It is dark when I get back to the house. There are lights in the windows. I sneak up close and make sure there isn't nobody watching outside. Presently I duck up to where I can look in a window. It is open, and I could hear. Mr. Vachti says, in a voice that would curdle the Alkahest--that hydrofluoric acid that ate through the test-tube and the sink and the floor: "Since I feel no physical changes, I will give you two just twenty-four hours more!" "Then what?" asks Jode, apprehensive. "If by then I am not a young man again," says Mr. Vachti, spiteful, "--and I do not expect to be--my bodyguards will either put you each in a barrel of concrete and dump you overboard at sea--which I do not think they have lost the knack of--or else you go to jail." * * * * * Jode wheezes indignant: "But there has been no offense, Mr. Vachti!" he protests. "You tried to swindle me," says Mr. Vachti peevish. "Both of you!" "I deny that," says old Jode in fine anger, but I see sweat dripping from his wattles. "Not one finger was laid on you or your money! Professor Barr made an experiment, which I financed. You wished to share the results. It was agreed that you should have a dose of the elixir with us, and pay if it worked and not otherwise! But your men grabbed us and hustled us aboard your yacht and brought us here as prisoners! You have had the elixir, yes! You insisted that the experiment go on, on your estate here. But if a crime has been committed," says Jode oratorical, "it has been committed by your hirelings! How will you stand in a court of law, Mr. Vachti, when you are charged with kidnapping?" I never hear exactly this kind of note in Jode's voice before. But I know what it is; he is scared. Mr. Vachti has not been put through the wringer. Old Jode has a swell trick for it, but it doesn't work. The prof is all set to give Mr. Vachti and Jode knockout drops, and Jode is all set to switch glasses so the Prof and Mr. Vachti will be the ones to pass out. But Mr. Vachti crosses them both up by kidnappin' them and the elixir and takin' his dose in the privacy of his own home with his bodyguards around. Now Mr. Vachti laughs, and he has absolutely the most unpleasant laugh I ever heard on anybody. "Do you think," he says ironic, "that when I was active in business, I never had anybody kidnapped?" There is a silence that you coulda cut in chunks. Mr. Vachti laughs again. "I have a hobby," he says, "of putting people in jail when they try to swindle me. You two tried it. I admit," he says, vexed, "that you fixed it so I can't put you in jail for this actual job. Putting you in jail won't be the perfect example I would wish for my files. But you go to jail or into a barrel of concrete!" "How can you send us to jail?" demands Jode, rather shrill.