“It is the nerves and heart.” A still gentler note crept into the dull tones. “Mrs. Cochrane has got much sorrow; her little boy she has lost less than a month ago.”
“Too bad!” McCarty sympathized absent-mindedly. “What did he die of?”
“Of tetanus.”
Dennis started.
“Is it catching?” he asked nervously. “Could you get it after?”
A little smile dimpled Truda Lindholm’s smooth cheek.
“Oh, no. Comes it from the scratch of a rusty nail, sometimes, and causes the jaws to set rigid, to lock.”
“Lockjaw!” Dennis stared for a moment and then his own lower jaw snapped. “Come along, Mac! There’s a date we’ll be missing!”
CHAPTER VIII
GATES OF MYSTERY
They argued hotly all the way back to the New Queen’s Mall, Dennis convinced that his prediction was already verified and McCarty combating the idea from force of habit as much as from any other urge, although he felt that the indications were too vague as yet, the clues too tenuous, to be woven into a fabric of proof.