“Let’s look at the box.”
“You don’t be thinkin’, doctor, there’s any ’arm?”
“Harm! Bread and ginger. Take the lot. Sit down, Smith,” and Dr. Tugler’s emphasis ended the discussion with the finality of fate.
When the room had cleared, and the last bottle had been passed through the dispensary window, that opened like the window of a railway booking-office into the alley at the side of the shop, Dr. Tugler marched into the surgery where Murchison had finished syringing the wax out of an old man’s ears.
“Overslept yourself, Murchison? I must buy you an alarum, you know, if it happens again.”
Murchison was washing his hands at the tap over the sink.
“No,” he said, “I was up half the night.”
John Tugler, cheerful little bully that he was, noticed the sag of the big man’s shoulders, and the peculiar harshness of his voice.
“Get through with it all right?”
Murchison stared momentarily at Dr. Tugler over his shoulder, a glance that had the significance of the flash of a drawn sword.