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 cholera poison.  He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his 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 l’Anarchie!  You are too late, my friend.  I have drunk it.  The cholera 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 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 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 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 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; 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 civilised 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—­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 Mrs Jabber.  My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught.  But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because of Mrs—.  Oh! very well.”

THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID