wondering.

I borrowed cab fare from Old Pudge Detweiler and headed for the address I'd been given.

It wasn't a home. It was a beat-up factory and it had a sign over the door:

T. GRECO

Plant Foods & Organic Supplies

ince it was Sunday, nobody seemed to be there, but I pushed open the door. It wasn't locked. I heard something from the basement, so I walked down a flight of steps and looked out into a rather smelly laboratory.

There was the Greek. Tall, thin, wide-eyed and staggering, he appeared to be chasing butterflies.

I cleared my throat, but he didn't hear me. He was racing around the laboratory, gasping and muttering to himself, sweeping at empty air with what looked to me like an electric toaster on a stick. I looked again and, no, it wasn't an electric toaster, but exactly what it was defied me. It appeared to have a recording scale on the side of it, with a needle that flickered wildly.

I couldn't see what he was chasing.

The fact was that, as far as I could see, he wasn't chasing anything at all.

You have to get the picture: Here was Greco, racing around with one eye on the scale and one eye on thin air; he kept bumping into things, and every now and then he'd stop, and stare around at the gadgets on the lab benches, and maybe he'd throw a switch or turn a dial, and then he'd be off again.

He kept it up for ten minutes and, to tell you the truth, I began to wish that I'd made some better use of Pudge Detweiler's cab fare. The Greek looked as though he'd flipped, nothing less.

But there I was. So I waited.

And by and by he seemed to get whatever it was he was looking for and he stopped, breathing heavily.

I said, "Hi there, Greek."

He looked up sharply. "Oh," he said, "Old Virgie."

He slumped back against a table, trying to catch his breath.

"The little devils," he panted. "They must have thought they'd got away that time. But I fixed them!"

"Sure you did," I said. "You bet you did. Mind if I come in?"

He shrugged. Ignoring me, he put down the toaster on a stick, flipped some switches and stood up. A whining sound dwindled and disappeared; some flickering lights went out. Others remained on, but he seemed to feel that, whatever it was he was doing, it didn't require his attention now.

In his own good time, he came over and we shook hands. I said appreciatively, "Nice-looking laboratory you have here, Greek. I don't know what the stuff is for, but it looks expen—it looks very efficient."

He grunted. "It is. Both. Expensive and efficient."

I laughed. "Say," I said, "you were pretty loaded last night. Know what you told me you were doing here?"

He looked up quickly. "What?"

"You said you were in transmutation." I laughed harder than ever.

e stared at me thoughtfully, and for a second I thought—well, I don't know what I thought, but I was worried. He had a lot of funny-looking things there, and his hand was stretching out toward one of them.

But then he said, "Old Virgie."

"That's me," I said eagerly.

"I owe you an apology," he went on.

"You do?"

He nodded. "I'd forgotten," he confessed, ashamed. "I didn't remember until just this minute that you were the one I talked to in my senior year. My only confidant. And you've kept my secret all this time."

I coughed. "It was nothing," I said largely. "Don't give it a thought."

He nodded in appreciation. "That's just like you," he reminisced. "Ten years, eh? And you haven't breathed a word, have you?"

"Not a word," I assured him. And it was no more than the truth. I