“No. Vincent’s away in Ireland. We’ve been going on other lines.”
“Tell me; I swear I won’t laugh.”
“All right; I don’t care if you do. … Well, automatic handwriting.”
“What’s that?”
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.”