«What will you take?» asked the doctor.
«After that dreadfully cold place,» said Parker, «what I really want is gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought of it.»
«Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China with it,» replied Sir Julian in the same tone, «I have no objection to make. Tea in the library at once,» he added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.
«I don't use the downstairs rooms much, except the dining-room,» he explained, as he ushered his guest into a small but cheerful library on the first floor. «This room leads out of my bedroom and is more convenient. I only live part of my time here, but it's very handy for my research work at the hospital. That's what I do there, mostly. It's a fatal thing for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work get behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good theory and all correct diagnosis. One must keep one's hand and eye in training. This place is far more important to me than Harley Street, and some day I shall abandon my consulting practice altogether and settle down here to cut up my subjects and write my books in peace. So many things in this life are a waste of time, Mr. Parker.»
Mr. Parker assented to this.
«Very often,» said Sir Julian, «the only time I get for any research work — necessitating as it does the keenest observation and the faculties at their acutest — has to be at night, after a long day's work and by artificial light, which, magnificent as the lighting of the dissecting room here is, is always more trying to the eyes than daylight. Doubtless your own work has to be carried on under even more trying conditions.»
«Yes, sometimes,» said Parker; «but then you see,» he added, «the conditions are, so to speak, part of the work.»
«Quite so, quite so,» said Sir Julian; «you mean that the burglar, for example, does not demonstrate his methods in the light of day, or plant the perfect footmark in the middle of a damp patch of sand for you to analyze.»
«Not as a rule,» said the detective, «but I have no doubt many of your diseases work quite as insidiously as any burglar.»
«They do, they do,» said Sir Julian, laughing, «and it is my pride, as it is yours, to track them down for the good of society. The neuroses, you know, are particularly clever criminals — they break out into as many disguises as — »