The Stolen Bacillus

"This again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the
microscope, "is well,--a preparation of the 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