"Two druggists in Radville!" he mused. "Is it possible?... Then it's
Harry's mistake if the scheme fails; he said this was a one-horse
country town, but I'm blest if it isn't a thriving metropolis! Two!...
Here, I'm going to have a look."
He turned up Beech and presently discovered the object of his quest, a
two-storey building of "frame," guiltless of the ardent caress of a
paint-brush since time out of mind. On the ground floor the windows
were made up of many small square panes, several of which had been
rudely mended. Through them the interior glimmered darkly. In the
foreground stood a broken bottle, shaped like a mortuary urn and half
full of pink liquid. Beside it reposed a broken packing-box in which
bleary camphor-balls nestled between torn sheets of faded blue paper.
Of these a silent companion in misery stood on the far side of the
window: a towering pagoda-like cage of wire in which (trapped,
doubtless, by means of some mysterious bait known only to alchemists)
three worn but brutal-looking sponges were apparently slumbering in
exhaustion. Back of these a dusty plaster cast of a male figure lightly
draped seemed to represent the survival of the fittest over some
strange and deadly patent medicine. The recessed door bore an
inscription in gold letters, tarnished and half obliterated:
AM GRAHAM
RUGS & CHEM C LS