This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring egotistic eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters: “Turnbull, James.”
Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part in the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to start at his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run: “Unique case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases, prosaic and healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however, leading him to attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent outbreak of pure anarchy——”
Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst of savage laughter: “Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even about getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You were right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about—about mad doctors.”
Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and then, after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: “There is one thing that was puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Evan.
“No man by will or wit,” answered Turnbull, “can get out of this garden; and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in right enough. And they will see that we do not get out.”
Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then he nodded without a word.
XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only have found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.