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 over 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