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Updated: May 7, 2025
"If the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and that, I think, is one of the most hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take the mixture?" "With water," said Gibberne, whacking down a carafe. He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy-chair; his manner was suddenly affected by a touch of the Harley Street specialist.
That there are astonishing experiences in store for all in search of new sensations will become apparent enough. Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone.
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."
"Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it down. This heat is too much! It's our running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!" "What?" he said, glancing at the dog. "Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast. Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm all over pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirring slightly.
The temptation is strong!" There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality.
It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire. Your linen trousers are going brown as it is!" He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge.
"The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank, and instantly I closed my eyes. You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one has taken "gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. Then I heard Gibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. There he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand.
Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone. Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages has already appeared in The Strand Magazine think late in 1899 but I am unable to look it up because I have lent that volume to someone who has never sent it back.
All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had begun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so far as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The New Accelerator " I began, but Gibberne interrupted me. "There's that infernal old woman!" he said. "What old woman?" "Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods!
"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.
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