“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike most people as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We had to come up from Tunbridge Wells yesterday. On a few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a couple of days things went on all right. Practically we were turned out of the boarding house. There was a frightfully disagreeable man there, a Mr. Hockleby, and he seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You know those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?”
“A very disagreeable side of human nature. I know. Why, people have taken dislikes to me!... But go on.”
“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. They frightened the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run the place. They said he might break out at any moment, and either he would have to leave or they would. There they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of sending for a policeman and having him taken away. What could I do? We had to clear out. You see Daddy had a sort of idea that when he was Sargon Mr. Hockleby had been alive too and had had to be impaled for seditious behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as one ought to do in such cases, he said something about it to him, and Mr. Hockleby construed it as a threat. It’s all so difficult, you see.”
“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?”
“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination that is doing tremendous things. He isn’t.”
“And now he’s in London?”
“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he wants to go to the King at Buckingham Palace and tell him about it. He says the King is a thoroughly good man, thoroughly good; and directly he hears how things are, he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and place him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything of that sort he will be locked up for a certainty. And he’s written letters to the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor and the President of the United States and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him for his instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post them till he can have a proper seal made.”
“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said Lambone.
“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that sort, but all that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase ‘raise my banner.’ I don’t think that matters much yet. But the Buckingham Palace idea,—something may come of that.”
“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked across his room and back, and then half sat on the arm of his easy chair with his hands deep in his pockets. “Tell me; is he distraught to look at?”