Agatha Christie - Passenger to Frankfurt

Again Miss Neumann turned to him and watched his lips. She smiled faintly.

'He says he thought Matilda was dead years ago.'

'She is very much alive. It is she who wanted us to know about this discovery of Professor Shoreham's.'

'Professor Shoreham will tell you the main points of what you want to know, though he has to warn you that this knowledge will be quite useless to you. Papers, formulae, accounts and proofs of this discovery were all destroyed. But since the only way to satisfy your questions is for you to learn the main outline of Project Benvo, I can tell you fairly clearly of what it consists. You know the uses and purpose of tear gas as used by the police in controlling riot crowds; violent demonstrations and so on. It induces a fit of weeping, painful tears and sinus inflammation.'

'And this is something of the same kind?'

'No, it is not in the least of the same kind but it can have the same purpose. It came into the heads of scientists that one can change not only men's principal reactions and feeling, but also mental characteristics. You can change man's character. The qualities of an aphrodisiac are well known. They lead to a condition of sexual desire, there are various drugs or gases or glandular operations — any of these things can lead to a change in your mental vigour, increase energy as by alterations to the thyroid gland, and Professor Shoreham wishes to tell you that there is a certain process — he will not tell you now whether it is glandular, or a gas that can be manufactured, but there is something that can change a man in his outlook on life — his reaction to people and to life generally. He may be in a state of homicidal rage, he may be pathologically violent, and yet, by the influence of Project Benvo, he turns into something, or rather someone, quite different. He becomes — there is only one word which, I believe, which is embodied in its name — he becomes benevolent. He wishes to benefit others. He exudes kindness and has a horror of causing pain or inflicting violence. Benvo can be released over a big area, it can affect hundreds, thousands of people if manufactured in big enough quantities, and if distributed successfully.'

'How long does it last?' said Colonel Munro. 'Twenty-four hours? Longer?'

'You don't understand,' said Miss Neumann. 'It is permanent.'

'Permanent? You've changed a man's nature, you've altered a component, a physical component, of course, of his being which has produced the effect of a permanent change in his nature. And you cannot go back on that? You cannot put him back to where he was again? It has to be accepted as a permanent change?'

'Yes. It was, perhaps, a discovery more of medical interest at first, but Professor Shoreham had conceived of it as a deterrent to be used in war, in mass risings, riotings, revolutions, anarchy. He didn't think of it as merely medical. It does not produce happiness in the subject, only a great wish for others to be happy. That is an effect, he says, that everyone feels in their life at one time or another. They have a great wish to make someone, one person or many people — to make them comfortable, happy, in good health, all these things. And since people can and do feel these things, there is, we both believed, a component that controls that desire in their bodies, and if you once put that component in operation it can go on in perpetuity.'

'Wonderful,' said Mr Robinson.

He spoke thoughtfully rather than enthusiastically.

'Wonderful. What a thing to have discovered. What a thing to be able to put into action if — but why?'

The head resting towards the back of the chair turned slowly towards Mr Robinson. Miss Neumann said:

'He says you understand better than the others.'

'But it's the answer,' said James Kleek. 'It's the exact answer! It's wonderful.' His face was enthusiastically excited.

Miss Neumann was shaking her head.

'Project Benvo,' she said, 'is not for sale and not for a gift. It has been relinquished.'

'Are you telling us the answer is no?' said Colonel Munro incredulously.

'Yes Professor Shoreham says the answer is no. He decided that it was against –' she paused a minute and turned to look at the man in the chair. He made quaint gestures with his head, with one hand, and a few guttural sounds came from his mouth. She waited and then she said, 'He will tell you himself, he was afraid. Afraid of what science has done in its time of triumph. The things it has found out and known, the things it has discovered and given to the world. The wonder drugs that have not always been wonder drugs, the penicillin that has saved lives and the penicillin that has taken lives, the heart transplants that have brought disillusion and the disappointment of a death not expected. He has lived in the period of nuclear fission; new weapons that have slain. The tragedies of radio-activity; the pollutions that new industrial discoveries have brought about. He has been afraid of what science could do, used indiscriminately.'

'But this is a benefit. A benefit to everyone,' cried Munro.

'So have many things been. Always greeted as great benefits to humanity, as great wonders. And then come the side effects, and worse than that, the fact that they have sometimes brought not benefit but disaster. And so he decided that he would give up. He says –' she read from a paper she held, whilst beside her he nodded agreement from his chair — "I am satisfied that I have done what I set out to do, that I made my discovery. But I decided not to put it into circulation. It must be destroyed. And so it has been destroyed. And so the answer to you is no. There is no benevolence on tap. There could have been once, but now all the formulae, all the know-how, my notes and my account of the necessary procedure are gone — burnt to ashes — I have destroyed my brain child."'

Robert Shoreham struggled into raucous difficult speech.

'I have destroyed my brain child and nobody in the world knows how I arrived at it. One man helped me, but he is dead. He died of tuberculosis a year after we had come to success. You must go away again. I cannot help you.'

'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 are going ahead in violence and hatred to save the world. They don't know how! They will have to do it themselves, out of their own hearts, out of their own minds. We'll give them an artificial way of doing it. No. An artificial goodness? An artificial kindness? None of that. It would not 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 thing — I'm right, you know, Shoreham. You'll have to admit it, too. You're an honest man. You wouldn't have destroyed your work. You couldn't have brought yourself to do that. You've got it somewhere still, locked away, hidden away, 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.'