ve mocked him, in a friendly, half-hearted
fashion. I am a medical man, and my own profession is one that does not
sympathize with radicals.

As for Professor Daimler, the third member of our triangle--perhaps, if
I take a moment to outline the events of that evening, the Professor's
part in what follows will be less obscure. We had called on him, M. S.
and I, at his urgent request. His rooms were in a narrow, unlighted
street just off the square, and Daimler himself opened the door to us. A
tall, loosely built chap he was, standing in the doorway like a
motionless ape, arms half extended.

"I've summoned you, gentlemen," he said quietly, "because you two, of
all London, are the only persons who know the nature of my recent
experiments. I should like to acquaint you with the results!"

He led the way to his study, then kicked the door shut with his foot,
seizing my arm as he did so. Quietly he dragged me to the table that
stood against the farther wall. In the same even, unemotional tone of a
man completely sure of himself, he commanded me to inspect it.

For a moment, in the semi-gloom of the room, I saw nothing. At length,
however, the contents of the table revealed themselves, and I
distinguished a motley collection of test tubes, each filled with some
fluid. The tubes were attached to each other by some ingenious
arrangement of thistles, and at the end of the table, where a chance
blow could not brush it aside, lay a tiny phial of the resulting serum.
From the appearance of the table, Daimler had evidently drawn a certain
amount of gas from each of the smaller tubes, distilling them through
acid into the minute phial at the end. Yet even now, as I stared down at
the fantastic paraphernalia before me, I could sense no conclusive
reason for its existence.

I turned to the Professor with a quiet stare of bewilderment. He smiled.

"The experiment is over," he said. "As to its conclusion, you, Dale, as
a medical man, will be sceptical. And you"--turning to M. S.--"as a
scientist you will be amazed. I, being neither physician nor scientist,
am merely filled with wonder!"

* * * * *

He stepped to a long, square table-like structure in the center of the
room. Standing over it, he glanced quizzically at M. S., then at me.

"For a period of two weeks," he went on, "I have kept, on the table
here, the body of a man who has been dead more than a month. I have
tried, gentlemen, with acid