Part 15

The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples at a table had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon that by the time he reached the entrance of the Rubicon Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a corner, he had called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions was a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and the other a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, lean and thinly bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors and wearing mittens and a tall black felt hat--a hat of an unusual shape rather like the steam-dome of a railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the very door of the Restaurant.

“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take meat with me. I have things to tell you that will change your whole life.”

“This is very _suddan_,” said the intelligent-looking man, speaking in the high neighing protesting accent of an English scholar and gentleman, as he yielded himself to Sargon’s grip.

§ 4

The actual invasion of the Rubicon Restaurant was a confused and swift affair. Sargon’s mind was clear and simple now; he had to make that vision of a long white table with his disciples grouped about him a reality or incur a great defeat. His following was animated by a mixture of unequal and incompatible motives, as all followings are, and it was now swollen to something near thirty--the exact number is uncertain because it passed marginally into mere onlookers and passers-by--by the action of the least worthy of the three out-of-work ex-soldiers, who had been uttering these magic words, “A Free Feed!” ever since the Rubicon Restaurant had been in sight.

The attention of that challenging individual, the outside porter, had happened to be distracted by the arrival of guests in a motor car when the Sargonites came along. They therefore swept through the outer entrance without encountering any obstacle other than the rotating door, which chopped the little crowd into ones and twos before it reached the entrance hall. Perhaps twenty got into the entrance hall, that space of marble and mahogany and hovering cloak-room attendants, before the mechanical incompetence of the man in deep mourning and his subsequent extraction by the politely indignant outer porter, the costermonger’s assistant intervening unhelpfully, jammed the apparatus. The man with the bruised shin seems to have fallen out before the restaurant was reached, and the vague-faced young woman in the magenta had drifted away at some unnoted moment.

In the spacious, glittering and observant outer hall a tendency to dispersal manifested itself. The out-of-work ex-soldier with the organ, seized by a sudden shyness, made for the gentleman’s cloak-room to deposit his instrument and became involved in an argument with his colleagues. The two ambiguous young men in caps and neck-wraps seem to have hesitated about the correctness of their costume. But Sargon held the newly caught gentleman tight, and the venerable match-seller did not mean to be separated from his patron in this bright, luxurious, dangerous place. Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall and smiling and shining, handed hat and umbrella to an attendant and followed closely upon the Master, serene in his assurance that these were the lordly portals of the long sought firm of African traders, Lean and Mackay. And Mr. Godley, with his natural passion for explicitness, would not leave Sargon until he had made it perfectly clear to him why he did not feel bound to accompany him further. He came next after the others into the Large Restaurant, making noises like a cuckoo clock that has lost control of itself. The reporter from Oldham was also holding on, though in considerable doubt now what sort of story he would have to write. The Eton boy, more than half aware now of his error, and so disposed to be a little detached also, came into the restaurant after depositing hat and umbrella without.

Bobby never came through. He was overtaken and held up in the entrance hall by Billy. “This isn’t your affair, Bobby,” said Billy. “This really isn’t your affair.”

“I can’t make out what he’s up to,” said Bobby. “He’s bound to get into trouble.”

“Never mind.”

“But I do mind.”

“The management’s scared,” said Billy. “They’re sending for the police. There’s a crowd gathered outside. Look at the faces looking in. See that chap peering through the hole in the glass? Nice thing for Tessy and Susan if we get into some police-court scrape.”

“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.”

“But how can we help him?”

§ 5

Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and final effort and encountered swift and overwhelming defeat. But at any rate he did not run away. He made a frontal attack on the world he had set out to subdue--as Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster.

Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon Restaurant. But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon of an evening as it is at lunch time; it is too far from the west; pre-eminently a luncheon place. And the hour even for such briskness as is customary had not yet come. The neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp and flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A family group going to a circus; a little knot of people going to a meeting in the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples of theatre-goers in evening dress; three or four of those odd couples of a rather inexperienced looking middle-aged business man and an extremely inexperienced looking young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who are to be seen everywhere in London, and a group of three business men from the north dressed in a canny grey and dining with a resolute completeness from cocktail to liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the lower gallery, dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The atmosphere was still timorous and chilly; even the three men from the north exacted their tale of London luxury in a subdued and even furtive manner.

The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, wine-waiters and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and glasses, or stood about with that expression of self-astonishment and melancholy upon their faces habitual to waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the sound of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by the last effort of the man in mourning preceded the entry of Sargon.

Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and their company manners; the waiters forgot their secret sorrows. Sargon appeared, an inconspicuous figure, a little white, almost luminous face, round bright eyes. With one hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the other he waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley proffered him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a shield of ebony and ivory above him. Behind were the match-seller and other followers, less clearly apprehended.

A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager and a little further off an assistant manager fiddled with the fruit on the buffet.

Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward.

“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a table here for a great company. I have called a following and must needs discourse with them.”

“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?”

“A great company.”

“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing glance at the manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow many.”

The manager came up to take control and the assistant manager deserted his piles of fruit and came up behind helpfully. Sargon perceived he was against opposition and gathered all the forces within him. “It is a great company,” he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must discourse to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the tables one to another. The day of separate tables and separate lives is at an end. Let even the tables manifest the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. Set them together.”

At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three business men from the north was smitten with understanding. “It’s a blood-stained Bolshevik,” he said, or words to that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all places!”

“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to have _no_ peace from them?”

The first business man expressed a general antipathy for incarmined Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a hurried, fussed, irritated manner. “When’s that Fricassee of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must have dropped it or something.”

But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker than the business man’s. A swift signal had been given at the very beginning of Sargon’s speech. The waiter sent to summon the police had already sped past Billy and Bobby and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken glass in the rotating door that the man in mourning had broken.

But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on to the only course that he could see before him, which was to overwhelm the opposition that gathered against him.

“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the manager, playing for time. “Banquets you can have in the Syrian Hall or in the Elysian Chamber or in the Great Masonic or Little Masonic Hall--given due notice and after proper arrangements, but this is the general public restaurant. You can’t _suddenly_ give a banquet to an unknown company or society or something here. We don’t cater for that. It isn’t done.”

“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and intonation and gesture that would have bent all dream Sumeria to its knees.

But the managers of European restaurants are made of sterner stuff, it seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m afraid _not_, sir,” he said, and stood blandly obstructive.

“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you have to deal?”

“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, with the apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce.

“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is the End and the Beginning of an Age. Men will count this banquet I shall hold here the sunrise moment of a new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon the Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of my followers must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily and fed spiritually. See to it that your share is done.”

He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his followers, but indeed there was no following behind him now save that one faithful but deluded African, and that perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The Eton boy had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a table afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and they conversed in undertones and watched. Even Mr. Godley with his microscope, and the gentleman with the book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of this story by this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about this singular affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their high and reasonable progress through life.

“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” said Mr. Godley.

While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had gathered. Behind him now stood an array of waiters of every description, three dozen perhaps of various and yet uniform waiters, tall waiters and short ones, fat and thin, hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons and one in shirt sleeves.

“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the manager. “I’m afraid I must ask you to go, sir.”

Should he go? Never!

“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his voice in an attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond this lowering crowd of waiting men, “do you not recognize me? Have you neither memories nor vision? Do you not see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not hear the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for awakening has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may cease to be things of habit and servitude, and you may become masters of a world reborn. Now! This moment. _Will_ the change with me and the change is upon you! Sargon calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the Wise Ruler and the Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, to freedom----”

“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the manager with hand extended.

“Let’s chuck ’im out _now_,” said a short, thick-set waiter.

“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, standing up and speaking in a voice replete with indignation and gathering volume as he went on. “And then bring us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been waiting Ten Minutes for THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN!”

And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all _about_?” and suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and overshadowed him.

A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror that was entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous life he had never once been in antagonism to the Police. “Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this horror in his soul. “What have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” The blue eyes grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. Preemby shivered and passed. Sargon choked and then spoke stoutly. “What is this, Officer?” he said. “Would you lay hands on the Master of the World?”

“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. “Master or no Master.”

Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase in his affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. Yes, but he was still Sargon. The Power that ruled him had thrust him into defeat, but that could only be to try him. He had not expected this of the Power, but since the Power willed it, so it had to be.

“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he said, magnificently and gently.

“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any trouble.”

A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the Master. He gave one last look at the rich decorations of the great restaurant in which the opening banquet was to have taken place. Not here then but in some squalid police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and Brotherhood had to be proclaimed.

He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side quietly, deep in thought.

§ 6

So ended Sargon’s first effort to enter into his Empire. Unless we count the visit to Buckingham Palace as his first attempt.

But before we go on to tell of the unexpected and dreadful experience that now came upon him, we must record one or two minor incidents of his capture.

One is the behaviour of Mr. Kama Mobamba. He watched the closing incidents in the restaurant with a growing amazement upon his great bronze face. Had this little blue-eyed man been, after all, leading him wrong? When at last Sargon was led away, Mr. Mobamba moved at first as though still half inclined to follow him. Then he stood still, frowned reflectingly and fumbled at his ticket-pocket. With some effort he produced the sheet of paper that seemed to be his one intelligible link with London; it was now in a rather crumpled condition. Smoothing it out with his great hands, he advanced upon the manager with it extended.

“What’s this?” said the manager.

The black gentleman bowed with infinite suavity, still tending his paper. “Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish. Lean-a-Kay. Lemonallstree.”

He was difficult to direct.

Meanwhile in the entrance hall Bobby tacitly denied all knowledge of Sargon. He was still hovering there with Billy, held by a curious half-maternal solicitude. The ex-soldiers had “mizzled,” to use the expressive word of the man with the organ, at the appearance of policemen; the man in mourning and his troubles had been cleared up; but there were still quite a number of people hanging about in a state of vague anticipation, and the young reporter was trying to find some one who understood the rare and obscure language of Oldham in order to verify his facts. And there were several policemen; one evidently a superior officer, a very good-looking man in a peaked cap and a frogged coat.

“Here he comes!” said Billy, and Sargon was led out.

There was a silence as he passed through the hall to the rotating door. And upon Sargon, it seemed to Bobby, there rested a hitherto unnoted dignity. He looked neither to the right nor the left, and his eyes were exceedingly mournful.

“But what will they do with him?” asked Bobby.

“You don’t happen to know him, sir?” asked the superior officer abruptly.

“Not a bit!” said Billy, taking the answer out of Bobby’s mouth. “Never seen him before. We just came in here to see what was up.”

And by his silence Bobby acquiesced.

“I’ve got no power to move you on here,” said the police officer, and smiled a suggestion of inopportuneness to Billy, and motioned to his satellites that the business there was at an end.

“We’d better go home,” said Billy, interpreting the smile.

§ 7

The three friends sat round a fire in the white room with the purple curtains, and Bobby poured out his regret that he had denied Sargon. “They’ve taken him off, Tessy,” he said for the third time, “and I do not know what they will do with him.”

“Discharge him with a caution,” said Billy with a drawing-board on his knee. “He hadn’t committed very much of an offence that I can see.”

“And then?” said Bobby, and meditated on the fire.

“I shall go round to the police-court and try to pick him up again afterwards if they let him go,” he said presently.

“Better leave it all alone,” said Billy.

But Tessy sat in her arm-chair between Billy and the fire and looked at Bobby’s preoccupied profile rather sweetly out of the warm shadow. And nobody in the world saw her.

“They’ll warn him and he’ll come back here of his own accord, Bobby,” said Tessy comfortingly.

“Of course he’ll come back,” said Billy.

“Very likely, Tessy,” said Bobby. “But suppose they don’t.”

He got up and stood by the fire. “I suppose I ought to go upstairs and do some work.”

“I suppose you had,” said Billy.

“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy.

“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has disorganized the actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of things that will tell some day. And of course I have to do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt Suzannah gets more and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they ask me. It’s all material in the long run. Still--it takes time.... I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little cell somewhere. And he’s wondering why they don’t see that he’s truly the great Sargon, come again to this world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a dangerous, unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? And his poor little map of the Whole World upstairs--he always called it the Whole World--and his little paper star-machine, and his poor little empty room and his poor little empty bed.”

“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. “Bobby, you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. You are a new disease. You are the type case of Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you should sympathize openly with that little devil Susan when I have spanked her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that you should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work because she needs light and air. I can even understand something of your emotional relationships with various stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes to your being sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw the line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little empty bed! It’s--it’s _morbid_, Bobby.”

“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. “You’ll go to the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?”

“I’ll go--in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. I’m worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too round-eyed for this cruel world.”

And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon Square Court and sat through a frowsty morning and waited for Sargon who never appeared. He heard all the morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial differences, and all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass window with intent to rob, but nothing about Sargon. The magistrate vanished and the court began to disperse. He asked questions of a policeman who had never heard of Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. Had he come to the right court? the policeman asked. Bobby hurried headlong to Minton Street. Minton Street, too, it seemed, had never heard of Sargon. It did not occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He retired baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the evening newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon or him. Perhaps he had not been charged! He hurried back and rushed upstairs full of a vain surmise; the room was desolate, the window open, the map of the world on the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence?

Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. Bobby lay awake of nights.

After three full days Billy, who had been watching his friend furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t you go and see the Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square Police Station about it? He’d be sure to know if anyone does.”

Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted by the same good-looking officer he had seen in the entrance hall of the Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the young man who didn’t happen to know anything about him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not answering Bobby’s questions.

Bobby explained the situation candidly.

“Doesn’t help much now,” said the Inspector. “Still it’s all in order. We took him, in the exercise of our discretion, to the Workhouse Infirmary--for observation as to his mental state. Three clear days they keep them there. Then they’re either certified or let go. Or charged.”

“Certified?” asked Bobby.

“As a lunatic,” said Inspector Mullins.

“And what happened to him?”

“Usual thing, I suppose. He was a pretty clear case. By this time he’s a certified lunatic, I suppose, and either at Cummerdown Hill or on his way there. Or if that’s full--somewhere else.”

“Phew!” said Bobby. “Pretty quick.”

He sat disconcerted. “Can I go and see him at Cummerdown Hill?” he asked.

“Probably not,” said Inspector Mullins. “Seeing you’re not a relation.”

“I’m interested in him.”

“It isn’t your business.”

“Exactly. But I like him. And I don’t think he’s exactly mad.... Seems odd of his people--Do you know anything about his people? I might go and talk to them about him.”

“That’s possible,” said the Inspector. “I don’t know who they are. You might find out at the Workhouse Infirmary or they might tell you from Cummerdown. I don’t know. Very likely _they_ don’t know who his relations are. There’s all sorts of such stragglers in the world. Possibly he hasn’t any relations--the sort of relations, I mean, who would want to bother about him. My impression is that once a man or woman is certified and put away it’s rather hard for an outsider to get through. But, as you say, you can but try. Sorry I can’t tell you any more. I never saw him myself at all--except as he went past me. Not my affair.... Yes, our usual procedure in such a case.... Oh! no trouble. Good morning.”

Left sitting squarely, an embodiment of implacable and indifferent law and rule.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

_The Journey of Sargon Underneath the World_

§ 1