A big, ugly one-eyed immigrant from East Europe gets passionate about his demure English teacher, and offers her the gift of a brooch. She instinctively refuses it, but he acts victim, claiming that she's rejecting him because of his appearance, and she feels blackmailed into accepting it. The next words she writes on the blackboard suddenly turn into a rapid stream of what looks like gibberish, but turns out to be a highly sinister, desperate message written in his native language (as only he can tell), and he rushes from the room.
What follows only makes sense if she's starting to warm towards him, yet there are no signs of this. He tells her that it's a message from his late girlfriend Clara, and in order to discover more, the teacher drives him to his boarding-house, running a red light and getting pulled-up, yet finds she can't write her name and address in the ordinary way.
Clearly the brooch is the channel for all this automatic writing (the catalyst, or what Hitchcock used to call 'the Macguffin') though its significance is much underplayed. The police doctor finds she's in better shape after a little rest without her jersey (or brooch). But the ending is indeterminate, fading out to reveal our genial host John Newland smoothly explaining his current take on psychic dialogue.
What follows only makes sense if she's starting to warm towards him, yet there are no signs of this. He tells her that it's a message from his late girlfriend Clara, and in order to discover more, the teacher drives him to his boarding-house, running a red light and getting pulled-up, yet finds she can't write her name and address in the ordinary way.
Clearly the brooch is the channel for all this automatic writing (the catalyst, or what Hitchcock used to call 'the Macguffin') though its significance is much underplayed. The police doctor finds she's in better shape after a little rest without her jersey (or brooch). But the ending is indeterminate, fading out to reveal our genial host John Newland smoothly explaining his current take on psychic dialogue.