"What can I do?" I whispered hoarsely. "For pity's sake let me help in some way. She must not die, she shall not die!"
"In that case you had better bestir yourself," he said. "There is but one remedy, and that we must employ. Had it not been for your folly I should have it with me now. As it is, you must go out and search the town for it. Give me writing materials."
These were on a neighbouring table, and when I had put them before him he seized the pen and scrawled something upon a sheet of notepaper, then folding it, he handed it to me.
"Take that with all speed to a chemist," he said. "Tell him to be particularly careful that the drugs are fresh, and bring it back with you as soon as you can. In all probability you will have a difficulty in procuring it, but you must do so somewhere. Rest assured of this, that if she does not receive it within an hour nothing can possibly save her."
"I will be back in less than half that time," I answered, and hastened from the room.
From a man in the street I inquired the address of the nearest chemist, and, as soon as he had directed me, hastened thither as fast as my legs could carry me. Entering the shop, I threw the prescription upon the counter, and in my impatience could have struck the man for his slowness in picking it up. If his life had depended upon his deciphering it properly he could not have taken longer to read it. Before he had got to the end of it my impatience had reached boiling heat.
"Come, come," I said, "are you going to make it up or not? It is for an urgent case, and I have wasted ten minutes already."
The man glanced at the paper again, smoothed it out between his fat fingers, and shook his head until I thought his glasses would have dropped from his nose.
"I can not do it," he said at length. "Two of the drugs I do not keep in stock. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw another prescription like it."
"Why did you not say so at once?" I cried angrily, and snatching the paper from his hand, I dashed madly out and along the pavement. At the end of the street was another shop, which I entered. On the door it was set forth that English, French and German were spoken there. I was not going to risk a waste of time on either of the two first, however, but opened upon the man in his own language. He was very small, with an unwholesome complexion, and was the possessor of a nose large enough to have entitled him to the warmest esteem of the great Napoleon. He took the prescription, read it through in a quarter of the time taken by the other man, and then retired behind his screen. Scarcely able to contain my delight at having at last been successful, I curbed my impatience as well as I could, examined all the articles displayed in the glass case upon the counter, fidgeted nervously with the india-rubber change mat, and when, at the end of several minutes, he had not made it up, was only prevented from going in search of him by his appearance before me once more.