"Prego, Signore—but not at all," he said. "We will sell it to you. This is a good prescription—good firms have filled it before. It is only that we have not the morphia in tablets—but in solution. And we have it not with the atropia."
"Ah!" said Chesney. His face relaxed. "Well, show me the kind you have," he said curtly, but not uncivilly.
The clerk brought a little cardboard box divided into cells. These cells, which were lined with cotton-wool, each held a small glass globule filled with a solution of morphia and sealed at one end with wax.
"It is safer so, Signore. One escapes to infect oneself. One breaks the seal and fills the hypodermic siringa direct from these little globules."
Chesney was silent for a second, gazing at the little transparent amphoræ that held Nepenthe. Then he said:
"Do you keep hypodermic syringes? I have broken mine."
He winced as the unnecessary lie escaped him. It made things more plausible, but need not have been uttered. Untruth seemed somehow the inevitable attendant of morphia, even when innocently indulged in as he was now about to do. Yet all this time his pulse was racing. The clang of the little bell attached to the door of the pharmacy, that rang when customers went in or out, made him start and glance round each time that it sounded....
He went out and got again into the carrozzella. In his pocket were three of the little globules and a shining new hypodermic syringe in a black Morocco case.
"Villa Bianca!" he said.
The vetturino glanced up, struck by the new, firm ring in his voice.