The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents

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  THE STOLEN BACILLUS AND OTHER INCIDENTS

  BY H.G. WELLS

  AUTHOR OF "THE TIME MACHINE"

  METHUEN & CO.36 ESSEX STREET, STRANDLONDON1895_Colonial Library_

  TO

  H.B. MARRIOTT WATSON

  Most of the stories in this collection appeared originally in the_Pall Mall Budget_, two were published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_,and one in _St James's Gazette_. I desire to make the usualacknowledgments. The third story in the book was, I find, reprintedby the _Observatory_, and the "Lord of the Dynamos" by the Melbourne_Leader_.

  H.G. WELLS.

  CONTENTS

  I. THE STOLEN BACILLUS

  II. THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

  III. IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY

  IV. THE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMIST

  V. A DEAL IN OSTRICHES

  VI. THROUGH A WINDOW

  VII. THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY

  VIII. THE FLYING MAN

  IX. THE DIAMOND MAKER

  X. AEPYORNIS ISLAND

  XI. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES

  XII. THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS

  XIII. THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY

  XIV. A MOTH--_GENUS NOVO_

  XV. THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST

  THE STOLEN BACILLUS

  "This again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide underthe microscope, "is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus ofcholera--the cholera 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 microscopeis out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of aturn 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, heldit in his hand towards the window. "Scarcely visible," he said,scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. "Are these--alive? Arethey dangerous now?"

  "Those have been stained and killed," said the Bacteriologist. "Iwish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them inthe universe."

  "I suppose," the pale man said with a slight smile, "that you scarcelycare to have such things about you in the living--in the activestate?"

  "On the contrary, we are obliged to," said the Bacteriologist. "Here,for instance--" He walked across the room and took up one of severalsealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of theactual 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, devouringthe little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched the morbidpleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visitedhim that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend,interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lankblack hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervousmanner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novelchange from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientificworker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhapsnatural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethalnature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter.

  He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "Yes, here is thepestilence imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into asupply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life thatone must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of themicroscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste--sayto them, 'Go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish thecisterns,' and death--mysterious, untraceable death, death swift andterrible, death full of pain and indignity--would be released uponthis city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here hewould take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother,here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from histrouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets,picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where theydid 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 byunwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil,to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Oncestart him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in, andcatch 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 usebombs when this 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 it. "Just a minute, dear," whisperedhis wife.

  When he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at hiswatch. "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 cannotstop a moment longer. I have an engagement at four."

  He passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and theBacteriologist accompanied him to the door, and then returnedthoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing on theethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a Teutonic typenor a common Latin one. "A morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," saidthe Bacteriologist to himself. "How he gloated on those cultivationsof disease-germs!" A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to thebench 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. "Imay 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 thefront door and down the steps of his house to the street.

  Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to thewindow. Down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. TheBacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running andgesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, buthe did not wait for it. "He has gone _mad_!" said Minnie; "it's thathorrid science of his"; and, opening the window, would have calledafter him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struckwith the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed hastily to theBacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron of the cabslammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a momentcab, and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista ofthe roadway and disappeared round the corner.

  Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then shedrew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Ofcourse he is eccentric," she meditated. "But running about London--inthe height of the season, too--in his socks!" A happy thought struckher. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into thehall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged uponthe doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. "Driveme up the r
oad and round Havelock Crescent, and see if we can find agentleman running about in a velveteen coat 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 tothis address every day in his life.

  Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers thatcollects round the cabmen's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startledby 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 beginin a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the kebs in Hampstead aintgone 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 theostler boy. "Nexst!"

  Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it butshe felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down HaverstockHill and Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on theanimated back view of old George, who was driving her vagrant husbandso incomprehensibly away from her.

  The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his armstightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vastpossibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was asingular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid ofbeing caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind thiswas a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But hisexultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had everapproached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all thosedistinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled intoinsignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of the watersupply, 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! Theworld should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered athim, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his companyundesirable, should consider him at last. Death, death, death! Theyhad always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world hadbeen in a conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet whatit is to isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great SaintAndrew's Street, of course! How fared the chase? He craned out of thecab. 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 thetop of the cab into the man's face. "More," he shouted, "if only weget away."

  The money was snatched out of his hand. "Right you are," said thecabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glisteningside of the horse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist, half-standingunder the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon theapron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack, andthe broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell backinto the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or threedrops 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. Iwonder if it hurts as much as they say."

  Presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. Alittle drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank thatto make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would notfail.

  Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape theBacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, andgot out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapidstuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so tospeak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breastawaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragicin 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. 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 aboutto say something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in thecorner 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 offtowards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body againstas many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied withthe vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surpriseat the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoesand overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said,and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of theAnarchist.

  "You had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie feltabsolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman homeon her own responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly dear," saidhe, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure,now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly somethinggrotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is reallyvery 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 wantedto astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up acultivation 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 withit to poison the water of London, and he certainly might have madethings look blue for this civilised city. And now he has swallowed it.Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know it turnedthat kitten blue, and the three puppies--in patches, and thesparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the troubleand expense of preparing some more.

  "Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet MrsJabber. My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear acoat on a hot day because of Mrs--. Oh! _very_ well."