"Hey! Then why aren't we all dead?"
"Because it doesn't spread so rapidly. Not at first, anyway."
"How does it spread? Come on! Open up!"
"Probably by vermin. It's rare in this country. There was a small epidemic in New York in the early nineties. It was discovered early and confined to one tenement. There were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. Thirty-two of 'em came out feet first. The only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. He died a week later."
"Sounds as if this little affair of the Rookeries might be some story."
"It is. There may have been fifty deaths to date; or maybe a hundred. We don't know."
Ellis sat back in his chair with a bump. "Who's 'we'?"
"Dr. Merritt and myself."
"The Health Bureau is on, then. What's Merritt going to do about it?"
"What can he do?"