Destination Unknown by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-27T08:54:20.079000+00:00

A shiver of horror shook her entire frame.

Chapter 11

The gates of the leper colony closed behind the travellers with a metallic clang. The noise struck on Hilary's startled consciousness with a horrible note of finality. Abandon hope, it seemed to say, all ye who enter here... This, she thought, was the end... really the end. Any way of retreat there might have been was now cut off.

She was alone now amongst enemies, and in, at most, a very few minutes, she would be confronted with discovery and failure. Subconsciously, she supposed, she had known that all day, but some undefeatable optimism of the human spirit, some persistence in the belief that that entity oneself could not possibly cease to exist, had been masking that fact from her. She had said to Jessop in Casablanca "And when do I reach Tom Betterton?" and he had said then gravely that that was when the danger would become acute. He had added that he hoped that by then he might be in a position to give her protection, but that hope, Hilary could not but realise, had failed to materialise.

If "Miss Hetherington" had been the agent on whom Jessop was relying, "Miss Hetherington" had been outmanoeuvred and left to confess failure at Marrakesh. But in any case, what could Miss Hetherington have done?

The party of travellers had arrived at the place of no return. Hilary had gambled with death and lost. And she knew now that Jessop's diagnosis had been correct. She no longer wanted to die. She wanted to live. The zest of living had come back to her in full strength. She could think of Nigel, of the little mound that was Brenda's grave, with a sad wondering pity, but no longer with the cold lifeless despair that had urged her on to seek oblivion in death. She thought: "I'm alive again, sane, whole... and now I'm like a rat in a trap. If only there were some way out..."

It was not that she had given no thought to the problem. She had. But it seemed to her, reluctantly, that once confronted with Betterton, there could be no way out...

Betterton would say: "But that's not my wife -" And that would be that! Eyes turning towards her... realisation... a spy in their midst...

Because what other solution could there be? Supposing she were to get in first? Supposing she were to cry out, before Tom Betterton could get in a word - "Who are you? You're not my husband!" If she could simulate indignation, shock, horror, sufficiently well - might it, just credibly, raise a doubt? A doubt whether Betterton was Betterton - or some other scientist sent to impersonate him. A spy, in other words. But if they believed that, then it might be rather hard on Betterton! But, she thought, her mind turning in tired circles, if Betterton was a traitor, a man willing to sell his country's secrets, could anything be 'hard on him'? How difficult it was, she thought, to make any appraisement of loyalties - or indeed any judgments of people or things.

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