Yes. He would do that.
He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the wall. One could get on the top of the wall and reach down to his hands. A cripple could do it. The motor bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. And then? Where would he take him?
This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind was appalled and paralyzed by the complexities of his enterprise. He had not thought of taking him anywhere in particular.
The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at once interminable and frightfully swift. He had been to Dymchurch in the summer with the Malmesburys, and liked the landlady of his lodgings very much; he wired to her “Can I come with a relation not ill but overworked for week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing the Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad to see you any time.” So that was all right. But the rest of the plan failed very largely to materialize. He made his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without misadventure.
The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen plans, and they all had gaps and none seemed much better or worse than the others. And he had walked round the asylum grounds at various discreet distances, by night and day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately asylums are much preoccupied with their internal affairs, and do not keep look-out men upon the battlements. They do not reckon with rescuers from outside.
Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting projects over his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid and his nerves all a-tingle, he set out for the asylum to see Sargon and begin the work of rescue as he had thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom of movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible for him to get away to the corner by the culvert, and he had to arrange a time for that meeting. Then he would have to provide also for alternative times if Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would be waiting under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car would be hidden among the bushes up by the road. In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. After that they could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep indoors until the fifteen days needed to make him legally a sane man again had passed. And then Bobby could find out those relations of his and talk the matter over with them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby planned it out.
Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed name. He wasn’t quite clear why he didn’t give his own name, but an assumed name seemed to him to be more in the spirit of the adventure.
§ 3
When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by Mr. Robin Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He betrayed no surprise at the name. It seemed to him to be as good as any other name. It might be the name of some intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor of the release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, and he nodded acquiescently to a warning not to talk about “every blessed thing” he’d seen.
His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness of Bobby’s face. It was the one disciple who had ever seemed to believe. He held out both his hands in a little storm of emotion. Whatever sort of muddler Bobby might be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he was strength and hope.