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 if. "Just a minute, dear," whispered his