“The steps were up for two reasons: The rats could not climb up, and beneath the steps Reed says he caught in a trap two of the tagged ones. As for Mademoiselle the thing that was coming up was her temperature—pure fright. The head you saw was poor Reed himself, wrapped in gauze against trouble and baiting his traps. He caught a lot in the neighbors’ cellars and some in the garden.”
“But why,” I demanded, “why didn’t he make it all known?”
Mr. Patton laughed while he shrugged his shoulders.
“A man hardly cares to announce that he has menaced the health of a city.”
“But that night when I fell—was it only last night?—some one was pounding above. I thought there was a fire.”
“The Frenchwoman had seen us waylay Reed from her window. She was crazy.”
“And the trouble is over now?”
“Not at all,” he replied cheerfully. “The trouble may be only beginning. We’re keeping Reed’s name out, but the Board of Health has issued a general warning. Personally I think his six pets died without passing anything along.”
“But there was a big box with a lid——”
“Ferrets,” he assured me. “Nice white ferrets with pink eyes and a taste for rats.” He held out a thumb, carefully bandaged. “Reed had a couple under his coat when we took him in the garden. Probably one ran over your foot that night when you surprised him on the back staircase.”