I shut him off and dragged him downstairs before they was any hard feelin's. We climbed in the doctor's bus and at the Kid's request, Miss Vincent come along with us. Then we went after the road record between Film City and the Hillcrest Sanitarium. I guess this doctor was born with a steerin' wheel in his hand, because we took some corners on that trip that would have worried a snake, and when he threw her in high, we breezed along so swift we could have made a bullet quit. Finally, we come to a great big buildin' all hedged off with an iron fence and if you've ever seen a souvenir post card with "Havin' a fine time. Wish you were here," on it, you know what it looked like.
The doctor tells me and Miss Vincent to wait in the office, and he goes out with the Kid. In about fifteen minutes he's back and calls me over to a desk. They's a long piece of paper there and he says to sit down and fill it out, but, after one flash at it, I asked him could I take it home to work over, because my fountain pen was better on sprints than long distance writin' and this looked like a good two-hour job. He gives me another one of them North Pole stares and remarks that if the thing ain't filled out at once, the Kid won't be admitted to the sanitarium.
"He's in now, ain't he?" I comes back.
"Yes!" he snaps. "And he'll be out, if that paper isn't drawn up instantly!"
Miss Vincent giggles and hisses in my ear.
"They say the child is in London!" she pipes. "Sign that paper, curse you! We are in his power!"
Well, I seen I had to do a piece of writing so I grabbed up that paper and let the fountain pen go crazy. I give the Kid's entire name, where he was born, what his people did to fool the almshouse, what was his mother's maiden name and why, whether he went to church or Billy Sunday, was he white and could he prove it, who started the war and a lot of bunk like that. The guy who doped out the entrance examinations for that hospital must have been figurin' on how many he could keep out. When I run out of ink, I took out a copy of the Sportin' Annual, tore off the Kid's record and pasted it at the bottom of the page.
"How's that?" I asks, passin' it over.
"Very well," he says, glancin' at it. "Mister Scanlan is in room 45. That will be one-fifty—a hundred and fifty!"
"The price," I says, gettin' dizzy. "Not your weight!"