"If you know Miss Johns," the young surgeon blurted out suddenly, "you know the best and most beautiful woman I have ever seen; and if you knew Dreghorn, you knew the damnedest scoundrel unhanged."
"That, too, I know," said Li Sin.
He waited an instant. The surgeon was uncomfortably silent.
"Dr. Gray," the Manchu insisted, "of what did Dreghorn die?"
"If you want to know, and have the right to know," Gray burst out savagely, "the man died because he had contracted the most virulent case of leprosy I have ever seen in the tropics. How he did it, God only knows. He was quite well when he left New York except for a rash on his left hand. He must have been impregnated with some horrible virus. In a few days I had to manacle him in his cabin. For a week the man was a shrieking maniac. I thought something might be done when we got to port. There was no chance. In Algiers they would have put him in the leper colony. So one night I took him up to the boat-deck and let him go overboard."
There was an instant's silence.
"I knew of the man," the doctor said bitterly, "and I can't even pray to God for his soul!"
"But I must!" said Li Sin.
"You will go up and see Miss Johns," the surgeon reminded him. "She will get over it."
"She will get over it, and be happy, and marry a good man," the Manchu told him. "I will go to see her." And they parted.