Part 73

“It’s the following-up into the house that does it,” said Dr. Strong, at an early morning meeting of the Household Protective Association (he still insisted on occasional short sessions, in spite of the overwhelming demands on his time and energies, on the ground that these were “the only chances I get to feel the support of full understanding and sympathy”), “that and the checking-up of the three carriers we found.”

“What’s a carrier?” asked Bettina, who had an unquenchable thirst for finding out things.

“A carrier, Toodlekins, is a perfectly well person who has the germs of disease in his throat. Why he doesn’t fall ill himself, we don’t know. He can give the disease to another person just as well as if he were in the worst stages of it himself. Every epidemic develops a number of carriers. One of the greatest arguments for inspection is that it brings to light these people, who constitute the most difficult and dangerous phase of infection, because they go on spreading the disease without being suspected. Now, I’ve got ours from Number Three quarantined. If I could catch every carrier in town, I’d guarantee to be in control of the situation in three weeks.”

“Our reports show over twenty of them discovered and isolated,” said Mrs. Clyde, who had turned her abounding energies to the organization of a corps of visiting nurses.

“Perhaps I’d better say something about carriers in my next talk,” said Grandma Sharpless, whose natural gift as a ready and convincing speaker, unsuspected by herself as well as her family until the night when she had met and routed the itinerating quack on his own platform, was now being turned to account in the campaign for short talks before Sunday schools and club gatherings.

“Develop it as part of the arm’s-length idea,” suggested the Health Master. “Any person may be a carrier and therefore a peril on too close contact. Tell ‘em that in words of one syllable.”

“Never use any other kind when I mean it,” answered Mrs. Sharpless. “What about that party at Mrs. Ellery’s, Manny?”

“I’ve got that fixed,” replied Maynard Clyde, who had been acting as general factotum for the household in its various lines of endeavor. “Mrs. Ellery gave a party to our crowd Friday night,” he explained to Dr. Strong, “and Monday one of the Ellery girls came down with diphtheria.”

“What have you done about it?” asked the Health Master.

“Notified all the people who were there. That was easy. The trouble is that a lot of the fellows have gone back to college since: to Hamilton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia,—I suppose there were a dozen colleges represented.”

“And you think that’s too wide a field for the follow-up system?” asked his father.

“Why, no,” said the boy thoughtfully. “I figured that starting a new epidemic would be worse than adding to an old one. So I went to Mrs. Ellery and got a list of her guests, and I wrote to every college the fellows have gone back to, and wrote to the fellows themselves. They probably won’t thank me for it.”

“They ought to give you a life-saving medal each,” declared Dr. Strong. “As for the situation here”—his face darkened—“we’re not making any general headway. The public isn’t aroused, and it won’t be until we can get the newspapers to take up the fight. The thing that discourages me is that they won’t help. I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t you? I do,” said Clyde grimly. “Their advertisers won’t let ‘em print anything about it. As I told you in the matter of closing the schools, business is frightened. The department stores, theaters, and other big advertisers are afraid that the truth about the epidemic would scare away trade. So they are compelling the papers to keep quiet.”

“Idiots!” cried Dr. Strong. “Suppressing news is like suppressing gas. The longer you do it, the more violent the inevitable explosion. But when I called on the editors, they didn’t say anything to me about the advertising pressure. It was, ‘We should be glad to help in any way, Dr. Strong. But an alarmist policy is not for the best interests of Worthington; and the good of our community must always be the first consideration.’—Bah! The variations I’ve heard on that sickening theme today! The ‘Press,’ the ‘Clarion,’ the ‘Evening News,’ the ‘Telegram, the ‘Observer’—all of ‘em.”

“You didn’t mention the ‘Star,’” said Grandma Sharpless.

“That rag? It’s against everything decent and for everything rotten in this town,” said Clyde.

“When I need a danger signal,” observed the old lady with her most positive air, “I’ll wave any kind of rag. The ‘Star’ has circulation.”

“Yes,” admitted the Health Master, “and among the very class we want to reach. But what’s the use?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “But I’m going to find out.”

One hour later she walked into the editorial sanctum of Mr. “Bart” Snyder, editor, proprietor, and controlling mind of as “yellow” a sheet as ever subsisted on a combination of enterprise, real journalistic ability, and blackmail. Mr. Snyder sat in a perfect slump of apparent languor, his body sagging back into his tilted chair, one foot across his desk, the other trailing like a broken wing along the floor, his shrewd, lined face uplifted at an acute angle with the cigar he was chewing, and his green hat achieving the most rakish effect possible to a third slant. His brilliant gray eyes were narrowed into a hard twinkle as he surveyed his visitor.

“Siddown,” he grunted, and shoved a chair toward her with the grounded foot.

Grandma Sharpless did not “siddown.” Instead she marched over to a spot directly in front of him, halted, and looked straight into the hard, humorous face.

“Bartholomew Snyder,” said she crisply, “I knew you when you were a boy. I knew your mother, too. She was a decent woman. Take off that hat.”

The Snyder jaw fell so unpremeditatedly that the Snyder cigar dropped upon the littered floor. One third of a second later, the Snyder foot descended upon it (and it was a twenty-cent cigar, too) as the Snyder chair reverted to the perpendicular, and the Snyder hat came off. The Snyder countenance quivered into articulation and therefrom came a stunned, “Well, I’ll be—”

“No, you don’t! Not in my presence,” cut in his visitor. “Now, you listen.”

“I’m listening,” he assured her in a strangled murmur.

She seated herself and threw a quality of rigidity into her backbone calculated to impress if not actually to appeal. “I want your help,” she said.