"I lyg your story," he said. "I lyg to see a feller stand up for his bizniz against the vorlt. I"m a Jew. I hope you lose--but--goot luck!"
He held out his hand. Hal took it. "Mr. Mintz, I"m glad to know you,"
said he earnestly.
Nothing now remained for the committee to do but to expend their allotted fund to the best purpose. Their notion of the proper method was typically commercial. They thought to buy off an epidemic. Many times this has been tried. Never yet has it succeeded. It embodies one of the most dangerous of popular hygienic fallacies, that the dollar can overtake and swallow the germ.
CHAPTER XXIII
CREEPING FLAME
For sheer uncertainty an epidemic is comparable only to fire on shipboard. The wisest expert can but guess at the time or place of its catastrophic explosion. It may thrust forth here and there a tongue of threat, only to subside and smoulder again. Sometimes it "sulks" for so protracted a period that danger seems to be over. Then, without warning, comes swift disaster with panic in its train.
But one man in all Worthington knew, early, the true nature of the disease which quietly crept among the Rookeries licking up human life, and he was well trained in keeping his own counsel. In this crisis, whatever Dr. Surtaine may have lacked in scrupulosity of method, his intentions were good. He honestly believed that he was doing well by his city in veiling the nature of the contagion. Scientifically he knew little about it save in the most general way; and his happy optimism bolstered the belief that if only secrecy could be preserved and the fair repute of the city for sound health saved, the trouble would presently die out of itself. He looked to his committee to manage the secrecy. Unfortunately this particular form of trouble hasn"t the habit of dying out quietly and of itself. It has to be fought and slain in the open.
As Dr. Surtaine"s committee hadn"t the faintest notion of how to handle their five-thousand-dollar appropriation, they naturally consulted the Honorable Tip O"Farrell, agent for and boss of the Rookeries. And as the Honorable Tip had a very definite and even eager notion of what might be done with that amount of ready cash, he naturally volunteered to handle the fund to the best advantage, which seemed quite reasonable, since he was familiar with the situation. Therefore the disposition of the money was left to him. Do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader, be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand dollars, so far as the Rookeries are concerned. Politicians of the O"Farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance. But they are quite likely to be human. Tip O"Farrell had seen recently more misery than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure. Some of the fund may have gone into the disburser"s pocket. A much greater portion of it, I am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough managed, almost lose the taint of charity. O"Farrell was tactful and he knew his people. Many cases over which organized philanthropy would have blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of inspired. Much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps some lives saved.
The main issue, nevertheless, was untouched. The epidemic continued to spread beneath the surface of silence. O"Farrell wasn"t interested in that side of it. He didn"t even know what was the matter. What money he expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn"t get in, or unauthorized news leak out. Also he continued to carry on an irregular but costly traffic in dead bodies. Meantime, the Special Committee of the Old Home Week Organization, thus comfortably relieved of responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself single-mindedly to worrying over the "Clarion."
According to Elias M. Pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to worry about in that direction. That snake, he considered, was scotched.
It might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, I need hardly state, to Mr. Harrington Surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses; but in the end he must realize that he was caught. The committee wasn"t so smugly satisfied. Time was going on and there was no word, one way or the other, from the "Clarion" office.
Inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about. On a warmish day, McGuire Ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted the bland air of early June to lull him to a nap, which was rudely interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat b.u.t.tons. Stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted Dr. Miles Elliot.
"Wa.s.samatter?" he demanded, in the thick tones of interrupted sleep.
"What are you poking me in the ribs for?"
"McBurney"s point," observed the visitor agreeably. "Now, if you had appendicitis, you"d have yelped. You haven"t got appendicitis."
"Much obliged," grumped Mr. Ellis. "Couldn"t you tell me that without a cane?"
"I spoke to you twice, but all you replied was "Hoong!" As I speak only the Mandarin dialect of Chinese--"
"Sit down," said Ellis, "and tell me what you"re doing in this den of vice and crime."
"Vice and crime is correct," confirmed the physician. "You"re still curing cancer, consumption, corns, colds, and cramps in print, for blood money. I"ve come to report."
McGuire Ellis stared. "What on?"
"The Rookeries epidemic."
"Quick work," the journalist congratulated him sarcastically. "The a.s.signment is only a little over two months old."
"Well, I might have guessed, any time in those two months, but I wanted to make certain."
"_Are_ you certain?"
"Reasonably."
"What is it?"
"Typhus."
"What"s that? Something like typhoid?"
"It bears about the same relation to typhoid," said the Doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid"s knee does to sunstroke."
"Well, don"t get funny with me. I don"t appreciate it. Is it very serious?"
"Not more so than cholera," answered the Doctor gravely.
"Hey! Then why aren"t we all dead?"
"Because it doesn"t spread so rapidly. Not at first, anyway."
"How does it spread? Come on! Open up!"
"Probably by vermin. It"s rare in this country. There was a small epidemic in New York in the early nineties. It was discovered early and confined to one tenement. There were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. Thirty-two of "em came out feet first. The only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. He died a week later."
"Sounds as if this little affair of the Rookeries might be some story."
"It is. There may have been fifty deaths to date; or maybe a hundred. We don"t know."
Ellis sat back in his chair with a b.u.mp. "Who"s "we"?"
"Dr. Merritt and myself."
"The Health Bureau is on, then. What"s Merritt going to do about it?"
"What can he do?"
"Give out the whole thing, and quarantine the district."
"The Mayor will remove him the instant he opens his mouth, and kill any quarantine. Merritt will be discredited in all the papers--unless the "Clarion" backs him. Will it?"
Ellis dropped his head in his hand. "I don"t know," he said finally.
"Not running an honest paper this week?" sneered the physician lightly.
"By the way, where"s Young Hopeful?"
"See here, Dr. Elliot," said Ellis. "You"re a good old scout. If you hadn"t poked me in the stomach I believe I"d tell you something."
"Try it," encouraged the other.
"All right. Here it is. They"ve put it up to Hal Surtaine pretty stiff, this gang of perfectly honorable business men, leading citizens, pillars of the church, porch-climbers, and pickpockets who run the city. I guess you know who I mean."