The Argosy, August 1905 — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

’s the matter with him?” ‘She drummed her knuckles against her forehead. $ Dippy,” she gurgled, and went on down. “This grows interestin’,” murmured Blinkers, turning away from the ban- isters as Trenwyek knocked on Tap- seott’s door. The door was opened by the philan- thropie gentleman himself. He was well advanced in years, wore an old dressing-gown and a pair of carpet- slippers, and was holding a test-tube in his hand. On a table off to one side streamed the bluish flame of an alcoho! lamp. Over the table was a shelf contaming a glass retort, two or three parting- flasks and many bottles, A dank, unhealthy odor, caused by a combination of plant-life and a super- heated atmosphere, manifested itself in the room. ‘There were three windows, and each was filled with potted plants— strange plants such as Trenwyck had meyer seen before. “ Reporters?” asked Tapscott, look- ing his visitors over. “No,” Trenwyck answered. = Certainly not police officers—in disguise?” he went on, holding the tube between his eye and the light and searching its contents. ““ Certainly not!” Tapscott heaved a long breath, evi- dently of relief. Placing the test-tube in a Tack on the table, he capped the spirit lamp, wavec his eallers to chairs, and took a seat opposite. * Would you believe it,” said he, “ you are the first ones to call on me in a spirit of legitimate inquiry? Are you pre- pared to take hold of my project?” ‘You mean to finance it?” Tren- wyck returned. He tossed his hands in petulant dep- recation. ““ No money is needed. What I want is brains—nineteenth-century brains, to grapple with the barbarism of the Dark Ages.” Blinkers rolled a cigarette and set- tled down to a quiet enjoyment of the interview. Trenwyck, having secured the keynote of Tapscott’s mania, played uv bit Pedra him out. colony of aed in abo pomewiere Ry “Wonldn’t that be a trifle diffienli? ” he suggested. “* Providing a man could get back to the era you suggest, its his- tory is already made and could not be warped one way or the other.” Color rushed into Tapscott’s sallow cheeks, his eyes lit up, and his whole form grew animated. “Time,” he pursued dogmatically, ‘even when following his ordinary for- his course and registering his prosy stages on a clock dial, is the producer of many riddles that vex the under- standing; yet when, as I can make manifest, he reverses his course and covers centuries at a backward bound, our respectable Gregorian calendar staggers with the weight of its mys- teries.” Blinkers was over his head. So was Trenwyck, for that matter, although he was thoroughly determined to persist until he had come closer to Tapscott’s hobby. “We are dealing in general terms,” Trenwyck observed. “Suppose we come at once to the crux of the matter, Mr. Tapscott. Just what sort of a proposition have you to make?” “We cannot get away from these general terms until we are done with the very bone and marrow of the proposi- tion,” he answered. “'Time, gentlemen, is merely a personal matter. It is as much a man’s property as the clothes on his back or the dollar in his pocket. Time is the inheritance of life, which in itseif is but a manifestation of time; time begins at birth, ceases at death, and for him that was time is and can be no more. “Sir, I am on intimate terms with Time. The old gentleman has grown fond of me, and from a simple desire to please he will take me by the hand, turn squarely about and retreat along his ancient path. “T might state that we have formed a partnership, known as Time & Com- pany, Limited. Im this scheme for the tegeneration of the Middle Ages we work together with an eye single to the main purpose. “What I desire,’ eried Tapscott, warming to his theme, “is to plant a ae - af - = — comicbooks.com