Except for the incident of the blonde and Phyl's reaction, the evening had been a bust. Murt wondered how he had ever visualized her as a warm-blooded, responsive female. He smiled at the evening of torment she had once given him.
She was entirely frigid or else so leery of men that she might as well have been one herself.
IV
The following morning, he presided at a specialists' conference at the hospital, during which he revealed the results of the blood research. They had all read the Health Service bulletin and were sharply interested in the photomicrographs.
When the meeting was over, Feldman, the bacteriologist, and Stitchell, an endocrinologist, volunteered to work with Murt. They gave Phyllis' "gland-irritation" theory more credence than Murt. He outlined a program. Both agreed to take the problem back to their own departments.
The conference set Murt behind in his work and he spoke scarcely five words to his assistant until he was ready to leave. As he finished scrubbing up, she handed him an early edition of the Times.
"Local Doctor Isolates Love Bug!" The story was sketchy and not half so positive as the headline, but it did name him and High Dawn Hospital, and described the new virus.
He stared at Phyllis Sutton. "Did you—"
"Of course not. The reporters were here, but I sent them away. I told them we were medicine men, not tobacco men."