III.
THE STOLEN BACILLUS.
"This again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under themicroscope, "is well,--a preparation of the Bacillus of cholera--thecholera germ."
The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently notaccustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over hisdisengaged eye. "I see very little," he said.
"Touch this screw," said the Bacteriologist; "perhaps the microscope isout of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn thisway 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, thosemere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!"
He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it inhis hand towards the window. "Scarcely visible," he said, scrutinising thepreparation. 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 theuniverse."
"I suppose," the pale man said, with a slight smile, 'that you scarcelycare 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 ofseveral sealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation ofthe actual living disease bacteria." He hesitated. "Bottled cholera, so tospeak."
A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of thepale man. "It's a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said,devouring the little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched themorbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited himthat afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interestedhim from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair anddeep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yetkeen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmaticdeliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom theBacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearerevidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of; his topic, to takethe most effective aspect of the matter.
He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "Yes, here is the pestilenceimprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a supply ofdrinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needsstain 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, increaseand multiply, and replenish the cisterns,' and death--mysterious,untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain andindignity--would be released upon this city, and go hither and thitherseeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife, herethe child from its mother, here the statesman from his duty, and here thetoiler from his trouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping alongstreets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there wherethey did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of themineral water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant inices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by unwarychildren in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil, to reappearin springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once start him atthe 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. "TheseAnarchist--rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools--to use bombs whenthis kind of thing is attainable. I think----"
A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails, was heard at thedoor. The Bacteriologist opened if. "Just a minute, dear," whispered hiswife.
When he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. "Ihad no idea I had wasted an hour of your time," he said. "Twelve minutesto four. I ought to have left here by half-past three. But your thingswere 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 Bacteriologistaccompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along thepassage 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. "Amorbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," said the Bacteriologist to himself."How he gloated over those cultivations of disease germs!" A disturbingthought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapour bath, and thenvery quickly to his writing-table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets andthen rushed to the door. "I may have put it down on the hall table," hesaid.
"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 frontdoor and down the steps of his house to the street.
Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Downthe street a slender man was getting into a cab. The Bacteriologist,hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildlytowards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. "Hehas gone _mad_!" said Minnie; "it's that horrid science of his"; and,opening the window, would have called after him. The slender man, suddenlyglancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. Hepointed hastily to the Bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, theapron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered,and in a moment cab and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded upthe vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner.
Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drewher head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Of course he iseccentric," she meditated. "But running about London--in the height of theseason, too--in his socks!" A happy thought struck her. She hastily puther bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat andlight overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cabthat opportunely crawled by. "Drive me up the road and round HavelockCrescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteencoat and no hat."
"Velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. Very good, ma'am." And the cabmanwhipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to thisaddress every day in his life.
Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers thatcollects round the cabman's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled bythe passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, drivenfuriously.
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 OldTootles.
"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 ain't."
"It's old George," said Old Tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic,_as_ you say. Ain't he a-clawin' out of the keb? Wonder if he's after'Arry 'Icks?"
The group round the cabman'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 beginin a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the cabs in Hampstead ain'tgone mad this morning!"
"It's a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy.
"She's a-followin' _him_," said Old Tootles. "Usually the other wayabout."
"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 ostlerboy. "Nexst!"
Minnie went by in a perfect
roar of applause. She did not like it, but shefelt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock Hill andCamden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the animated backview of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband soincomprehensibly away from her.
The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightlyfolded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities ofdestruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fearand exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he couldaccomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear ofthe awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. NoAnarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol,Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envieddwindled into insignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of thewater supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantlyhe had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into thelaboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! The worldshould hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at him,neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his companyundesirable, should consider him at last. Death, death, death! They hadalways treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in aconspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is toisolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great Saint Andrew's Street,of course! How fared the chase? He craned out of the cab. TheBacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would becaught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money, and found half asovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab intothe 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 thehorse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist, half-standing under the trap,put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preservehis balance. He felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half of itrang 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 aMartyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I wonderif it hurts as much as they say."
Presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. A littledrop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to makesure. 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 theBacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and gotout. 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 awaitingthe arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose.The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted hispursuer with a defiant laugh.
"Vive l'Anarchie! You are too late, my friend, I have drunk it. Thecholera is abroad!"
The Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through hisspectacles. "You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now." He was about tosay something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in the cornerof his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at whichthe Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towardsWaterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as manypeople as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the visionof him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at theappearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes andovercoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said, and remainedlost in contemplation of the receding figure of the Anarchist.
"You had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie felt absolutelyconvinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her ownresponsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly, dear," said he, as the cabbegan to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in thedistance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him, andhe 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 toastonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a cultivationof that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of that infest, and Ithink cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and, like a fool, Isaid it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the waterof London, and he certainly might have made things look blue for thiscivilised city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say whatwill happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the threepuppies--in patches, and the sparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, Ishall 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 ahot day because of Mrs.-----. Oh! _very_ well."