Laurie hesitated.
“Well, I go into trance, you see, and—”
“Good Lord, what next?”
“And then this girl writes through my hand,” said Laurie deliberately, “when I’m unconscious. See?”
“I see you’re a damned young fool,” said Morton seriously.
“But if it’s all rot, as you think?”
“Of course it’s all rot! Do you think I believe for one instant—” He broke off. “And so’s a nervous breakdown all rot, isn’t it, and D.T. ? They aren’t real snakes, you know.”
Laurie smiled in a superior manner.
“And you’re getting yourself absorbed in all this—”
Laurie looked at him with a sudden flash of fanaticism.
“I tell you,” he said, “that it’s all the world to me. And so would it be to you, if—”
“Oh, Lord! don’t become Salvation Army. … Seen Cathcart yet?”
“No. I haven’t the least wish to see Cathcart.”
Morton rose, put his pens in the drawer, locked it; slid half a dozen papers into a black tin box, locked that too, and went towards his coat and hat, all in silence.
As he went out he turned on the threshold.
“When’s that man coming back from Ireland?” he said.