mrs. Baker and Hilary. Besides Peters and Ericsson, there was a thin, tall Frenchman, and a severe-looking nun.
It was a clear, sunny day and flying conditions were good. Leaning back in her seat with half closed eyes, Hilary studied her fellow passengers, seeking to distract herself that way from the anxious questionings which were going on in her mind.
One seat ahead of her, on the other side of the aisle, Mrs. Calvin Baker in her grey travelling costume looked like a plump and contented duck. A small hat with wings was perched on her blue hair and she was turning the pages of a glossy magazine. Occasionally she leaned forward to tap the shoulder of the man sitting in front of her, who was the cheerful-looking fair young American, Peters. When she did so he turned round, displaying his good-humoured grin, and responding energetically to her remarks. How very good natured and friendly Americans were, Hilary thought to herself. So different from the stiff travelling English. She could not imagine Miss Hetherington, for instance, falling into easy conversation with a young man even of her own nation, on a plane, and she doubted if the latter would have responded as good-naturedly as this young American was doing.
Across the aisle from her was the Norwegian, Ericsson.
As she caught his eye, he made her a stiff little bow and leaning across offered her his magazine, which he was just closing. She thanked him and took it. In the seat behind him was the thin, dark Frenchman. His legs were stretched out and he seemed to be asleep.
Hilary turned her head over her shoulder. The severe-faced nun was sitting behind her, and the nun's eyes, impersonal, incurious, met Hilary's with no expression in them. She sat immovable, her hands clasped. It seemed to Hilary an odd trick of time that a woman in traditional medieval costume should be travelling by air in the twentieth century.
Six people, thought Hilary, travelling together for a few hours, travelling to different places with different aims, scattering perhaps at the end of that few hours and never meeting again. She had read a novel which had hinged on a similar theme and where the lives of those six people were followed up. The Frenchman, she thought, must be on a holiday. He seemed so tired. The young American was perhaps a student of some kind. Ericsson was perhaps going to take up a job. The nun was doubtless bound for her convent.
Hilary closed her eyes and forgot her fellow travellers. She puzzled, as she had done all last night, over the instructions that had been given her. She was to return to England! It seemed crazy! Or could it be that in some way she had been found wanting, was not trusted: had failed to supply certain words or credentials that the real Olive would have supplied. She sighed and moved restlessly. "Well," she thought, "I can do no more than I am doing. If I've failed - I've failed. At any rate, I've done my best."
Then another thought struck her. Henri Laurier had accepted it as natural and inevitable that a close watch was being kept upon her in Morocco - was this a means of disarming suspicion? With the abrupt return of Mrs. Betterton to England it would surely be assumed that she had not come to Morocco in order to "disappear" like her husband. Suspicion would relax - she would be regarded as a bona fide traveller.
She would leave for England, going by Air France via Paris - and perhaps in Paris -
Yes, of course - in Paris. In Paris where Tom Betterton had disappeared. How much easier to stage a disappearance there. Perhaps Tom Betterton had never left Paris. Perhaps - tired of profitless speculation Hilary went to sleep. She woke - dozed again, occasionally glancing without interest, at the magazine she held. Awakening suddenly from a deeper sleep, she noticed that the plane was rapidly losing height and circling round. She glanced at her watch, but it was still some time earlier than the estimated time of arrival. Moreover, looking down through the window, she could not see any signs of an aerodrome beneath.
For a moment a faint qualm of apprehension struck her. The thin, dark Frenchman rose, yawned, stretched his arms and looked out and said something in French which she did not catch. But Ericsson leant across the aisle and said,
"We are coming down here, it seems - but why?"
Mrs. Calvin Baker, leaning out of her seat, turned her head and nodded brightly as Hilary said,
"We seem to be landing."
The plane swooped round in ever lower circles. The country beneath them seemed to be practically desert. There were no signs of houses or villages. The wheels touched with a decided bump, bouncing along and taxiing until they finally stopped. It had been a somewhat rough landing, but it was a landing in the middle of nowhere.
Had something gone wrong with the engine, Hilary wondered, or had they run out of petrol? The pilot, a dark-skinned, handsome young man, came through the forward door and along the plane.
"If you please," he said, "you will all get out."
He opened the rear door, let down a short ladder and stood there waiting for them all to pass out. They stood in a little group on the ground, shivering a little. It was chilly here, with the wind blowing sharply from the mountains in the distance. The mountains, Hilary noticed, were covered with snow and singularly beautiful. The air was crisply cold and intoxicating. The pilot descended too, and addressed them, speaking French:
"You are all here? Yes? Excuse, please, you will have to wait a little minute, perhaps. Ah, no, I see it is arriving."
He pointed to where a small dot on the horizon was gradually growing nearer. Hilary said in a slightly bewildered voice:
"But why have we come down here? What is the matter? How long shall we have to be here?"
The French traveller said,
"There is, I understand, a station wagon arriving. We shall go on in that."
"Did the engine fail?" asked Hilary.
Andy Peters smiled cheerfully.
"Why no, I shouldn't say so." he said, "the engine sounded all right to me. However, they'll fix up something of that kind, no doubt."
She stared, puzzled. Mrs. Calvin Baker murmured,
"My, but it's chilly, standing about here. That's the worst of this climate. It seems so sunny but it's cold the moment you get near sunset."
The pilot was murmuring under his breath, swearing, Hilary thought. He was saying something like:
"Toujours des retards insupportables."
The station wagon came towards them at a break-neck pace. The Berber driver drew up with a grinding of brakes. He sprang down and was immediately engaged by the pilot in angry conversation. Rather to Hilary's surprise, Mrs. Baker intervened in the dispute - speaking in French.
"Don't waste time," she said peremptorily. "What's the good of arguing? We want to get out of here."
The driver shrugged his shoulders, and going to the station wagon, he unhitched the back part of it which let down. Inside was a large packing case. Together with the pilot and with help from Ericsson and Peters, they got it down on to the ground. From the effort it took, it seemed to be heavy. Mrs. Calvin Baker put her hand on Hilary's arm and said, as the man began to raise the lid of the case,
"I shouldn't watch, my dear. It's never a pretty sight."
She led Hilary a little way away, on the other side of the wagon. The Frenchman and Peters came with them. The Frenchman said in his own language,
"What is it then, this manoeuvre there that they do?"
Mrs. Baker said,
"You are Dr. Barron?"
The Frenchman bowed.
"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Baker. She stretched out her hand, rather like a hostess welcoming him to a party. Hilary said in a bewildered tone,
"But I don't understand. What is in that case? Why is it better not to look?"
Andy Peters looked down on her consideringly. He had a nice face, Hilary thought. Something square and dependable about it. He said,
"I know what it is. The pilot told me. It's not very pretty perhaps, but I guess it's necessary." He added quietly, "There are bodies in there."
"Bodies!" She stared at him.
"Oh, they haven't been murdered or anything," he grinned reassuringly. "They were obtained in a perfectly legitimate way for research - medical research, you know."
But Hilary still stared.
"I don't understand."
"Ah. You see, Mrs. Betterton, this is where the journey ends. One journey, that is."
"Ends?"
"Yes. They'll arrange the bodies in that plane and then the pilot will fix things and presently, as we're driving away from here, we shall see in the distance the flames going up in the air. Another plane that has crashed and come down in flames, and no survivors!"
"But why? How fantastic!"
"But surely -" It was Dr. Barron now who spoke to her. "But surely you know where we are going?"
Mrs. Baker, drawing near, said cheerfully,
