The thin mysterious woman passenger vanished, staggering with her suit-case—she had said no word, and they never saw her again. The Commission, with Stokes and the harbor-police who had manned the launch, carried the baggage (Martin weaving with a case of the phage) through the rutty balconied streets to the San Marino Hotel.
Once or twice faces, disembodied things with frightened lips, stared at them from alley-mouths; and when they came to the hotel, when they stood before it, a weary caravan laden with bags and boxes, the bulging-eyed manageress peered from a window before she would admit them.
As they entered, Martin saw under a street light the first stirring of life: a crying woman and a bewildered child following an open wagon in which were heaped a dozen stiff bodies.
“And I might have saved all of them, with phage,” he whispered to himself.
His forehead was cold, yet it was greasy with sweat as he babbled to the manageress of rooms and meals, as he prayed that Leora might not have seen the Things in that slow creaking wagon.
“I’d have choked her before I let her come, if I’d known,” he was shuddering.
The woman apologized, “I must ask you gentlemen to carry your things up to your rooms. Our boys— They aren’t here any more.”
What became of the walking stick which, in such pleased vanity, Martin had bought in New York, he never knew. He was too busy guarding the cases of phage, and worrying, “Maybe this stuff would save everybody.”
Now Stokes of St. Swithin’s was a reticent man and hard, but when they had the last bag up-stairs, he leaned his head against a door, cried, “My God, Arrowsmith, I’m so glad you’ve got here,” and broke from them, running.... One of the negro harbor-police, expressionless, speaking the English of the Antilles with something of the accent of Piccadilly, said, “Sar, have you any other command for I? If you permit, we boys will now go home. Sar, on the table is the whisky Dr. Stokes have told I to bring.”
Martin stared. It was Sondelius who said, “Thank you very much, boys. Here’s a quid between you. Now get some sleep.”