And “Morocco” itself!  To anybody who remembered history for a few years back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle, but enlightenment.  For had not Morocco been really the starting point of the Years of Crisis—­those years intermittent in excitement, but constant in anxiety?  Beaumaroy was to start tomorrow for Morocco—­on the strength of the hieroglyphics!  Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya; perhaps he was to raise the Senussi (Mary had followed the history of the war), to make his appearance at Cairo, Jerusalem, Bagdad!  He was to be a forerunner, was Mr. Beaumaroy.  Mr. Saffron, his august master, would follow in due course!  With a sardonic smile she wondered how the ingenious man would get out of starting for Morocco; perhaps he would not succeed in obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the vigilance of the British authorities.  Or some more hieroglyphics might come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the propitious moment had not yet arrived after all.  There were several devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in possibilities.  Her acid smile was turned against herself when she remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to Beaumaroy about sensitive honor!

Well, never mind Mr. Beaumaroy!  The case as to Mr. Saffron stood pretty plain.  It was queer and pitiful, but by no means unprecedented.  She might be not much of an alienist, as Dr. Irechester had been kind enough to suggest to Mr. Naylor, but she had seen such cases herself—­even stranger ones, where even higher Powers suffered impersonation, with effects still more tragically absurd to onlookers.  And she remembered reading somewhere—­was it in Maudslay—­that in the days of Napoleon, when princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the tyrant’s pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk?  Potentates there galore!  If she had Mr. Saffron’s “record” before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron—­diagnosed with the assistance of some lucky accidents!

But what was her duty now—­the duty of Dr. Mary Arkroyd, a duly qualified, accredited, responsible medical practitioner?  With a slight shock to her self-esteem she was obliged to confess that she had only the haziest idea.  Had not people who kept a lunatic to be licensed or something?  Or did that apply only to lunatics in the plural?  And did Beaumaroy keep Mr. Saffron within the meaning of whatever the law might be?  But at any rate she must do something; the state of things at Tower Cottage could not go on as it was.  The law of the land—­whatever it was—­must be observed, Beaumaroy must be foiled, and poor old Mr. Saffron taken proper care of.  The course of her meditations was hardly interrupted by the episode of her light evening meal; she was back in her drawing-room by half past eight, her mind engrossed with the matter still.