Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/364

 yet have as much grace and good taste as the cats. But if this is to be, there must be knowledge. So many men, Martin, are kind and neighborly; so few have added to knowledge. You have the chance! You may be the man who ends all plague, and maybe old Max Gottlieb will have helped, too, hein, maybe?

"You must not be just a good doctor at St. Hubert. You must pity, oh, so much the generation after generation yet to come that you can refuse to let yourself indulge in pity for the men you will see dying.

"Dying It will be peace.

"Let nothing, neither beautiful pity nor fear of your own death, keep you from making this plague experiment complete. And as my friend— If you do this, something will yet have come out of my Directorship. If but one fine thing could come, to justify me—"

When Martin came sorrowing into his laboratory he found Terry Wickett waiting.

"Say, Slim," Terry blurted, "just wanted to butt in and suggest, now for St. Gottlieb's sake keep your phage notes complete and up-to-date, and keep 'em in ink!"

"Terry, it looks to me as if you thought I had a fine chance of not coming back with the notes myself."

"Aw, what's biting you!" said Terry feebly.

The epidemic in St. Hubert must have increased, for on the day before the McGurk Commission sailed, Dr. Inchcape Jones declared that the island was quarantined. People might come in, but no one could leave. He did this despite the fretting of the Governor, Sir Robert Fairlamb, and the protests of the hotel-keepers who fed on tourists, the ex-rat-catchers who drove the same, Kellett the Red Leg who sold them tickets, and all the other representatives of sound business in St. Hubert.

Besides his ampules of phage and his Luer syringes for injection, Martin made personal preparations for the tropics. He bought, in seventeen minutes, a Palm Beach suit, two new