This was true.  Not infrequently there comes an inexplicable subsidence of mortality in mid-epidemic.  No competent hygienist is deceived into mistaking this phenomenon for an indication of the end.  Not being a hygienist Hal was again impressed.

“The Health Bureau’s own statistics,” continued the argumentator, pushing his advantage.  “With Dr. Merritt’s signature at the bottom.”

“Dr. Merritt says that the epidemic is being fostered by secrecy, suppression, and lying.”

“All sentimentalism.  Merritt would turn the city upside down if he had his way.  Was it him that told you it was typhus?”

“No.  We’ve got a two-page story in proof now, giving the whole facts of the epidemic.”

“You can’t publish it, Boy-ee,” said his father firmly.

“Can’t?  That sounds like an order.”

Adroitly Dr. Surtaine caught at the word.  “An order drawn on your word of honor.”

“If there’s any question of honor to the ‘Clarion,’ it’s to tell the truth plainly and take the consequences.”

“Who said anything about the ‘Clarion’s’ honor?  This is between you and me.”

“You’ll have to speak more plainly,” said Hal with a dawning dread.

“Boyee, I hate to do this, but I’ve got to, to save the city.  You gave me your word that the day you had to suppress news for your own sake, you’d quit this Don Quixotic business and treat others as decently and considerately as you treated yourself.”

“Go on,” said Hal, in a half whisper.

“Well—­Milly Neal.”  Dr. Surtaine wet his lips nervously.  “You saved yourself there by keeping the story out of the papers.  Of course you were right.  You were dead right.  You’d have been a fool to do anything else.  But there you are.  And there’s your promise.”

A nausea of the soul sickened Hal.  That his father, whom he had so loved and honored, should make of the loyalty which had, at the cost of principle, protected the name of Surtaine against open disgrace, a tool wherewith to tear down his professional standards—­it was like some incredible and malign jocosity of a devilish logic.  Of what was going on in the quack’s mind he had no inkling.  He could not know that his father saw in the suppression of the suicide news, only a natural and successful effort on the part of Hal to conceal his own guilt in Milly’s death.  No more could Dr. Surtaine comprehend that it was the dreadful responsibility of the Surtaine quackery for which Hal had unhesitantly sacrificed the declared principle of the “Clarion.”  So they gazed darkly at each other across the chasm, each seeing his opponent in the blackest colors.

“You hold me to that?” demanded Hal, half choked.

“I have to, Boy-ee.”

To Dr. Surtaine the issue which he had raised was but the distasteful means to a necessary end.  To Hal it meant the final capitulation to the forces against which he had been fighting since his first enlightenment.