H. G. Wells - "The Stolen Bacillus" - 1894

🎧 H.G. Wells - "The Stolen Bacillus" (1894) 🦠🔬

Step into the brilliant mind of H.G. Wells with this sharp and ironic short story about science, deception, and unintended consequences. 🌍📖 In a Victorian-era laboratory, a bacteriologist proudly demonstrates a deadly cholera bacillus to a visitor, unaware that his guest is a radical anarchist with sinister intentions. 🕵️‍♂️💉 As the story unfolds, chaos ensues in the bustling streets of 19th-century London, culminating in a surprising and humorous twist. 🏙️🚴‍♂️ Wells masterfully combines suspense, humor, and social commentary in this thought-provoking tale about the dangers of scientific progress and human folly. 🤔⚡

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
H. G. Wells The Stolen Bacillus, published in eighteen ninety four.
This again, said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under
the microscope, is well a preparation of the bacillis of cholera,
the cholera germ. The pale faced man peered down the microscope.

(00:23):
He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing,
and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye.
I see very little, he said, Touch this screw, said
the bacteriologist. Perhaps the microscope is out of focus. For you.
Eyes vary so much, just the fraction of a turn

(00:43):
this way or that. Ah. Now I see, said the visitor,
not so very much to see, after all, little streaks
and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those
mere atomies my multiply and devastate a city. Wonderful. He

(01:05):
stood up, and, releasing the glass slip from the microscope,
held it in his hand towards the window. Scarcely visible,
he said, scrutinizing the preparation, he hesitated, Are these alive?
Are they dangerous? Now? Those have been stained and killed,
said the bacteriologist. I wish for my own part we

(01:30):
could kill and stain every one of them in the universe.
I suppose, the pale man said, with a slight smile,
that you scarcely care to have such things about you
and the living in the active state. On the contrary,
we are obliged to, said the bacteriologist. Here, for instance,

(01:50):
he walked across the room and took up one of
several sealed tubes. Here is the living thing. This is
a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria. He hesitated
bottled cholera, so to speak. A slight gleam of satisfaction
appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. It's

(02:12):
a deadly thing to have in your possession, he said,
devouring the little tube with his eyes. The bacteriologist watched
the morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who
had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction
from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast
of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep gray eyes,

(02:36):
the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen
interest of his visitor were a novel change from the
phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker. With whom the
bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural with a hearer
evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic,
to take the most effective aspect of the matter. He

(03:00):
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 need stain and
examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see,
and that one can neither smell nor taste. Say to them,

(03:20):
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, hear the child from its mother,

(03:42):
hear the statesman from his duty, and hear the dwaller
from his trouble. He would follow the water mains, creeping
along streets, picking out and punishing a house here in
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 ices. He would wait,

(04:02):
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 wring him in and catch him again,
he would have decimated the metropolis. He stopped abruptly. He

(04:25):
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

(04:46):
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 it
just a minute, dear, whispered his wife. When he re
entered the laboratory, his visitor was looking at his watch.

(05:08):
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

(05:29):
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

(05:55):
gloated over those cultivations of diseased germs. A disturbing thought
struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapor 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,

(06:21):
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 door and down the steps of

(06:43):
his house to the street. Minnie hearing the door slam
violently ran in alarm to the window. Down the street,
a slender man was getting into a cab. The bacteriologist,
hatless and in his carpet slippers, was running in, just
stickingulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but

(07:04):
he did not wait for it. He has gone mad,
said Minnie. It's that horrid science of his, and opening
the window would have called after him. The slender man,
suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of
mental disorder. He pointed hastily to the bacteriologist said something

(07:26):
to the cabman. The apron of the cab slammed, the
whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment
cab and bacteriologist, hotly in pursuit, had reseated up the
vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. Minnie
remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then
she drew her head back into the room again. She

(07:47):
was dumbfounded. Of course, he is eccentric, she meditated. But
running about London in the height of the season two
in his socks, a happy thoughts struck her She hastily
put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall,
took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs,

(08:09):
emerged upon the doorstep and hailed a cab that opportunely
crawled by. Drive me up the road and round Havelock Crescent,
and see if we can find a gentleman running about
in a velveteen coat and no hat. Velveteen coat, ma'm
and no hat. Very good, ma'am. And the cabman whipped

(08:30):
up at once, in the most matter of fact way,
as if he drove to this address every day in
his life. Some few minutes later, the little group of
cabmen and loafers that collects round the cabman's shelter at
Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab
with a ginger colored screw of a horse driven furiously.
They were silent as it went by, and then as

(08:52):
it receded. That's airy dicks. What's he got, said the
stout gentleman known as old Toodles. He's a using his whip.
He is to rights, said the ostler boy. Hullo, said
poor old Tommy Byles. Here's another bloomin lunatic blowed. If
there ain't it's Old George, said Old Tootles. An he's

(09:16):
drivin a lunatic, as you say, ain't he acklowan out
of the cab? Wonder if he's after berry picks. The
group round the cabman's shelter became animated chorus, Go it, George,
it's a race. You'll catch em. Whip up. She's a goer,

(09:39):
she is, said the ostler boy. Strike me giddy, cried
Old Tootles. Here I may goin to begin in a minute.
Here's another comin' If all the cabs in Hampstead ain't
gone mad this morning. It's a field maal this time,
said the ostler. She's a followin him, said Old Toodles.

(10:04):
Usually the other way about. What she got in her
hand looks like a I at what a bloomin lark.
It is three to one on Old George, said the
ostler boy. Next Minnie went by in a perfect roar
of applause. She did not like it, but she felt

(10:26):
that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down
Haverstock Hill and Camden Town High Street with her eyes
ever intent on the animated back view of Old George,
who was driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her.
The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner,
his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained

(10:47):
such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His
mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly
he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish
his purpose. But behind them was a vaguer but larger
fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation
far exceeded his fear. No anarchist before him had ever

(11:09):
approached this conception of his ravacol valiant. All those distinguished
persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance. Beside him.
He had only to make sure of the water supply
and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly
he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction, and

(11:30):
got into the laboratory, And how brilliantly he had seized
his opportunity. The world should hear of him at last,
All those people who had sneered at him, neglected him,
preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, should
consider him at last death, death, death. They had always

(11:52):
treated him as a man of no importance. All the
world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under.
He would teach them. Yet, what it is to isolate
a man? What was this familiar street, Great Saint Andrew's Street?
Of course, how fared the chase? He craned out of

(12:12):
the cab. The bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That
was bad. He would be caught and stopped. Yet he
felt in his pocket for money and found half a sovereign.
This he thrust up through the trap in the top
of the cab into the man's face. More, he shouted,

(12:33):
if only we get away. The money was snatched out
of his hand. Right you are, said the cabman, and
the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening
side of the horse. The cab swayed, and the anarchist,
half standing under the trap, put the hand containing the
little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance.

(12:55):
He felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half
of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He
fell back into the seat with a curse. And stared
dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on
the apron. He shuddered, Well, I suppose I shall be
the first few. Anyhow, I shall be a martyr. That's something.

(13:19):
But it is a filthy death. Nevertheless, I wonder if
it hurts as much as they say. Presently, a thought
occurred to him. He groped between his feet. A little
drop was still in the broken end of the tube,
and he drank that to make sure. It was better
to make sure, at any rate he would not fail.

(13:42):
Then it dawned upon him that there was no further
need to escape the bacteriologist in Wellington Street. He told
the cabman to stop and got out. He slipped on
the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff,
this collar of poison. He waved his cab out of existence,
so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his

(14:04):
arms folded upon his breast, awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist.
There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of
imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his
pursuer with a defiant laugh. Vive al anarchy. You are
too late, my friend, I have drunk it. The cholera

(14:26):
is abroad. The bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at
him through his spectacles. You have drunk it, an anarchist,
I see now. He was about to say something more,
and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner
of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab

(14:48):
as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him
a dramatic farewell, and strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully
jostling his infected body against as many people as possible.
The bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him
that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance
of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes

(15:10):
and overcoat. Very good of you to bring my things,
he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding
figure of the anarchist. You had better get in, he said,
still staring. Minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad,
and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. Put

(15:32):
on my shoes, certainly, dear, said he, as the cab
began to turn and hid the strutting black figure, now
small in the distance from his eyes. Then suddenly something
grotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, it
is really very serious, though. You see that man came

(15:54):
to my house to see me, and he is an anarchist. No,
don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest.
And I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was
an anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new
species of bacterium. I was telling you of that infest
and I think cause the blue patches upon various monkeys,

(16:14):
And like a fool, I said it was asiatic cholera.
And he ran away with it to poison the water
of London. And he certainly might have made things look
blue for this civilized city. And now he has swallowed it.
Of course I cannot say what will happen, but you
know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies

(16:35):
in patches, and the sparrow bright blue. But the bother
is I shall have all the trouble and expense of
preparing some more put on my coat on this hot day,
Why because we might meet Missus Jabber, My dear Missus Jabber,
is not a draft. But why should I wear a

(16:57):
coat on a hot day because of missus? Oh very well,