Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/354

342 I pulled out my flask.

"Here, man, have a good drink, and cheer up. Don't give in. I'm a doctor myself, and if you like to come to my cottage this evening, I will remove that horrible sore, and put you right again. In the meantime, for God's sake, keep it covered up—don't let a soul catch sight of it. You're highly infectious, and if you are caught now, you will certainly be shut up for some time. Here's half-a-crown, and get some light good food and come and see me at nine." I told him the name of my cottage, and was not sorry to see him slouch off.

You say to yourself, Brown, "That's not quite like More d'Escombe, to operate on an ordinary tramp, especially in such an infectious and deadly condition."

Quite right, old man, but I wanted the anthrax bacillus, and here was the opportunity to get it—far from home—far from London—far from the person who would develop it.

In London I could have made a stab-culture in gelatine, or a culture on either agar or blood serum. I knew the colonies of bacilli. I had observed them often beneath my microscope, beautiful wavy wreaths, like locks of hair, radiating from the centre and apparently terminating in a point which,