"Let me see.It is now four o'clock.If you can get hold of all these people in time I think I shall be ready for the final scene to-night--say, at nine.You know how to arrange it.Have them all present at my laboratory at nine, and I promise we shall have a story that will get into the morning papers with leaded type on the front page.""Now, Walter," he added, as we hurried down to the taxicab again, "I want you to drop off at the Department of Health with this card to the commissioner.I believe you know Dr.Leslie.Well, ask him if he knows anything about this Bridget Fallon.I will go on up-town to the laboratory and get my apparatus ready.You needn't come up till nine, old fellow, for I shall be busy till then, but be sure when you come that you bring the record of this Fallon woman if you have to beg, borrow, or steal it."I didn't understand it, but I took the card and obeyed implicitly.It is needless to say that I was keyed up to the greatest pitch of excitement during my interview with the health commissioner, when I finally got in to see him.I hadn't talked to him long before a great light struck me, and I began to see what Craig was driving at.The commissioner saw it first.
"If you don't mind, Mr.Jameson." he said, after I had told him as much of my story as I could, "will you call up Professor Kennedy and tell him I'd like very much to be present to-night myself?""Certainly I will," I replied, glad to get my errand done in first-class fashion in that way.
Things must have been running smoothly, for while I was sitting in our apartment after dinner, impatiently waiting for half-past eight, when the commissioner had promised to call for me and go up to the laboratory, the telephone rang.It was Craig.
"Walter, might I ask a favour of you?" he said."When the commissioner comes ask him to stop at the Louis Quinze and bring Miss Bisbee up, too.Tell her it is important.No more now.
Things are going ahead fine."
Promptly at nine we were assembled, a curious crowd.The health commissioner and the inspector, being members of the same political party, greeted each other by their first names.Miss Bisbee was nervous, Bridget was abusive, Denny was sullen.As for Kennedy, he was, as usual, as cool as a lump of ice.And I--well, I just sat on my feelings to keep myself quiet.
At one end of the room Craig had placed a large white sheet such as he used in his stereopticon lectures, while at the top of the tier of seats that made a sort of little amphitheatre out of his lecture-room his stereopticon sputtered.
"Moving pictures to-night, eh?" said Inspector O'Connor.
"Not exactly," said Craig, "though--yes, they will be moving in another sense.Now, if we are all ready, I'll switch off the electric lights."The calcium sputtered some more, and a square of light was thrown on the sheet.
Kennedy snapped a little announcer such as lecturers use."Let me invite your attention to these enlargements of finger-prints," he began, as a huge thumb appeared on the screen."Here we have a series of finger-prints which I will show one after another slowly.They are all of the fingers of the same person, and they were found on some empty bottles of spring water used at Bisbee Hall during the two weeks previous to the departure of Mr.Bisbee for New York.
"Here are, in succession, the finger-prints of the various servants employed about the house--and of a guest," added Craig, with a slight change of tone."They differ markedly from the fingerprints on the glass," he continued, as one after another appeared, "all except this last one.That is identical.It is, Inspector, what we call a composite type of finger-print--in this case a combination of what is called the 'loop' and 'whorl'
types.'
No sound broke the stillness save the sputtering of the oxygen on the calcium of the stereopticon.
"The owner of the fingers from which these prints were made is in this room.It was from typhoid germs on these fingers that the fever was introduced into the drinking water at Bisbee Hall."Kennedy paused to emphasise the statement, then continued."I am now going to ask Dr.Leslie to give us a little talk on a recent discovery in the field of typhoid fever--you understand, Commissioner, what I mean, I believe?""Perfectly.Shall I mention names?"
"No, not yet."
"Well," began Dr.Leslie, clearing his throat, "within the past year or two we have made a most weird and startling discovery in typhoid fever.We have found what we now call 'typhoid carriers'--persons who do not have the disease themselves, perhaps never have had it, but who are literally living test-tubes of the typhoid bacillus.It is positively uncanny.
Everywhere they go they scatter the disease.Down at the department we have the records of a number of such instances, and our men in the research laboratories have come to the conclusion that, far from being of rare occurrence, these cases are comparatively common.I have in mind one particular case of a servant girl, who, during the past five or six years, has been employed in several families.
"In every family typhoid fever has later broken out.Experts have traced out at least thirty, cases and several deaths due to this one person.In another case we found an epidemic up in Harlem to be due to a typhoid carrier on a remote farm in Connecticut.This carrier, innocently enough, it is true, contaminated the milk-supply coming from that farm.The result was over fifty cases of typhoid here in this city.
"However, to return to the case of the servant I have mentioned.
