Harry, feeling frantic and helpless now with two sick family members on his hands, could only nod. He was beginning to feel pretty rotten himself.

It would take a good forty minutes to get an ambulance, and the patient was very small, so the doctor opted for a police car. He and the father got in the back, carefully cradling the young and still motionless infant, and the car roared off, a deputy at the wheel, siren blaring and lights flashing.

Not far out of town the car started weaving a little, and the deputy cursed himself. “Sorry, folks,”—he yelled back apologetically. “I don’t know what happened. Just felt sorta dizzy-like.”

He got them to the hospital, pulling up to the emergency entrance with an abandon reserved for police, and stepped out.

And fell over onto the concrete.

The doctor jumped out to examine him, and a curious intern, seeing the collapse, rushed to help.

“Hey! Harry! Get Jennie inside!” the doctor snapped. “I got to take care of Eddie, here!”

The intern took immediate charge, and the two men turned the deputy over and looked at him. There were few scrapes and bruises from the fall, and he was breathing hard and sweating profusely.

“I’ll get a stretcher,” the intern said. He turned and looked back at the police car, seeing Harry still sitting in it, holding the baby.

“Harry!” he yelled. “I told you to get Jennie inside!”

There was no reply, no sign that he had been heard at all. The doctor jumped up swiftly and leaned back into the car.

Harry sat there stiff as a board, only his panicked eyes betraying the fact that he was alive.

The doctor ran inside the emergency room entrance.

“We got us some kind of nasty disease!” he snapped. “Be careful! Isolation for all of them, full quarantine for the staff. Admit me, too—I’ll assist from inside, since I’ve been in contact with them. And get another ambulance over to Cornwall fast! I think we got a young woman there with the same thing!”