.

.

" A knock at the private door into the hall made him straighten up with an eagerness that he did not attempt to mask.

A nod to Miss Judson sent her to open the door, and entered two policemen, a police sergeant, and a professionally whiskered person in a business suit with a carnation in his button-hole.
"Good morning, Doctor Masters," Emory greeted the professional one, and, to the others: "Howdy, Sergeant;" "Hello, Tim;" "Hello, Johnson--when did they shift you off the Chinatown squad ?" And then, continuing his suspended sentence, Walter Merritt Emory held on, looking intently at Kwaque's swelling: "I should say, as I was saying, that it is the finest, ripest, perforating ulcer of the _bacillus leprae_ order, that any San Francisco doctor has had the honour of presenting to the board of health." "Leprosy!" exclaimed Doctor Masters.
And all started at his pronouncement of the word.

The sergeant and the two policemen shied away from Kwaque; Miss Judson, with a smothered cry, clapped her two hands over her heart; and Dag Daughtry, shocked but sceptical, demanded: "What are you givin' us, Doc. ?" "Stand still! don't move!" Walter Merritt Emory said peremptorily to Daughtry.