Part 86 (1/2)

The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. The boy's teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused.

”Convulsions,” said Esme.

The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother, an Italian, was deaf to Esme's persuasions that the child be turned over to them.

”What shall we do?” she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. ”I think he's dying, and I can't make the woman listen.”

Something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in Kathleen Pierce.

”Don't be a fool!” she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. ”Start the car, Esme.”

The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O'Farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. ”Grab her, you,” she directed O'Farrell.

The politician hesitated. ”What's the game?” he began. Then he caught sight of Esme. ”Oh, it's you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!” he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. ”They'll take the kid to the hospital. See? You go along quiet, now.”

Speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they all but ran down Dr. Merritt and stopped to take him in. He confirmed Esme's diagnosis.

”It'll be touch and go whether we save him,” said he.

Esme carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. The two volunteers waited outside for word. In an hour it came. The boy would probably live, thanks to their prompt.i.tude.

”But you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district,”

he protested. ”It isn't safe.”

”Oh, we belong to the St. Bernard tribe,” retorted Miss Pierce. ”We take 'em as we find 'em. Hugh, come and lunch with us.”

The grayish young man looked at her wistfully. ”Haven't time,” he said.

”No: I didn't suppose you'd step aside from the th.o.r.n.y path, even to eat,” she retorted; and Esme, hearing the new tone under the flippant words, knew that all was well with the girl, and envied her with a great and gentle envy.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

VOX POPULI

These were the days when Hal Surtaine worked with a sense of wild freedom from all personal bonds. He had definitely broken with his father. He had challenged every interest in Worthington from which there was anything to expect commercially. He had peremptorily banished Esme Elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an undesired guest. He was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in him. Defeat, he believed, was practically certain. He would make it a defeat of which no man need be ashamed.

The handling of the epidemic news, Hal left to his colleagues, devoting his own pen to a vigorous defense of the ”Clarion's” position and a.s.sertion of its policy, in the editorial columns. Concealment and suppression, he pointed out, had been the chief factor in the disastrous spread of the contagion. Early recognition of the danger and a frank fighting policy would have saved most of the sacrificed lives. The blame lay, not with those who had disclosed the peril, but with those who had fostered it by secrecy; probing deeper into it, with those who had blocked such reform of housing and sanitation as would have checked a filth disease like typhus. In time this would be indicated more specifically. Tenements which netted twelve per cent to their owners and bred plagues, the ”Clarion” observed editorially, were good private but poor public investments. Whereupon a number of highly regarded Christian citizens began to refer to the editor as an anarchist.

The ”Clarion” principle of ascertaining ”the facts behind the news” had led naturally to an inquiry into owners.h.i.+p of the Rookeries. Wayne had this specifically in charge and reported sensational results from the first.

”It'll be a corking follow-up feature,” he said. ”Later we can hitch it up to the Housing Reform Bill.”

”Make a fifth page full spread of it for Monday.”

”With pictures of the owners,” suggested Wayne.

”Why not this way? Make a triple lay-out for each one. First, a picture of the tenement with the number of deaths and cases underneath. Then the half-tone of the owner. And, beyond, the picture of the house he lives in. That'll give contrast.”