“O ... my ... lord!” groaned the chemist distractedly; but there was no help for it, and, calling his boy Horace, they carried the cat into the storeroom. The lethal box was in a corner; all round were shelves of costly drugs. The place did not smell of death; it smelt of paint, oils, volatile spirits, tubs of white lead, and packing-cases that contained scented soap or feeding-bottles. As Oddfellow prepared his syringe, a sporting friend named Jerry peeped in to watch the proceedings.
“Shut the door!” cried little Horace. “I can’t hold him.... He’s off!”
Sure enough the cat, sensing its danger, had burst from his arms and sprung to one of the shelves. Immediately phials of drugs began to fall and smash upon the floor, and as the cat rushed and scurried from their grasp disaster was heaped upon disaster; the green, glowing eyes, the rigid teeth, that seemed to grow as large as a tiger’s, confounded them, and the havoc deterred them; they dared not approach the spitting fury, it was a wild beast again, and a bold one.
“O ... my ... lord!” said Oddfellow, also swearing softly, for bottles continued to slip from shelf to floor. “What’s to be done?”
“Open the door—let the flaming thing go,” said Jerry.
“No fear,” replied the chemist, “I’ve had enough of these dead cats turning up like Banquo’s ghost—just enough.”
Horace intervened. “My father’s got a gun, sir; shall I run round home and get it?”
Jerry’s eyes began to gleam, the costly phials kept dropping to the floor—the chemist distractedly agreed—the boy Horace ran home and fetched a rook rifle. But his prowess was so poor, his aim so disastrous—he shot a hole through a barrel of linseed oil and received a powerful squirt of it in his eye—that Jerry deprived him of the weapon. Even then several rounds had to be fired, a carboy of acid was cracked, a window smashed, a lamp blown to pieces, before poor tom was finally subdued. Oddfellow had gone into the shop. He could not bring himself to witness the dismal slaughter. Every repercussion sent a pang of pity to his heart, and when at last the bleeding body of the cat was laid in the yard to await removal by its owner he almost vomited and he almost wept; if he had not sniffed the bunch of early primroses in his buttonhole he would surely have done one or the other.
“Now the dog,” whispered the chemist. The collie was very subdued, good dog, he gave no trouble at all, good dog, he was hustled into the big box, good dog, and quietly chloroformed. Later on, a countryman with his cart called for the body. The old woman who owned it was going to make a hearthrug with the skin. It was enveloped in a sack; the countryman carried it out on his shoulder like a butcher carrying the carcase of a sheep and flung it into the cart. The callousness of this struck Mr. Oddfellow so profoundly that he announced there and then, positively and finally, that he would undertake no more business of that kind, and doubly to insure this the lethal box was taken into the yard and chopped up.
Now, the poor old woman who owned the dog called next day at the chemist’s shop. Behind her walked the very collie. For a moment or two Oddfellow feared that he was to be haunted by the walking ghost of cats and dogs for evermore. Said the old woman: “Please, sir, you must do him again; he’s woke up!”