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