He had hardly taken a step when the little man called him back and, as soon as he was at the bedside, gripped his hands.
“They can’t be rough with an invalid, a man who’s hanged himself, can they, Doctor?”
Rieux gazed down at him for a moment, then assured him that there was no question of anything like that, and in any case he was here to protect his patient.
This seemed to relieve Cottard, and Rieux went out to get the inspector.
After Grand’s deposition had been read out, Cottard was asked to state the exact motive of his act.
He merely replied, without looking at the police officer, that “a secret grief” described it well enough.
The inspector then asked him peremptorily if he intended to “have another go at it.”
Showing more animation, Cottard said certainly not, his one wish was to be left in peace.
“Allow me to point out, my man,” the police officer rejoined with asperity, “that just now it’s you who’re troubling the peace of others.”
Rieux signed to him not to continue, and he left it at that.
“A good hour wasted!” the inspector sighed when the door closed behind them. “As you can guess, we’ve other things to think about, what with this fever everybody’s talking of.”
He then asked the doctor if there was any serious danger to the town; Rieux answered that he couldn’t say.
“It must be the weather,” the police officer decided. “That’s what it is.”
No doubt it was the weather.
As the day wore on, everything grew sticky to the touch, and Rieux felt his anxiety increasing after each visit.
That evening a neighbor of his old patient in the suburbs started vomiting, pressing his hand to his groin, and running a high fever accompanied by delirium.
The ganglia were much bigger than M. Michel’s.
One of them was beginning to suppurate, and presently split open like an overripe fruit.
On returning to his apartment, Rieux rang up the medical-stores depot for the district.
In his professional diary for the day the only entry was:
“Negative reply.”
Already he was receiving calls for similar cases from various parts of the town.
Obviously the abscesses had to be lanced.
Two crisscross strokes, and the ganglion disgorged a mixture of blood and pus.
Their limbs stretched out as far as they could manage, the sick men went on bleeding.
Dark patches appeared on their legs and stomachs; sometimes a ganglion would stop suppurating, then suddenly swell again.
Usually the sick man died, in a stench of corruption.
The local press, so lavish of news about the rats, now had nothing to say.
For rats died in the street; men in their homes.
And newspapers are concerned only with the street.
Meanwhile, government and municipal officials were putting their heads together.
So long as each individual doctor had come across only two or three cases, no one had thought of taking action.
But it was merely a matter of adding up the figures and, once this had been done, the total was startling.
In a very few days the number of cases had risen by leaps and bounds, and it became evident to all observers of this strange malady that a real epidemic had set in.
This was the state of affairs when Castel, one of Rieux’s colleagues and a much older man than he, came to see him.
“Naturally,” he said to Rieux, “you know what it is.”
“I’m waiting for the result of the post-mortems.”
“Well, I know.
And I don’t need any post-mortems.
I was in China for a good part of my career, and I saw some cases in Paris twenty years ago.
Only no one dared to call them by their name on that occasion.
The usual taboo, of course; the public mustn’t be alarmed, that wouldn’t do at all.
And then, as one of my colleagues said,
‘It’s unthinkable. Everyone knows it’s ceased to appear in western Europe.’
Yes, everyone knew that—except the dead men.
Come now, Rieux, you know as well as I do what it is.”
Rieux pondered.
He was looking out of the window of his surgery, at the tall cliff that closed the half-circle of the bay on the far horizon.
Though blue, the sky had a dull sheen that was softening as the light declined.
“Yes, Castel,” he replied. “It’s hardly credible.