“Nervous specialist. He is a wonderful talker—most intelligent and (h’rrmp) understanding. I have a curious feeling that somewhere, somewhen, somehow I have met him before. In this life—or some other. It is all quite vague, and he does not seem to have any corresponding recollection. No. Probably a coincidence of some sort.”
Bobby saw nothing in the coincidence.
Sargon shut his eyes for a second or so.
“We talked of my recent experiences,” he resumed.
“Naturally,” said Bobby, helping.
“There has been a lot of confusion about my personality. It is a trouble more frequent nowadays than it used to be. Most of my life I have thought that I was a person called Albert Edward Preemby, a limited person, a most limited person. Then I had a light. I began to realize that nobody could really be such a thing as that Albert Edward Preemby. I began to seek for myself. I had reason—too long to explain—to suppose that I was Sargon the First, the great Sumerian, the founder of the first Empire in the world. Then—then came trouble. You saw something of it. I grasped at the sceptre—one afternoon—in Holborn—rashly. Most painful affair. I was sent to that Place. Yes. It shook me. Humiliations. Hardship. Real—uncleanness. I doubted whether I wasn’t after all just that little Preemby. A human rabbit. My faith faltered. I admit it faltered.”
He mused painfully for some moments.
Then he laid his hand reassuringly on Bobby’s wrist.
“I am Sargon,” he said. “Talking to your friend Devizes has cleared my mind greatly. I am Sargon, but in a rather different sense from what I had imagined. Preemby was, as I had supposed, a mere accidental covering. But——”
The little face puckered with intellectual effort. “I am not exclusively Sargon. You—you perhaps are still unawakened—but you are Sargon too. His blood is in our veins. We are co-heirs. It is fairly easy to understand. Sargon, regal position. Naturally many wives. Political—biological necessity. Offspring numerous. They again—positions of advantage—many children. Next generation, more. Like a vast expanding beam of intellectual and moral force. You can prove it—prove it by mathematics. Dr. Devizes and I—we worked it out on a piece of paper. We are all descended from Sargon, just as we are all descended from Cæsar—just as nearly all English and Americans are descended from William the Conqueror. Few people realize this. A little arithmetic—it is perfectly plain. Long before the Christian era the blood of Sargon was diffused throughout all mankind. His traditions still more so. We all inherit. Not merely from him—from all the great kings, from all the noble conquerors. From all the brave and beautiful women. All the statesmen and inventors and creators. If not directly from them, from their fathers and mothers. All that rich wine from the past is in my veins. And I thought I was just Albert Edward Preemby! And at Woodford Wells I went for a silly little walk nearly every afternoon with sixpence in my pocket to spend and nothing in the world to do! For twenty years. It seems incredible.”