Still there was no answer.  I worked the hook up and down but could get no reply.  Finally, disgusted, I hung up.

A moment later, I recall now, it seemed to me as though some one had stuck a pin into the lobe of my ear.  Still, I thought nothing of it in the excitement of Kennedy’s departure, and went to work again to help him pack.

We had scarcely got back to work, when the telephone bell jangled again, and a second time I answered it.

“Is Mr. Kennedy there?” came back a strange voice.

I handed the instrument to Craig.

“Hello,” he called.  “Who is this?”

No response.

“Hello, hello,” he shouted, working the hook as I had done and, as in my case, there was still no answer.

“Some crank,” he exclaimed, jamming down the receiver in disgust and returning to his packing.

Neither of us thought anything of it at the time, but now I recall that I did see Kennedy once or twice press the lobe of his ear as though something had hurt it.

We did not know until later that in a pay station down the street our arch enemy, Long Sin, had been calling us up and then, with a wicked smile, refusing to speak to us.

. . . . . . .

It was about a week later that I came home late one night from the Star, feeling pretty done up.  Whatever it was, a violent fever seemed to have come on me suddenly.  I thought nothing of it, at first, because I soon grew better.  But while it lasted, I had the most intense shivering, excruciating pains in my limbs, and delirious headache.  I recall, too, that I felt a peculiar soreness on the ear.  It was all like nothing I had ever had before.

Indeed the next morning when I woke up, I felt a lassitude that made it quite hard enough even to lounge about in my bath-robe.  Finally, feeling no better, I decided to see a doctor.  I put on my clothes with a decided effort and went out.

The nearest doctor was about half a block away and we scarcely knew him, for neither Kennedy nor I were exactly sickly.

“Well,” asked the doctor, as he closed the door of his office and turned to me.  “What seems to be the matter?”

I tried to smile.  “I feel as though I had been celebrating not wisely but too well,” I replied, trying to cheer up, “but as a matter of fact I have been leading the simple life.”

He sounded me and pounded me, looked at my tongue and my eyes, listened to my heart and lungs, though I don’t think he treated my symptoms very seriously.  In fact, I might have known what he would do.  He talked a little while on generalities, diet and exercise then walked over to a cabinet, and emptied out a few pills into a little paper box.

“Take one every hour,” he said, handing them to me, and carefully returning the bottle to the cabinet so that I could not see what was on the label.  “Cut your cigarettes to three a day, and don’t drink coffee.  Four dollars, please.”