While this untimely denouement was rounding out in the hallway, a mad drama of another sort was beginning to ferment in the Pharmacy.
Olliphant Gunn, the rotund and habitually foggy keeper of the dopes and drugs, had been watching it for several minutes; there was trouble brewing in the Salts and Syrups—trouble of a most mysterious and upsetting nature. The containers, for all the world as though they had suddenly been endowed with some idiotic life of their own, had begun to shift about all by themselves. Watching a jar of salts hurl itself to the floor and splash its contents out in a whitish mess, Olliphant Gunn concluded definitely that there was some sort of flimflam afoot.
This conclusion was stoutly strengthened as he witnessed the progress of his private bottle from its hiding place amongst the medicants to a position in mid-air in front of the shelves. Olliphant began to quiver about the dewlaps. He quivered even more as the bottle uncapped itself, tilted upward and emptied a noticeable portion of its contents into—into absolutely nothing at all!
Olliphant fell back in his chair, slack of jaw, and it is doubtful, had anyone been able to apprise him of the truth of the matter, that he'd have felt any better about it. To a man in his cups, as Olliphant was, the news does not come lightly that he is in the company of a thirsty ghost, with an unerring nose for whiskey, and a predisposition for celebration.
Olliphant watched in bleary disbelief as the bottle repeated the tilting and emptying process. Then his mood began to change. Regardless of what this obviously demented bottle thought it was up to, it had no right to deplete his private reserves in this callous fashion. The slack jaw of Olliphant Gunn hitched itself up and became firm.
"Stop that!" Olliphant roared. "You stop that right now, damnit!"
For a moment the bottle wavered, as though startled, then defiantly upended a third time and brought the level of the coveted liquor down still further. Quite as though to rub salt in the wound, it burped with grandiose satisfaction.
"Damnation!" Olliphant gasped. "I'll teach you, you blathering bottle!"
Heaving his considerable bulk up out of his chair, he hurled himself bodily toward the object of his wrath.