“How can I tell? It may mean weeks, it may mean months.”
“What are you going to do when you’ve found it?”
“Get someone to take it up, I suppose.”
Christopher was answering against his will, but the swift sharp questions left him no time to fence.
“I’ll take it up now. Fit you up a laboratory and experimenting ground and give you two years to perfect it—and a partnership when it’s started.”
Christopher looked up with incredulous amazement.
“But it’s a purely scientific speculation at present. 246 There are just about half a dozen people on the track. We are all racing each other.”
“Well, you’ve got to win, and I’ll back you. You shall have every assistance you want—money shan’t count. You can live here and have the North Park for trials, as many men as you want and no interruption.”
“But it’s impossible. It’s not a certainty even.”
“No speculation is a certainty. If you bring it off it will mean a fortune, properly managed. I can do that for you far better than Aymer. We should share profits, of course, and I should have to risk money. It’s a fancy thing, but it pleases me.”