“A commitment blank to an insane asylum.”
Average Jones absently drew out his handkerchief, elaborately whisked from his coat sleeve an imaginary speck of dust, and smiled benignantly where the dust was supposed to have been.
“Insane asylum,” he murmured. “Was—er—the blank—er—filled in?”
“Only partly. My name was pricked in, and there was a specification of dementia from drug habit, with suicidal tendencies.”
With a quick signal, unseen by the visitor, Average Jones opened the way to Bertram, who, in wide range of experience and study had once specialized upon abnormal mental phenomena.
“Pardon me,” that gentleman put in gently, “has there ever been any dementia in your family?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Or suicidal mania?”
“All my people have died respectably in their beds,” declared the visitor with some vehemence.
“Once more, if I may venture. Have you ever been addicted to any drug?”