“You know what I mean. You’ve protected yourself well enough, but even if the—the thing you know of did not kill old Mr. Smythe you cannot tell what will happen next.”
“I’ve got almost all of them,” he muttered sullenly. “Another night or two and I’d have had the lot.”
“But even then the mischief may go on. It means a crusade; it means rousing the city. Isn’t it the square thing now to spread the alarm?”
Mr. Patton could stand the suspense no longer.
“Perhaps, Miss Adams,” he said, “you will be good enough to let me know what you are talking about.”
Mr. Reed looked up at him with heavy eyes.
“Rats,” he said. “They got away, twenty of them, loaded with bubonic plague.”
I went to the hospital the next morning. Mr. Patton thought it best. There was no one in my little flat to look after me, and although the pain in my arm subsided after the fracture was set I was still shaken.
He came the next afternoon to see me. I was propped up in bed, with my hair braided down in two pigtails and great hollows under my eyes.
“I’m comfortable enough,” I said, in response to his inquiry; “but I’m feeling all of my years. This is my birthday. I am thirty today.”