He paused abruptly, and looked up. The air entering through the window was beginning to freshen; a faint gray haze was appearing in the sky behind the city. And the chemist acted like one in haste to an appointment. He seized a tablet, in the drawer before him, tore off a sheet, wrote hastily upon it, and thrust it across the table to Arnbush.
“There is the chemical formula of circine,” he said, “and the name of the fungus. I must go.”
The distiller began to speak about his offer, the lawyer Stetman, the other partner, Lang, and what should now be done in payment and the legal transfer.
But the chemist hurried him; he could not listen; he had no time, and it was unimportant.
In some confusion and as swiftly as he could, Arnbush descended the stair and went out into the street. The door clicked behind him, and he heard the footsteps of the chemist going down as though to pass out through the basement.
Morning had now arrived. And Arnbush returned across the city to the Waldorf.
But he returned like one entering with a triumph. He walked, his shoulders thrown back, his head up, like a conquerer. The effect of this wondrous fluid, even from his taste of it, remained. He would impose his will on this crank-ridden country, and he had the power folded in his pocket.
He began to go over in his mind the things Neinsoul had said.
He had some knowledge of the phraseology of such a trade, from the chemists employed about his manufactories; and he understood the substance of the discourse. He reviewed it now carefully in detail. This stuff was circine. It was the active principle in all fermentation; one got it from green seed, heat, and a pinch of fungus. And he passed on into a scrutiny of Neinsoul’s statement about the effect of circine.
He was in this abstraction when, at the entrance to the hostelry, he stopped.