§ 3
“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part hadn’t come Mr. Fenton was able to join us once more. He made some little objection at first because he said he and his people were all Particular Baptists, and he was doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy and forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of that. And this time we spelt out a quite singular message. It was AWAKE, SARGON! ARISE OR BE FOREVER FALLEN!
“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages from Sargon had something to do with me. Now suddenly conviction came upon me. I asked ‘Is Sargon present?’ ‘Yes.’ I knew it would be so. ’Is it anyone in the circle?’ ‘Yes.’ ’Is it this gentleman?’—pointing to Mr. Hockleby. A very loud No. ’Is it me?’ ‘Yes.’
“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed—as though he felt it was he who ought to be Sargon.
“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I can’t stand any more of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite muzzy. I’m sure this sort of thing is harmful.’ He walked across the room and sat down suddenly with his hands hanging over the arms of the chair—it was one of the big arm-chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much concerned, but as for myself I was all in a daze at the thought of being this Sargon and being called upon so openly to rouse myself to action. I did not understand fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize that it meant a very great deal.”
“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina Alberta sharply, and her perplexed gaze searched his profile. His blue eyes stared at things far away beyond the distant hills, strange things, fantastic empires, secret cities, mystical traditions, and his brows were knit in the effort to keep his story together.
“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my story in my own way. I was telling you, I think, that young Mr. Fenton said he felt heavy and strange. Mrs. Hockleby happily was quite equal to that situation. She had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against it,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. Just lean back in your chair. If you want to lie quiet, do. If you want to say anything, do. Let the influence work.’ And she turned to me and whispered ‘trance.’
“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton—just like that. ‘What is a trance?’
“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making passes,’ I think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort of sigh and his head lolled back. We all sat round him waiting, and presently he began to mutter.
“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ words like that. Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah comes to serve Sargon. To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander off into sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered in his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare Part.’
“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this sort of trance, and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad and a pencil to take down anything more that was said.
“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not speak in his own voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper quite different from his usual voice. It was the voice of this Oujah speaking—Oujah the control. With a slight accent—Sumerian I suppose.
“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. I think that this Oujah was anxious to secure my attention by convincing me that he knew of things, intimate things that nobody else could know. At the same time he did not wish the others to know too clearly what he was aiming at. How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has a lot of it written down, but so far I have not had time to make a copy. ‘Child of the sea and the desert,’ he said, ‘the blue waters and the desert sand.’ Is it too fanciful to find an allusion to Sheringham in that? ‘Cascades and great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue shield.’ That is more puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ set me thinking of our big washers. And you remember the swastika on our blue delivery vans, Christina Alberta? Is not that oddly suggestive of a thing like a wheel on a blue shield? The Norse peoples called the swastika the fire-wheel. ‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, the long lines drawn out—armies of delivery.’ That again is queer. One is reminded of armies and also—don’t think me absurd!—of the drying-ground and the vans. It is like one thing becoming transparent and your seeing the other behind it.”
“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?”
“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not got them quite right you will be able to read his notes.”
“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina Alberta. “Or you may have been drawing it on the edges of the newspaper. You do sometimes. And he may have seen it.”
“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid great stress on the blue ground. And there were other things; matters known only to me and your dear mother. I could not tell you them without telling you everything. And small things, entirely private to me. The name of my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It is sometimes difficult to argue about things although one may be absolutely convinced. And all this was mixed up with broken sentences about a great city and the two daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. And also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift in and out of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that has fallen into disorder.’ These are remarkable words. And then ‘Beware of women; they take the sceptre out of the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? Ask Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’”
“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have ever had a fair chance!”
“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... And it seemed to me that this too applied to me, for because of my great fondness for your mother I had let so many years of my life slip away. He said many other things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I have told you enough for you to understand what has happened. In the end Mr. Fenton came-to quite suddenly, much more suddenly than is usual in such cases, Mrs. Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m going to bed.’
“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. ‘Absolutely fed up,’ were his actual words.
“We asked him if that was the end of his message.
“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no memory of his communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t the sort of thing one ought to get up to. What sort of things have I been saying? Nothing objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do any more of this sort of thing.’
“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with such a promise of great psychic power as he had, before. He said he was really very sorry to hear it. She said he owed it to himself to cultivate so rare and strange a gift, but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at all. The rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a walk down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. Perfectly simple and natural he was from first to last, and rather unwilling. And he really did look tired out.”
“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta.
“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he had transmitted. The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. Hockleby did her utmost to try to get him once more in the afternoon and develop his Communication, but he would not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even give us his name and address. When I spoke of sending Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the Occult Review he was suddenly quite alarmed. He said that if his name appeared in connection with them it might mean a very serious row with his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. from Cambridge. ‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite a different name. Put anything you like that does not point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from London. Or something of that sort.’
“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.”