The Stolen Bacillus
The Stolen BacillusTHE STOLEN BACILLUSTHE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHIDIN THE AVU OBSERVATORYTHE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMISTA DEAL IN OSTRICHESTHROUGH A WINDOWTHE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAYTHE FLYING MANTHE DIAMOND MAKERAEPYORNIS ISLANDTHE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYESTHE LORD OF THE DYNAMOSTHE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARYA MOTH—GENUS NOVOTHE TREASURE IN THE FORESTCopyright
The Stolen Bacillus
H. G. Wells
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 gonemad!" 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'shegot?" said
the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles."He's a-using his whip, he is,torights," 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,asyou 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'ma-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!verywell."
THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative
flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue,
and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer,
or your good-luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be
moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair
value for your money, or perhaps—for the thing has happened again
and again—there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the
happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel
richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler
colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit
blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even
immortality. For the new miracle of Nature may stand in need of a
new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its
discoverer? "Johnsmithia"! There have been worse names.
It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that
made Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these
sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else
of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely,
rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep
off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make
him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps
or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new
species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had
one ambitious little hothouse.
"I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is
going to happen to me to-day." He spoke—as he moved and
thought—slowly.
"Oh, don't saythat!"
said his housekeeper—who was also his remote cousin. For "something
happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her.
"You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant … though
what I do mean I scarcely know.
"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to
sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go
up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good,
unawares. That may be it."
He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.
"Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you
told me of the other day?" asked his cousin as she filled his
cup.
"Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of
toast.
"Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently,
beginning to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to
other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he
picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers,
on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he
broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement!—compared to
me."
"I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said
his housekeeper. "It can't be good for you."
"I suppose it's troublesome. Still … you see, nothing ever
happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I
never fell in love as I grew up. Never married…. I wonder how it
feels to have something happen to you, something really
remarkable.
"That orchid-collector was only thirty-six—twenty years
younger than myself—when he died. And he had been married twice and
divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he
broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by
a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It
must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been
very interesting, you know—except, perhaps, the leeches."
"I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady, with
conviction.
"Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch.
"Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to
twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear
my alpaca jacket—it is quite warm enough—and my grey felt hat and
brown shoes. I suppose—"
He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit
garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face.
"I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to
London," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's
all between here and the station coming back."
When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had
made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly
enough to buy, but this time he had done so.
"There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some
Palaeonophis." He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed
his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him,
and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered
through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to
London over again in the evening for her and his own
entertainment.
"I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all
these. Some of them—some of them—I feel sure, do you know, that
some of them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel
just as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn
out remarkable.
"That one"—he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not
identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new
species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten
ever collected."
"I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's
such an ugly shape."
"To me it scarcely seems to have a shape."
"I don't like those things that stick out," said his
housekeeper.
"It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow."
"It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming
dead."
Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one
side. "It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can
never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn
out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be
to-morrow! I must see to-night just exactly what to do with these
things, and to-morrow I shall set to work."
"They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove
swamp—I forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these
very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some
days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted.
These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood,
they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be
that very plant that cost him his life to obtain."
"I think none the better of it for that."
"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with
profound gravity.
"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy
being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and
quinine—if men were left to themselves they would live on
chlorodyne and quinine—and no one round you but horrible natives!
They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches—and,
anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the
necessary training. And just for people in England to have
orchids!"
"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to
enjoy that kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of
his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his
collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back
again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of
the orchid and had let it wither. And it makes these things more
interesting."
"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the
malaria clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead
body lying across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before.
There! I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner."
"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in
the window-seat. I can see them just as well there."
The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy
little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss,
and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered
he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would
talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over
again he reverted to his expectation of something strange.
Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care,
but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He
was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making
to see it at once, directly he made the discovery.
"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot
of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aërial
rootlets."
"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the
brown," said his housekeeper. "I don't like them."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I
can't help my likes and dislikes."
"I don't know for certain, but I don'tthinkthere are any orchids I know that
have aërial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of
course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends."
"I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering
and turning away. "I know it's very silly of me—and I'm very sorry,
particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can't help
thinking of that corpse."
"But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a
guess of mine."
His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like
it," she said.
Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant.
But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids
generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt
inclined.
"There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day;
"such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their
fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary
orchid-flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the
pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of
orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for
fertilisation in that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance;
there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and
some of them have never be found with seed."
"But how do they form new plants?"
"By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is
easily explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?
"Very likely," he added, "myorchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so I
shall study it. I have often thought of making researches as Darwin
did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has
happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now. I
do wish you would come and see them!"
