CHAPTER XXV
It was six months since Prokop had had any chemical apparatus in his hands.
He examined one instrument after another; everything of which he had ever dreamed was there, gleaming, brand-new and arranged with pedantic precision. There was a desk and a technical library, an enormous table covered with chemicals, cupboards containing delicate instruments, a chamber for experimental explosions, a room containing transformers, and apparatus of which he had never even heard. He had looked over about half these marvels when, following a sudden impulse, he rushed to the table for a certain barium salt, some nitrate acid, a few other things, and began an experiment in the course of which he succeeded in burning his fingers, smashing a test-tube to fragments and burning a hole in his coat. Satisfied with this beginning he sat down at the writing-table and jotted down two or three notes.
Then he had another look round the laboratory. It reminded him rather of a newly instituted perfumery. Everything was arranged too carefully; but after changing the places of a few things it became more to his taste, more intimate. In the midst of the most intense work he suddenly stopped himself.
“Aha!” he said, “this is how they're trying to
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