"All the difference in the world! It's like this.... By the way, what is your name?"
"Clutterbuck." The word escaped his lips by accident. He looked annoyed. I smiled reassuringly.
"It's like this, Mr. Clutterbuck. If you kill all the germs in a person's body, that person doesn't die. He lives ... indefinitely. Now do you see?"
"No, I don't see," said Clutterbuck with great frankness. "I don't understand what you're driving at. You tell me that you're a doctor and you give me a card bearing a well-known specialist's name. Then you say you created a germ and put it in the Birmingham water supply and that the result is the Blue Disease. This germ, you say, doesn't kill people, but does something else which I don't follow. Now I was taught that germs are dangerous things, and it seems to me that if your story is true—which I don't believe—you are guilty of a criminal act." He pushed back his chair and reached for his hat. There was a flush on his face.
"Then you don't believe my tale?"
"No, I'm sorry, but I don't."
"Well, Mr. Clutterbuck, will you believe it when you see your wife restored to health in a few days' time?"
"What you say is impossible," he said slowly. "If you were a doctor you'd know that as well as I do."
"But the reports in the paper?"