I get it. I do have fun. I have never heard of Hermes Trismigestus; I have never heard of Paracelsus, or Dr. Dee, or Dr. Faustus, or Nicolas Flamel, or any of those guys. I have never heard of Prof Henry Barr. But I learn to sail my boat pretty good and I am happy planning my laboratory. But old Jode loses his carefree look; he gets absent-minded and fretful. One day he confides his woes to me. "I am afraid," he wheezes pathetic, "that I am losing my grip, Buck. I know Mr. Vachti well. We are on confidential terms. He thinks I am a retired banker, and he has confided to me all about his hobby, and tells me with grim amusement about the various sucker-baits he has been invited to fall for. And I cannot contrive a scheme to offer him! Every type of enterprise the mind of man can invent has been tried on him! The most refined of financial shenanigans have failed! He is on to everything!" I say, "Yeah?" I would like to be helpful; that laboratory is going to cost money. A electron-telescope ain't cheap. I need for Jode to be prosperous to keep his promise. "He has opened his files to me," says Jode, wrinklin' up his fat face like a baby tryin' not to cry. "All the games he has pretended to fall for, with the news clippings of the trials and sentencing of the operators! He even has the records of the parole board hearings on them, and how he has protested the freeing of such criminals. That file is most informative. There are a coupla twists that even I never heard of before. The greatest artists in the business have worked on him, Buck! It would be a artistic triumph to diddle him. Indeed, I could not rest easy in my grave without havin' a try at him!" "I bet," I says, "that if he ever does fall, it will be for somethin' a three-year-old would laugh at." I don't know why I say it, but Jode's mouth drops open. He blinks at me, and suddenly he begins to wheeze happy again. "Genius!" he says. "That's the trick! Now I start hunting for the oldest, stalest, most impossible trick in the world! Somethin' so old and phoney nobody would think of tryin' it. I think, Buck, that as my technical assistant you show genius!" He struts out, a fat little guy with sporty clothes who looks like a retired banker without a worry in the world. And around this time a new crop of science magazines appears on the newsstands; I buy the lot of 'em and loaf around in my sailboat, readin' 'em and making plans. 2 One week passes, and two. Then Jode tells me he wants me to have dinner, formal, with a Prof Henry Barr whom he has contacted because he's got a hunch that the Prof has maybe the scheme he is looking for. The Prof had an advertisement in the paper. It reads: I have made an unconventional scientific discovery that I do not know how to develop commercially. An entrepreneur or financial adviser with some money is sought. Address Biologist, Box 711, care this paper.