After that Rasputin became more discreet, but I was nevertheless glad
when one night we met Professor Hoheisel at the station and left for
Hamburg, duly arriving at Stockholm two days later, where we lost no time
in visiting the premises of Juel and Ehrensvard.
Indeed, Mr. Juel, the head of the Hun firm which was doing a large export
business between Sweden and Germany, called upon us at the Grand Hotel
within an hour of our arrival, and together we all went to a narrow
street off the Fjellgatan, not far from the Saltsjoebanans station, where
we found a great warehouse filled to overflowing with tins of corned beef
and cases containing bottles of beef extract, which had come from
America, destined for Germany, but which had been held up to be diverted
to Russia after being treated with disease germs.
We were shown stacks upon stacks of tins of one pound, two pounds and six
pounds of beef, all bearing a well-known label, but all painted a
peculiar blue for identification purposes. In the store we were met by
four German laboratory assistants of the fat professor, ready to commence
work upon the tins.
"I will show you what we shall do," said Hoheisel. "The manipulation of
the tins is quite easy."
He conducted us to a small room on the top floor, which I at once saw was
fitted as a laboratory, and which contained microscopes, incubators,
stands of test-tubes, and all the other apparatus appertaining to the
bacteriologist.
One of his assistants had carried up four small tins of beef, with a
couple of bottles of beef extract. These he placed on the table, and as
we stood around he took a small bradawl, and having punctured the tin at
the large end close to the rim, he took from one of the incubators a
test-tube full of a cloudy brown liquid gelatine. Then filling a
hypodermic syringe--upon which was an extra long needle--he thrust it
into the contents of the tin and injected the virus into the meat.
Afterwards, with a small soldering-iron he closed the puncture.
"That tin, infected as it is, is sufficient to cause an epidemic which
might result in thousands of deaths," declared the Hun professor proudly.
His assistant then took a bottle of beef extract, which in Russia is
popular with all classes in preparing their cabbage soup, and refilling
the syringe, plunged the needle through the cork, afterwards placing a
spot of melted resin upon the puncture.
"You see how simple it is!" laughed the professor, addressing the
"saint." "All that now remains is for a firm in Petrograd to buy the
consignment and arrange for it to be sold to wholesale dealers in Vologda
and Nijni. This we expect you to arrange."
"I certainly will," replied Rasputin promptly. "Truly, the idea is a most
ingenious one--a disease which is as yet unknown!"
We remained in Stockholm for four days longer. The professor and his
assistants were working strenuously, we knew, preparing death for the
population of those two Russian towns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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