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