“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy.
“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has disorganized the actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of things that will tell some day. And of course I have to do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt Suzannah gets more and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they ask me. It’s all material in the long run. Still—it takes time.... I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little cell somewhere. And he’s wondering why they don’t see that he’s truly the great Sargon, come again to this world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a dangerous, unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? And his poor little map of the Whole World upstairs—he always called it the Whole World—and his little paper star-machine, and his poor little empty room and his poor little empty bed.”
“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. “Bobby, you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. You are a new disease. You are the type case of Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you should sympathize openly with that little devil Susan when I have spanked her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that you should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work because she needs light and air. I can even understand something of your emotional relationships with various stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes to your being sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw the line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little empty bed! It’s—it’s morbid, Bobby.”
“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. “You’ll go to the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?”
“I’ll go—in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. I’m worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too round-eyed for this cruel world.”
And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon Square Court and sat through a frowsty morning and waited for Sargon who never appeared. He heard all the morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial differences, and all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass window with intent to rob, but nothing about Sargon. The magistrate vanished and the court began to disperse. He asked questions of a policeman who had never heard of Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. Had he come to the right court? the policeman asked. Bobby hurried headlong to Minton Street. Minton Street, too, it seemed, had never heard of Sargon. It did not occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He retired baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the evening newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon or him. Perhaps he had not been charged! He hurried back and rushed upstairs full of a vain surmise; the room was desolate, the window open, the map of the world on the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence?
Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. Bobby lay awake of nights.
After three full days Billy, who had been watching his friend furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t you go and see the Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square Police Station about it? He’d be sure to know if anyone does.”
Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted by the same good-looking officer he had seen in the entrance hall of the Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the young man who didn’t happen to know anything about him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not answering Bobby’s questions.
Bobby explained the situation candidly.