A CHEMIST'S CLEVER TRICK

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 89, 16 April 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

A CHEMIST'S CLEVER TRICK

What might have proved a very tragici occurrence "was adroitly nipped in the but on a recent Sunday by a Parisian chemist An elegantly-dressed young woman, wearing a thick veil over her face, went into a pharmaceutical establishment at Clichy, and asked for a phial of vitriol. The chemist, whose suspicions were aroused by the mysterious manner of his fair customer asked her some questions, to which she returned evasive replies. He then gave her, instead of vitriol, a bottle of perfumed water, and directed a man to follow the fair damsel and to watch her movements. The amateur detective did so, and soon saw the woman take up her position at a street corner, phial in hand. After having carefully uncorked the bottle, she waited, and as a young man well known in the neighbourhood passed by she flung its contents with a yell of triumph in his face. The man received the perfumed water in his eyes, but, although it only made him smart for a moment, he roared like a bull of Bashan, and cried out that he was blinded for ever. Meanwhile, the emulator of Marie Beer, who thought she had inflicted a terrible punishment on her falsehearted Adonis, ran away with the speed of an Atalanta, vainly pursued by some of the bystanders who had witnessed the scene. The chemist's man, however, set everybody's mind at ease by describing the pious fraud employed by his master for the prevention of another Parisian drama.