THE STOLEN BACILLUS
"This
again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under
the microscope, "is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of
cholera—the cholera germ."The
pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not
accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his
disengaged eye. "I see very little," he said."Touch
this screw," said the Bacteriologist; "perhaps the
microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the
fraction of a turn this way or that.""Ah!
now I see," said the visitor. "Not so very much to see
after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little
particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city!
Wonderful!"He
stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it
in his hand towards the window. "Scarcely visible," he
said, scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. "Are
these—alive? Are they dangerous now?""Those
have been stained and killed," said the Bacteriologist. "I
wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in
the universe.""I
suppose," the pale man said with a slight smile, "that you
scarcely care to have such things about you in the living—in the
active state?""On
the contrary, we are obliged to," said the Bacteriologist.
"Here, for instance—" He walked across the room and took
up one of several sealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This
is a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria." He
hesitated, "Bottled cholera, so to speak."A
slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the
pale man."It's
a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said, devouring
the little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched the morbid
pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him
that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend,
interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank
black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous
manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel
change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific
worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was
perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the
lethal nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the
matter.He
held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "Yes, here is the
pestilence imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a
supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that
one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the
microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste—say
to them, 'Go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the
cisterns,' and death—mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and
terrible, death full of pain and indignity—would be released upon
this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here he
would take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother,
here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from his
trouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets,
picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they
did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the
mineral-water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant in
ices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by
unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil,
to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places.
Once start him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in,
and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis."He
stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness."But
he is quite safe here, you know—quite safe."The
pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. "These
Anarchist—rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools—to
use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable. I think—"A
gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails was heard at the
door. The Bacteriologist opened it. "Just a minute, dear,"
whispered his wife.When
he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. "I
had no idea I had wasted an hour of your time," he said. "Twelve
minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half-past three. But
your things were really too interesting. No, positively I cannot stop
a moment longer. I have an engagement at four."He
passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the Bacteriologist
accompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along the
passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the ethnology of his
visitor. Certainly the man was not a Teutonic type nor a common Latin
one. "A morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," said the
Bacteriologist to himself. "How he gloated on those cultivations
of disease-germs!" A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to
the bench by the vapour-bath, and then very quickly to his
writing-table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed
to the door. "I may have put it down on the hall table," he
said."Minnie!"
he shouted hoarsely in the hall."Yes,
dear," came a remote voice."Had
I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, dear, just now?"Pause."Nothing,
dear, because I remember—""Blue
ruin!" cried the Bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the
front door and down the steps of his house to the street.Minnie,
hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Down the
street a slender man was getting into a cab. The Bacteriologist,
hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating
wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait
for it. "He has gone
mad!" said
Minnie; "it's that horrid science of his"; and, opening the
window, would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly
glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder.
He pointed hastily to the Bacteriologist, said something to the
cabman, the apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's
feet clattered, and in a moment cab, and Bacteriologist hotly in
pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared
round the corner.Minnie
remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drew her
head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Of course
he is eccentric," she meditated. "But running about
London—in the height of the season, too—in his socks!" A
happy thought struck her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his
shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from
the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cab that
opportunely crawled by. "Drive me up the road and round Havelock
Crescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a
velveteen coat and no hat.""Velveteen
coat, ma'am, and no 'at. Very good, ma'am." And the cabman
whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to
this address every day in his life.Some
few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that
collects round the cabmen's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled
by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse,
driven furiously.They
were silent as it went by, and then as it receded—"That's
'Arry'Icks. Wot's
he got?" said
the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles."He's
a-using his whip, he is,
to rights,"
said the ostler boy."Hullo!"
said poor old Tommy Byles; "here's another bloomin'
loonatic.Blowed if
there aint.""It's
old George," said old Tootles, "and he's drivin' a
loonatic, as
you say. Aint he a-clawin' out of the keb? Wonder if he's after 'Arry
'Icks?"The
group round the cabmen's shelter became animated. Chorus: "Go
it,George!"
"It's a race." "You'll ketch 'em!" "Whip
up!""She's
a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy."Strike
me giddy!" cried old Tootles. "Here!
I'm a-goin' to
begin in a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the kebs in
Hampstead aint gone mad this morning!""It's
a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy."She's
a followin' him,"
said old Tootles. "Usually the other way about.""What's
she got in her 'and?""Looks
like a 'igh 'at.""What
a bloomin' lark it is! Three to one on old George," said the
ostler boy. "Nexst!"Minnie
went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it but she
felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock Hill
and Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the animated
back view of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband so
incomprehensibly away from her.The
man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly
folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of
destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of
fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he
could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger
fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded
his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception
of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose
fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance beside him. He had
only to make sure of the water supply, and break the little tube into
a reservoir. How brilliantly he had planned it, forged the letter of
introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had
seized his opportunity! The world should hear of him at last. All
those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other
people to him, found his company undesirable, should consider him at
last. Death, death, death! They had always treated him as a man of no
importance. All the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under.
He would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. What was this
familiar street? Great Saint Andrew's Street, of course! How fared
the chase? He craned out of the cab. The Bacteriologist was scarcely
fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would be caught and stopped yet.
He felt in his pocket for money, and found half-a-sovereign. This he
thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man's face.
"More," he shouted, "if only we get away."The
money was snatched out of his hand. "Right you are," said
the cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the
glistening side of the horse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist,
half-standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little
glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. He felt the
brittle thing crack, and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of
the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally
at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron.He
shuddered."Well!
I suppose I shall be the first.
Phew! Anyhow, I
shall be a Martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death,
nevertheless. I wonder if it hurts as much as they say."Presently
a thought occurred to him—he groped between his feet. A little drop
was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make
sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not fail.Then
it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the
Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and
got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was
rapid stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of
existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms
folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist.
There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of imminent death
gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his pursuer with a defiant
laugh."Vive
l'Anarchie! You are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The cholera
is abroad!"The
Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his
spectacles. "You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now."
He was about to say something more, and then checked himself. A smile
hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if
to descend, at which the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and
strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected
body against as many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so
preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the
slightest surprise at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with
his hat and shoes and overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my
things," he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the
receding figure of the Anarchist."You
had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie felt
absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman
home on her own responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly
dear," said he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting
black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly
something grotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, "It
is really very serious, though.""You
see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist.
No—don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I
wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up
a cultivation of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of,
that infest, and I think cause, the blue patches upon various
monkeys; and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran
away with it to poison the water of London, and he certainly might
have made things look blue for this civilised city. And now he has
swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know
it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies—in patches, and
the sparrow—bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the
trouble and expense of preparing some more."Put
on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs Jabber. My
dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a
hot day because of Mrs—. Oh!
very well."