ave-lengths, on the
reactions which constitute growth in plants have had a great effect on
hothouse forcing of plants and promise to revolutionize the truck
gardening industry. He has speeded up the rate of growth to as high as
ten times the normal rate in some cases.

"A few years ago, he and his assistant, James Collier, turned their
attention toward discovering a catalyst which would do for the metabolic
reactions in animal life what his light rays did for plants. What his
method was, I will not disclose for obvious reasons, but suffice it to
say that he met with great success. He took a puppy and by treating it
with his catalytic drugs, made it grow to maturity, pass through its
entire normal life span, and die of old age in six months."

* * * * *

"That is very interesting, Doctor, but I fail to see what bearing it has
on the robbery."

"Mr. Rogers, how, on a dark day and in the absence of a timepiece, would
you judge the passage of time?"

"Why, by my stomach, I guess."

"Exactly. By your metabolic rate. You eat a meal, it digests, you expend
the energy which you have taken into your system, your stomach becomes
empty and your system demands more energy. You are hungry and you judge
that some five or six hours must have passed since you last ate. Do you
follow?"

"Certainly."

"Let us suppose that by means of some tonic, some catalytic drug, your
rate of metabolism and also your rate of expenditure of energy has been
increased six fold. You would eat a meal and in one hour you would be
hungry again. Having no timepiece, and assuming that you were in a
light-proof room, you would judge that some five hours had passed, would
you not?"

"I expect so."

"Very well. Now suppose that this accelerated rate of digestion and
expenditure of energy continued. You would be sleepy in perhaps three
hours, would sleep about an hour and a quarter, and would then wake,
ready for your breakfast. In other words, you would have lived through a
day in four hours."

"What advantage would there be in that?"

"None, from your standpoint. It would, however, increase the rate of
reproduction of cattle greatly and might be a great boom to agriculture,
but we will not discuss this phase now. Suppose it were possible to
increase your rate of metabolism and expenditure of energy, in other
words, your rate of living, not six times, but thirty thousand times. In
such a case you would live five min