campaign against the epidemic.  From all I can learn, Merritt has got the goods as a health officer.  He knows his business.  There’s no man in town could handle the thing better, unless it’s you, Chief, and you don’t want to mix up in the active part of it.  Merritt’ll be crazy to do it, too.  That’s where we’ll have him roped.  You say to him, ’Take this money and do the work, but do it on the quiet.  That’s the condition.  If you can’t keep our secret, we’ll have you fired and get some man that can.’  The Mayor will chuck him if the committee says so.  But it won’t be necessary, if I’ve got Merritt sized up.  He wants to get into this fight so bad that he’ll agree to almost anything.  His assistants we can square.

“So much for the official end of it.  But what about the run of the medical profession?  If they go around diagnosing typhus, the news’ll spread almost as fast as through the papers.  So here’s how we’ll fix them.  Recommend the City Council to pass an ordinance making it a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, and revocation of license to practice, for a physician to make a diagnosis of any case as a pestilential disease.  The Council will do it on the committee’s say-so.”

“Whew!” whistled the old charlatan.  “That’s going pretty strong, Bel.  The doctors won’t stand for that.”

“Believe me, they will.  It’s been tried and it worked fine, on the Coast, when they had the plague there.  That’s where I got the notion:  but the revocation of the license is my own scheme.  That’ll scare ’em out of their wits.  You’ll find they don’t dare peep about typhus.  Especially as there aren’t a dozen doctors in town that ever saw a case of it.”

“That’s so,” agreed his principal.  “I guess you’re right after all, Bel.”

“Sure, am I!  You say you’ve got the newspapers fixed.”

“Sewed up tight.”

“Keno!  Our programme’s complete.  You and Mr. Pierce and the Mayor see Merritt and get him.  Call the meeting for next week.  Make some good-natured, diplomatic feller chairman.  Send out the call to about three hundred of your solidest men.  Then we’ll elect you permanent chairman, you can pick your Emergency Committee, put the resolution about pest-diagnosis up to the City Council—­and there you are.  My job’s done.  I shall not be among those present.”

“Done, and mighty well done, Bel.  You’ll be going back to Washington?”

“No, I guess I better stick around for a while—­in case.  Besides, I want a little rest.”

Like so many persons of the artistic temperament, Certina Charley was subject to periods of relaxation.  With him these assumed the phase of strong drink, evenly and rather thickly spread over several days.  On the afternoon before the carefully planned meeting, ten days after Norman Hale was taken to the hospital, the diplomat of quackery, his shoulders eased of all responsibility, sat lunching early at the Hotel Dunston.