§ 2
Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the Power was treating him was a strange way. He had to submit to the Power; he had to maintain himself Sargon. Still he could have wished for more explicitness.
He was so turned inward now that he went along beside Constable Buxton, not noting the streets nor the traffic nor the passers-by. Presently they were at a door in a high wall, within which there were buildings. Then they were in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter looked at him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. Then they were going across a wide yard and through large doors into a corridor where there was an unoccupied stretcher and two or three nurses in uniform. They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon was asked to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor as though the task was nearly done.
A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked at Sargon. For some moments they regarded each other in silence. “Well?” said the man in the grey suit.
“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been brought here. Is this a hospital? I understand it is. I am not ill.”
“You may be ill without knowing it.”
“No.”
“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look at you.”
Sargon shrugged his shoulders.
A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, clean-shaven, intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. He had a wide, thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes and highly oiled and entirely subjugated sandy hair with an army “quif” on the forehead.
“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.”
“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey.
“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you are. This ’im?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing his thick neck and depressing the corner of his mouth towards him.
“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. Jordan. He’s going to show you just where you have to go and just what you have to do.”
Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. But he stood up obediently because his idea of submission to the Power seemed in some way to overlap and include this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced a voice of flat, oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right ’fyou don’t give no trouble.”
They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase that turned back on itself; they came to a landing and double doors with glass panes in them that opened upon a very long, dark passage lit by a single very remote light. And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that behind him and already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the streets and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, the endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle of life to which the Power had sent him, and before him were dark and narrow and dreadful experiences. Why should he turn his back thus voluntarily on the great outer world he had come to save? Was this again only another mistake he was making? He took a step or so away from Jordan and faced him.
“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this place. I do not wish it. Let me return. I have disciples to call and many things to do.”
The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous astonishment that passed into fierceness. “Wot?” he said.
He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke very rapidly. “None of your tricks ’ere, you thundering old Bastard.” With a swift movement his huge, raw, red hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His thin lips were retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping out. He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and injure, and he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, so that Sargon stared at him with dilated eyes and uttered a sharp, involuntary cry of pain.
The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely uncomfortable, and the big face came down close to Sargon’s. It was manifest that Mr. Jordan had been regaling himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it on, you Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever it is, don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to understand what I say. See? You do exactly wot you’re told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re told. You do your best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best ditto. But if you start doin’ tricks—Gawd ’elp you! See?”
And he crushed the arm again.
“Understan’?”
The blue eyes seemed to assent.
“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan.
A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject Sargon was taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which a broken chair, pools of water, great splashings on the wall, and some crumpled towels in the corner suggested a recent struggle. There he was made to undress and take a tepid bath, dried with a towel that had already been in action, put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a grey shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a pair of down-at-heel slippers two sizes too big, and so garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a little propitiated now by alert obedience, into the ward in which he was to pass the night.
A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared.
“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan.
“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many more of ’em?”
“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan.
“Three,” said Mr. Higgs.
“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.”
“So long,” said Mr. Higgs.
Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World directly. He might have been a parcel passed from hand to hand.