"Damn your barbaric pessimists and all their hungry tribe!"
Donaldson smiled a trifle condescendingly.
"What's the use of talking to you when you 'll not admit a sound deduction? And yet, if I said you don't know what results when you put together two known chemicals, you 'd—"
There was a look in Barstow's face that checked Donaldson,—a look of worried recollection.
"I 'd say nothing," he asserted earnestly, "because I don't always know."
For a moment his fingers fluttered over the medley of bottles upon the shelves before him. They paused over a small vial containing a brilliant scarlet liquid. He picked it out and held it to the light.
"See this?" he asked.
Donaldson nodded indifferently.
"It is a case in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one of those things a man occasionally stumbles upon in this work,—better forgotten. How do I account for it? I don't. Even in science there is always the unknown element which comes in and plays the devil with results."
"But according to your no-waste theory, even this discovery ought to have some use," commented Donaldson with a smile.