by Robert Reed
beautiful and more adorable than any he had seen before, he soon
became reconciled to his lot .
And instead of committing the folly of loving one woman in par-
ticular, he learned to love all women in general .
A LEGEND, by Lafcadio Hearn | 1270
And during fifty years he lived such a life as even the angels
might envy .
And before he died he had 15,273 children, and 91,638 grand-
children .
And the children were brought up by the nation, and permitted to
do nothing except to perfect their minds and bodies .
And in the third generation the descendants of the man had in-
creased even to two millions of males, not including females, who
were indeed few, so great was the universal desire for males .
And in the tenth generation there were even as many males as
females .
And the world was regenerated .
A LEGEND, by Lafcadio Hearn | 1271
THE DUST OF DEATH,
by Fred M. White
Originally published in 1903.
The front door bell tinkled impatiently; evidently somebody
was in a hurry . Alan Hubert answered the call, a thing that even a
distinguished physician might do, seeing that it was on the stroke
of midnight. The tall, graceful figure of a woman in evening dress
stumbled into the hall . The diamonds in her hair shimmered and
trembled, her face was full of terror .
“You are Dr . Hubert,” she gasped . “I am Mrs . Fillingham, the
artist’s wife, you know . Will you come with me at once… My hus-
band… I had been dining out . In the studio… Oh, please come!”
Hubert asked no unnecessary questions . He knew Fillingham,
the great portrait painter, well enough by repute and by sight also,
for Fillingham’s house and studio were close by . There were many
artists in the Devonshire Park district—that pretty suburb which
was one of the triumphs of the builder’s and landscape gardener’s
art . Ten years ago it had been no more than a swamp; today people
spoke complacently of the fact that they lived in Devonshire Park .
Hubert walked up the drive and past the trim lawns with Mrs . Fill-
ingham hanging on his arm, and in at the front door . Mrs . Fillingham
pointed to a door on the right . She as too exhausted to speak . There
were shaded lights gleaming everywhere, on old oak and armour
and on a large portrait of a military-looking man propped up on an
easel. On a lay figure was a magnificent foreign military uniform.
Hubert caught all this in a quick mental flash. But the vital inter-
est to him was a human figure lying on his back before the fireplace.
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1272
The clean-shaven, sensitive face of the artist had a ghastly, purple-
black tinge, there was a large swelling in the throat .
“He—he is not dead?” Mrs . Fillingham asked in a frozen whisper .
Hubert was able to satisfy the distracted wife on that head . Fill-
ingham was still breathing . Hubert stripped the shade from a reading
lamp and held the electric bulb at the end of its long flex above
the sufferer’s mouth, contriving to throw the flood of light upon the
back of the throat .
“Diphtheria!” he exclaimed . “Label’s type unless I am greatly
mistaken . Some authorities are disposed to scoff at Dr . Label’s dis-
covery . I was an assistant of his for four years and I know better .
Fortunately I happen to know what the treatment—successful in two
cases—was .”
He hurried from the house and returned a few minutes later
breathlessly . He had some strange-looking, needle-like instruments
in his hands . He took an electric lamp from its socket and substituted
a plug on a flex instead. Then he cleared a table without ceremony
and managed to hoist his patient upon it .
“Now please hold that lamp steadily thus,” he said . “Bravo, you
are a born nurse! I am going to apply these electric needles to the
throat .”
Hubert talked on more for the sake of his companion’s nerves
than anything else. The still figure on the table quivered under his
touch, his lungs expanded in a long, shuddering sigh . The heart was
beating more or less regularly now . Fillingham opened his eyes and
muttered something .
“Ice,” Hubert snapped, “have you got any ice in the house?”
It was a well-regulated establishment and there was plenty of ice
in the refrigerator . Not until the patient was safe in bed did Hubert’s
features relax .
“We’ll pull him through yet,” he said . “I’ll send you a competent
nurse round in half-an-hour. I’ll call first thing in the morning and
bring Dr . Label with me . He must not miss this on any account .”
Half-an-hour later Hubert was spinning along in a hansom to-
wards Harley Street . It was past one when he reached the house of
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1273
the great German savant . A dim light was burning in the hall . A big
man with an enormous shaggy head and a huge frame attired in the
seediest of dress coats welcomed Hubert with a smile .
“So, my young friend,” Label said, “your face promises excite-
ment .”
“Case of Label’s diphtheria,” Hubert said crisply . “Fillingham,
the artist, who lives close by me . Fortunately they called me in . I
have arranged for you to see my patient the first thing in the morn-
ing .”
The big German’s jocular manner vanished . He led Hubert
gravely to a chair in his consulting-room and curtly demanded de-
tails . He smiled approvingly as Hubert enlarged upon his treatment
of the case .
“Undoubtedly your diagnosis was correct,” he said, puffing furi-
ously at a long china pipe . “You have not forgotten what I told you
of it . The swelling—which is caused by violent blood poisoning—
yielded to the electric treatment . I took the virus from the cases in
the north and I tried them on scores of animals . And they all died .
“I find it is the virus of what is practically a new disease, one of
the worst in the wide world . I say it recurs again, and it does . So
I practise, and practise to find a cure. And electricity is the cure.
I inoculate five dogs with the virus and I save two by the electric
current. You follow my plans and you go the first stage of the way to
cure Fillingham . Did you bring any of that mucous here?”
Hubert produced it in a tiny glass tube . For a little time Label
examined it under his microscope . He wanted to make assurance
doubly sure .
“It is the same thing,” he said presently . “I knew that it was bound
to recur again . Why, it is planted all over our big cities . And electric-
ity is the only way to get rid of it . It was the best method of dealing
with sewage, only corporations found it too expensive . Wires in the
earth charged to say 10,000 volts . Apply this and you destroy the
virus that lies buried under hundreds of houses in London . They
laughed at me when I suggested it years ago .”
“
Underground,” Hubert asked vaguely .
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1274
“Ach, underground, yes . Don’t you recollect that in certain parts
of England cancer is more common than in other places? The germs
have been turned up in fields. I, myself, have proved their existence.
In a little time, perhaps . I shall open the eyes of your complacent
Londoners . You live in a paradise, ach Gott! And what was that
paradise like ten years ago? Dreary pools and deserted brickfields.
And how do you fill it up and level it to build houses upon?”
“By the carting of hundreds of thousands of loads of refuse, of
course .”
“Ach, I will presently show you what that refuse was and is . Now
go home to bed .”
* * * *
Mrs . Fillingham remained in the studio with Hubert whilst Label
was making his examination overhead . The patient had had a bad
night; his symptoms were very grave indeed . Hubert listened more
or less vaguely; his mind had gone beyond the solitary case . He was
dreading what might happen in the future .
“Your husband has a fine constitution,” he said soothingly.
“He has overtried it lately,” Mrs . Fillingham replied . “At present
he is painting a portrait of the Emperor of Asturia . His Majesty was
to have sat today; he spent the morning here yesterday .”
But Hubert was paying no attention .
The heavy tread of Label was heard as he floundered down the
stairs . His big voice was booming . What mattered all the portraits in
the world so long as the verdict hung on the German doctor’s lips!
“Oh, there is a chance,” Label exclaimed . “Just a chance . Every-
thing possible is being done . This is not so much diphtheria as a new
disease . Diphtheria family, no doubt, but the blood poisoning makes
a difficult thing of it.”
Label presently dragged Hubert away after parting with Mrs .
Fillingham. He wanted to find a spot where building or draining was
going on .
They found some men presently engaged in connecting a new
house with the main drainage—a deep cutting some forty yards long
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1275
by seven or eight feet deep . There was the usual crust of asphalt on
the road, followed by broken bricks and the like, and a more or less
regular stratum of blue-black rubbish, soft, wet, and clinging, and
emitting an odour that caused Hubert to throw up his head .
“You must have broken into a drain somewhere here,” he said .
“We ain’t, sir,” the foreman of the gang replied . “It’s nout but
rubbidge as they made up the road with here ten years ago . Lord
knows where it came from, but it do smell fearful in weather like
this .”
The odour indeed was stifling. All imaginable kinds of rubbish
and refuse lay under the external beauties of Devonshire Park in
strata ranging from five to forty feet deep. It was little wonder that
trees and flowers flourished here. And here—wet, and dark, and fes-
tering—was a veritable hotbed of disease . Contaminated rags, torn
paper, road siftings, decayed vegetable matter, diseased food, fish
and bones all were represented here .
“Every ounce of this ought to have gone through the destructor,”
Label snorted . “But no, it is used for the foundations of a suburban
paradise . My word, we shall see what your paradise will be like
presently . Come along .”
Label picked up a square slab of the blue stratum, put it in a tin,
and the tin in his pocket. He was snorting and puffing with contempt.
“Now come to Harley Street with me and I will show you things,”
he said .
He was as good as his word . Placed under a microscope, a minute
portion of the subsoil from Devonshire Park proved to be a mass
of living matter . There were at least four kinds of bacillus here that
Hubert had never seen before . With his superior knowledge Label
pointed out the fact that they all existed in the mucous taken from
Fillingham on the previous evening .
“There you are!” He cried excitedly . “You get all that wet sodden
refuse of London and you dump it down here in a heap . You mix
with it a heap of vegetable matter so that fermentation shall have
every chance . Then you cover it over with some soil, and you let it
boil, boil, boil . Then, when millions upon millions of death-dealing
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1276
microbes are bred and bred till their virility is beyond the scope of
science, you build good houses on the top of it . For years I have
been prophesying an outbreak of some new disease—or some awful
form of an old one—and here it comes . They called me a crank be-
cause I asked for high electric voltage to kill the plague—to destroy
it by lightning . A couple of high tension wires run into the earth and
there you are . See here .”
He took his cube of the reeking earth and applied the battery to
it . The mass showed no outward change . But once under the micro-
scope a fragment of it demonstrated that there was not the slightest
trace of organic life .
“There!” Label cried . “Behold the remedy . I don’t claim that it
will cure in every case, because we hardly touch the diphtheretic
side of the trouble . When there has been a large loss of life we shall
learn the perfect remedy by experience . But this thing is coming,
and your London is going to get a pretty bad scare . You have laid it
down like port wine, and now that the thing is ripe you are going to
suffer from the consequence . I have written articles in the Lancet, I
have warned people, but they take not the slightest heed .”
Hubert went back home thoughtfully . He found the nurse who
had Fillingham’s case in hand waiting for him in his consulting-
room .
“I am just back from my walk,” she said . “I wish you would call
at Dr . Walker’s at Elm Crescent . He has two cases exactly like Mr .
Fillingham’s, and he is utterly puzzled .”
Hubert snatched his hat and his electric needles, and hurried away
at once . He found his colleague impatiently waiting for him There
were two children this time in one of the best appointed houses in
Devonshire Park, suffering precisely as Fillingham had done . In
each instance the electric treatment gave the desired result . Hubert
hastily explained the whole matter to Walker .
“It’s an awful business,” the latter said, “Personally, I have
a great respect for Label, and I feel convinced that he is right . If
this thing spreads, property in Devonshire Park won’t be worth the
price of slum lodgings .” By mid-day nineteen cases of the so-called
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1277
diphtheria had been notified within the three miles area known as
Devonshire Park . Evidently some recent excavations had liberated
the deadly microbe . But there was no scare as yet . Label came down
again hotfoot with as many assistants as he could get, and took up
his quarters with Hubert . They were goin
g to have a busy time .
It was after two before Hubert managed to run across to Filling-
ham’s again . He stood in the studio waiting for Mrs . Fillingham . His
mind was preoccupied and uneasy, yet he seemed to miss something
from the studio . It was strange, considering that he had only been in
the room twice before .
“Are you looking for anything?” Mrs . Fillingham asked .
“I don’t know,” Hubert exclaimed . “I seem to miss something .
I’ve got it—the absence of the uniform .”
“They sent for it,” Mrs . Fillingham said vaguely . She was dazed
for want of sleep . “The Emperor had to go to some function, and that
was the only uniform of the kind he happened to have . He was to
have gone away in it after his sitting today . My husband persuaded
him to leave it when it was here yesterday, and—”
Hubert had cried out suddenly as if in pain .
“He was here yesterday—here, with your husband, and your hus-
band with the diphtheria on him?”
Then the weary wife understood .
“Good heavens—”
But Hubert was already out of the room . He blundered on until he
came to a hansom cab creeping along in the sunshine .
“Buckingham Palace,” he gasped. “Drive like mad. A five-pound
note for you if you get me there by three o’clock!”
* * * *
Already Devonshire Park was beginning to be talked about . It
was wonderful how the daily press got to the root of things . Hubert
caught sight of more than one contents bill as he drove home that
alluded to the strange epidemic .
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1278
Dr . Label joined Hubert presently in Mrs . Fillingham’s home,
rubbing his huge hands together . He knew nothing of the new dra-
matic developments . He asked where Hubert had been spending his
time .
“Trying to save the life of your friend, the Emperor of Asturia,”
Hubert said . “He was here yesterday with Fillingham, and, though
he seems well enough at present, he may have the disease on him
now . What do you think of that?”
Hubert waited to see the great man stagger before the blow . Label
smiled and nodded as he proceeded to light a cigarette .
“Good job too,” he said . “I am honorary physician to the court of
Asturia. I go back, there, as you know, when I finish my great work