“I realized that the rays from the salt arrested growth, and at the same time prolonged to an almost incalculable extent,” said the Professor—“for you will understand that the grubs in flask number one had lived as grubs half a dozen times as long as grubs usually do.... And I said to myself that the discovery presented an immense, a tremendous field for future development. Suppose a young woman of, say, twenty-nine were enclosed in a glass receptacle of sufficient bulk to contain her, and exposed for a few hours to my protium rays, she would retain for many years to come—until she was a great-grandmother of ninety!—the same charming, youthful appearance——”
“As Lady Clanbevan!” I cried, as the truth rushed upon me and I grasped the meaning this astonishing man had intended to convey.
“As Lady Clanbevan presents to-day,” said the Professor, “thanks to the discovery of a——”
“Of a great man,” said I, looking admiringly at the lean worn figure in the closely-buttoned black frock-coat.
“I loved her.... It was a delight to her to drag a disciple of Science at her chariot-wheels. People talked of me as a coming man. Perhaps I was.... But I did not thirst for distinction, honors, fame.... I thirsted for that woman’s love.... I told her of my discovery—as I told her everything. Bah!” His lean nostrils worked. “You know the game that is played when one is in earnest and the other at play. She promised nothing, she walked delicately among the passions she sowed and fostered in the souls of men, as a beautiful tigress walks among the poison-plants of the jungle. She saw that rightly used, or wrongly used, my great discovery might save her beauty, her angelic, dazzling beauty that had as yet but felt the first touch of Time. She planned the whole thing, and when she said, ‘You do not love me if you will not do this,’ I did it. I was mad when I acceded to her wish, perhaps; but she is a woman to drive men frenzied. You have seen how coldly, how slightingly she looked at me when we encountered her in the Row? I tell you—you have guessed already—I went there to see her. I always go where she is to be encountered, when she is in town. And she bows, always; but her eyes are those of a stranger. Yet I have had her on her knees to me. She cried and begged and kissed my hands.”
He knotted his thin hands, their fingers brown-tipped with the stains of acids, and wrung and twisted them ferociously.
“And so I granted what she asked, carried out the experiment, and paid what you English call the piper. The giant glass bulb with the rubber-valve door was blown and finished in France. It involved an expense of three hundred pounds. The salt I used—of protium (christened radium now)—cost me all my savings—over two thousand pounds—for I had been a struggling man——”
“But the experiment?” I broke in. “Good Heavens, Professor! How could a living being remain for any time in an exhausted receiver? Agony unspeakable, convulsions, syncope, death! One knows what the result would be. The merest common sense——”
“The merest common sense is not what one employs to make discoveries or carry out great experiments,” said the Professor. “I will not disclose my method; I will only admit to you that the subject—the subjects were insensible; that I induced anæsthesia by the ordinary ether-pump apparatus, and that the strength of the ray obtained was concentrated to such a degree that the exposure was complete in three hours.” He looked about him haggardly. “The experiment took place here nineteen years ago—nineteen years ago, and it seems to me as though it were yesterday.”
“And it must seem like yesterday to Lady Clanbevan—whenever she looks in the glass,” I said. “But you have pricked my curiosity, Professor, by the use of the plural. Who was the other subject?”