that stinking silly dress! Four months!"

The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said, when
he emerged to linguistic purity once more. "Forty thousand pounds worth
of gold."

"Did the little missionary come back?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! Bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a man
inside the god, and started out to see as much with tremendous ceremony.
But there wasn't--he got sold again. I always did hate scenes and
explanations, and long before he came I was out of it all--going home to
Banya along the coast, hiding in bushes by day, and thieving food from
the villages by night. Only weapon, a spear. No clothes, no money.
Nothing. My face was my fortune, as the saying is. And just a squeak
of eight thousand pounds of gold--fifth share. But the natives cut up
rusty, thank goodness, because they thought it was him had driven their
luck away."

8. THE NEW ACCELERATOR

Certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pin
it is my good friend Professor Gibberne. I have heard before of
investigators overshooting the mark, but never quite to the extent that
he has done. He has really, this time at any rate, without any touch of
exaggeration in the phrase, found something to revolutionise human life.
And that when he was simply seeking an all-round nervous stimulant to
bring languid people up to the stresses of these pushful days. I have
tasted the stuff now several times, and I cannot do better than describe
the effect the thing had on me. 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.
Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages has
already appeared in The Strand Magazine--I think late in 1899; but I am
unable to look it up because I have lent that volume to some one who has
never sent it back. The reader may, perhaps, recall the high forehead
and the singularly long black eyebrows that give such a Mephistophelian
touch to his face. He occupies one of those pleasant little detached
houses in the mixed style that make the western end of the Upper
Sandgate Road so interesting. His is the one with the Flemish gables and
the Moorish portico, and it is in the little room with the mullioned bay
window that he works when he is down here, and in which of an evening
we have so often smoked and talked together. He is