interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat
buttons. Stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted Dr. Miles Elliot.

"Wassamatter?" 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
assignment 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 bump. "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 rem