The Cat, the Dog, and the Bad Old Dame

The chemist had certain odd notions that were an agreeable reflex of his name, which was Oddfellow—Herbert Oddfellow. Our man was odd about diet. It was believed that he lived without cookery, that he browsed, as it were, upon fruit and salads. Ironically enough he earned a considerable income by the sale of nostrums for indigestion. At any hour of the day you were likely to find him devouring apples, nibbling artichokes, or sucking an orange, and your inquiry for a dose of bismuth or some such aid would cause by an obscure process a sardonic grin to assemble upon his face. You would scarcely have expected to find a lot of indigestion in the working-class neighbourhood where his pharmacy flourished, but it was there, certainly; he was quite cynical about it—his business throve abundantly upon dietary disorders.

There were four big ornamental carboys in his shop windows—red, violet, green, and yellow; incidentally he sold peppermint drops and poisons, and at forty years of age he was reputed to be the happiest, as he was certainly the healthiest, man in the county. This was not merely because he was unmarried ... but there, I declare this tale is not about Oddfellow himself, but about his lethal chamber.

You must know that the sacrificial exactions of the war did not spare cats and dogs. They, too, were immolated—but painlessly—scores of them, at Oddfellow’s. He was unhappy about that part of his business, very much so; he loved animals, perhaps189 rather more than people, for, naturally, what he ministered to in his pharmacy was largely human misery or human affectation. Evil cruel things—the bolt of a gaol, the lime of the bird-snarer, the butcher’s axe—maddened him.

In the small garden at the back of the dispensary the interments were carried out by Horace the errand boy, a juvenile with snub nose and short, tough hair, who always wore ragged puttees. He delighted in such obsequies, and had even instituted some ceremonial orgies. But at last these lethal commissions were so numerous that the burial-ground began to resemble the habitat of some vast, inappeasable mole, and thereupon Oddfellow had to stipulate for sorrowing owners to conduct the interments themselves in cemeteries of their own. Even this provision did not quell the inflow of these easily disposable victims.

Mr. Franks brought him a magnificent cat to be destroyed. (Shortly afterwards Franks was conveyed to the lunatic asylum, an institution which still nurtures him in despotic durance.) Pending the return of Horace, who was disbursing remedial shrapnel to the neighbourhood, the cat, tied to a rail in the shop, sat dozing in the sunlight.

“What a beautiful cat!” exclaimed a lady caller, stroking its purring majesty. The lady herself was beautiful. Oddfellow explained that its demise was imminent—nothing the matter with it—owner didn’t want it.

“How cruel, you sweet thing, how cruel!” pronounced the lady, who really was very beautiful.190 “I would love to have it. Why shouldn’t I have it ... if its owner doesn’t want it? I wonder. May I?”

Manlike was Oddfellow, beautiful was the lady; the lady took the cat away. Twenty-four hours later the shop counter was stormed by the detestable Franks, incipient insanity already manifest in him. He carried the selfsame cat under his arm—it had returned to its old home. Franks assailed the abashed chemist with language that at its mildest was abusive and libellous. His chief complaint seemed to repose upon the circumstance of having paid for the cat’s destruction, whereupon Oddfellow who, like an Irishman, never walked into an argument—he simply bounced in—threw down the fee upon the counter and urged Mr. Franks to take his cat, and his money, and himself away as speedily as might be. This reprehensible behaviour did by no means allay the tension; the madman-designate paraded many further signs of his impending doom.

“Take your cat away, I tell you,” shouted Oddfellow, “take it away. I wouldn’t destroy it for a thousand pounds!”

“You won’t, oh?”

“Put an end to you with pleasure!”

“Yes?”

“Make you a present of a dose of poison whenever you like to come and take it!”

“Yes?”

“I will!”

Franks went away with his tom-cat.

“O ... my ... lord!” ejaculated the chemist, that being his favourite evocation;191 “I’ll do no more of this cat-and-dog business. I shall not do any more; no, I shall not. I do not like it at all.”

But in the afternoon his assistant, who had not been informed of this resolve, accepted two more victims for the lethal chamber, another tom-cat and a collie dog.

“O ... my ... lord!” groaned the chemist distractedly; but there was no help for it, and, calling his boy Horace, they carried the cat into the storeroom. The lethal box was in a corner; all round were shelves of costly drugs. The place did not smell of death; it smelt of paint, oils, volatile spirits, tubs of white lead, and packing-cases that contained scented soap or feeding-bottles. As Oddfellow prepared his syringe, a sporting friend named Jerry peeped in to watch the proceedings.

“Shut the door!” cried little Horace. “I can’t hold him.... He’s off!”

Sure enough the cat, sensing its danger, had burst from his arms and sprung to one of the shelves. Immediately phials of drugs began to fall and smash upon the floor, and as the cat rushed and scurried from their grasp disaster was heaped upon disaster; the green, glowing eyes, the rigid teeth, that seemed to grow as large as a tiger’s, confounded them, and the havoc deterred them; they dared not approach the spitting fury, it was a wild beast again, and a bold one.

“O ... my ... lord!” said Oddfellow, also swearing softly, for bottles continued to slip from shelf to floor. “What’s to be done?”

“Open the door—let the flaming thing go,” said Jerry.

“No fear,” replied the chemist, “I’ve had enough of these dead cats turning up like Banquo’s ghost—just enough.”

Horace intervened. “My father’s got a gun, sir; shall I run round home and get it?”

Jerry’s eyes began to gleam, the costly phials kept dropping to the floor—the chemist distractedly agreed—the boy Horace ran home and fetched a rook rifle. But his prowess was so poor, his aim so disastrous—he shot a hole through a barrel of linseed oil and received a powerful squirt of it in his eye—that Jerry deprived him of the weapon. Even then several rounds had to be fired, a carboy of acid was cracked, a window smashed, a lamp blown to pieces, before poor tom was finally subdued. Oddfellow had gone into the shop. He could not bring himself to witness the dismal slaughter. Every repercussion sent a pang of pity to his heart, and when at last the bleeding body of the cat was laid in the yard to await removal by its owner he almost vomited and he almost wept; if he had not sniffed the bunch of early primroses in his buttonhole he would surely have done one or the other.

“Now the dog,” whispered the chemist. The collie was very subdued, good dog, he gave no trouble at all, good dog, he was hustled into the big box, good dog, and quietly chloroformed. Later on, a countryman with his cart called for the body. The old woman who owned it was going to make a hearthrug with the skin. It was enveloped in a sack; the countryman carried it out on his shoulder like a butcher carrying the carcase of a sheep and flung it193 into the cart. The callousness of this struck Mr. Oddfellow so profoundly that he announced there and then, positively and finally, that he would undertake no more business of that kind, and doubly to insure this the lethal box was taken into the yard and chopped up.

Now, the poor old woman who owned the dog called next day at the chemist’s shop. Behind her walked the very collie. For a moment or two Oddfellow feared that he was to be haunted by the walking ghost of cats and dogs for evermore. Said the old woman: “Please, sir, you must do him again; he’s woke up!”

She described at great length the dog’s strange revival. It stood humbly enough in the background, a little drowsy, but not at all uneasy.

“No,” cried Oddfellow firmly; “can’t do it—destroyed my tackle. You take him home, ma’am; he’s all right. Dog that’s been through that ought to live a long life. Take him home again, ma’am,” he urged, “he’s all right.”

The woman was old; she was feeble and poor; she was not able to keep him now, he was such a big dog. Wasn’t it hard enough to get him food, things were so dear, and now there was the licence money due! She hadn’t got it; she never would have it; she really couldn’t afford it.

“You take him, sir, and keep him, sir.”

“No, I can’t keep a dog—no room.”

“Have him, sir,” she pleaded; “you’ll be kind to him.”

“No, no; ... but ... if it’s only his licence ... I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay for his licence rather than destroy him.”

Putting his hand into the till, he laid three half-crowns before her. The old woman stared at the chemist, but she stared still more at the money. Then, thanking him with quaint, confused dignity, she gathered it up, but again stood gazing meditatively at the three big coins, now lying, so unexpectedly, in her thin palm.

“Good dog,” said the chemist, giving him a final pat. “Good dog!”

Then the poor old woman, with tears in her eyes, turned out of Mr. Oddfellow’s shop and, followed by her dog, walked off to a quarter of the town where there was another chemist who kept a lethal chamber.