Free Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Tainted Canister by Thomas A. Turley Page B

trouble, and so far as I know his health was generally good. There may be something to Merrick’s impressions after all.”
    â€œNo . . . I don’t think so, Doctor.” Inspector Lestrade’s hesitation was just palpable. “We have our own man looking into it. But I’d be obliged if you’d tell Mr. Holmes about the matter as soon as he returns. We’d like him to examine ‘the scene of the crime’ on Thursday morning.” Lestrade invested this penny-dreadful phrase with a comical significance, signaling that our mutual interrogation was finally at an end. Taking his departure, he shook my hand with no want of cordiality.
    â€œProbably there’s no crime at all,” he chuckled, “but we may as well make use of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, now that he’s come back to us. We at the Yard thank Heaven for it, Dr. Watson, every day.”
    â€œAs do I, Inspector.” Closing the door behind him, I extinguished the lamps in my consulting room, pondering our absent friend’s return.
    Although the account I had given to Lestrade was accurate enough, there was much more that I could have told him concerning Richard Anstruther. Most of my information came from my late wife, who knew the man for fully half of her brief term on Earth. Mary told me of him soon after we were married. We had just received a note from Anstruther, stating that he had recently purchased another practice in the neighbourhood and asking to make my acquaintance. My new wife seemed both embarrassed and obscurely pleased.
    â€œHe is an old friend of mine, you see, John, or—well—perhaps a little more than that. I met him first in Edinburgh, after I caught measles at Mrs. Parker’s boarding house. He was only a medical student in those days, but already quite sure of himself and (in the eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl) terribly dashing. I must admit that my recovery from a simple case of measles was protracted!” She blushed and smiled at me; my own smile was a trifle forced.
    â€œDid you see much of him?”
    â€œYes, for awhile. I was very young, of course, and we were severely chaperoned. Then my father telegraphed that he was coming home from India; and, as you know, he did come home but disappeared before I ever saw him. After that, I was far too frantic to have thoughts of romance, and Richard and I fell out of touch. I learned, much later, that he had taken his degree and gone to India himself, as an army surgeon. Just as you did in Afghanistan, my dear.”
    â€œAnd with no lovely young lady at home pining for me, I can assure you!”
    â€œOh, John! I didn’t pine for him. I didn’t see him for six years, until after he returned from India. By then, he had almost passed from my mind.”
    â€œBut you had not from his.”
    â€œWell, no. In the spring of ’85, after I had been with Mrs. Forrester for some time as governess, I heard from him again. Richard wrote that he had left the army and was opening a small practice in Kensington. He asked to visit me, and Mrs. Forrester—who was always very kind—had no objection. In fact, she rather encouraged us, even at the risk of losing her children’s governess.”
    â€œHappily for me, it appears that she did not.”
    â€œIndeed.” Mary now looked more troubled than nostalgic. “Something had changed about him, John. Of course, I was no longer a silly girl myself, so I regarded him with more maturity. But he was different, too. Richard had always been ambitious—telling me of the great medical discoveries that he would make one day—and in India he seemed to have learnt a great deal about fevers. Yet, individual patients no longer seemed to matter to him, as surely they should to any doctor. He talked now of building great clinics and research centers, of inoculating millions against mass epidemics; but never of saving just one man, one woman, one child. There was an