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."

So saying, I took from my pocket my gold watch and chain and handed them
across the counter to him. Then, without waiting for an expression of
his gratitude, I passed into the street and, hailing a cab, bade the man
drive me as fast as his horse could go to my hotel.

Reaching it, I paid him with the first coin I took from my pocket and
ran upstairs. What my feelings were as I approached the room where I had
left Pharos and Valerie together I must leave you to imagine. With a
heart beating like a sledge-hammer I softly turned the handle of the
door and stole in, scarcely daring to look in the direction of the sofa.
However, I might have spared myself the pain, for neither Pharos nor
Valerie were there, but just as I was wondering what could have become
of them the former entered the room.

"Have you got it?" he inquired eagerly, his voice trembling with
emotion.

"I have," I answered, and handed him the medicine. "Here it is. At one
time I began to think I should have to come back without it."

"Another ten m