I pondered the sequence in silence, going over each of the possible denotations conjunctively. “I don’t think, Sir Dabber, that the glyphs for papyrus and roll-tie are merely illustrative of the fact that I am a writer. Newman would not expend himself in merely stating the obvious.” Suddenly, in the midst of my composed and sedate interpretation of these symbols, I was struck by the import of their very purpose: that my nephew Newman was attempting to communicate with me. That he had been here within this very cell — a place in which he most obviously did not wish to be — and devised, using the only tools at his disposal, a means by which to tell this to me — with only the slightest chance that his effort should be discovered and correctly interpreted by an unintended recipient. It was a gambit that had little chance for the most desirable of outcomes: that his uncle might eventually find his way to this particular cell — but regardless of its rather long odds, it had paid off. For was I not standing here reading his words?
Or were those odds not long ones at all? I would presently find out.
“He is here, Dabber — being concealed within this very building.”
“The crocodile, Trimmers. Concealment. There you have it.”
“Yes, but why the second crocodile?”
“The other — well, what does one do when another one hides, Trimmers?”
“We go to look for them.”
Dabber nodded and smiled. “The second crocodile therefore means that very thing. He wishes you to find him. It couldn’t be simpler.”
“I wish that somewhere in those ideograms there gave an elaboration for why he is being secretly held captive here.”
I rose from my crouched situation and stepped out into the corridor. I called to the attendant Oscar who was half-dozing in his chair. “You there! Have you any knowledge of the person or persons who occupied this cell after Chivery?”
“I have not.”
“Why do you say that with such assurance?”
“Because there are certain folks they bring down here that I’m not permitted to see. That is when they send me up the stairs to work in the scullery or clean out all them piss pans. I prefer it here if you want the truth of it, where I can keep my hands dry of suds and piss.”
I returned to Dabber and to the hieroglyphic message from my nephew.
“Perhaps we are straining too hard to see that which is most obvious,” said Dabber, continuing the thread of our exchange. “Let us therefore use a bit of Chiverian mathematical logic for our own benefit. There were seventeen Returnees, prior to the unfortunate death of Mr. Gamfield, all of whom have allegedly been taken ill by the Terror Tremens. Now we have another Returnee, your nephew Newman, who returns us to the original figure of seventeen. For he was slipped in here unbeknowst to you or his mother or even to poor Oscar out in the corridor. Why?”
“Not because he has been struck ill by the Terror Tremens. For if that be true why should we not have been told that he now resides here?”
“Because there is another reason for his secret incarceration. Let us think of what that could be.”
“What else can it be but this, Dabber? That each who is held here should not be given leave to speak of what they know — what they have gleaned from time spent outside the Dell. There are things that they’ve seen, things that they know, which cannot, nay, must not be revealed.”
“It is all quite crocodilian — the whole business — isn’t it?”
I nodded. “And perhaps Newman isn’t the only one who has been slipped in here in the dead of night in such a crocodilian fashion. If this be true, Dabber, there should be no reason that Muntle could not enter this hospital on the morrow, writ in hand, and search every room for every Returnee who is being held captive here.”
“But who would sign such a writ? Judge Fitz-Marshall? I think not, Trimmers. Based upon what — a suspicion? A collection of Egyptian hieroglyphs? Fitz-Marshall wouldn’t do it. Nor should any of the other magistrates, possessed of not a single independent streak amongst the lot of them. No, we cannot do it by prescribed and lawful means, Trimmers. Just as I cannot go to Judge Fitz-Marshall and demand the release of my son on a different form of habeas corpus.”
“My nephew is entreating me with chalked fingers to help him, however I can. In want of an ideogram for the imperative, he is imploring me to look for him! It is all here. I see it now in his missive to me.”
“Let us not be precipitant. Let us take some time to think of a proper course of action both for my son Bevan and for your nephew. And for whomever else is kept against his wishes within this increasingly perilous place and must be freed. There is something terribly malignant in all of this, Trimmers, I am sure of it. We must therefore tread with great caution from this point forward. Lest — if nothing else — the kindnesses shewn by this Beyonder nurse Miss Wolf be discovered and perhaps punished, and Bevan lose his advocate-angel and his healing medicaments.”
I nodded, recalling my recent encounter with Miss Wolf and wondering how it could possibly be that an advocate-angel (who shewed a devilishly angelic side to me as well) should first start along her ministering path with the hard steps of a destroying monster. Then I knelt down and with my sleeve scrubbed away the Egyptian markings that my nephew had made, so that no one else should find them.
Sir Dabber nodded his agreement with this protective action, wheezed, and gave the slightest shudder. Then Dabber said this: “There is another kindness that Miss Wolf has done for us. I’m certain now that it must have been she.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Miss Wolf has set your mind at ease that your nephew has been safely returned to the Dell.”
“How has she done this, Dabber?”
“By sending me this note.” Sir Dabber drew a crumpled piece of paper from his vest pocket. “It was slipped beneath my front door yesterday. You will see that it was penned anonymously, but who else could have written it but someone who wanted to make certain that you accompanied me to-day?”
I took the note and read it. This is what it said:
Sir Dabber:
You must not go alone to see your son to-morrow. As one who knows best Bevan’s current state, I entreat you to take a companion with you to lend you a supportive and consolatory hand. Think upon the words of the writer Frederick Trimmers who wrote so eloquently upon the plight of the beleaguered Scadger clan: “Anguish and woe to him that walks alone by choice or by cruel natural design. But comfort and joy to him that would accept the succoring hand from without. Can it be any other way? The woeful one must find courage to invite that hand of aid and comfort, which had previously been eschewed. It is the best course for keeping loneliness and isolation at bay and for improving the spirit.”
“I wrote that?”
“If you did not, Trimmers, it was attributed to you for a purpose — a purpose for which I was its most receptive recipient. For did I not ask you to accompany me? And was not your candidacy suggested by that missive in its cunning manner?”
I nodded, the mystery of Ruth Wolf growing, even as more about her had been revealed. “The angel seems, in a sense, to be ministering to us all,” I said musingly.
Dabber and I summoned Oscar so that we should be escorted from this dreary place — a place that had ironically fed the two of us with the morsels of renewed hope. Sir Dabber and I were now determined to visit this building again when we had a better sense as to what could be done for those we loved who were interned here. In the meantime I would speak with Ruth Wolf and find out all that I could from this woman whose conscientious heart grew with every new mention or thought of her.