“So she went to the man.  She knew him.  And she determined either that he should help her or that she would be revenged on him.  All this she told me in a note, to be opened in case of her death.  He must have refused to help.  He had not the criminal courage to produce the abortion which he falsely promised in his advertisements.  What passed between them I do not know.  But I believe that she attempted to kill him and failed.  She attempted to kill herself and succeeded.  The blood of Camilla Neal is on every cent of Dr. Surtaine’s ten-thousand-dollar subscription.”

He tossed the wreath aside.  It rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the Midas of Medicine who stared at it with a contorted face.

The meeting sat stricken into immovability.  It seemed incredible that the tensity of the silence should not snap.  Yet it held.

“I shall vote ‘No’ on the motion,” said the Reverend Norman Hale, still with that quiet and appalling simplicity.  “I came here from a hand-to-hand struggle with death to vote ‘No.’  I have strength for only a word more.  The city is stricken with typhus.  It is no time for concealment or evasion.  We are at death-grips with a very dreadful plague.  It has broken out of the Rookeries district.  There are half a dozen new foci of infection.  In the face of this, silence is deadly.  If you elect Dr. Surtaine and adopt his plan, you commit yourself to an alliance with fraud and death.  You deceive and betray the people who look to you for leadership.  And there will be a terrible price to pay in human lives.  I thank you for hearing me patiently.”

No man spoke for long seconds after the young minister sat down, wavering a little as he walked to a chair at the rear.  But through the representative citizenship of Worthington, in that place gathered, passed a quiver of sound, indeterminate, obscure, yet having all the passion of a quelled sob.  Eyes furtively sought the face of Dr. Surtaine.  But the master-quack remained frozen by the same bewilderment as his fellows.  Perhaps alone in that crowd, Elias M. Pierce remained untouched emotionally.  He rose, and his square granite face was cold as abstract reason.  There was not even feeling enough in his voice to give the semblance of a sneer to his words as he said: 

“All this is very well in its place, and doubtless does credit to the sentimental qualities of the speaker.  But it is not evidence.  It is an unsupported statement, part of which is admittedly conjecture.  Allowing the alleged facts to be true, are we to hold a citizen of Dr. Surtaine’s standing and repute responsible for the death of a woman caused by her own immorality?  The woman whose death Mr. Hale has turned to such oratorical account was, I take it, a prostitute—­”

“That is a damned lie!”

Hal Surtaine came down the aisle in long strides, speaking as he came.

“Milly Neal was my employee and my father’s employee.  If she went astray once, who are you to judge her?  Who are any of us to judge her?  I took part of that blood-money.  The advertisement was in my paper, paid for with Surtaine money.  What Mr. Hale says is the living truth.  No man shall foul her memory in my hearing.”