The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards him, and stared at him with rather stupid green-blue eyes.
Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was always more afraid of women than men. This prim sharp-nosed figure so manifestly listening, and listening with a faint hostility to all he said, completed his discomfiture. He tried to improvise a story of lost and recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and yet incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention faltered at the difficult task. Where the river ran out of the city, he repeated; he harped upon that idea; where there were trees and ivy, there the faithful waited. When was the propitious hour for the Master to steal away to them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? When might it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many irrelevancies Bobby tried to get the import of these suggestions over to his hearer. Now he would be explicit; now as the fear of the listener returned, vague and misleading. He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. The time was slipping by. Bobby could have throttled that infernal woman. More and more did she become audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered back to his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such person as Bobinsky,” he threw in.
“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, manifestly more and more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole.
“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.”
“Some men are.”
“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to that corner? No, no. She’s looking. Don’t answer.
“Now answer.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sargon.
Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what else was to be done? He could have kicked himself for not having brought a brief statement of his plan written plainly on a little piece of paper that he could have slipped into Sargon’s hand—or pocket. It would have been so simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too late to do that now.
Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. He got up to go and then sat down again to make another attempt. He felt murderous towards that woman, towards himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon.