"You have a girl. living here I should say you had a girl—”

"Ada! Good heavens, what has happened? She's my maid and she didn't come home last night!"

"Ada Mertz is the name, probably German, second generation. You are Mrs. Anthony Loring?"

"Yes, of course I am. Tell me about Ada; she's a very valuable girl; I hope nothing serious has happened to her! Tell me quickly, Inspector!"

The reluctance of the atmosphere was beginning to try Maisie's nerves. "Valuable, was she?" He paused and seemed to hesitate as though disliking the information he was in duty bound to impart.

"Tell me, please, at once!" She became slightly imperious, though her heart was pounding uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, Mrs. Loring, but your maid was found last night at least her body was foundit isn't very pretty, but you'll have to know: she was strangled in a house on Mott Street."

"Oh!" Maisie gasped and her blue eyes widened with horror. "You don't mean it-you can't-it must be somebody else! It couldn't be Ada!"

"There doesn't seem to be much doubt about it; she wasn't badly disfigured." He paused again. "Perhaps you didn't know that your girl had been living with a half-caste— one of those white Chinamen-for a good while back?"

"Ada living with a Chinaman! Oh, I can't believe it, it's too absurd, too theatrical!" Maisie felt her world go crumbling. "But she was too quiet, too respectable”

"They're deep as the sea, usually,

those quiet ones, ma'am. No doubt this thing has been going on for several years. She shut your eye up that's what she did!"

"I was abroad for a few months last year," murmured Maisie. "Most likely the trouble started then."

"But really, Inspector, she wasn't that kind of a girl. She never went out with men; never had one in the kitchen that I knew of. It must be somebody else. There's been a horrible mistake!"

"But you said yourself, ma'am, the girl didn't show up at the usual time."

"Yes, but anything may have delayed her."

"Was she paid up, by any chance?" "Yes, but I don't see that that means anything—"

Inspector Murdock smiled slightly. "It means something to us."

"I won't believe it's Ada! Tell me, what did she look like, this girl that you-you found?"

Inspector Murdock consulted his note-book. "Face oval, teeth good, a quantity of wavy, light-brown hair, eyes closed"-he paused.

Maisie shuddered. The man looked at her and continued. "When found, the body was unclothed except for a pink silk kimono, soiled, with a border of small, pink and blue checks."

"Oh!" Maisie uttered an involuntary cry. "My kimono-an old one -it was still good-I gave it to Ada

I never saw another just like it." She turned away. "It's horrible!"

The thought of her familiar kimono on Ada's dead body nauseated her. That it was her's admitted of no argument. She had bought it four

years ago at Liberty's shop in Regent Street. It was made of their marvelous, nearly indestructible silk in lovely shades of pink and blue; even the colors had not faded. She had merely got tired of it.

"Not with me! but, oh, Tony! Ada's been murdered by a Chinaman-"

"Good God!"

"Yes, and oh, Tony, when they found her she had on my old pink

Inspector Murdock looked at his colleague and back again at Maisie. "It's a bad business, Mrs. Loring. I'm sorry we had to get you into it. You see, we found a check of yours in her handbag. That's how we traced her here. The body's got to be identified at the morgue. It's good but not conclusive evidence that you happen to be familiar with the garment she was wearing. I don't like to ask you to come down there with me; maybe your husband will do the job for us."

"Mr. Loring? Oh yes! He'll know what to do, of course!" said Maisie weakly. "Don't you want to talk to him on the telephone? I'll call him at once!"

"Thanks, that's a good idea." Maisie grabbed the receiver off the hook. A great desire to hear Tony's voice filled her troubled spirit to overflowing. Dear, wonderful, dependable Tony!

"Mr. Loring, please it's Mrs. Loring" She tried to make her voice sound as commonplace as usual, but she'd forgotten to greet his secretary. However, the boy would soon know about the tragedy"Hello, darling!"

"Oh, Tony!" She tried unsuccessfully to keep the note of relief out of her voice.

"Anything wrong?"

"Better let me talk to him, Mrs. Loring," suggested the inspector gently.

"Here's the inspector, he'll tell you all about it." She relinquished the receiver and listened breathlessly while Murdock related the gruesome facts. Ada had obviously been murdered by the man she was living with. He had disappeared, but left considerable damaging evidence behind him. Nothing would be required of Mr. Loring, the inspector assured him, but positive identification of the body as that of Ada Mertz. Headquarters would do its utmost to keep the Loring name out of the papers, and he saw no reason why the case should be accorded undue publicityit was common enough. He thanked Mr. Loring and he'd join him directly at the office.

Maisie saw the two officers out and returned to the telephone. Tony was speaking words of comfort and understanding. She must get the whole beastly thing out of her head. They'd have dinner downtown! He'd get tickets for the new edition of the "Follies." Maisie was on no account to get morbid. He'd telephone later when the job at the morgue was done. It was all in a lifetime and she mustn't get blue over it!

mind was clear now, her sense of values at least partly recovered. Ada's death had acted like the proverbial blow on the head that frequently restores a lost memory.

Maisie realized that she was supremely ignorant of life-that she had always managed to avoid it. But now life had bumped up against her so swiftly that she had not the time to draw away her skirts. A vagrant, blundering air-current from the underworld had blown foully for a moment through her house. She felt it polluted by the contact, and yet everything looked the same.

She found herself at the door of the little room that had been Ada's; the Ada she had known. Not the strange Ada who lived with a Chinaman. Maisie felt no resentment now. She was simply wonderstruck at her own. innocence. Could such things be? Obviously they could.

The room was clean, white. The narrow bed was covered with the spotless counterpane drawn up over the pillows without a wrinkle.

The curtain at the window showed a small tear, carefully mended; it was well laundered and hung in crisp, straight folds. An austere room—a nun's room-the air of chastity was on it undeniably.

Maisie stood on the threshold bewildered. She could never, she told herself, believe in anybody again. This room and the horrible end of Ada were irreconcilable. The more she dragged her reasoning powers forth to confront the facts, the farther apart they receded. If all the sign-posts bore false directions how could she ever hope to find her way through the future? Tony might lead her, but he was as blind as she.

The blind leading the blind-that's what they would be!

It was all so confusing. To think that the girl who had stamped her personality so forcibly on this chaste, white cell had lived the other half of her life in the lowest of surroundings. Maisie's imagination faltered, but went valiantly on to picture the loathsome details. Such places crawled with vermin. How could Ada, the immaculate, indignant at the tiniest of water-bugs, live in the very headquarters of filth? Opium! Very likely she smoked it, or took it in pills.

Tentatively Maisie pulled out the top drawer of the bureau. What she was looking for, she scarcely knew. The drug, perhaps or an item, just an item of damaging evidence. Something tangible that would make her understand, help her to reconcile the irreconcilable. But even in this she was baffled.

Feverishly she pulled out drawer after drawer. She found nothing but the obvious collection of necessities, and these arranged with a precision that put her own dresser drawers to blush. She went to the closet, half eager, half fearful; as she stood there, she heard the sound of a key being fitted into a lock. She listened-the kitchen door opened-closed-it was only a step-she hurried to see.

Her servant, Ada, stood in the kitchen.

"Ada!" Maisie's voice sounded metallic.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Loring, dreadfully sorry!" The girl's voice sounded tired and she looked worn out, but not in disorder.

"I've been looking for my sisterall night-she-she got lost." The girl turned away.

"Your sister!" An avalanche of relief swept over Maisie. "You found her?"

cation of her belief in Ada as a person, an individual. She was what Maisie had always believed her to be: honest, faithful, decent. The small white room was her rightful habitat. No need for her mistress to wrench.

"We we know about it-sheshe was wearing that pink kimono I gave you-"

But what of Ada, she thought. What shred of faith could be left her after the ghastly experience of the

"My God! how do you know about it so soon?"

"The police have been here-they found a check I'd given you, in her room-and they described the kimono! Oh, Ada, I thought it was you!"

"Me, ma'am?" The tired girl looked at Maisie in dumb surprise.

"It was the kimono. I didn't know you'd given it away-I didn't even know you had a sister. But it's all right now. I don't care. It's terrible though for you, Ada. I'm so-so sorry. Mr. Loring and I will do everything we can to help you through-indeed we will."

"Thank you, ma'am. I'm sure it's very kind of you. I'll have to get off to bury her." She spoke dully. "Of course! And Mr. Loring will help you with the arrangements.

22

Maisie tried hard to control her voice; to keep out the note of relief that seemed to proclaim with heartless insistence the fact that her maid had been found, recovered like any lost article and returned to the owner.

She could not explain to Ada that the source of her relief lay far deeper. The confines of her soul were narrow, but they expanded now in the justifi

Maisie pushed her gently into a chair.

"You're all tired out. Don't try and do any work to-day. It's not necessary. I made my bed, and washed the breakfast dishes—and I broke a cup!" Maisie spoke hurriedly; she was feeling a little embarrassed. It seemed trivial to mention broken china; the look of tragedy was so heavy in the maid's eyes.

"Thank you, Mrs. Loring. I'm sorry to be upsetting everything.'

Maisie shook her head in silent protest. It was difficult for her to speak. At the moment, she was trying to blot out a sordid vision: the vision of a girl who looked like Ada, prostrate, with closed eyes, wrapped in a soiled pink kimono from Liberty's-it was too horrible!

She looked down at Ada. The girl's hands were pressed against her face and she was crying silentlyapologetically it seemed.

Mrs. Loring knelt down on the floor and put her arm about her maid's shoulders. She realized that life, which had spared her hitherto, had come perilously close that day. But in its very nearness, it seemed to have made her aware of an unexplored vista of humility-shown her an enduring beauty which was compassion,

A

NY consideration of the progress of medicine in the past twenty-five years must take into account that which was known and that which was unknown in 1900. It will be remembered that Pasteur, Koch, Lister and others had already established the fact that bacteria are responsible for infectious diseases; that diphtheria antitoxin had been shown to be a specific method for the treatment of diphtheria; that anesthesia had been introduced and was widely used in medicine; that much was known concerning man's body and its functions. There had not yet been developed however that form of systematic organization which is distinctly American and which brought the benefits of medical science to the American community. Medical knowledge had increased so tremendously that specialization was required in many fields, since few men were capable of comprehending and putting into application all of the intricacies and refinements of diagnosis and treatment in any medical specialty.

Pathology

The changes which take place in the human body in the course of disease and which represent both

the causes of symptoms and the results of disease, are classified under the general term "pathology." During the past twenty-five years, the causes of syphilis, sleeping-sickness of the African type, whoopingcough, infectious jaundice, yellow fever, scarlet fever, and possibly of measles, have been discovered. The determination of the cause means in most instances also a method of control, and possibly a specific method of treatment. In some instances in which the exact bacterial causes of disease have not been determined, the methods of transmission have been so thoroughly worked out as to make the diseases amenable to perfect control. This applies particularly to the work of Howard Taylor Ricketts in relation to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and to the work of Nicolle and Ricketts on typhus fever. It has been clearly shown that these dis