"I have become parasitical on
Thorndyke! 'The big fleas have little fleas,' you know. I am the
additional fraction trailing after the whole number in the rear of a
decimal point."
"Don't you believe him, Berkeley," interposed Thorndyke. "He is the
brains of the firm. I supply the respectability and moral worth. But you
haven't answered my question. What are you doing here on a summer
afternoon staring into a wigmaker's window?"
"I am Barnard's locum; he is in practice in Fetter Lane."
"I know," said Thorndyke; "we meet him occasionally, and very pale and
peaky he has been looking of late. Is he taking a holiday?"
"Yes. He has gone for a trip to the Isles of Greece in a currant ship."
"Then," said Jervis, "you are actually a local G.P. I thought you were
looking beastly respectable."
"And, judging from your leisured manner when we encountered you," added
Thorndyke, "the practice is not a strenuous one. I suppose it is
entirely local?"
"Yes," I replied. "The patients mostly live in the small streets and
courts within a half-mile radius of the surgery, and the abodes of some
of them are pretty squalid.
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