Page:Tales of the Unexpected (1924).djvu/177

 'Worth a guinea a drop,' said I, 'and more—to men like that.'

'And in a duel, again,' said Gibberne, 'where it all depends on your quickness in pulling the trigger.'

'Or in fencing,' I echoed.

'You see,' said Gibberne, 'if I get it as an all-round thing, it will really do you no harm at all—except perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twice to other people's once'

'I suppose,' I meditated, 'in a duel—it would be fair?'

'That's a question for the seconds,' said Gibberne.

I harked back further. 'And you really think such a thing is possible?' I said.

'As possible,' said Gibberne, and glanced at something that went throbbing by the window,' as a motor-bus. As a matter of fact'

He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edge of his desk with the green phial. ' I think I know the stuff. . . . Already I've got something coming.' The nervous smile upon his face betrayed the gravity of his revelation. He rarely talked of his actual experimental work unless things were very near the end. 'And it may be, it may be—I shouldn't be surprised—it may even do the thing at a greater rate than twice.'

'It will be rather a big thing,' I hazarded.

'It will be, I think, rather a big thing.' But I don't think he quite knew what a big thing it was to be, for 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