This conclusion, to which my reflections led again and again, committed me to the dilemma that either this villain must be allowed to go his way unmolested, if the police could find no clue to his identity—a position that I utterly refused to accept; or that the one supremely skilful investigator should be induced, if possible, to take up the inquiry. In the end I decided to call on Thorndyke and frankly lay the facts before him, but to postpone the interview until I had seen Miss D’Arblay and ascertained what view the police took of the case, and whether any new facts had transpired.
The train of reflection which brought me to this conclusion had brought me also, by way of Pentonville, to the more familiar neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, and I had just turned into a somewhat squalid bystreet, which seemed to bear in the right direction, when my attention was arrested by a brass plate affixed to the door of one of those hybrid establishments, intermediate between a shop and a private house, known by the generic name of “Open Surgery.” The name upon the plate—“Dr. Solomon Usher”—awakened certain reminiscences. In my freshman days there had been a student of that name at our hospital; a middle-aged man (elderly, we considered him, seeing that he was near upon forty), who, after years of servitude as an unqualified assistant, had scraped together the means of completing his curriculum. I remembered him very well: a facetious, seedy, slightly bibulous but entirely good-natured man, invincibly amiable (as he had need to be), and always in the best of spirits. I recalled the quaint figure that furnished such rich material for our schoolboy wit; the solemn spectacles, the ridiculous side-whiskers, the chimney-pot hat, the formal frock-coat (too often decorated with a label secretly pinned to the coattail, and bearing some such inscription as “This style 10/6,” or other scintillations of freshman humour), and, looking over the establishment, decided that it seemed to present a complete congruity with that well-remembered personality. But the identification was not left to mere surmise, for even as my eye roamed along a range of stoppered bottles that peeped over the wire blind, the door opened and there he was, spectacles, side-whiskers, top-hat, and frock-coat, all complete, plus an œdematous-looking umbrella.
He did not recognize me at first—naturally, for I had changed a good deal more than he had in the five or six years that had slipped away—but inquired gravely if I wished to see him. I replied that it had been the dearest wish of my heart, now at length gratified. Then, as I grinned in his face, my identity suddenly dawned on him.
“Why, it’s Gray!” he exclaimed, seizing my hand. “God bless me, what a surprise! I didn’t know you. Getting quite a man. Well, I am delighted to see you. Come in and have a drink.”
He held the door open invitingly, but I shook my head.
“No, thanks,” I replied. “Not at this time in the day.”
“Nonsense,” he urged. “Do you good. I’ve just had one myself. Can’t say more than that, excepting that I am ready to have another. Won’t you really? Pity. Should never waste an opportunity. Which way are you going?”
It seemed that we were going the same way for some distance and we accordingly set off together.
“So you’ve flopped out of the nest,” he remarked, looking me over, “at least so I judge by the adult clothes that you are wearing. Are you in practice in these parts?”
“No,” I replied, “I am doing a locum. Only just qualified, you know.”
“Good,” said he. “A locum’s the way to begin. Try your ’prentice hand on somebody else’s patients and pick up the art of general practice, which they don’t teach you at the hospital.”
“You mean bookkeeping and dispensing and the general routine of the day’s work?” I suggested.
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “I mean practice; the art of pleasing your patients and keeping your end up. You’ve got a lot to learn, my boy. Experientia does it. Scientific stuff is all very well at the hospital, but in practice it is experience, gumption, tact, knowledge of human nature, that counts.”
“I suppose a little knowledge of diagnosis and treatment is useful?” I suggested.
“For your own satisfaction, yes,” he admitted, “but for practical purposes a little knowledge of men and women is a good deal better. It isn’t your scientific learning that brings you kudos, nor is it out-of-the-way cases. It is just common sense brought to bear on common ailments. Take the case of an aurist. You think that he lives by dealing with obscure and difficult middle and internal ear cases. Nothing of the kind. He lives on wax. Wax is the foundation of his practice. Patient comes to him as deaf as a post. He does all the proper jugglery—tuning-fork, otoscope, speculum, and so on, for the moral effect. Then he hikes out a good old plug of cerumen, and the patient hears perfectly. Of course, he is delighted. Thinks a miracle has been performed. Goes away convinced that the aurist is a genius; and so he is if he has managed the case properly. I made my reputation here on a fish-bone.”
“Well, a fish-bone isn’t always so very easy to extract,” said I.
“It isn’t,” he agreed. “Especially if it isn’t there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you about it,” he replied. “A chappie here got a fish-bone stuck in his throat. Of course, it didn’t stay there. They never do. But the prick in his soft palate did, and he was convinced that the bone was still there. So he sent for a doctor. Doctor came, looked in his throat. Couldn’t see any fish-bone, and, like a fool, said so. Tried to persuade the patient that there was no bone there. But the chappie said it was his throat and he knew better. He could feel it there. So he sent for another
