A score took the cue.  “Question!  Question!” they cried.

“Do I get an answer to my question?” persisted Willard.

“What is your question?” asked the harassed chairman.

“Is there a pestilence in the Rookeries?  If so, what is its nature?”

“There is not,” stated Dr. Surtaine from his seat.  “Who ever says there is, is an enemy to our fair and healthy city.”

This noble sentiment, delivered with all the impressiveness of which the old charlatan was master, roused a burst of applause.  To its rhythm there stalked down the side aisle and out upon the rostrum the gaunt figure of the Reverend Norman Hale.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said.

“How did that fellow get here?” Dr. Surtaine asked of Douglas.

“We invited all the ministers,” was the low response.  “I understood he was seriously ill.”

“He is a trouble-maker.  Tell Harkins not to let him talk.”

Douglas spoke a word in the chairman’s ear.

“There’s a motion before the house—­I mean the meeting,” began Congressman Harkins, when the voice behind him cut in again, hollow and resonant: 

“Mr. Chairman.”

“Do you wish to speak to the question?” asked the chairman uncertainly.

“I do.”

“No, no!” called Douglas.  “Out of order.  Question!”

Voices from the seats below supported him.  But there were other calls for a hearing for the newcomer.  Curiosity was his ally.  The meeting anticipated a sensation.  The chairman, lacking a gavel, hammered on the stand with a tumbler, and presently produced a modified silence, through which the voice of the Reverend Norman Hale could be heard saying that he wished but three minutes.

He stepped to the edge of the platform, and the men below noticed for the first time that he carried in his right hand a wreath of metal-mounted, withered flowers.  There was no mistaking the nature of the wreath.  It was such as is left lying above the dead for wind and rain to dissipate.  Hale raised it slowly above his head.  The silence in the hall became absolute.

“I brought these flowers from a girl’s grave,” said the Reverend Norman Hale.  “The girl had sinned.  Death was the wage of her sin.  She died by her own hand.  So her offense is punished.  That account is closed.”

“What has all this to do—­” began the chairman; but he stopped, checked by a wave of sibilant remonstrance from the audience.

The speaker went on, with relentless simplicity, still holding the mortuary symbol aloft:—­

“But there is another account not yet closed.  The girl was deceived.  Not by the father of her unborn child.  That is a different guilt, to be reckoned with in God’s own time.  The deception for which she has paid with her life was not the deception of hot passion, but of cold greed.  A man betrayed her, as he has betrayed thousands of other unfortunates, to put money into his own pockets.  He promised her immunity.  He said to her and to all women, in print, that she need not fear motherhood if she would buy his medicine.  She believed the promise.  She paid her dollar.  And she found, too late, that it was a lie.