The woman muttered, but obeyed, though her hands shook as she fumbled with the bandage. Crossing herself, she said with shaking voice:
“All safe,” and stepped back again to the wall. The light was turned on, and Carlson bent down to look more closely at his mysterious patient.
A deep, feverish flush was over the arms, neck and the strip of forehead above the bandage. But Carlson’s trained fingers could not feel even a suggestion of the “shotty” feeling which goes with the first rash of smallpox.
“What do you make of it, Doc?” asked the man impatiently.
“Highly suspicious, but I cannot tell certainly until I have finished my examination. Madam, may I listen to your lungs and heart with my stethoscope?”
“Yes,” she faintly murmured.
Carlson looked around at the man.
“I am not in the habit of examining women in the presence of strange men,” he said sharply.
The man mumbled a curse and turned his back. Carlson then looked at the masked woman.
“Turn down the bedclothes and open her nightgown!”