Well—I play up. I am passing for Jode's nephew in the very swank surroundings of Las Lagunas, where Jode's and my hotel-suite costs more money per day than I ever hoped to make a week. I prefer hanging around in my sailboat, reading science fiction and planning my laboratory, but I get combed up and put on a snazzy suit Jode has bought me; we meet this Prof and Jode waddles grand into the hotel dining-room. They have cocktails and I have a coke and then the business starts.
Old Jode eats his oysters, noisy and with gusto, and wipes his mouth. "I was—hrrrm—much interested in your advertisement, Professor Barr," he wheezes. "It is a beautiful approach. However, I will bet cash money that you didn't get a single answer besides mine worth your talents."
"True," admits the Prof. He is a dignified but seedy-looking guy with long white whiskers. He strokes them reflective. "I had a number of replies, but few of them suggested financial responsibility."
The waiter serves the soup. Jode sniffs at it and beams. "The chef here," he says, "makes soup which is almost music—What have you got, Professor?"
The Prof begins his spiel, dignified. "Why," he says, profound, "I had better explain that I was Professor of Medieval History at Perkins College for thirty-five years. I was released because a wealthy alumnus offered to add to the endowment if a son-in-law of his was taken on the faculty and his habit of getting drunk frequently was ignored. I had to be released so the college could take advantage of the offer."
"Hrrrrm," says Jode. "My sympathies, sir."
"I do not blame them," says the Prof, resigned, "but I shall never again practice teaching as a profession.... The point is that in my studies of medieval history I naturally came across many mentions of alchemy. The alchemists, you are doubtless aware, searched for the Philosopher's Stone to turn base metal into gold; for an Alkahest to dissolve all known substances; and they searched for the Elixir of Youth. I planned to write a scholarly treatise on the contributions of alchemy—gunpowder, metallic tinctures in medicine, sulphuric acid, and all the foundations of chemistry. But as I studied the source-material, I found the reports of their work singularly convincing."
Jode looks at me. I nod. Something like this hasta be the truth. Sure! Astronomy started with fortune-telling. Chemistry must have had as crazy a beginning. I nod emphatic.
"It has been pointed out," says the Prof, profound, "that if one set a million monkeys at a million typewriters and kept them pounding away at random, by the mere operation of the laws of chance one of those monkeys would ultimately re-write the Smyth Report on Atomic Energy. And it is easy to calculate that during the Middle Ages there were enough alchemists making experiments practically at random to produce outstanding discoveries by sheer happenchance. Some of these discoveries we know. I have mentioned them. But I have proof that they made others."