have been quite different. He would
have dealt with Daughtry as Daughtry had described, as between white men.
He would have warned Daughtry of his disease and enabled him to take ship
to the South Seas or to Japan, or to other countries where lepers are not
segregated. This would have worked no hardship on those countries, since
such was their law and procedure, while it would have enabled Daughtry
and Kwaque to escape the hell of the San Francisco pest-house, to which,
because of his baseness, he condemned them for the rest of their lives.

Furthermore, when the expense of the maintenance of armed guards over the
pest-house, day and night, throughout the years, is considered, Walter
Merritt Emory could have saved many thousands of dollars to the
tax-payers of the city and county of San Francisco, which thousands of
dollars, had they been spent otherwise, could have been diverted to the
reduction of the notorious crowding in school-rooms, to purer milk for
the babies of the poor, or to an increase of breathing-space in the park
system for the people of the stifling ghetto. But had Walter Merritt
Emory been thus considerate, not only would Daughtry and Kwaque have
sailed out and away over the sea, but with them would have sailed
Michael.

Never was a reception-roomful of patients rushed through more
expeditiously than was Doctor Emory's the moment the door had closed upon
the two policemen who brought up Daughtry's rear. And before he went to
his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his machine and down into the
Barbary Coast to the door of the Bowhead Lodging House. On the way, by
virtue of his political affiliations, he had been able to pick up a
captain of detectives. The addition of the captain proved necessary, for
the landlady put up a stout argument against the taking of the dog of her
lodger. But Milliken, captain of detectives, was too well known to her,
and she yielded to the law of which he was the symbol and of which she
was credulously ignorant.

As Michael started out of the room on the end of a rope, a plaintive call
of reminder came from the window-sill, where perched a tiny, snow-white
cockatoo.

"Cocky," he called. "Cocky."

Walter Merritt Emory glanced back and for no more than a moment
hesitated. "We'll send for the bird later," he told the landlady, who,
still mildly expostulating as she followed them downstairs, failed to
notice that the captain of the detectives had carelessly left th