“But, Bill, Bill, old chum,”—and the Mystic shook like a mold of jelly. “I must away. My body, don’t you know? My body that I am going to need very shortly—is in danger. Even at this great distance I sense the approach of those wild beasts. Pray let me return for a brief time to my studies of the abstract. I’m already away behind in Yog. Release me old boy, release me, I must hence!”
“I say, Leff, if I’d let up on you would you swear by the One-Horned-Hair-of-the-Sacred-Rabbit never to show yourself again in Kankakee?”
“But, the law—the law”—groaned the erring lover, and he gazed upon his Lady-Bird in an unutterable fashion. “How—are—we—to—get—around—Chemistry? I—we—are not to blame—”
“Enough,” snorted Bill Vanderhook. “No more fooling,” and it was now the baseball captain to the front.
“But my body,” pleaded Lonnie. “It will be eaten. Do you hear me? It will be eaten, chewed up, and destroyed.”
“Well,” said Bill impatiently, “what if it is? What then?”
“What then?” cried the Seer excitedly. “Why, don’t you see that I’ll be regularly dead? Just dead, and my body no good to me? Why, don’t you know that I’ll be nothing then but a mere angel? Don’t you know that I’ll be altogether confined to another world? I’ll be a Mystic no longer? Nor be able thus to materialize, and to travel at will—to—”
“Aha! That hadn’t occurred to me,” chuckled Bill. “I see. I see. And in that case you can’t crawl back into your terrestrial jacket and come back to marry Mrs. V. when she succeeds in getting that divorce? Aha! good! I see, and wouldn’t that be one on you? But”—and the injured husband once more became the scientist. “I say, Leff,—suppose you telep to some old Yogy to go and get that body of yours and ship it to me. I give you my word that you’ll not need it again; and I’d like it more’n anything for chemical analysis. Have it sent C. O. D. of course.”
“Monster!” again sobbed Imogene.
The Mystic was speechless with horror.