THE DESERTED LABORATORY
There was a small rusty old stove, in a bad state of repair, two broken chairs, and a table in the single room. An irregular row of bottles, of various shapes and sizes, filled a long shelf, and sundry worthless looking utensils were scattered about. At the end of the room was a mildewed husk mattress on some boards which had been nailed to the ends of four pieces of wood, about two feet from the floor. Suspended from nails which were driven along the boards next to the roof, were large bunches of dried plants of various kinds.
“This is ’is nest all right, an’ this is where ’e makes ’is dope,” remarked Sipes, and a minute later he held up a battered looking object, and exclaimed, “Dam’d if ’ere ain’t my kittle!”
We had indeed stumbled upon an abandoned secret retreat of Doc Looney. Like an illicit still, his laboratory had been hidden in untrodden recesses, away from the paths of men. In this quiet spot he could meditate, and compound his mysterious “powerful remedies” with little fear of intrusion by his female pursuers, and out of it he could emerge and roam where his fancy led.
Into this deep seclusion the turmoil of warring schools of medicine, and the abuse of a captious world could not come. His medicines and his theories were beyond criticism. Such a fortress enabled him to concoct ammunition with which to offer battle to the diseases of his kind, without fear of capture and incarceration, which he may or may not richly deserve.
If the motto “similia similibus curantur” be true, some terrible human suffering could be alleviated with some of the stuff we found on the shelf. Many of the bottles were empty, but we removed the stopper from one of them, and regretted it. We were assailed by a pungent and sickening odor. Sipes remarked that “sumpen must ’a’ crawled in that bottle an’ died.” On taking it out to the light we discovered that it was about half filled with angle worms, whose identity was practically gone.
“I know wot that stuff is,” said Sipes, “it’s angle worm ile. That old cuss said oncet ’e was goin’ to squirt some in John’s knees to make ’em supple, when ’e operated on ’im, but John wouldn’t let ’im monkey with ’em.”
There were no labels on the bottles, with the exception of one which was marked “Bromide.” The remaining materia medica could not be identified.
We examined the odd pieces which had been used in building the shanty, with much interest.