y, equal to a man living twenty-five thousand
years instead of the normal seventy."

"You don't suggest----?"

He replaced the muslin covering and took out his pipe and tobacco pouch.
Absurd, outrageous ideas crowded to my mind. Was it, then, possible that
our dream was to become reality?

"I don't suppose they'll live much longer," I stammered.

He was silent until he had lit his pipe.

"If you met a man who had lived twenty-five thousand years, would you be
inclined to tell me he would not live much longer, simply on general
considerations?"

I could not find a satisfactory answer.

As a matter of fact the question scarcely conveyed anything to me. One
can realize only by reference to familiar standards. The idea of a man
who has lived one hundred and fifty years is to me a more realistic
curiosity than the idea of a man twenty-five thousand years old. But I
caught a glimpse, as it were, of strange figures, moving about in a
colourless background, with calm gestures, slow speeches, silences
perhaps a year in length. The familiar outline of London crumbled
suddenly away, the blotches of shadow and the coloured shafts of light
striking between the gaps in the crowds, the violet-lit tubes, the
traffic, faded into the conception of twenty-five thousand years. All
this many-angled, many-coloured modern spectacle that was a few thousand
years removed from cave dwellings, was rolled flat and level, merging
into this grey formless carpet of time.

Next morning Sarakoff returned to Russia, bearing with him the wonderful
butterflies, and for many months I heard nothing from him. But before he
went he told me that he would return soon.

"I have only one step further to take and the ideal germ will be
created, Harden. Then we poor mortals will realize the dream that has
haunted us since the beginning of time. We will attain immortality, and
the fear of death, round which everything is built, will vanish. We will
become gods!"

"Or devils, Sarakoff," I murmured.

CHAPTER IV

THE SIX TUBES

One night, just as I entered my house, the telephone bell in the hall
rang sharply. I picked up the receiver impatiently, for I was tired with
the long day's work.

"Is that Dr. Harden?"

"Yes."

"Can you come down to Charing Cross Station at once? The station-master
is speaking."

"An accident?"

"No. We wish you to identify a person who has arrived by the boat-train.
The police are detaining him as a suspect.