There had been a slight altercation with Billy before Bobby came hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” said Bobby.
“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? He was pretty nearly all moustache.”
“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A sort of prance in his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s heading for trouble.”
“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he get that ecstatic nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, Bobby. You keep out of it. There’s a policeman tacking on now.”
Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, and dodged across the road just as four racing omnibuses blotted out the Sargonites from Billy’s eyes.
“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, stooping to Sargon’s grateful ear in spite of a considerable push from Mr. Godley.
“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway reassurance came. This was the First of the Disciples, and he had found his way to his Master. Quite clearly now did Sargon see what he had to do. These first followers had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. To do that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the hurry and tumult of the street. A vision came to Sargon of a long brightly lit table, and an array of disciples asking questions, and of memorable answers and great sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of the Rubicon Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise of supplying dinners de luxe at popular prices.
“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the hand, “we will rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all things shall be explained.”
The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples at a table had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon that by the time he reached the entrance of the Rubicon Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a corner, he had called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions was a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and the other a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, lean and thinly bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors and wearing mittens and a tall black felt hat—a hat of an unusual shape rather like the steam-dome of a railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the very door of the Restaurant.
“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take meat with me. I have things to tell you that will change your whole life.”