“Widgery?”
“That was his visitor yesterday.”
“Was it?” said the Medical Superintendent, and reflected and went to his desk as if to look for a paper. “I thought it was a different sort of name—rather more like Goodchild. Perhaps I’ve mixed up the names.”
“Mr. Sam Widgery,” said Christina Alberta, “would be the last person who’d want Daddy to get out. He probably came to make sure that he wouldn’t. He may have come just for the pleasure of gloating over him. Uncle Sam’s not a pretty soul. He may have wanted to make sure the wall went all the way round.”
The Medical Superintendent forgot his doubt about the name and the paper and turned with a fresh idea to them. “You don’t think there was any animus? You don’t think he may have made for Mr. Widgery? Where does this Mr. Widgery live?”
But neither Devizes nor Christina Alberta thought there was any great possibility of Mr. Preemby beating back to Woodford Wells.
“He’s much more likely to go to Canterbury or Windsor or start straight off for Rome,” said Christina Alberta.
“Or Mesopotamia—or the British Museum,” said Devizes.
“Or anywhere!” said Christina Alberta with a note of despair.
They returned to London completely baffled. Christina Alberta was for a visit to the Cummerdown Police Station and for a search in the villages round about, but Devizes explained that this might do more harm than good. Until now Christina Alberta had never heard of that one kindly weakness in the British lunacy laws, the release of the fourteen days freedom. If the lunatic can get away from the Asylum and remain at large for that period, he or she becomes legally sane again, and cannot be touched without a fresh examination and a new certificate. To set the whole countryside hunting for Preemby might merely lead to his recapture by the Asylum authorities. And whatever happened the mystery must not get into the papers.