It seemed to be the room where prescriptions were compounded.  As it was empty, he allowed himself a hasty survey.  All manner of bottles were ranged along the walls; there was a high counter with scales, a desk, and a sink.  At the back he could see the bamboo curtain which he remembered having noticed from the shop.  The whole place was in the utmost disorder:  mortars, glass beakers, a typewriter, cabinets of labels, dusty piles of old prescriptions strung on filing hooks, papers of pills and capsules, all strewn in an indescribable litter.  Some infusion was heating in a glass bowl propped on a tripod over a blue gas flame.  Aubrey noticed particularly a heap of old books several feet high piled carelessly at one end of the counter.

Looking more carefully, he saw that what he had taken for a mirror over the prescription counter was an aperture looking into the shop.  Through this he could see Weintraub, behind the cigar case, waiting upon some belated customer with his shop-worn air of affability.  The visitor departed, and Weintraub locked the door after him and pulled down the blinds.  Then he returned toward the prescription room, and Aubrey ducked out of view.

Presently he risked looking again, and was just in time to see a curious sight.  The druggist was bending over the counter, pouring some liquid into a glass vessel.  His face was directly under a hanging bulb, and Aubrey was amazed at the transformation.  The apparently genial apothecary of cigar stand and soda fountain was gone.  He saw instead a heavy, cruel, jowlish face, with eyelids hooded down over the eyes, and a square thrusting chin buttressed on a mass of jaw and suetty cheek that glistened with an oily shimmer.  The jaw quivered a little as though with some intense suppressed emotion.  The man was completely absorbed in his task.  The thick lower lip lapped upward over the mouth.  On the cheekbone was a deep red scar.  Aubrey felt a pang of fascinated amazement at the gross energy and power of that abominable relentless mask.

“So this is the harmless old thing!” he thought.

Just then the bamboo curtain parted, and the woman whom he had seen upstairs appeared.  Forgetting his own situation, Aubrey still stared.  She wore a faded dressing gown and her hair was braided as though for the night.  She looked frightened, and must have spoken, for Aubrey saw her lips move.  The man remained bent over his counter until the last drops of liquid had run out.  His jaw tightened, he straightened suddenly and took one step toward her, with outstretched hand imperiously pointed.  Aubrey could see his face plainly:  it had a savagery more than bestial.  The woman’s face, which had borne a timid, pleading expression, appealed in vain against that fierce gesture.  She turned and vanished.  Aubrey saw the druggist’s pointing finger tremble.  Again he ducked out of sight.  “That man’s face would be lonely in a crowd,” he said to himself.  “And I used to think the movies exaggerated things.  Say, he ought to play opposite Theda Bara.”