CHAPTER THE SECONDHow Bobby Stole a Lunatic
AMANmay be a mental expert and yet fail to take the most obvious hints in a detective investigation. The medical superintendent at Cummerdown Hill had doubted for a moment whether Widgery was the name of Sargon’s visitor. He had thought it was more like Goodchild. But since there was no known Goodchild in the world of Christina Alberta, neither she nor Devizes had troubled to scrutinize this momentary uncertainty. Nor had she and Devizes asked themselves why Widgery should have made a second visit to his cousin. Indeed, he had not done so. It was a much younger man who had visited Sargon that Tuesday; he had falsely represented himself as Sargon’s nephew and given the name of “Robin Goodchild.” His real name was Robert Roothing, and he had come for the sole purpose of getting Sargon out of the asylum as soon as possible, because he could not endure the thought of his staying there.
Circumstances had conspired with a natural predisposition to give Bobby a great horror of all restraint. His mother, a gentle dark creature, the wife of a large blond negligent landowner, had died when Bobby was twelve; and he had been entrusted to the care of a harsh, old-fashioned aunt—to whom the cupboard seemed a proper place for discipline. When she discovered that he was really distressed by it, she sought to break his “cowardice” by giving him quite liberal doses of it—even when he hadcommitted no offence. He went to a school where discipline was maintained by “keeping-in.” The war eliminated his father, who died suddenly of over-excitement while in command of an anti-aircraft gun during an air-raid, and it led Bobby through some tiresome campaigning in Mesopotamia and the beleaguerment of Kut to an extremely unsympathetic Turkish prison. In any case he would probably have been a free-going easy creature, but now he had so passionate a hatred of cages that he wanted to release even canaries. He disliked the iron fences round the public parks and squares with a propagandist passion, he wrote articles about them inWilkins’ Weeklyand elsewhere clamouring for their “liberation,” and he never went by train if he could help it because of the claustrophobia that assailed him in the compartment. He would ride a push-bike except for long distances, and then he would borrow Billy’s motor bicycle. He did his best to prevent his craving for the large and open from becoming too conspicuous or a nuisance to other people, but Tessy and Billy understood about it and did their best to make things easy for him.
It was not only claustrophobia that Bobby had to fight against. He carried on a secret internal conflict with a disinclination to act upon most occasions, that he believed had developed in him as a result of war experiences. Sometimes it seemed to him to be just indolence, sometimes fastidiousness, sometimes sheer funk and cowardice. He could not tell. He had a rankling memory of a case of cruelty he had witnessed in the prisoners’ camp when he had stood by and done nothing. He would wake up sometimes at three o’clock in the morning and say to himself aloud, “I stood by and I did nothing. Oh God! OhGod! OhGod!” And at times he would walk up and down his study repeating: “Act!You vegetable! you hiding cur! Out and act!” Meanwhile he obeyed routines and did whatever came to his hand. As “Aunt Suzannah” he wasexcellent, indefatigably considerate, lucid, really helpful.Wilkins’ Weeklywas proud of him. He was the backbone of the paper.
And now this affair of Sargon’s had twisted him up very badly between his desire to free the little man, who had taken an extraordinary hold upon his imagination and sympathy, and his sense of the immense forces against which he would have to pit himself if he tried to give him any help. It was only after a considerable struggle with himself that he had called at the police station and the Gifford Street Workhouse. He was afraid of awkward questions, afraid above all of being “detained.” The workhouse was a detestable place with high walls and a paved court and a general effect of sinister seclusion from the grubby street outside. For the best part of a day after his Gifford Street visit he hesitated whether he should do anything more.
“Bobby’s got a grouch,” Susan told Tessy. “He’s stoopid. Just sits and says ’E ’as to fink sumpfink over. What’s he fink fings over for? Said I was to come downstairs again, there was a good girl.... Meant it.... Said so.... Puss’d me ’way.... I do-o-n’t fink I lo-o-o-ove Bobby ’nymore.”
Great distress. A storm of tears. Tessy was deeply sympathetic.
But after tea Bobby was brighter and drew Susan her “Good night picture” and came down and sat on her bed and talked her to sleep the same as usual, and Tessy perceived that the worst of Bobby’s trouble was over.
At supper Bobby unfolded his plans.
“I mean to go to Cummerdown Hill to-morrow,” he said compactly.
“To see Sargon?” said Tessy understandingly.
“If I can. But it won’t be visiting day. That’s Tuesday. I want to look round.”
Billy raised his eyebrows and helped himself to butter.
“But—” said Tessy, and stopped short.
“Yes?” said Bobby.
“You won’t be able to see him. You don’t know the name he’s under.”
“They’ll call him Mr. Sargon,” said Billy.
“His name’s Preemby. He’s a laundryman. They told me at the workhouse. His peoplewant him to be there!”
“I can’t stand the thought of it,” said Bobby after a brief silence.
“Don’t follow,” said Billy.
“That nice little thing being made into a lunatic. Like a little blue-eyed bird he was. High walls. Great louting warders. Sargon, King of Kings.... I’ve got to do something about it or I shall burst.”
He looked at once weak and desperate. Tessy reflected. “You’d better go,” she said.
“But what good will that do?” said Billy, and was quelled by a glance from Tessy.
“If you can lend me the old motor bike and the side-car. You’re not using it this week-end.”
“You can take off the side-car,” said Billy.
“I may want it,” said Bobby.
“You don’t mean—!” said Billy.
Bobby came as near to an explosion as he ever did.
“Oh never mindwhatI mean. I tell you I’m going down to Cummerdown to have a look at the place. No doubt I’m a futile ass, Billy, but I just can’t help myself going. The poor little beggar’s got no friends. His own family’s helped to put him away. Families do. It’s an infernal world. I’ve got to do something. If it’s only to shake ’em up. If I stay here another day I shall start smacking Susan.”
“Somebody ought to,” said Billy.
“If he can only keep away for fourteen days clear——”
“He’s free?” said Tessy.
“He has to be certified all over again—anyhow,” said Bobby.
Bobby discovered that the village of Cummerdown lies nearly two miles away from the asylum, and does its best very successfully to have as little to do with it as possible. It nestles among trees just off the high-road to Ashford and Hastings, and has one cramped little inn that gave him a bleak bedroom and accommodated his machine and side-car in an open outhouse crowded with two carts and a Ford and populous with hens. The day was still young, and after he had deposited the elderly rucksac in which he had brought his “things” upstairs, he set out with a walking-stick and an air of detached interest to reconnoitre the asylum and develop his plans for the rescue of Sargon. That golden autumn was still holding out; the pleasant lane he followed to the high-road was patterned with green and yellow chestnut leaves and the trees overhead were full of sunshine. It was a reassuring day. It encouraged him. It took him with a kindly seriousness and made him feel that rescuing people from lunatic asylums was the sort of work the sun could shine upon and nature welcome.
It had needed a great effort to get down from London. He had felt then like a midget setting out to attack an embattled universe. Amidst the Croydon traffic he had been half-minded to go back, but he had felt that he could not face Tessy until he had been at least definitely defeated. It was delightful to note an increased assurance within himself as he drew nearer to his enterprise. He felt much more on the scale of the powers he attacked. After all, what were laws and regulations but just things patched up by men like himself? What were prison walls but the slow work of shirking bricklayers and evasivecontractors? The attendants and custodians, the superintendents and so forth he was setting out to circumvent, were all as fallible as himself. And the thing was urgent and outrageous, this seizure of a harmless little fantastic, this frightful imprisonment. It had to be fought. The world would be intolerable unless such things were fought.
Queer world it was! Such beauty on these tree-stems, such a glow, and the delightfulness of rustling one’s feet through these leaves! But all that was by the way; the real business of life was to fight evil things.
He came out from between the trees and saw the wide downs opening out before him and the blocked masses of the asylum with its broad bare grounds and walls, an eyesore. This was his objective. In that place somewhere was Sargon, and he had to be released.
He seated himself on a convenient stile and inspected that heavy architecture and tried to frame a plan. That white building in the centre looked like a gaunt Georgian private house. That was probably the nucleus of the whole place. Two men were visible in front of it mowing the grass—patients perhaps. The wall and railings along the road looked implacable. Two stern-looking lodges there were, no doubt with a testy janitor lurking within, and there were iron gates—one open. A van was coming out, a furniture dealer’s van. For a time Bobby’s mind ran on the possibility of becoming a tradesman with parcels or a crate to deliver.... Many difficulties that way....
“But why a frontal attack?” said Bobby with an effect of discovery. The place fell away behind, down-hill. He would inspect the rear. If he worked round by the open down to the right, he would probably get on to slopes commanding a view of the asylum grounds.
An hour later Bobby was sitting on a heap of flints by the side of a minor road which ran over the risingground behind the asylum. He found the rear of the place much more hopeful and much more interesting than the front. There were fields with a number of men working in them, and at one place near the buildings a row of men seemed to be digging a trench under the supervision of an attendant. There was quite a lot of movement closer to the buildings, under a sort of open shed half a dozen men seemed to be taking exercise by walking up and down. It vexed Bobby to think that any one of these figures might be his Sargon. If only he had the elementary common sense to bring a field-glass, he reproached himself, he might have been able to make out his little friend’s features. “No clearness of thought,” he whispered. “No decision.” A lot of these people seemed to be going about very freely, carrying gardening implements and so forth. One he noted, walking about and gesticulating as if he talked to himself; he was manifestly a patient and quite unattended.
The wall bounding the asylum on this side had none of the austerity of the front wall. It seemed to be an old estate wall; in several places it was covered with ivy and here and there it was overhung with trees. The ground dropped away to his right, there was a little stream which ran out of the asylum grounds at the lowest corner; the corner was shaded by trees and seemed to be left to the trees and undergrowth; the stream ran under a low arch in the wall and went on down a widening valley towards London. The seclusion and shade of this corner appealed to Bobby very strongly. It seemed to him exactly the point at which Sargon ought to be got out of the place. He decided that presently he would stroll down and examine its possibilities as precisely as possible. If one could get Sargon to come down there——
He found the details difficult. He meant to have a plan worked out in every detail and to communicate it to Sargon on the next visiting day, but it was very hard to fit this plan together. He did not know when it would be mostconvenient for Sargon to attempt to slip away, whether this was to be a daylight or a night affair. He saw before him a great vista of inquiries to be made and suspicious people to be faced. “Damn!” said Bobby, and for a time he was again for abandoning the attempt.
Why couldn’t one go in at these gates, boldly and overwhelmingly, and say, “There is a sane man here and I have come to set him free?” A superman might do that, or an archangel. How splendid it would be to be a sort of Archangel-Knight-Errant, a great flaming presence of light and winged power, righting wrongs, reproving oppressors, liberating every kind of captive creature. Then one might do things. Bobby lapsed into a childish day-dream.
Presently he roused himself, stood up and went down towards the exit of the stream. The wall struck him as quite climbable—even by a little old gentleman. The stream came out meandering among pebbles through a short tunnel. One could have got into the asylum grounds or out of them quite easily over the wall by the ivy or through the culvert. He resolved to come again at twilight and—just to satisfy himself about his own pluck among other things—get into the asylum premises and walk about a little.
Yes. He would do that.
He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the wall. One could get on the top of the wall and reach down to his hands. A cripple could do it. The motor bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. And then?Where would he take him?
This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind was appalled and paralyzed by the complexities of his enterprise. He had not thought of taking him anywhere in particular.
The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at once interminable and frightfully swift. He had been toDymchurch in the summer with the Malmesburys, and liked the landlady of his lodgings very much; he wired to her “Can I come with a relation not ill but overworked for week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing the Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad to see you any time.” So that was all right. But the rest of the plan failed very largely to materialize. He made his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without misadventure.
The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen plans, and they all had gaps and none seemed much better or worse than the others. And he had walked round the asylum grounds at various discreet distances, by night and day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately asylums are much preoccupied with their internal affairs, and do not keep look-out men upon the battlements. They do not reckon with rescuers from outside.
Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting projects over his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid and his nerves all a-tingle, he set out for the asylum to see Sargon and begin the work of rescue as he had thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom of movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible for him to get away to the corner by the culvert, and he had to arrange a time for that meeting. Then he would have to provide also for alternative times if Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would be waiting under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car would be hidden among the bushes up by the road. In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. After that they could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep indoors until the fifteen days needed to make him legally a sane man again had passed. And then Bobby could find out those relations of his and talk the matter overwith them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby planned it out.
Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed name. He wasn’t quite clear why he didn’t give his own name, but an assumed name seemed to him to be more in the spirit of the adventure.
When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by Mr. Robin Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He betrayed no surprise at the name. It seemed to him to be as good as any other name. It might be the name of some intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor of the release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, and he nodded acquiescently to a warning not to talk about “everyblessed thing” he’d seen.
His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness of Bobby’s face. It was the one disciple who had ever seemed to believe. He held out both his hands in a little storm of emotion. Whatever sort of muddler Bobby might be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he was strength and hope.
The meeting occurred in the reception-room downstairs, for no one from the outside world may ever penetrate to the wards and the bleak realities of everyday asylum life. The reception-room had a baize-covered table in the middle, a black horsehair sofa and numerous chairs; it was totally devoid of small movables; there was an A B C time-table and one or two illustrated weeklies on the table, and the walls bore brown-spotted steel engravings of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in the Highlands and of Windsor Castle from the Thames. There were three or four groups, each of two or three people, with their heads together conversing in tactful undertones; there wereseveral women and one little girl; a tearful lady in profound mourning sat apart by the empty fire-place and no doubt awaited a patient; two attendants tried hard not to look as though they were listening as intently as possible to the conversations going on about them. The patients present were all in the sanest phase, “fit to be visited.” There was no madness visible; at most only a little nervous oddity. Bobby had been watching these other groups while he waited, and he had been impressed by a certain quality of furtiveness in their behaviour. The furtiveness he connected with the alertness of the attendants. One affected to look out of the window, the other half sat at a table holding an oldGraphic, and ever and again there would be a quick glance at this patient or that. It had not occurred to Bobby that his talk to Sargon would be semi-public; it was a disconcerting interference that would greatly hamper him in giving his instructions.
Bobby saw at once that Sargon was very much thinner than when he had taken his room in Midgard Street. He looked ill and worn, an effect that was emphasized by the fact that he was badly shaven and wearing ill-fitting clothes. His eyes seemed larger and sunken under his brows and his forehead more definitely lined. Yet if he looked unhappier he also looked more intelligent. He seemed more aware of the things about him—less a man in a dream.
“I have come to see if I can be of service to you,” said Bobby, holding out his hands. “Your friends and disciples are anxious for your welfare.”
“You have come to see me,” he said, and glanced sideways at the listening attendant and dropped his voice; “me—Sargon?”
Bobby understood that note of doubt and it grieved him. “You, Sargon, the King out of the Past.”
“They would have me deny it,” whispered Sargon.
Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as who should say, “They’d doanything.”
The little man’s manner changed. “How is one to know?” he said. “How is one to know?”
He sighed. “Nothing seems certain any more.”
“Can we sit down and talk together?” said Bobby. “There is much to be said between us.”
Sargon glanced round. There were two chairs in a corner, and in that corner they might be a little beyond the eavesdropper’s range. “I cannot understand this madness,” said Sargon as they sat down. “I cannot understand this Riddle that has been set me. Why does the Power, why does God, permit men to be mad? When they are mad they are beyond good and evil. What are they? Men still? What becomes of justice, what becomes of righteousness—when men go mad?” His voice sank. His eyes became furtive. “Dreadful things happen here,” he whispered. “Dreadful things. Quite dreadful things.”
He ceased. For a little while neither he nor Bobby said a word.
“I want to get you out of this,” said Bobby.
“Are my friends doing anything?” asked Sargon. “What is Christina Alberta doing? Is she well?”
“She is splendid,” he said haphazard. No doubt she was one of this beastly family of Sargon’s that was content to leave him here. “I want you to listen to me,” he said.
But Sargon had things to tell. “Everyone in this place is always thinking about what their friends outside are doing for them. The poor souls come and talk to me. They know I am different from what they are. They write letters, petitions. I tell them that when God releases me I will bear them all in mind. Some mock at me. They have delusions. They think they are kings or emperors or rich men or great discoverers, and that the world has plotted against them.... Some are suspicious and cruel....Darkened souls.... Some have dreadful habits. You cannot help but see.... Some are badly sunken—degraded—indescribably.... It is very painful, very painful.”
The blue eyes stared blankly at unpleasant memories.
“There can be no doubt that I am Sargon,” he said abruptly, and looked sharply at Bobby.
“I call you by no other name,” said Bobby.
The momentary acuteness faded again. “That man Preemby was unawakened. He was asleep—scarcely dreaming of life.But I have seen!I have looked at the world from high places. And from dark places too.... Sargon. Sargon is a different person.... But it is difficult.”
He became silent.
Bobby felt that they were getting nowhere. In his anticipations of this conversation he had talked and Sargon had listened. And there had been no one to overhear. But this was all unexpected. Anyhow, the plan had to be told; Sargon had to be instructed in his part. He glanced warily at the people nearest to them. “There are those among us,” he said quietly and quickly, “who would set you free. I want to tell you—” On the spur of the moment he attempted a code. “When I speak of a city in Central Asia it will mean this place, the Asylum. Do you understand?”
“This place—Central Asia. If I am Sargon.... Everything is possibly something else. But we are still in England nevertheless.”
“In reality. But I want to explain to you.”
“Yes, yes. Explain.”
“I shall speak of great discoveries in Central Asia. That will mean this.”
Didhe understand?
“Rescue!” whispered Bobby in Sargon’s ear, and glanced at the attendant and met his eye and was discomposed.
“Tell me about the discoveries,” said Sargon after a little pause as though he had not heard that whispered word.
“It is a symbol for this place,” said Bobby.
Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching their faces now. Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby flushed hotly and plunged abruptly into an account of the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called Bobinsky. Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” said Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking away. “Like this place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; “Imeanthis place.” There was a river ran through the city, the city of confinement, and went out by the lower part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. That was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At that point where the trees grew and the river went out through the wall. They they waited. There they would wait until the captive king came to them.
“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king do you mean?”
“It is meant for you.”
“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said Sargon. “I dream of the Euphrates.”
He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering of his own. Euphrates! What had the Euphrates to do with Central Asia? Or the Asylum?
“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say— It is a smaller river I mean, a streamlet—in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?”
A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw came near them and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed her out of the corner of his eye. Was she the friend of a patient or what was she doing here? “I speak in symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about this woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the woman exchanging a glance of intelligence with the male attendant who had moved a couple of yards up the room.They knew each other. Then she must be another observer. “I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about here pretty freely?”
“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.”
“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.”
The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards him, and stared at him with rather stupid green-blue eyes.
Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was always more afraid of women than men. This prim sharp-nosed figure so manifestly listening, and listening with a faint hostility to all he said, completed his discomfiture. He tried to improvise a story of lost and recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and yet incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention faltered at the difficult task. Where the river ran out of the city, he repeated; he harped upon that idea; where there were trees and ivy, there the faithful waited. When was the propitious hour for the Master to steal away to them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? When might it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many irrelevancies Bobby tried to get the import of these suggestions over to his hearer. Now he would be explicit; now as the fear of the listener returned, vague and misleading. He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. The time was slipping by. Bobby could have throttled that infernal woman. More and more did she become audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered back to his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such person as Bobinsky,” he threw in.
“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, manifestly more and more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole.
“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.”
“Some men are.”
“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to that corner? No, no. She’s looking. Don’t answer.
“Nowanswer.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sargon.
Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what else was to be done? He could have kicked himself for not having brought a brief statement of his plan written plainly on a little piece of paper that he could have slipped into Sargon’s hand—or pocket. It would have been so simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too late to do that now.
Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. He got up to go and then sat down again to make another attempt. He felt murderous towards that woman, towards himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon.
“It was very good of you to come and see me,” said Sargon.
“Whydid you come?...
“Do you think anything will be done about me?...
“You will see Christina Alberta? When I saw you first I thought you had things to tell me—important things. One lives on such hopes here. Here—when there are no visitors—nothing happens, nothing pleasant. And one is distressed....
“I am interested to hear of those cities in Central Asia of course, but it is a little puzzling. Did you come specially about them? Or just to see me?
“You will come again. Even to come down here to this sitting-room is an event....”
Then in a swift whisper. “The food is frightful. So badly cooked. It disagrees with me....”
“That woman,” said Bobby as he went, “She has spoilt everything. I can’t stand her.”
“That woman?” said Sargon, and followed the directionof Bobby’s eyes. “Poor soul,” he said. “She’s a deaf mute. She comes to see her brother. The whole family is defective or insane.”
A maddened Bobby returned towards his little inn. Should he chuck the whole thing? Intolerable thought! He must make fresh plans—fresh plans altogether. He must begin all over again. The little man was evidently wretched. But it was going to be harder to get hold of him than Bobby had thought.
Bobby had no sleep that night.
In the night just before daybreak suddenly Sargon woke up and understood. He understood quite clearly what the young man had been saying to him. He had said “Rescue!” Of course he had meant to say “Escape”! That city in Central Asia was only a parable; he had said as much. He had been describing a corner of the asylum grounds, that corner where the stream ran out beyond the work-fields and the shrubbery where the patients were supposed not to go. He had been telling of friends who would wait outside. He had been trying to arrange an hour when these friends would come there. And Sargon had failed to understand. He sat up in bed very still.
It was perfectly clear, but through a sort of dulness that came upon him at times he had not grasped the drift of it at the time. The young man had shown irritation, naturally enough. What would he do now? Would he try again? Were the friends still waiting?
Who was this young man? His name was unknown or forgotten. But he believed. He had said, “I call you by no other name.” Sargon! And there were these friends he spoke of, who waited outside for the king. They must know. How could they know, if there was nothing to be known? After all, perhaps it was no dream. Perhaps theworld was awakening.... But he had failed them. He had not understood.... They waited without....
How still everything was! A strange unusual stillness. It was rare for this place to be so bereft of noise. It was dark and yet not altogether dark. The ward was dimly lit by a blue-shaded light. The three nearer beds were unoccupied, and beyond the man who tossed and muttered almost incessantly lay for a little while at peace. The man who raved had died three days ago; the man who gave sudden loud shouts had been taken away to another ward. Through the open door one could see across the landing into the little yellow-lit room, where Brand the ward attendant sat with his arms crossed and chin on his chest and slept, his patience cards spread out before him. He seemed to be alone and yet he could sleep like that! Where could the other man be—the new attendant whose name Sargon did not know? And yet he felt—some one had just gone out!
The uncurtained windows showed the night outside, a darkness that became translucent, a streak of very black cloud and five pale stars. Across the lower edge of that oblong picture one could see indistinctly a tracery of tree branches and the lumpish head of a young oak still bearing its leaves, the trees along the first hedge. These outlines grew distincter as he watched. It was like the slow development of a photographic plate in the dark-room. The stars dissolved. Had there been five? There were three; the other two had dissolved into the pale invading light.
Dared one venture on to the landing? If Brand awoke he could make some natural excuse. He stood well with Brand. But the other fellow——?
There was not a trace of him. Where had he gone?...
Do it now!—wisest of maxims.
Very swiftly Sargon slipped out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and slippers. Hush!What was that?...Only some one snoring. Nothing more. He went out and stood on the landing. Brand slept on like a log.
The stone staircase was lit and empty and from the open door to the left downstairs came the harsh breathing of a sleeper. All the world seemed asleep for once, except Sargon and those friendly watchers outside the walls. Far away there were sounds of bawling and raving, but these were stifled by distance and an intervening door. They merely made the nearer silence more perceptible.
Something stirred, a little clicking sound that sent Sargon’s heart racing. Then a resonant blow. A second blow. It was nothing; it was the clock downstairs striking six.
Very quietly but very resolutely he walked downstairs. An intuition, an instinct impelled him. He felt and peered at the door and behold! it was ajar! Unbolted! Unlocked! Brand’s colleague was abroad upon some errand of his own. The cold air of freedom blew upon Sargon’s face.
The door opened and closed softly and Sargon stood upon the doorstep of the left wing of the asylum, facing the dim world of a November dawn.
It was dark but it was clear, a world of ebony outlines and colourless forms. Everything looked as if it had just been wiped over with a wet rag. It was cold, but it was cold without any of the hate and bitterness of wind.
He crossed the gravel drive and came to a stop and stood looking about him. The heavy building of the left wing rose above him, a vast bulk that went up into the paler darkness of the sky. It receded in perspective and the central block beyond looked like the ghost of a house. Here and there were orange-lit windows and others fainter lit by some remote reflected light. In the lodge to the left of the gates there was also a light. For where there is madness there is never perfect sleep.
But the asylum was as near complete silence that morning as an asylum can ever be.
He looked and listened. Not a footfall. It would not do to be found here by that other attendant....
But the man was snugly away somewhere. No one would loiter here in this chill air.
What was it Sargon had to remember?
The friends and believers were waiting for him. They were waiting now. Where the river ran out of the city wall; that was to say where the little streamlet ran out of the grounds. That would be this way—to the left, where the fields dropped down-hill. He stepped on to the grass, for his feet made loud sounds on the gravel. The grass hissed crisply. It was heavy with white frost and his footmarks made black blots in the wet silvery grey.
He walked past and away from the ponderous dark mass of the asylum into the open, colder air of freedom. He unlatched and went through the small iron gate in the iron fencing that separated the trim grass plots of the front from the cabbage field. It complained a little on its hinge and he opened and closed it very carefully. He struck across the field. The path ran before him into a mist. It came out of the mist to his feet and vanished behind him. It was as if it went past him while he marked time. He could not remember whither the path ran, nor how it lay with regard to the corner he sought. But every moment things grew clearer.
Every moment things grew clearer. There had been something dark and brooding in the sky that hung over him and seemed to watch him. He had done his best to ignore the vague presence, because he was afraid of his own imagination. But suddenly he saw plainly that it was just the tops of trees showing above the mist. That must be the line of trees along the hedge parallel to the asylum front. He must go through these if he wanted to go down-hill. He left the path and made his way slowly along a frozen ridge of dug earth. He skirted long rows of stalky cabbages, black and shrivelled and unkempt theylooked like Cossack sentinels afoot. They all leant towards him as though they listened to the sound of him.
As he drew near the hedge and the trees he heard a sound like the feet of an army of midgets. It was the drip, drip of moisture from the trees.
Far away behind him and quite invisible to him a motor car scurried along the high-road.
He had some difficulty in finding a way through the hedge and a bramble scratched his ankle. He told himself there was no hurry; the friends waited. Beyond the hedge the ground went down-hill and the mist grew whiter and thicker. The daylight was strong enough now to show the mist dead-white. It veiled the stream altogether.
He walked slowly. He had no sense of being pursued. Brand would not go into the ward for an hour yet; he might not miss him for a long time....
What a wonderful thing, thought Sargon, is daybreak, and how little one sees of it! Every day begins with this miraculous drama and we sleep through it as though it did not concern us and rouse ourselves only for the trite day. A little while ago the world had been an inky monochrome and now it was touched with colour. The sky was blue. All the stars had gone—but no! not all. One still shone, a large pale star, the star of Sargon. And the sky about it was flushed with a faint increasing pinkiness. That must be the east and that star must be the morning star, hanging above the outhouse chimneys. Those chimneys were very distinct. The butt end of the asylum which had been a black and shapeless monster a little while ago, had now become a dark purple shape outlined with an exquisite clearness, eaves and ridges and chimneys and creasings and window-frames. Four windows shone a fading orange and two of them suddenly blinked and vanished.
Would anyone look out of a window there and see him?
It did not matter. He would go on down towards the stream. This friendly mist would hide him.
It was wonderful to be in this white mist and yet not in it. It was always a little way from him. And nevertheless it wetted him. How crisp the frosted ground was, but if one kicked through the surface, it was soft.
Overhead the blueness increased and there was now a rippled patch of pink cloud.
He went deeper and deeper into the soft mist. Presently he was walking on long wet shrivelled grass. When he turned presently to look back at the asylum it had altogether disappeared.
What was that?Was it something talking or was it the beating heart of some busy elfin machine? Listen! Peer! Think!
It was the stream.
Now everything was plain and easy.
He walked beside the stream. Near at hand trees became visible, attendant trees with mist about their waists, white-clad sentinel trees. The dry grass was ranker here. And what was this, like a denser lower mist within the mist? This was the wall. Beyond that wall, almost within shouting distance now, the friends and believers would be waiting. How discreet they were! Not a murmur, not a footfall.
For a long time Sargon stood motionless beside the culvert beneath the wall. At last he roused himself and by a great effort and with the help of the ivy he scrambled to the top of the wall.
No one waited. Some dim four-footed thing bolted from the frost-bitten weeds below, and then there was silence. There was no sign of watchers nor helpers.
No matter. If it was God’s will they would come.
He sat very still. He did not feel deserted nor alone. He was not in the least dismayed. He felt that the Power who had called him into being was all about him.
Slowly, steadily the light grew brighter. A little cloud like a floating feather caught fire very suddenly and thenanother. A great beam of light, like the beam of a searchlight, only very much broader, appeared slanting to the north. Then above a whaleback of distant downland came a knife-edge of dazzling light, an effulgence, like a curved knife, like a cap, like a dome, a quivering blazing fire-birth. And then torn clear of the hill and round and red the November sun had risen.
It was full daylight and the mist had dissolved away. The roofs of the asylum buildings were now visible over the crest, divested of all magic, bleak and commonplace. From some point in that direction a dog was barking.
It was strange that there should be no one here. That young man whose name he had never known, had made it very plain that there were friends in waiting here. Perhaps they had gone away and would come back presently.
Still it did not matter now very much. At any rate he had seen a sunrise of almost incredible beauty. How good a thing the sun was! The thing of all visible things that was most like God.
Perhaps there were no helpers here at all. Perhaps he had misunderstood. He was stupid he knew. He misunderstood more and more. Perhaps presently keepers would come in search of him and take him back to the asylum. It might be so that things were decreed. He would not let it distress him. Life was full of trials and disappointments. He was feeling now very cold throughout his substance and tired so that all his energy was gone. With a start he became aware that there was a man standing up the slope that overlooked the asylum grounds. He felt a thrill of renewed vitality. This man was standing quite still looking down at the asylum. It might be one of thestaff looking for him. Or one of the promised helpers. One of the promised helpers?
Sargon was not so calm and apathetic as he had supposed. He was atremble from head to foot. He was not shivering with cold but trembling with excitement. He felt he must end this doubt one way or the other. Could he catch this man’s eye? He waved a hand. Then he drew a dirty little pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-gown pocket and began to wave it. Now! Now it seemed the man was looking straight down at Sargon.
He was moving towards Sargon slowly, as if incredulous. Then he was signalling and running.
Sargon sat quite still. He knew all along they would come for him.
It was Bobby, close at hand now and crying out, “Sargon! It is you! Sargon!” Sargon did not wait for him. He turned about and scrambled and dropped off the wall. They clasped hands. “You have come to fetch me?”
“I was in despair. I didn’t dream you understood me. I’m all amazed.... Let me think; what are we to do? This is splendid. My motor bicycle is in the inn. Nuisance that. Yes, come along. I must hide you somewhere and fetch it. Then we will get away. I didn’t think you’d have no clothes. Clothes? Won’t show much. Cold? May be cold. I’ll get a rug. There’s a rug in the side-car.”
He led the way back up the slope, glancing ever and again at the asylum fields. Sargon trotted beside him, calmly confident in God and Bobby, with the limitless docility of one who trusts his servant.
Bobby’s mind was fresh and bright that morning. He had wandered out to the asylum simply because he could lie in bed in a fever of regrets no longer. His extreme luck in encountering Sargon had restored all his confidence inhimself and in the propitiousness of things. He made his plans quickly and with decision. It would be impossible to take Sargon back to the inn and give him coffee. So soon as he was missed they would surely go to the village. And every one would note this queer little figure with its dressing-gown and slippers and scarred ankles. He must get the little man into hiding somewhere close at hand. In that small beech-wood just over the next crest. (Pity he was so scantily clad!) Then the motor bicycle must be fetched as quickly as possible.
Sargon was absolutely trustful and obedient. “It is cold I know,” said Bobby, “but unavoidable. I wish there were not so many wet dead leaves.”
“Only be quick and fetch help,” said Sargon.
“Don’t stir from here,” said Bobby.
It was not the most perfect hiding-place in the world, a ditch, a clump of holly on the edge of a bare beech-wood, but it was all that downland was likely to provide. “So long,” said Bobby and set off at a smart trot for the inn and the motor bicycle. He arrived flushed, dishevelled, and out of breath and found the inn suspicious and reluctant when he announced that he wanted his bill instantly, refused any breakfast but a cup of tea and a chunk of bread and butter, and set about packing his little roll. There seemed endless things to do, taking an interminable time. To cap a score of irritating delays the inn was short of change and had to send out to the village shop. Billy’s motor bicycle, always a temperamental creature, gave great trouble with its kick starter. And meanwhile Sargon was shivering amidst the mud and dead leaves under the dripping trees or worse, being recaptured and led back into captivity.
It was nearly eight before Bobby came back along the cart-track into sight of the little beech-wood, and his heart jumped when he saw two heavy-looking men advancing towards him. He knew them for asylum men at once;they had the unmistakable flavour of subaltern authority that distinguishes prison warders, ex-policemen, time-keepers, and the keepers of the insane. As he throbbed near them they came into the middle of the road and made signs for him to stop. “Hell!” said Bobby, and pulled up.
They came alongside and without evident hostility.
“Excuse me, sir,” said one—and Bobby felt better.
“That large place you see there, sir, is Cummerdown Asylum. Perhaps you know it, sir?”
“No.Whichis the asylum? All of it?” Bobby felt he was being really clever and his spirits rose.
“Yesir.”
“Damn great place!” said Bobby.
“We’ve got one of our inmates astray this morning. Harmless little man, he is, and we ventured to stop you and ask you if you’ve seen him.”
Bobby had an inspiration. “I believe I have. Was he in a sort of brown robe and slippers with nothing on his head?”
“That’s ’im, sir. Where did you see him?”
Bobby turned round and pointed in the direction from which he had come. “He was making off along the edge of a field,” he said. “I saw him not—oh, not five minutes ago. Mile, or a bit more, away from here. Running he was. Along a hedge to the right—left I mean—near a chestnut plantation.”
“That’s ’im all right, Jim.Wheredid you say, sir?”
Bobby’s brilliance increased. “If one of you will sit behind me and the other get into this contraption—bit of a load, but we can manage it—I’ll run you back to the very place. Right away.” And without more ado he set about turning round. “That’s a real help, sir,” said Jim. “Don’t mention it,” said Bobby.
Bobby was now at the top of his form. He loaded them in with helpful words—even the smaller of the two was a tight fit for the side-car and the other sat like a sack on the luggage carrier—he took them back a mile and a half untilhe found the suitable hedge by the chestnut tree. He unloaded them carefully, received their hearty but hasty thanks with a generous gesture and sent them off at a smart trot across the fields. “He can’t have a mile’s start,” he said. “And he wasn’t going particularly fast. Sort of limping.”
“That’s ’im,” said Jim.
Bobby kissed his hand to their retreating backs. “That’syou,” said Bobby. “God help you both and cleanse your hearts. And now for Sargon.”
He buzzed back to the place where he had left Sargon, turned his machine round again and then looked towards the corner of the wood by the holly clump where the little man ought to have been waiting. But there was no sign of a peeping head. “Queer!” said Bobby, and ran up to the place where he had left Sargon crouching in the ditch. Not a sign was there of him. Bobby looked about him, baffled and frightened. After all, after everything, could things go wrong now?
“Sargon,” he called, and then louder, “Sargon!”
Not a sound, not a rustle came in reply.
“He’s hidden! Can he have crawled away and fainted? Exhausted perhaps!”
Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken the place perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite of his promise, or crept back numbed and wretched to the warmth and shelter of the asylum? Bobby followed the ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond the corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little old woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on a litter of dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a battered black straw hat adorned with a broken black feather, a small black jacket bodice; a sack was drawn over her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over her shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, all except one bright red ear, and behind her on the banklay two large stakes tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby she was the most astonishing of apparitions. It was disconcerting enough to discover Sargon gone. It was still more amazing to find him so oddly replaced.
Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. Should he wake the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, or should he steal away? Nothing, he decided, would be lost by asking.
He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said.
The sleeper did not awake.
Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and asked to be excused again. The sleeper muttered a choking snore, woke with a start, looked up, and revealed the face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without recognition for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. While he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and understanding. “I was so cold,” he said. “I took these things from the scarecrow. And the straw was nice and dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?”
“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. “It makes an honest woman of you. Can you walk in that sack? No, we haven’t time to put it back. Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. The side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to put it on again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! Certainly we won’t put it back. Off we’ll go, and when we’ve a good ten miles between us and the asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something to eat.”
“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And bacon and eggs?”
“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby.
“The coffee there is—beastly,” said Sargon.
Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the hood over him, erected the wind-screen, and so packed himaway. He became a quite passable aunt, dimly seen. And in another minute Bobby had kicked the engine into an impatient fuss and was in the saddle.
He felt himself now the cleverest fellow that ever stole a lunatic. Not that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get a lunatic away. If you knew how.... They quivered and jolted along the little minor road and so on to the smooth main highway to Ashford and Folkestone. The accelerator was urged to do its best. “Good-bye, Cummerdown,” sang Bobby. “Cummerdown Hill, good-bye!”
The little old motor bike was going beautifully.
They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a mile or so beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in the side-car and went to send a telegram to Dymchurch announcing his coming. There was some delay in the Post Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her spectacles. Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the inn. The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave observant face. He watched this emergence of Sargon and his progress to a chair behind the little white tablecloth, with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. Then he came back into the little room where the table was set. For some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” he said at last and turned about and went slowly into his kitchen where some sort of wife seemed to be cooking things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, and so was prepared for discussion.
The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received with eagerness. The landlord stood over them scrutinizing their reception of his provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, then?” he said.
“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard.
“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause.
“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment.
“Going far?” the landlord tried.
“So-so,” said Bobby.
The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We get some rummy customers here at times,” he said.
“You must attract them,” said Bobby.
The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned about and said “Umph”—meaningly.
“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning.
The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. “Hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know rightly whether it’s a lady or a gentleman you got with you—still——”
Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just then. “It’s hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential whisper and left the landlord with that.
But when they had gone a few miles further he told Sargon he had decided to buy him some socks and a jacket and trousers at the next shop they saw. “As it is,” he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll put that hat and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. I made a mistake.”
Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day wore on. He developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie about a cottage and a fire and how his friend had only escaped with just a few articles of clothing hastily put on. “Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically incinerated.” They were going down to take refuge with a variable relation, a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day progressed the circumstances of the fire became richer and more remarkable and the particulars of the escape more definitely thrilling. Bobby told such lies with great sincerity and gravity; they were a form of freedom—from reality.
Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure was a severer endurance test than Bobby realized at the time. For the most part he was either cramped up and boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and being jolted and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting still in the side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly but perplexingly, and usually quite unnecessarily, explained.
Mrs. Plumer, of Maresett Cottage, Dymchurch, was an anxious widow woman. She had a kind, serviceable heart, but it was troubled about many things. She saved and eked out almost too much. She let most of her rooms in the summer and some even in the winter, but she hated to think of the things careless lodgers might do to her furniture. She liked everything to be in order and lodgers better looking and better behaved than Mrs. Pringle’s lodgers or Mrs. Mackinder’s lodgers. She had taken a fancy to Bobby because he had fitted in nicely when she had had only one room to spare, and because he had shaved in cold water instead of calling down as every other man lodger did—there was no bell in that room—for hot. Also he talked agreeably when he came in and out and didn’t want more at meals.
She was very pleased when he wrote to take her downstairs living-room and two bedrooms for himself and a friend for a fortnight. There were few people in Dymchurch who got “lets” in November. They might come “any time” after Tuesday.
She told Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder that she was expecting two young gentlemen, and left them to suppose that her guests might stay on indefinitely.
On Wednesday she was excited and rather perplexed by aseries of telegrams from Bobby. The first said plainly and distinctly: “Arriving with aunt about four Roothing.” That disappointed her. She would have infinitely preferred two gentlemen.
But within an hour came another wire and this said: “Error in telegram not aunt uncle sorry Roothing.”
Now what was one to make ofthat?
Presently the child from the Post Office was back again. “Uncle catching cold fire hot-water bottles whisky.”
The next sensational telegram announced a delay. “Tyre trouble not so soon later Roothing.”
Then came: “Sixish almost certain good fire please Roothing.”
“It’s very good of him,” said Mrs. Plumer “to keep me informed like this. But I hope the old gentleman won’t be fussy.”
The fire in the downstairs sitting-room was burning brightly at six, there was a kettle on the hob, there were not only tea-things, but whisky, sugar, glasses, and a lemon on the table and a hot-water bottle in both the beds upstairs when the fugitives arrived. Mrs. Plumer’s first feelings at the sight of Sargon were feelings of disappointment. She had allowed her mind to run away with the idea of a warm, comfortable uncle with at most a whisky-drinking cold, an uncle who would be, if not absolutely golden, at least gilt-edged. She had, if anything, exaggerated her memories of Mr. Roothing’s geniality. So soon as she held open her door at the roar and toot of the motor bicycle, she saw that her anticipations would have to be modified again. Things were rather indistinct in the deepening twilight, but she could see that Bobby wasn’t wearing the full and proper leather costume with gauntlets and goggles complete, that a real young gentleman would have worn on such an occasion and which Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder would have respected, and that theshape he was extracting from the side-car was not the shape of a properly-expanded uncle. It looked much more like a large hen taken out of a small basket on market day.
As Sargon came into the light of the living-room, Mrs. Plumer’s disillusionment deepened and decreased. She had rarely seen so strange and weather-beaten an outcast. His blue eyes stared pitifully out of a pale face; his hair, beneath an unsuitable black felt hat, was greatly disordered. He was clad chiefly in an excessive pair of trousers which he clutched nervously to keep up; very full they were with his dressing-gown tails; his too ample white socks fell like gaiters over his old felt slippers and betrayed his distressful ankles. He looked afraid. He stared at her almost as though he anticipated an unfriendly reaction. And Bobby, too, standing beside him, looked rough and travel-worn and eventful, and not at all the self-effacing young gentleman she had remembered.
When Bobby saw the swift play of Mrs. Plumer’s expression he realized that their foothold in this pleasant, restful, firelit apartment was precarious. Happily a reserve lie he had thought of, but not hitherto used, came aptly to his mind.
“Isn’t it a shame!” he said. “They went off with his clothes. Even his socks.”
“They seem to have,” said Mrs. Plumer, “whoever they were.”
“Pure hold-up. This side of Ashford. My big bag too.”
“And where did the gentleman get the clothes he’s wearing?” she asked. Her tone was unpleasantly sceptical.
“They exchanged. I’d gone back along the road to see if I could see anything of the tyre-pump I’d dropped, never thinking anything of the sort was possible on an English high-road. (Come and sit by the fire, uncle.) And when I came back they’d gone and there he was—as you see him. Imagine my astonishment!”
“And you never sent a telegram about it!” said Mrs. Plumer.
“Too near home. I’d have got here first, anyhow. Well, we’ve had adventures enough to-day, anyhow. I’ve never known such a journey. Thank heaven, we’ve had our tea. I think the best place for uncle is bed—until we can arrange some clothes for him. What do you think, Mrs. Plumer?”
“After he’s had a good wash,” said Mrs. Plumer. She was still doubtful, but a sort of kindliness was struggling to the surface. “Weren’t you afraid when they jumped out on you, sir!” She asked Sargon directly. His blue eyes sought Bobby’s for instructions.
“It was a great shock to him,” said Bobby, “a great shock. He’s hardly got over it yet.”
“Hardly got over it yet,” said Sargon in confirmation.
“Took all your clothes off, they did. It’s shameful,” said Mrs. Plumer. “And you with a cold coming on.”
“We’ll get him to bed. Of course, if you’ve got anything for us to eat we might have it first here. Perhaps just a bit of toasted cheese or Welsh Rarebit, or something of that sort, and a good hot grog. Eh, uncle?”
“Don’t want much to eat,” said Sargon. “No.”
“I haven’t forgotten that Welsh Rarebit you made for me, Mrs. Plumer, after I got caught in the rain on the way from Hythe.”
“Well, I daresay I could get you a Welsh Rarebit,” said Mrs. Plumer, softening visibly.
“Famous,” said Bobby. “Make a new man of him. And meanwhile I’ll run the old bike round to the shed. If I may put it in the shed? You’ll be all right here, uncle?”
“It’s safe?”
“Every one’s safe with Mrs. Plumer,” said Bobby, and held the door open for her to precede him out of the room.
“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow morning,” he saidto her confidentially in the passage. “He’s a wonderful man.”
“He’s all right?” asked Mrs. Plumer.
“Right as can be.”
“He looks that distraught!”
“He’s a poet,” said Bobby, “besides playing on the violin,” and so satisfied her completely.
But he did not feel that he had brought the wonderful day to a completely successful end until he had got Sargon washed and brushed and tucked up cosily in Mrs. Plumer’s bright little best bedroom. “Now we’re anchored,” he said. He went into his own room and sat down for a time to invent things about his uncle in case Mrs. Plumer was desirous of more explicit information when he went downstairs. He decided to say “He’s eccentric,” in an impressive, elucidatory way. “And very shy.” His uncle, he would explain, was suffering from overwork, due to writing an heroic poem about the Prince of Wales’ journey round the world. He wanted a complete rest. And sea air. The more he stayed in bed and indoors the better. He filled in a few useful details of this story, sat for a little while twiddling the toes of his boots, and then got up and went downstairs. He felt sure he could carry it off all right with Mrs. Plumer. He found her waiting for him. The chief difficulty he encountered was her conviction that the police ought to be told of the highway robbery this side of Ashford at once.
“H’m,” said Bobby and for a moment he was at a loss. Then he decided. “I’ve done that already,” he said.
“But when?”
“I telephoned from an Automobile Association box. To the Ashford police. It will be in their district you know. Not in Romney Marsh. Sharp fellows, the Ashford police. I had to describe the lost clothes and everything. They don’t let much get by them.”
She took it beautifully. After that everything was easy.
The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold in his throat and chest. His chest was painful and he was feverish, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, and short of breath. Bobby did not care to consult a doctor. He believed that all doctors constituted a league for the re-incarceration of escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about escapes being circulated throughout the profession. He motored to Hythe and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of voice jujube, two iodine preparations for the chest, and suchlike trifles that the chemist recommended. When he returned about midday the patient looked better and seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine and rubbed his chest and made a generally curative fuss, he was able and disposed to talk.
“The pillow all right?” said Bobby.
“Perfect.”
“You ought to doze for a bit now.”
“Yes.”
Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that Place again?”
“I hope not.”
The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. Promise me not. I couldn’t endure it.”
“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are quite safe.”
“And there will be no need to get into that side-car again?”
“None.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“It bumped—horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?”
Bobby did not answer for a moment or so.
“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who ChristinaAlberta is. I took you out of the asylum because I do not believe you are mad. But I know nothing of your family. I know nothing about your circumstances at all. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.”
Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes on Bobby’s face. “You were sorry for me?”
“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in Midgard Street.”
“Likedme? But you believed I was Sargon, King of Kings?”
“Practically,” said Bobby.
“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.”
The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of the window at the sky. “I have been very much confused in my mind,” said Sargon. “Even now I am not clear. But I realize I am confused. Christina Alberta is my daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her and came away from her, and I must have distressed her greatly.”
“Then she may not know where you have been?”
“She may be looking for me.”
“Where is she?”
“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio somewhere—with peculiar pictures. I never liked those pictures. A studio in a Mew. It had a name but I cannot remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably Christina Alberta is there with her friends—still wondering what has become of me.”