The Cat, the Dog, and the bad old Dame
The chemist had certain odd notions that were an agreeable reflex of his name, which was Oddfellow—Herbert Oddfellow. Our man was odd about diet. It was believed that he lived without cookery, that he browsed, as it were, upon fruit and salads. Ironically enough he earned a considerable income by the sale of nostrums for indigestion. At any hour of the day you were likely to find him devouring apples, nibbling artichokes, or sucking an orange, and your inquiry for a dose of bismuth or some such aid would cause by an obscure process a sardonic grin to assemble upon his face. You would scarcely have expected to find a lot of indigestion in the working-class neighbourhood where his pharmacy flourished, but it was there, certainly; he was quite cynical about it—his business throve abundantly upon dietary disorders.
There were four big ornamental carboys in his shop windows—red, violet, green, and yellow; incidentally he sold peppermint drops and poisons, and at forty years of age he was reputed to be the happiest, as he was certainly the healthiest, man in the county. This was not merely because he was unmarried ... but there, I declare this tale is not about Oddfellow himself, but about his lethal chamber.
You must know that the sacrificial exactions of the war did not spare cats and dogs. They, too, were immolated—but painlessly—scores of them, at Oddfellow’s. He was unhappy about that part of his business, very much so; he loved animals, perhaps rather more than people, for, naturally, what he ministered to in his pharmacy was largely human misery or human affectation. Evil cruel things—the bolt of a gaol, the lime of the bird-snarer, the butcher’s axe—maddened him.
In the small garden at the back of the dispensary the interments were carried out by Horace the errand boy, a juvenile with snub nose and short, tough hair, who always wore ragged puttees. He delighted in such obsequies, and had even instituted some ceremonial orgies. But at last these lethal commissions were so numerous that the burial-ground began to resemble the habitat of some vast, inappeasable mole, and thereupon Oddfellow had to stipulate for sorrowing owners to conduct the interments themselves in cemeteries of their own. Even this provision did not quell the inflow of these easily disposable victims.
Mr. Franks brought him a magnificent cat to be destroyed. (Shortly afterwards Franks was conveyed to the lunatic asylum, an institution which still nurtures him in despotic durance.) Pending the return of Horace, who was disbursing remedial shrapnel to the neighbourhood, the cat, tied to a rail in the shop, sat dozing in the sunlight.
“What a beautiful cat!” exclaimed a lady caller, stroking its purring majesty. The lady herself was beautiful. Oddfellow explained that its demise was imminent—nothing the matter with it—owner didn’t want it.
“How cruel, you sweet thing, how cruel!” pronounced the lady, who really was very beautiful. “I would love to have it. Why shouldn’t I have it ... if its owner doesn’t want it? I wonder. May I?”
Manlike was Oddfellow, beautiful was the lady; the lady took the cat away. Twenty-four hours later the shop counter was stormed by the detestable Franks, incipient insanity already manifest in him. He carried the selfsame cat under his arm—it had returned to its old home. Franks assailed the abashed chemist with language that at its mildest was abusive and libellous. His chief complaint seemed to repose upon the circumstance of having paid for the cat’s destruction, whereupon Oddfellow who, like an Irishman, never walked into an argument—he simply bounced in—threw down the fee upon the counter and urged Mr. Franks to take his cat, and his money, and himself away as speedily as might be. This reprehensible behaviour did by no means allay the tension; the madman-designate paraded many further signs of his impending doom.