d you obey it if it were?"

"No."

"You'd resign first?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll take it down myself."

With his letter-opener he pried the offensive strip loose, tore it
across thrice, and scattered the pieces on the floor.

"Mr. Ellis," said he formally, "hereafter no medical advertising will be
accepted for or published in the 'Clarion.' The same rule applies to
fraudulent advertising of any kind. I wish you and the other members of
the staff to act as censors for the advertising."

"Yes, sir," said McGuire Ellis.

He turned back to his desk, and sprawled his elbows on it. His head
lapsed lower and lower until it attained the familiar posture of rest.
But McGuire Ellis was not sleeping. He was thinking.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET

Two hundred and fifty representative citizens, mostly of the business
type, with a sprinkling of other occupations not including physicians,
sat fanning themselves into a perspiration in the Chamber of Commerce
assembly rooms, and wondering what on earth an Emergency Health Meeting
might be. Congressman Brett Harkins, a respectable nonentity, who was
presiding, had refrained from telling them: deliberately, it would
appear, as his speech had dealt vaguely with the greatness of
Worthington's material prosperity, now threatened--if one might credit
his theory--by a combination of senseless panic and reckless tongues;
and had concluded by stating that Mr. William Douglas, one of the
leaders of our bar, as all the chairman's hearers well knew, would
explain the situation and formulate a plan for the meeting's
consideration.

Explanation, however, did not prove to be Mr. William Douglas's forte.
Coached by that practiced diplomat, Certina Charley, he made a speech
memorable chiefly for what it did not say. The one bright, definite
gleam, amidst rolling columns of oratory, was the proposal that an
Emergency Committee of One Hundred be appointed to cope with the
situation, that the initial sum of twenty-five thousand dollars be
pledged by subscription, and that their distinguished fellow citizen,
Dr. L. Andre Surtaine, be permanent chairman of said committee, with
power to appoint. Dr. Surtaine had generously offered to subscribe ten
thousand dollars to the fund. (Loud and prolonged applause; the word
"thousand" preceding the word "dollars" and itself preceded by any
numeral from one to one million, inclusive, being invariably
provocative of acclaim in a subscript