For a moment Lester was too startled to move. Then, laggingly, his eyes moved to the name on the crib, and he stiffened sharply. The name, plain as a day in May, was Holmes!
"Wha—!" Lester said, unable to grasp the situation or any part of it. He whirled about to the doctors and found them in hasty retreat toward a doorway at the far end of the room.
"Hey!" Lester yelled and took out after them.
He raced along in their wake down a narrow hallway and through another door, into a small room full of electric sterilizers. Instantly upon arrival, the doctors went quickly to the business of donning masks.
"Now just look here!" Lester cried, but the doctors were already in retreat toward an inner door with a glass port-hole through which could be seen the nursery. Lester shoved after them, but was held back.
"You can't come in without a mask," one of the doctors told him, then slammed the door in his face.
"I'm getting sore!" Lester said. He swung about, found a discarded mask lying on a white porcelained table and slipped it on. Adjusting the strap, he hastened into the nursery.
He was greeted by a deafening din as he shoved through the door. Thirty odd babies, suddenly roused, had taken up the cry in shrill discord. Intermingled with this was the disgruntled rumblings of the doctors and the outraged mouthings of the truculent baby.
"Well, high time!" the infant yelled. "Get me out of this Bedlam before I lose my temper! How do you expect anyone to get any rest in a room full of howling brats!"
"Shut off that loudspeaker!" one of the doctors yelled, and a colleague rushed to a switch on the wall.