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Yaws, but in addition he had been afflicted with leprosy, Ryndal's disease and some disease that I could not identify. Cultures and inoculations tested on guinea-pigs, rabbits and monkeys proved that the latter was even more contagious and more rapid in its development than the terrible Ryndal's disease, which, as is well known, utterly destroys all sense of morality and humanity and results in producing a homicidal mania in its victims, and which, though not contagious by ordinary means or personal contact, and which as far as known, has no insect-carriers, may yet be transmitted readily through the slightest abrasion of the skin. Hence I felt certain that every person who had been wounded or scratched by the maniacal creatures would, almost inevitably, develop this most terrible of tropical maladies. Fortunately, however, I had, while working in the West Indies, discovered, or I may better say, had developed, in company with Doctor Sir Ian Maxwell, an antitoxin that, administered in time, prevented the dreaded disease from developing beyond its primary stages and eventually eliminated it from the system. But to produce the antidote in sufficient quantities to inoculate all the victims injured by the ever-increasing number of infected maniacs, who were dropping nightly from the skies, required time, and to be efficacious, it was essential that it should be used within forty-eight hours after the germs of Ryndal's disease had been transmitted.
    Needless to say, every resource of the Royal Laboratories was placed at my disposal, once my report had been made, and the antitoxin was being produced as rapidly as possible. As fast as it was made it was being distributed throughout the districts that had been cursed by the murderous beings arriving in the strange and still inexplicable airships. But there were certain discoveries that I made during my examinations of the cadaver that in some respects overshadowed my determination of the several diseases.
    To my amazement I found, upon dissecting the brain of the creatures, that the abnormality of that organ was not due to natural causes or to disease, but had been artificially produced. In other words, the creature had been operated upon during youth, or at least several years previous to my examination, and a portion of the cerebellum had been removed. There was no question of this. The incision (perfectly healed to be sure) in the skull was plain, and the scar in the brain itself was readily distinguishable.
    But to make assurance doubly sure, I secured the crania of several more of the maniacs, and in each case found precisely the same conditions. Moreover, I found that, beyond any question, the beings had been inoculated with the diseases from which they were suffering. Only one conclusion could result from these astounding discoveries. The murderous creatures—I cannot bring myself to call them men—had purposely been transformed to maniacs; they had been coldbloodedly inoculated with Ryndal's disease in order to insure their becoming potential murderers, and had been inoculated with the two most loathsome and little known of contagious diseases with the devilish idea of spreading these diseases. The whole thing was a plot, a deep-laid, unspeakably fiendish plot, that must have required years to consummate, and that was aimed at the inhabitants of England. Who, what nation, what devilish master-mind could have conceived such a monstrous thing, I could not even guess. But there was one thing certain. Some arch-enemy of our country had evolved this scheme to destroy us and, unless some means were devised to check it, it would succeed.
    I shuddered and felt sick at the mere thought of thousands of our citizens becoming raving, homicidal maniacs, of thousands—tens of thousands—suffering the awful living death of lepers, of hundreds of thousands covered with the loathsome ulcers of the Yaws. Far more fortunate were those who died at the hands and teeth of these brainless,