Before he could have half filled his glass I had passed out of the office and was in the street he had mentioned. Drunk as he was, his information proved correct, and a chemist's shop, with the name of Dittmer over the door, was the third house on the right hand side. I entered and handed the prescription to the venerable-looking man I found behind the counter.
"I am afraid you will have some difficulty in getting this made up," he said after he had read it. "Two of the drugs are not in common use, and personally I do not keep them. Is the case an urgent one?"
"It's a matter of life and death," I answered. "All my happiness in life depends upon it. If you can not help me, can you direct me to any one who will? I assure you there is not a moment to be lost."
Evidently the man was touched by my anxiety. At any rate he went out of his way to do a kindly action, for which no amount of gratitude on my part will ever be able to repay him.
"I do not know anything about the merits of the prescription," he said, "but if these two drugs are necessary, I don't mind telling you that I think I know where I can procure them. I have an old friend, a quack, so the other chemists call him, who is always trying experiments. It is within the bounds of possibility he may have them. If you will wait here for a few minutes I'll run up to his house and see. It is only a few doors from here, and he is always at home at this hour."
"I will await only too willingly," I answered earnestly. "Heaven grant you may be successful!"
He said no more but ran out of the shop. While he was gone I paced up and down in a fever of impatience. Every minute seemed an hour, and as I looked at my watch and realized that if I wished to get back to the hotel within the time specified by Pharos I had only ten minutes in which to do it, I felt as if my heart would stop beating. In reality the man was not gone five minutes, and when he burst into the shop again he waved two bottles triumphantly above his head.
"There's not another man in Hamburg could have got them!" he cried with justifiable pride. "Now I can make it up for you."
Five minutes later he handed the prescription to me.
"I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently for your kindness," I said as I took it. "If I can get back with it in time you will have saved a life that I love more than my own. I do not know how to reward you, but if you will accept this and wear it as a souvenir of the service you have rendered me, I hope you will do so."