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Rh that modern medical science is an invention of the devil to cheat the Divine Will of its prey. You see, Sergeant, we are up against a stone wall every way we turn."

"Tell me more about these bacteria," Odell urged. "You installed this incubator a month before your mother was taken ill, you say?"

"Approximately. I used, the usual sterile culture medium; and the first bacteria that Hampton let me have were called streptococcus viridans, if it means anything to you. They produce blood-poison of the most virulent kind, and had my mother been infected with any of them death would have resulted almost immediately. Next I got from Hampton some staphylococcus aureus; and finally, two or three days before my mother pierced her finger with that needle, he told me to try some staphylococcus albus. They are the bacteria which would have produced the mild case of septicemia from which my mother seemed at first to be suffering, if the needle had been infected with them."

"Could that have been done practically?"

"By simply dipping the needle in the tube containing the culture-medium on the surface of which the bacteria were floating," Rannie replied. "They would remain alive for several hours at least; and the fact that the needle had been drawn repeatedly through the material on which my mother was embroidering would make no difference. Sterilization alone would have destroyed their effectiveness."

"Did your friend Hampton teach you all this?" asked the detective.

"No. He only showed me how to go about experimenting with them. I learned what I know about them from those books you have and a lot more of them over there." He