"I'm trying to be one," I modestly rejoined.
"I am the greatest chemist in the world, if I choose to let men know it." It seemed to me rather ill concealed for a secret of such importance. "I have an idea here—" he tapped his forehead—"that will make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Would you like to know what it is?"
"Very much," I said sipping my stout gratefully.
"Listen!" he proclaimed. "I have discovered the secret of making electricity direct from coal! What do you think of me now?" And he sat back to study the effect of his dramatic announcement on me. I felt that common politeness compelled me in some way to rise to the occasion.
"It sounds marvellous," I said. "Have you ever done it?"
He waved this question aside with a long draft of stout. "Not yet," he sputtered through the brown foam on his moustache, "but that is immaterial, for I know the secret." I contemplated him a bit ruefully, wondering if the hard-headed Knowlton had made a good bargain in saddling us with this.
"You doubt me," he remarked. "That is because you do not know me yet. Do you know"—suddenly dropping his voice to a whisper—"I am not convinced yet that the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone was vain. It might be possible—locked within the element radium that secret lies. And if men are to find it out, I shall be that man."
"Oh, hell, Mr. Fougère!" I said much nettled, "all this has very little to do with the chemistry we use in our business."
"True, my young materialist, true. He who looks straight before his nose shall see but the dust. My gaze is among the stars. But you need not worry. I shall give you and your father every cent's value that the most exacting business man could ask of me. If you care nothing for my true brains and want only my routine daily labour, that will be your loss—yet I shall not hold it against you. Money is the curse of the age."
"Your big ideas sound reasonably profitable," I retorted, "if you pull them off. How would you escape the curse?"