"The oaf!" cried Shagarach, but the assailant was gone in a flash.
"Water! Water!" shrieked the office boy, writhing in his arms.
The lawyer glanced around. The wainscoting was charred where the liquor had fallen. The boy's jacket was eaten away in holes. It was vitriol that had been thrown.
"A quart of lime-water at the nearest apothecary's," he shouted to Aronson, who had just come back. "And the first physician you can fetch. Don't lose a second."
Aronson was off like the wind, while Shagarach unbuttoned the boy's vest and tore away the saturated portions of his undergarments that were clinging to his shriveled skin. Already great blisters rose under the action of the acid.
"Will you telephone central 431, Inspector McCausland," he said to the tenant opposite who had been attracted in by the noise. "Ask him to call at once, and state that I have been attacked again."
It was the physician who arrived first, then Aronson. Walter's burns were bathed profusely with the lime-water, and the blisters pricked open by the doctor's needle. After the first agony he bore the pain without a groan. His breast and palm would be scarred for life, but the only wound on the visible parts was a long, pear-shaped corrosion extending along the side of his neck. You may imagine how tenderly Shagarach nursed him and how excitedly Aronson ran to and fro fetching whatever was asked for.
"It is time this should be stopped," said McCausland, entering. But he was not alone. He held a great bloodhound in leash. "It was the same customer, I suppose? Can you give me any article belonging to the man? I picked up this in the doorway."
He held up a white wig.
"The false beard," cried Walter, holding it out from the stretcher on which they were bundling him.