"Lucky Simone, then."
"No, no!" Henri cried. "That was the awful thing! She hadn't arrived! Today of all days, she was late for work! I began to go mad. I dashed out into the corridor and down the stairs. I was like a dangerous animal. I was hunting for a woman, any woman, and heaven help her when I found her!"
"And who did you find?"
"Nobody, thank God. Because suddenly, I regained my senses. The effect had worn off. It was very quick, and I was standing alone on the second-floor landing. I felt cold. But I knew at once exactly what had happened. I ran back upstairs and re-entered this room with my nostrils pinched tightly between finger and thumb. I went straight to the drawer where I stored the noseplugs. Ever since I started working on this project, I have kept a supply of noseplugs ready for just such an occasion. I rammed in the plugs. Now I was safe."
"Can't the molecules get up into the nose through the mouth?" I asked him "They can't reach the receptor sites," he said. "That's why you can't smell through your mouth. So I went over to the apparatus and switched off the heat. I then transferred the tiny quantity of precious fluid from the beaker to this very solid airtight bottle you see here. In it there are precisely eleven cubic centimetres of Number 1076."
"Then you telephoned me."
"Not immediately, no. Because at that point, Simone arrived. She took one look at me and ran into the next room, screaming."
"Why did she do that?"
"My God, Oswald, I was standing there stark naked and I hadn't realized it. I must have ripped off all my clothes!"
"Then what?"
"I got dressed again. After that, I went and told Simone exactly what had happened. When she heard the truth, she became as excited as me. Don't forget, we've been working on this together for over a year now."
"Is she still here?"
"Yes. She's next door in the other lab."
It was quite a story Henri had told me. I picked up the little square bottle and held it against the light. Through the thick glass I could see about half an inch of fluid, pale and pinkish-grey, like the juice of a ripe quince.
"Don't drop it," Henri said. "Better put it down." I put it down. "The next step," he went on, "will be to make an accurate test under scientific conditions. For that I shall have to spray a measured quantity on to a woman and then let a man approach her. It will be necessary for me to observe the operation at close range."
"You are a dirty old man," I said.
"I am an olfactory chemist," he said primly.
"Why don't I go out into the street with my noseplugs in," I said, "and spray some on to the first woman who comes along. You can watch from the window here. It ought to be fun."
"It would be fun all right," Henri said. "But not very scientific. I must make the tests indoors under controlled conditions."
"And I will play the male part," I said.
"No, Oswald."
"What do you mean, no. I insist."
"Now listen to me," Henri said. "We have not yet found out what will happen when a woman is present. This stuff is very powerful, I am certain of that. And you, my dear sir, are not exactly young. It could be extremely dangerous. It could drive you beyond the limit of your endurance."
I was stung. "There are no limits to my endurance," I said.
"Rubbish," Henri said. "I refuse to take chances. That is why I have engaged the fittest and strongest young man I could find."
"You mean you've already done this?"
"Certainly I have," Henri said. "I am excited and impatient. I want to get on. The boy will be here any minute."
"Who is he?"
"A professional boxer."
"Good God."
"His name is Pierre Lacaille. I am paying him one thousand francs for the job."
"How did you find him?"
"I know a lot more people than you think, Oswald. I am not a hermit."
"Does the man know what he's in for?"
"I have told him that he is to participate in a scientific experiment that has to do with the psychology of sex. The less he knows the better."
"And the woman? Who will you use there?"
"Simone, of course," Henri said. "She is a scientist in her own right. She will be able to observe the reactions of the male even more closely than me."
"That she will," I said. "Does she realize what might happen to her?"
"Very much so. And I had one hell of a job persuading her to do t. I had to point out that she would be participating in a demonstration that will go down in history. It will be talked about for hundreds of years."
"Nonsense," I said.
"My dear sir, through the centuries there are certain great epic moments of scientific discovery that are never forgotten. Like the time when Dr Horace Wells of Hartford, Connecticut, had a tooth pulled out in 1844."
"What was so historic about that?"
"Dr Wells was a dentist who had been playing about with nitrous oxide gas. One day, he got a terrible toothache. He knew the tooth would have to come out, and he called in another dentist to do the job. But first he persuaded his colleague to put a mask over his face and turn on the nitrous oxide. He became unconscious and the tooth was extracted and he woke up again as fit as a flea. Now that, Oswald, was the first operation ever performed in the world under general anaesthesia. It started something big. We shall do the same."
At this point, the doorbell rang. Henri grabbed a pair of noseplugs and carried them with him to the door. And there stood Pierre, the boxer. But Henri would not allow him to enter until the plugs were rammed firmly up his nostrils. I believe the fellow came thinking he was going to act in a blue film, but the business with the plugs must have quickly disillusioned him. Pierre Lacaille was a bantamweight, small, muscular, and wiry. He had a flat face and a bent nose. He was about twenty-two and not very bright.
Henri introduced me, then ushered us straight into the adjoining laboratory where Simone was working. She was standing by the lab bench in a white overall, writing something in a notebook.
She looked up at us through thick glasses as we came in. The glasses had a white plastic frame.
"Simone," Henri said, "this is Pierre Lacaille." Simone looked at the boxer but said nothing. Henri didn't bother to introduce me.
Simone was a slim thirtyish woman with a pleasant scrubbed face. Her hair was brushed back and plaited into a bun. This, together with the white spectacles, the white overall, and the white skin of her face, gave her a quaint antiseptic air. She looked as though she had been sterilised for thirty minutes in an autoclave and should be handled with rubber gloves. She gazed at the boxer with large brown eyes.
"Let's get going," Henri said. "Are you ready?"
"I don't know what's going to happen," the boxer said. "But I'm ready." He did a little dance on his toes.
Henri was also ready. He had obviously worked the whole thing out before I arrived. "Simone will sit in that chair," he said, pointing to a plain wooden chair set in the middle of the laboratory. "And you, Pierre, will stand on the six-metre mark with your noseplugs still in."
There were chalk lines on the floor indicating various distances from the chair, from half a metre up to six metres.
"I shall begin by spraying a small quantity of liquid on to the lady's neck," Henri went on addressing the boxer. "You will then remove your noseplugs and start walking slowly toward her." To me he said, "I wish first of all to discover the effective range, the exact distance he is from the subject when the molecules hit."
"Does he start with his clothes on?" I asked.
"Exactly as he is now."
"And is the lady expected to cooperate or to resist?"
"Neither. She must be a purely passive instrument in his hands."