all that.



I remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "The New

Accelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confident

on each occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected

physiological results its use might have, and then he would get

a little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary, and we debated

long and anxiously how the preparation might be turned to commercial

account. "It's a good thing," said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing.

I know I'm giving the world something, and I think it only reasonable

we should expect the world to pay. The dignity of science is all

very well, but I think somehow I must have the monopoly of the stuff

for, say, ten years. I don't see why ALL the fun in life should go

to the dealers in ham."



My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time.

I have always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in my

mind. I have always been given to paradoxes about space and time,

and it seemed to me that Gibberne was really preparing no less

than the absolute acceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedly

dosed with such a preparation: he would live an active and record

life indeed, but he would be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at

twenty-five, and by thirty well on the road to senile decay. It seemed

to me that so far Gibberne was only going to do for any one who

took his drug exactly what Nature has done for the Jews and Orientals,

who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, and quicker in thought

and act than we are all the time. The marvel of drugs has always

been great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man, make him

incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passion

and allay that, all by means of drugs, and here was a new miracle

to be added to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use!

But Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to enter

very keenly into my aspect of the question.



It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillation

that would decide his failure or success for a time was going forward

as we talked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was

done and the New Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I met

him as I was going up the Sandgate Hill towards Folkestone--I think

I was going to get my hair cut, and he came hurrying down to meet

me--I suppose he was coming to my house to tell me at once of his

success. I remember that his eyes were unusually bright and his face

flushed, and I noted even then the swift alacrity of his step.



"It's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast;

"it's more than done. Come up to my house and see."



"Really?"



"Really!" he shouted. "Incredibly! Come up and see."



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