s afraid your mask wouldn't hold up after the trouble
you had with it. Tell me what happened that night."

Carnes glanced at Captain Murdock, who nodded.

"I went down to the narrows and watched, Doctor, and when the Russian
boat passed, I started to make my way back to you. The tide had come
in and I had to make quite a detour to get to you. I got there a
little later than I liked but still in time to do some good. You were
down and Miss Andrews was standing over you with a bloody knife in her
hand, fighting like a wildcat. I started shooting and ran in yelling
as loud as I could. I managed to plug three of them and I guess they
thought I was a dozen men. I tried to make enough noise for that many.
The rest took to their heels and Miss Andrews and I rigged one of
their protectors over your face and dragged you to the scooter. The
rest was plain sailing. We brought you in and Captain Murdock did the
rest. That's all there was to it. If I hadn't been so slow, I could
have driven them off before they opened that box and saved you all of
this."

"Thelma?" asked the doctor faintly.

"Oh, she's none the worse, Doctor. I want to apologize to you for the
poor opinion I had of your judgment. That girl wasn't recognized; she
recognized Denberg on the streets of Washington and deliberately put
her head into the lion's mouth by declaring herself. She got their
whole plan and went along to try to checkmate them. If she hadn't
started knifing when she did, the devils meant to hold your head
directly over that box and it would have been just too bad."

"What was in the box?"

* * * * *

"She found that out. It was some kind of a microbe that Saranoff
developed in a Belgian laboratory which does something to the oxygen
of the air. You'll have to get Dr. Burgess to explain that to you
later; he has some of the bugs shut up for you to play with when you
get back on the job. When we found that you were knocked out, Davis
got him to come down from Washington to take charge. He has been
running ray machines over the swamps for two weeks and says that every
trace of the bugs are gone except those he has in the laboratory."

"Saranoff has more."

"No, he hasn't, thanks to Miss Andrews. Every day they started a fresh
colony, leaving one lot back to start the next brood with. She tipped
us off where they were kept and Bolton and Haggerty raided and got the
lot and turned them over to Dr. Burgess."

"