Christina Alberta began to unfold her premeditated discourse. Every now and then Devizes would interrupt her with a question. He kept his eyes on her, and it seemed to her even from the beginning that they betrayed something more than attention to what she was saying. He looked at her as though he had seen her before and couldn’t quite remember where. She described her Daddy’s talks to her when she was a girl, about the Pyramids and the Lost Atlantis and so forth, and the odd spirit of release and renewed growth that had followed the death of her mother. She told of the spiritualistic séance and the coming of Sargon. Devizes was very keen on various aspects of the Sargon story. “It was odd that the suggestion fell in so aptly with Preemby’s mental disposition. What was that young man up to? I don’t quite understand him.”
“I don’t know. I think he just hit by chance on the stuff he talked. It was just bad luck that it fitted.”
“Undergraduate idea of fun?”
“Undergraduate fun. It might have been Tut-an-ka-man.”
“But it happened to be Sargon.”
“He may have been reading some ancient history.”
“He didn’t, I suppose, know anything about your father?”
“Couldn’t have done. I suppose he thought my—my Daddy looked a little small and absurd, and I suppose it appealed to his sense of humour to single him out from the others and make him a great king. I’d like to have a few minutes straight talk with that young man.”
“This you see isn’t a delusion, Devizes. It’s a deception,” said Paul Lambone.
“Is he generally coherent,” asked Devizes.