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THE FOOD OF THE GODS

Winkles returned to that on a later occasion.

"It's in many ways an Exceptional Discovery."

"That doesn't matter," said Redwood.

"It's the sort of knowledge that could easily be subject to grave abuse—grave dangers, as Caterham puts it."

Redwood said nothing.

"Even carelessness, you know——

"If we were to form a committee of trustworthy people to control the manufacture of Boomfood—Herakleophorbia, I should say—we might———"

He paused, and Redwood, with a certain private discomfort, pretended that he did not see any sort of interrogation. . . .

Outside the apartments of Redwood and Bensington, Winkles, in spite of the incompleteness of his instructions, became a leading authority upon Boomfood. He wrote letters defending its use; he made notes and articles explaining its possibilities; he jumped up irrelevantly at the meetings of the scientific and medical associations to talk about it; he identified himself with it. He published a pamphlet called "The Truth about Boomfood," in which he minimised the whole of the Hickleybrow affair almost to nothing. He said that it was absurd to say Boomfood would make people thirty-seven feet high. That was "obviously exaggerated." It would make them Bigger, of course, but that was all. . . .

Within that intimate circle of two it was chiefly evident that Winkles was extremely anxious to help in the making of Herakleophorbia, help in correcting any proofs there might be of any paper there might

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