The Antidote

Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio.  With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc).  Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, along with top Federal agents from all over the country, attend an important meeting in Washington, DC.  The Speaker says that since the beginning of Prohibition, all alcohol produced under government license has had one of various denaturants added to it: pyridine, methanol, etc.  But the Underworld has always found a way to renature the alcohol. The Speaker is happy to announce that the government chemists in his Department have finally come up with a denaturant for which there is no Antidote

Un chimiste handicapé, mais ambitieux, réussit à se procurer la formule pour régénérer l'alcool que le gouvernement dénature afin de contrer la mafia. Il profite de cette découverte pour gravir les échelons de l'organisation.

Wally Baltzer tiene a sus químicos trabajando en un antídoto contra el antirefinante que impide que el alcohol común pueda ser usado para hacer licor… la solución definitiva para los contrabandistas.