The laws of nature, however, were against Olliphant from the very beginning. As the bottle darted out of his reach, sheer momentum carried him headlong into the dim reaches of Salts and Syrups. Gravity delivered him along with a quantity of gummy liquid and gritty crystallines to the floor. Settled in a sticky puddle of wreckage, Olliphant glanced around with a reddish, enraged expression. Besides salt and syrup, there was blood in his eye.
At a distance sufficiently out of reach, yet insultingly near, the bottle was bobbing about amusedly. Indeed, Olliphant distinctly heard a soft chuckling sound coming from its direction. With a jungle roar he surged up from the floor and launched a second attack. This netted him another disastrous collision, this time with the glassware department. The Pharmacy was swiftly being transformed into a scene of chaos.
In the interval, the bottle had retreated to a position by the doorway and was humming maddeningly to itself. Suddenly it burst into full-throated song.
"Goin' to Louisiana," it warbled, "for a case of good whis-kee! Goin' to Louisiana with a hussy on mah knee!"
Olliphant settled himself sadly on an untidy mound of rubble and began to brood. There was no use denying it; the thing was just too much for him. As he watched the bottle bob back and forth in time with the idiot song, a large tear trickled down his cheek. Olliphant Gunn was just a broken reed in the holocaust of Life, and his ruination had come about through a mere mad bottle. The man began to blubber hopelessly.
It was during this heart-rending climax that the nurse, a small blonde, appeared at the doorway and stared into the pharmacy with large wondering blue eyes.
The invisible George, who had been enjoying his own singing to the utmost, stopped at the sight of the newcomer in mid verse. Things, he decided, were beginning to look up. Warmed by the liquor, George was dazzled and enchanted.
Unfortunately the nurse was neither of these. Striding through the door, she stepped into a trickle of syrup and skidded dangerously toward Olliphant. George, feeling that things were moving in the wrong direction entirely, seized upon the floundering blonde with one deft swoop of his invisible arm and lifted her to dry ground. It was a moment before he was able to account for the girl's shrill screams.
A period of stupefied silence followed as the nurse glanced around suspiciously. As a girl who, in line of business, had experienced considerable traffic with men, she was disposed to know to the exact moment when she had been forcibly clutched by a masculine hand. Also, which only made matters worse, she was a girl who knew where she had been clutched and why.