I explained that my name was Parker. He spoke with a strong foreign accent, and in a tone of voice which I instinctively disliked. He was about six and a half feet high, and had a moustache which stood out three inches on either side of his face; not at all the sort of looking person with whom one would care to quarrel. "I have not come to be made a fool of," he remarked. "I have come to give a lecture, and that lecture I will give!" And he gave it. It is all very well to say that when I saw what sort of man he was I ought not to have let him into the house. But he was invited, and I have the instincts of a gentleman. So they hauled four great wooden cases up the stairs. It took six strong men to do it; they broke the banisters and knocked pieces out of the wall as they went. When the cases were opened they proved to be full of bottles of all sorts, shapes, sizes, and colours. "Reminds you of the old Polytechnic. Do you remember the Leyden jars they used to have?" When George Foster said that in a sort of whisper I thought of Edison's ideas of the dreadful part which electricity might be made to play in modern warfare. I did not require any illustrations of electrocution in my house, so I asked the lecturer a question. "I suppose it has nothing to do with electricity?" "Electricity? It is not electricity which kills men like flies, do not believe it. It is what I have in here." He waved his hand towards his bottles. His manner was not reassuring. "And of course there's nothing explosive?" "Explosive? What have I to do with explosives?--ask of yourself. It is not dynamite, it is not melinite, it is not cordite which destroys millions. It is noding of the kind. The Great Death is in these bottles." He said this in a way which made me quite uncomfortable--it was most unsuited to an evening party. Every moment I liked the fellow less and less, towards his bottles I felt an absolute aversion. I own that my impulse would have been to have sneaked out into the street and strolled round the square till the lecture was finished. But as I occupied the position of host I was in duty bound to see it through. And I did. Shall I ever forget it? Anything more monstrous than Nowell's idea of what was a fitting prelude to a little party I never yet encountered. The lecturer commenced. He was as grave as a judge. It gave you the creeps to hear him. There was nothing humorous about him; he was a dreadful man. His accent was peculiar. "In modern warfare de battle is not to de soldier, it is to de ghemist. I will prove it to you very easily. I have here dree bottles. They are little bottles"--they were, quite small--"yet I have only to take de stoppers out and you will know it as certainly as if I had exploded dree dynamite bombs." I am sure the people paled, it was enough to make them.