“I believe so.  If it isn’t, I’ve wasted my time for a year.  These various preparations of the hypophosphites, for example, seem to show that something of the sort...  Even if it was only one and a half times as fast it would do.”

“It would do,” I said.

“If you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing up against you, something urgent to be done, eh?”

“He could dose his private secretary,” I said.

“And gain—­double time.  And think if you, for example, wanted to finish a book.”

“Usually,” I said, “I wish I’d never begun ’em.”

“Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think out a case.  Or a barrister—­or a man cramming for an examination.”

“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 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.”