The Killer That Stalked New York Page #3

- More than enough.

- Then where is it?

Give it another day.

Maybe tomorrow.

- That's pretty.

- A nice lady gave it to me.

I'll be back tomorrow, Walda, with lollypops.

There's no doubt about it. She had

whooping cough when I admitted her.

Well, the whole thing's

more complicated now.

Yes. But what is it?

I've had two of the best diagnosticians

in the city examine her.

We've run tests on every possible disease

from typhoid to mumps.

Yet the symptoms persist.

The same chronic headache,

backache and recurring fever.

Twenty minutes ago her temperature

was 105. Now it's back to normal.

And we have the added symptom now

in the rash.

One minute at play

and the next minute crying in pain.

Well, Ben, perhaps at tonight's consultation

we'll figure it out.

It may be too late then.

What good is all our modern

lifesaving equipment and all our hospitals?

As far as that child is concerned,

we might just as well be back in the days

when medicine was groping blindly.

Those things were expected then, but now...

For all our knowledge, we're unable to add

up a group of symptoms to mean anything.

Symptoms are warnings.

What are they trying to tell us?

Ben.

Suppose we were in those

medieval days again.

When plagues wiped out whole cities.

Before x-ray, vaccine and anesthesia.

And the symptoms were a headache,

backache, fever and rash.

What would they have meant?

Smallpox.

The symptoms could fit, couldn't they?

But here, in the middle of New York City?

Why, I've never even seen a case.

Well, I have. In Europe, as a child.

Hundreds of them.

Screaming and twisting creatures.

Doomed to be fed to a huge bonfire

that was kept going for weeks.

I should have thought of it before this,

except that New York's the last place

in the world we'd expect smallpox.

We haven't had a case in 10 years.

How could she possibly get it?

She'd have to pick it up

from someone who was already sick.

Well, that's what frightens me even more.

If Walda has smallpox, then

someone else in New York has the disease.

Do you know what that would mean?

Only too well. A killer out of the past,

loose amongst eight million people.

That's fantastic.

This is 1947 and we do have

vaccine against smallpox.

Was Walda ever vaccinated?

No.

Nurse.

Tell the head nurse to make arrangements

for all patients and personnel

- to be vaccinated at once.

- Vaccinated?

- Hurry. This may be smallpox!

- Yes, Doctor.

Get blood and tissue samples from the child.

Do you suppose we have a case

of smallpox here, Doctor?

I hope not. But Cooper's taking no chances.

That's why the vaccinations.

Do we have a case here, Doctor?

We won't know until the Army lab

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