So it was that a lot of people, me among them, were highly perturbed to hear that Legionnaires' disease was loose in the Parkway Hotel in Nassau. I flew to New Providence to talk to Tony Bosworth, our Corporation doctor. He had his base at the Sea Gardens Hotel because New Providence is fairly central and he could get to our other hotels reasonably quickly, using a Corporation plane in an emergency. A company doctor was another of my extravagances of which Jack Gunningham did not approve, but he earned his salary on this, and other, occasions.

When I told him what was happening at the Parkway he gave a low whistle.

"Legionellosis! That's a bad one. Are you sure?"

I shrugged.

"That's what I hear."

"Do you know which form? It comes in two ways Pontiac fever and Legionnaires' disease."

That was the first time I had heard of Pontiac fever, but not the last. I shook my head.

"I wouldn't know. You're the doctor, not me."

"Pontiac fever isn't too bad," he said.

"It hits fast and has a high attack rate, about ninety-five per cent, but usually there are no fatalities. Legionnaires' disease is a killer. I'll get on to the Department of Public Health. Give me fifteen minutes, will you?"

I went away to look at the kitchens. I often make surprise raids on the kitchens and other departments just to keep the staff up to the mark. All departments are equally important but, to paraphrase George Orwell, the kitchen is more equal than others. Every hotelier's nightmare is an outbreak of salmonella. It was nearer half an hour before I got back to Tony and he was still nattering on the telephone, but he laid it down a couple of minutes after my arrival.

"Confirmed," he said gloomily.

"Legionnaires' disease. Suspected by a smart young doctor in Manchester, England, it was confirmed by the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. The World Health Organization has identified a man dead in Paris and two more in Zurich; there's, a couple of cases in Buenos Aires and a rash of them across the States."

"All these people stayed at the Parkway?"

"Yes. How many rooms there?"

I had all the statistics of my competition at my fingertips.

"A

hundred and fifty. "

"What would you say the year-round occupation rate is?"

I considered.

"It's a reasonably good hotel. I'd say between seventy-five and eighty per cent."

Tony's lips moved silently as he made a calculation.

"They'll have to contact about 12,000 people, and they're spread all over the bloody world. That's going to be a job for someone."

I gaped at him.

"Why so many!"

"There's been some work done on this one since 1976. Studies have shown that this deadly little chap can live in water for over a year, so that's how far back it's standard to check. One will get you ten that the bacteria are in the air- conditioning cooling tower at the Parkway, but we don't know how long they've been in there. Look, Tom, this is pretty serious. The attack rate among those exposed is between one and five per cen t. Let's split the difference and call it two-and-a-half. That means three hundred casualties. With a death rate among them of fifteen per cent that gives us forty-five deaths."

In the event he was not far out. When the whole scare was over the final tally came to 324 casualties and 41 deaths.

"You seem to know a lot about it."

He gave me a lopsided grin.

"I'm a hotel doctor; this is what I get my salary for. Those casualties who don't die won't be good for much for a few months, and there's a grave risk of permanent lung damage, to say nothing of the kidneys and the liver."

I took a deep breath.

"All right, Tony; what do we do?"

"Nothing much. These outbreaks tend to be localized usually restricted to a single building. They've turned off the air-conditioning at the Parkway so there'll be nothing blown out."

"So you think our hotels are safe?"

He shrugged.

"They should be."

"I'd like to make sure."

"Testing for L. pneumophila is a finicky business. You need a well-equipped laboratory with livestock guinea pigs, fertilized eggs and so on. That's why the damned creature only turned up as late as 1976. And it takes a long time, too. I'll tell you what; I'll take samples of the water from the air- conditioners in the four hotels and send them to Miami but don't expect quick results."

"What about the room conditioners?" I asked. The lobby and the public rooms of the Sea Gardens were handled by a central air-conditioner, but each room had its own small one which could be set individually by the occupier. The same system worked at the Royal Palm because those two were our older hotels. The Abaco Sands and the brand-new Rainbow Bay had completely centralized air-conditioning.

Bosworth raised his eyebrows.

"You're taking this a bit far, aren't you?" He turned and took a fat medical book from a shelf next to his desk and flipped through the pages.

"We haven't developed an anti-bacterial agent for this one yet; nothing specific, anyway. Heavy chlorination would appear to be the answer.

"

"Tell me how it's done."

So he told me and I got busy. In the two hotels we had 360 rooms and that meant 360 air-conditioners to be emptied, filled with chlorinated water, left to soak for twenty-four hours, emptied again and refilled with guaranteed pure water. A big job.

I did not wait for Bosworth to report on the samples he sent to Miami, but got working on the big air-conditioners in each hotel, taking them out of service one at a time and using the same technique. But there was a difference. An air- conditioner in a moderately big hotel can handle up to 1000 gallons of water a minute and the cooling is effected by evaporation as the water pours over splash bars and has air blown through it.

A cooling tower will lose about ten gallons of water a minute as water vapour and there is another gallon a minute lost in what is known technically in the trade as 'drift'; very finely divided drops of water. Attempts are made to control the emission of drift by drift eliminators, but some always gets out. Tony Bosworth told me that any infectious bacteria would probably be escaping in the drift. I chlorinated that water to a fare-thee-well.

I supervised it all myself to make sure it was done properly. It might seem odd that the boss would do it personally but I had to make sure it was done in the right way. There was a lot riding on this, apart from the fact that I did not want anyone to die just because he had patronized one of my hotels. L. pneumophila had a nasty habit o not only killing people, but hotels, too.

Tony Bosworth was also pretty busy flitting from island to island attending suspected cases of Legionnaires' disease which turned out to be the common cold. Our hotels were clean but the tourists were jittery and the whole of the Bahamas ran scared for a little while.

It was not a good year for either the Bahamas or the Theta Corporation, and the Ministry of Tourism and I sat back to watch the people stay away. Tourism fell off by fifteen per cent in the next three months. The Parkway Hotel was cleaned up and certified safe, but I doubt if the room occupancy even reached ten per cent in the months that followed. The company that owned it later went broke.

Another thing it meant was that I was away from home more often than I was there. Debbie grew fractious and we had our first rows. It had never been that way with Julie but now, with hindsight, I remember that when Julie was expecting Sue I had been always careful to stay close. That had been my first baby, too.

So, perhaps, in a sense our quarrels were equally my fault even if I did not recognize it at the time. As it was I took umbrage. I was working very hard, not only protecting against this damned disease which was worrying the hell out of me, but also taking the usual workload of the President of the Theta Corporation, and I did not see why I should have to be drained of my energies at home, too. So the quarrelling became worse. It is not only jealousy that feeds on itself.