"It would prob'ly work," I repeat, firm. "That catalyst stuff is good reasonin'. I knew a fella got fired from a silverplatin' plant and he took a file and filed off some powdered bakelite into each one of the platin' baths to get even. The firm near went crazy. The bakelite don't dissolve or anything, but you can't plate when it's in the bath. It's a anticatalyst. Some of those impurities the Prof was talking about must keep the regular chemical actions from takin' place, so you get what he said." Old Jode sits down and howls. "That stuff about the million monkeys is true," I point out. "I read that myself in a science magazine. I got a hunch there's more to his idea than he figures. If my laboratory was set up I'd try it myself. Maybe I better had, anyways." "Buck!" wheezes old Jode, "You'll be the death of me!" He near strangles, laughin'. I get mad. "Okay," I say, "but I tell you right now you better let me do it if you sure-enough want that elixir. Icelandic spar ain't what he said. He's got good dope, but he's a phoney!" Old Jode thinks that's so funny I go out and take a walk to cool off. But the more I think about it, the better the Prof's stuff looks. Next day I go to the public library and hunt up alchemy. I get a bunch of books out in the reading-room. Trismigestus. Bacon. Theophrastus. Paracelsus. Count Graby. I read them, fast, taking notes when necessary. I get fascinated; the stuff sounds plenty convincing. I get excited. It's as good as some science fiction. I fill my head up with the stuff, and a notebook with memos. I go to a drug-store and buy some test-tubes. I get a alcohol-burner and some denatured; I go to a paint store and buy some more stuff. I have to hunt high and low before I can find a hobby-shop with geological specimens. I get some stuff there. Fluor-spar. The clerk sells it to me indifferent. Plenty of guys my age mess around with experiments; I get everything I need, except some egg-skin. I go back to the hotel, lock the door and put the stuff together. I have not got pure chemicals. A hunk of native sulphur. I catch some soot from safety matches that I burn one after another under a metal ash-tray. I've got a hunk of sal-ammoniac--lump stuff, not what they sell at a drug-store. Nobody will sell me oil of vitriol, but I get some at a garage where they have it for storage batteries. I got some iron pyrites. I mix the stuff up careful. It makes an awful stink. I have to open the windows. I go through all the routine that a guy named Dr. Dee says would make a universal solvent. Nothing happens. Nothing at all.