I said privately to Peters afterwards—
"How would Holmes have acted if this had happened to him?"
And Peters said, "For once I can see as clear as mud what Sherlock would have done. He would have said, 'I think in this extraordinary case, Watson, we may safely let well alone.'"
And that's what Peters did.
THE DOCTOR'S PARROT
No. II
THE DOCTOR'S PARROT
When Johnson maximus, young Corkey's cousin, left Merivale, he went to sea, and a very curious thing happened. He went into what is called the mercantile marine, which means liners, and not battleships or destroyers; still you see a good deal of the world, and have not got to fight for your country, but only for yourself. A pension is not so certain in the mercantile marine as it is in the Royal Navy; but, Johnson maximus told Corkey, when he came off a voyage from the East Indies, that he was hopeful. He had seen a good many curious things and brought home several, including a parrot, chiefly grey with a good deal of red about its tail. But what was far more wonderful than the parrot was the reason that Johnson maximus had brought it home.
He had brought it home, and also a very fine tiger's skin, as gifts to Dr. Dunstan, and when Corkey reminded him very naturally that he had always hated Dunstan as much as anybody when he was at Merivale, and been jolly thankful to leave and go on to the Worcester, training ship for the mercantile marine, Johnson maximus admitted it, but confessed that, looking back, he had found it different, and felt that Dunstan was an awfully good sort and that he owed him a great deal. But all the same, Johnson maximus never would come and see the Doctor in after life. Corkey asked him why, and he said he wanted to remember the awe and terror of the Doctor, and thought, if he ever saw him again it might not be the same; because, since the Merivale days, Johnson had seen so many queer places and things, including his own captain in the mercantile marine, who, Johnson maximus said, was himself one of the wonders of the deep.
Of course Johnson maximus left Merivale long before I came there. He was, in fact, nearly twenty when he sent the parrot by young Corkey; and it seemed that the Doctor had never had a gift from an old pupil until that time; and though Corkey said he thought the Doctor would rather have had almost anything than a parrot, still it was so; and he took the parrot and the tiger skin; and Corkey told me that Johnson maximus got a letter of four pages from Dr. Dunstan, thanking him for these things, and telling Johnson many facts about parrots in general.