by Earl
Dick sank down in the soft cushions beside Dorothy Nash after exchanging greetings. She threw the car into gear and sped away from the barn.
“Where to, Dick?”
“No particular place, Dot. Just keep going where our noses point.”
They sat in silence for a few miles. The girl understood. She was his fiancé of childhood standing and understood his moods. Dorothy Nash, whose family was as influential and wealthy as Dick’s, strangely enough had stuck to him even after his disinheritance. Dick thought the world of her, especially now that she had proven her faithfulness.
Conversation started light and trivial as the car rolled along, but gradually Dick began to refer to his biological work, a subject that the girl showed her distaste for by maintaining complete silence.
Dick drew in his breath as a person preparing to plunge into icy waters. Then he spoke to her.
“Dot, pardon my breaking into a perfect evening with a thing as serious as this, but I must do it. You know what I’ve been working on—the conquest of the Green Germ. I’ve succeeded—partially. To go ahead and finish the task,—I need money—more than I can lay my hands on. Dot, dear, you believe in me, don’t you?”
The girl allowed the machine to slow to idling speed and turned a somewhat piqued face to her sweetheart. “You mean, Dick, that you want me to give you some money for—for that—”
“Why, Dot!” burst out Dick, sensing the veiled scorn in her voice. “You sound like—like you don’t consider my work worth while. And I always thought—”
A Love Quarrel
l The girl had stopped the car in the middle of the gravel road. “Oh, Dick, what’s the use of hiding it any longer? I like you; I love you, but since you’ve been secreting yourself in that messy old barn, dabbling with chemicals, forfeiting the life to which you were born—”
She ended with a sob, hiding her face in her hands.
Dick, his face contorted with a pain that had stabbed through his heart with her careless words, bent dull eyes on the girl he loved. “Dot—I’m sorry. I guess it had to come to this. The life to which I was born means nothing to me any more.” He stopped, himself overcome.
The girl raised a tear-stained face. “I spoke with your father yesterday, Dick, and he asked me to invite you back to his full regard if you would give up your—your—work.” She had almost said “puttering” but realized it would only hurt him more. “And Dick, won’t you do that for me?”
“Let’s go back,” said the man quietly. His face held her answer.
Their parting was abrupt. A small anger and great pride upheld the girl till she was out of sight of the barn. Then she stopped the car and burst into violent sobs. It was an hour later that she finally started for home, her pretty eyes sad and unhappy.
Dick stood in the doorway, his face flushed with anger, and watched the one person he loved roar away in a crescendo of power as Dorothy Nash sent her cat-tearing away. His outlook on life underwent a sudden revision. In his combined feelings of despair and disgust, he vowed to himself that humanity was not worth the effort of any man’s talent. He began a train of thought that astounded even himself. He began to wonder if he shouldn’t give up his unselfish labors and take advantage of the money and power his dad could place in his lap at but a word. Here he had been striving to do good, and the people he revered most, loved most, proved entirely unworthy of that good. Better that he should let Fate take its course. Let the horrible Green Plague come again and wipe out humanity, himself included. Life was hardly worth living. Something had dropped from his soul and heart and had gone racing away in that maroon car.
As he stood there bewildered and disgusted, he gazed upon the setting sun. In a blaze of orange and gold, its fires majestically sank below the distant pine-covered hills. As the globe disappeared, a magnificent change of colors took place. Streaks of vivid red dulled to burnt sienna; splashes of orange suffused the western sky, reaching to fuzzy sunset clouds; clinging streamers of yellow and gold outlined the celestial screen. As the colors became weaker, a misty haze overshadowed the scene as if it had always been there, invisible and waiting till now. The haze deepened as the colors faded.
Dick found enchantment and heart-ease in this cosmic theatrical color play. But he froze suddenly in nameless terror. The haze had become a definite green in hue, glowing stronger and stronger. He shook his head and stared. As the final dying glow of the sun went, with it went the green mist, dissolving into the blackness of night.
He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. Had his taxed mind conjured up the whole scene with that evil green mist? Or had he, through some phenomenon of refraction, actually seen the cloud of Green Germs?
The next night after supper, which Dick ate with the Craft family, he and George went to the laboratory. The latter had finished his pruning job that forenoon and had been in the city all afternoon, trying vainly to raise money, to get someone to listen to his story of a cure for the past and forgotten Green Plague. But tired as he was, he saw that Dick was exceedingly downcast.
“What’s wrong, Dick?”
“Dot and I split,” murmured the young biologist so low that the other could hardly hear. Then he told the whole story.
George’s face turned white. “Dick!” he cried agonizingly. “Will you ever forgive me? I’m the cause of it! I went to see your dad yesterday about—about raising that money. He must have thought, even though I denied it, that you sent me, that you were weakening. That’s why he asked Miss Nash to—oh, God!”
Dick was stunned. “Gosh, George, you shouldn’t have done that—asked my dad for the money.” Suddenly he burst out laughing. “But I’m glad you did. It brought matters to a head. It was inevitable—between Dot and me. Now listen, George. Forget what you’ve done. Don’t blame yourself that you have disrupted my friendship with Dot. From now on—from now on—I’m through with everything in my past.”
Dick’s eyes dilated with a wild light. His face became hard. “All washed up—my past. And as for the serum, to hang with that! My father broke my spirit; Dot broke my heart. So the hell with the world!”
George Craft’s first thought was that his friend’s reason had tottered; that the ceaseless, gruelling labor of the past few months had finally snapped his keen brain. But no look of insanity shone from Dick’s eyes, only a sparkle of cold fire; only fierce determination.
“You know, George,” whispered the young biologist suddenly, getting up from his chair, “I think the Green Plague is coming back. I saw green in the sunset We are heading into the cloud that I always suspected lay in waiting for us. And when it comes—”
George sprang up, his face seething. “And you, with the chance to save the world, with the chance to live in history forever, are going to give up now—now—you—I thought you—Oh, you can’t be serious; it’s strain—overwork—you’ll forget this in the morning. Tell me, please Dick, that you’re joking.”
“I’m not joking,” cried Dick wildly. “Can you blame me? My own father calls me a ‘putterer’—the girl I love as good as agreed. Why should I try to save humanity when it can be that selfish and narrowminded? Let the Green Plague come and bring them face to face with doom. That short few hours of repentance, of true insight, before death, will do them more good than a lifetime of egotistical security.
I have tried and have been spurned. I’ve told you how I went to all the big medical institutions before I came here, trying to warn them, offering to do research on the Green Germ without recompense. What t was my answer? ‘Fool—dolt—pessimist’—anything but sympathy.”
“But still, Dick, you can swallow all that in view of the right-about-face that they will do after the Green Plague has come and has been conquered with the serum you discovered. Then you will come into your own, Dick. It will be your present unselfishness and uncomplaining labor that will later become the bitterest dregs for them. Can’t you see that when your serum has proven effective, and your name flashes before the world, that all those w
ho have scoffed at you will suffer a remorse that will be immeasurable?”
Dick waved a tired hand. “Now you’re just appealing to my vanity, George. I was thinking of it in a different way. But go now, George. I’m going to take a good, long rest. I’ll probably sleep half the day tomorrow. Then we shall see.”
And George left to a sleepless bed. When he had gone, Dick paced the floor for long minutes, thinking deeply. Finally he spoke aloud in the solitude of his thoughts. “For the sake alone of a good kid like George, the world is worth saving. There must be others like him—simple, honest, poor people—people that I have never met in my former life.”
And when he awoke at high noon, he sprang to his work with a will. The agonies of the preceding day had become dimmed, as the moon becomes dimmed by the bright sun. He resolutely put all thought of his ex-fiancé from his mind. Probably she would send back her engagement ring by mail, having made no move to return it the night before. Dick even chuckled a bit as he thought of the value of the ring. He could probably pawn it for several hundred dollars, as he had long ago pawned all his personal belongings to furnish the laboratory.
George burst in at two o’clock and waved a fistful of bills.
“Got it, Dick! Money—all we’ll need!”
Dick came close to dropping the flask in his hand. “Where?”
“Secret. Went to town this morning and finally got the loan. Never you mind where or from whom. That’s my worry. You just take this money and spend it!”
“Gosh, George, you’re—you’re just splendid. How much?”
“Five thousand. Enough?”
Dick whistled. “Plenty. I’ll sit down right now and make out an order.”
George, flushed, happy, sat down and caught up on his breathing. He took the orders and insisted on mailing them directly in town, although Dick argued that there was no need for such haste.
“Got the rest of the afternoon off,” said George when he came back, “and I’m going to pitch right in and help you!”
CHAPTER III
Sleepless Nights
l The next two weeks were busy ones.
With the big electric oven that the new funds purchased, Dick was able to raise his cultures rapidly and in large quantity. Gradually he saw the Green Germ destroyer approaching within his reach. Each day saw a stronger, more dependable serum in the test tubes. Soon he would have a solution of which a mere hypodermic full would clean a human’s blood system completely of the virulent Green Germs. His final tests would have to be made on a chimpanzee. This latter animal had suffered as badly from the last Green Plague as the human race. Anything that would cure it would cure a man. And the indefatigable George would help him when chores were over, several times half through the night.
It was one evening at supper in the plain but clean home of George’s parents that the worst came. The radio orchestra to which the whole family had been listening was suddenly cut off and an authoritative voice with a note of grave concern in it announced that the Green Plague had again returned, and that the President of the country, to forestall the panic of the previous plague, would deliver a message to the people the following night.
Dick’s fork dropped from nerveless fingers. Four white faces peered at one another.
“We saw it coming—every night in the sunset,” whispered George hoarsely. “And now it’s here!”
Dick sprang up, his chair toppling backwards. “Come, George, we’ve got to finish that serum and get the final formula—tonight! We can’t call our lives our own now.”
Without a word, they raced to the barn and plunged into the work.
To say that they worked like demons would be putting it mildly. Every fiber, every nerve of their already tired bodies and brains was strained to the limit. And just before sunrise, Dick slumped before the crude desk and rapidly, carefully wrote down the ultimate formula and the complete process of producing the serum. George drove him to town where he telephoned Washington. A great and infinite patience overcame Dick as the officials at the other end seemed skeptical, thought he was an insane quack. But the pleading in his voice, his earnestness, won their attention and he was connected with the chief biologist of the medical bureau. In a half-hour, he was through and the precious formula was the property of the world.
George ran forward as Dick collapsed without hanging up the receiver, picked him up in eager arms and carried him to the car, with a curious crowd already about them. George took no notice of them; only Dick’s welfare was his concern. As he started the car, Dick opened his eyes.
George, old boy! Take me—lab—” No, no! It’s hospital for you!”
Dick struggled to sit up. “No, George—not sick—tired—take me to lab—little sleep and then—work.”
After a minute of hesitation, George decided to carry out his wishes, and laid the soundly sleeping young biologist in his own comfortable bed in the house.
CHAPTER IV
The Return of the Plague
l The Green Plague struck with numbing force. From isolated cases here and there, it loomed terrible with hundreds and then thousands dying each day. For a week before Dick had perfected the serum, it had waxed mightily. Yet the world as a whole knew nothing because it had been suppressed for that week to avoid panic and to give the governments a chance to plan ways of allaying public fear. The night after Dick perfected the antitoxin, the President of the United States delivered a message not only to his people, but to the whole world. His speech is memorable for one statement in particular:
“Up till a few hours ago, I had only a message of appeal: that we, humanity, should not allow this frightful catastrophe to wreck our civilization, no matter how much greater this attack of the Green Plague might be than the last. But raise your voices in thanks to a Higher Power, People of the World, for our medical department has the formula for a serum that can cure the Plague! An obscure—but may Heaven bless him forever—young biologist, foreseeing this second plague, devoted his all to the continuance of the human race. We have already radioed the formula to every corner of the world—”
And so it was that in the midst of a great fear, humanity found a balm.
But even with the serum, it was a fearsome experience for mankind. Before the antitoxin could be produced in sufficient quantity to safeguard all human life, before the chemical and medical laboratories could turn out the precious serum in huge quantity, millions died. Outlying districts that had to wait for boat or airplane to bring the cure were sometimes decimated to a man. In fact, it was six months before the production of the serum overbalanced the prevalence of the Green Plague epidemic. At times, corpses lay strewn about some city which had been the victim of a particularly vicious attack of the insidious Green Germ. The highways were gruesome testimonials of the plague’s ravages, their sides cluttered with cadavers, for many people had blindly left the city, thinking the countrysides more immune to the attack of the Green Germ.
But how foolish it was to flee! The earth had plunged into a vast cloud of cosmic proportions. Its atmosphere became saturated with the deadly Green Germ, One was as liable to die in a rich city mansion as if he were deep in virgin forests. And how queerly the plague worked! A city stricken—half contaminated, the other half untouched. A family stricken-mother and two children dying, father and one child wishing for the same end, but never finding the sickening green blotch beside the right ear. Its poisonous breath swept over all, yet many people, long before the serum came to them to protect their lives, lived through the epidemic as if a guardian angel were watching them. It was queer, and horrible—and endless, it seemed, for the Green Germ continued to saturate earth’s atmosphere for almost two decades. Without the serum, the last man would have died long before the Green Germ left; with the serum, life went on as before.
But before the production of the miracle fluid had reached sufficient proportions to protect all human life, the events in the life of Dick Palmer reached a climax.
CHAPTER V
A Fre
nzied Populace
l Dick awoke from his deep sleep before the evening meal. He greeted George with a smile. Both of them felt a gigantic load off their shoulders.
“Our work, however, is far from over,” said Dick when they were back in the laboratory. “We’ve got enough material here to make several hundred injections of the serum. Each of those will save a life, for it will take some time for the government to turn it out. As fast as we make it, we will send it to the city to be put in the hands of some competent physician.”
Hardly had they begun their labors when a radiogram came from Washington. Half the message praised and thanked Dick, but the other half brought a shining light to his eyes. For the government, having decided to establish serum-producing stations all over the country, was shipping immediately a vast quantity of the necessary chemicals to their city. Dick, stated the message, was to be in charge of the station.
“And, George,” said Dick whirling, “you are going to be my first assistant. Some of this glory is going to be yours!”
They worked with a will for three days, turning out a small batch of the serum which immediately went to the city. The new serum station would not be completed for another two days.
But from that batch, Dick set aside ten ampules, locking it in the cabinet of which both he and George had a key.
“For us,” said Dick, “in case we or our—our loved ones”—he choked as he thought of his dad and of Dorothy—“contract the disease. It’s selfish, I know, but I’m only human.”
“I should say it isn’t selfish, Dick,” cried George. “You have a perfect right to wish to protect your close relatives, And furthermore, you, yourself, are too important, too much needed to die. The functioning of that station will depend upon you. With your experience, it will probably produce serum long before any other station does, thereby saving so many more lives.”