Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/309

Rh attention was one in which I was making a rather difficult cultivation of certain bacteria which, on the day before, I had received from Paris. I placed a little of it beneath my microscope and on magnifying it a thousand times watched those minute micro-organisms, the exact nature of which science has not, up to the present, determined.

Still, the culture had commenced, and I raised my eye from the microscope, perfectly satisfied. The organism resembled a kind of yeast which bacteriologists have placed among the blastomycetes, yet more than that we know but little. Nevertheless, the tiniest particle of that virus introduced beneath the skin, either by injection or by abrasion, would certainly result in one of the most horrible and fatal diseases to which man is subject.

The media I was using contained brain substance, and, delighted with the entire success of my experiment, I left the room, carefully re-locking the door behind me.

That evening, anyone passing down King Street, St. James', about eight o'clock would, perhaps, have noticed a taxi draw up at the kerb at the corner of Bury Street. In it someone sat back in the darkness, and the driver smoked a cigarette while seated at the wheel.