Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching their faces now. Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby flushed hotly and plunged abruptly into an account of the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called Bobinsky. Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” said Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking away. “Like this place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; “I mean this place.” There was a river ran through the city, the city of confinement, and went out by the lower part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. That was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At that point where the trees grew and the river went out through the wall. They they waited. There they would wait until the captive king came to them.
“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king do you mean?”
“It is meant for you.”
“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said Sargon. “I dream of the Euphrates.”
He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering of his own. Euphrates! What had the Euphrates to do with Central Asia? Or the Asylum?
“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say— It is a smaller river I mean, a streamlet—in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?”
A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw came near them and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed her out of the corner of his eye. Was she the friend of a patient or what was she doing here? “I speak in symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about this woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the woman exchanging a glance of intelligence with the male attendant who had moved a couple of yards up the room. They knew each other. Then she must be another observer. “I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about here pretty freely?”
“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.”
“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.”