business, please, I have a lecture to give.’
And he continued to stare at me with a somewhat pugnacious expression.
As I think back to this small reunion I sense again how energised and indefatigable the Doctor was in those days. Recalling his eager yet assertive gaze, I can see now that there was still almost an innocence in him for he had not as yet been fully tested. His most recent case at that time, involving a man called Canning, had proved a typical triumph, even if it had irritated the local constabulary. The Doctor was yet, in fact, to be seriously bloodied in any quest he had undertaken. That would come, and a good deal sooner than either of us might have wished.
‘I merely came to tell you I could make myself available again for my duties.’
He looked at me with a certain amusement. ‘Your letter said you were obliged to undertake intensive studies for another course. So in that at least you must now be accomplished?’
After the business with the watch I had written him a polite but vague letter, explaining that I had to take a leave of absence as his clerk to further my studies and his written reply did not press me though he must have guessed the real reason.
‘I feel enough time has been devoted to them.’
‘Do you really, now? Well, you may assist me in my operating theatre today.’
Of course it was the lowliest task he could have offered, and an hour later I was running around like a madman fetching instruments and dressings as he desperately tried to speed the progress of a woman patient having an emergency amputation. In those days patients survived in a fairly direct ratio to the speed with which their doctors worked, and I truly sensed the Doctor’s frustration for I had to mop his brow over thirty times as he cut and cleaned. I had rarely seen him so determined, but he managed to get the woman off the table alive.
Later, as I performed the mundane chore of sorting through his surgery papers, he sat in his workroom making a few notes and offering very little in the way of conversation. Then he got up, without even glancing in my direction, and disappeared through the locked door leading to the extraordinary room where he kept relics and other more private records of criminal cases. Clearly I was not be admitted to this inner sanctum again for the moment.
It took me some time to finish my work and at last I walked home, deliberately extending my journey until I reached the street where the beggar Samuel played his violin. The night was cold yet clear, and the stars above made a perfect setting for the player, who seemed in a kind of trance and did not notice me. But I paused some minutes to listen and am glad that I did, for it was a sound I was destined never to hear again in this world.
THE STRANGE STUDENT
Next day I resumed my studies and found myself sitting mournfully alongside my friends in Macfarlane’s pharmacology lecture hall. I say ‘mournfully’ because among the many dreary teachers in Edinburgh at that time, Macfarlane was without contest the dreariest of all. In fact he was probably the dullest lecturer I have ever known in my life.
The man’s idea of teaching was to walk up and down reciting endless lists and formulae that several centuries ago he had learned by heart. A small, nervous, bespectacled figure with a trim white beard, he rarely looked at his audience, and sometimes the words themselves became entirely incomprehensible, little more than a mumble.
‘I have in my time,’ he was saying on this occasion, ‘counted nineteen compounds which may be of use to help a patient suffering from the condition. And we list them for you in order of strength …’
On one side of me was Colin Stark, a cheerful student from Dundee. On the other was Neill, from the colonies, at that time my closest companion. He was a little older than me and his features generally bore an expression of amusement, but today he looked pained by Macfarlane’s ramblings and leant
And he continued to stare at me with a somewhat pugnacious expression.
As I think back to this small reunion I sense again how energised and indefatigable the Doctor was in those days. Recalling his eager yet assertive gaze, I can see now that there was still almost an innocence in him for he had not as yet been fully tested. His most recent case at that time, involving a man called Canning, had proved a typical triumph, even if it had irritated the local constabulary. The Doctor was yet, in fact, to be seriously bloodied in any quest he had undertaken. That would come, and a good deal sooner than either of us might have wished.
‘I merely came to tell you I could make myself available again for my duties.’
He looked at me with a certain amusement. ‘Your letter said you were obliged to undertake intensive studies for another course. So in that at least you must now be accomplished?’
After the business with the watch I had written him a polite but vague letter, explaining that I had to take a leave of absence as his clerk to further my studies and his written reply did not press me though he must have guessed the real reason.
‘I feel enough time has been devoted to them.’
‘Do you really, now? Well, you may assist me in my operating theatre today.’
Of course it was the lowliest task he could have offered, and an hour later I was running around like a madman fetching instruments and dressings as he desperately tried to speed the progress of a woman patient having an emergency amputation. In those days patients survived in a fairly direct ratio to the speed with which their doctors worked, and I truly sensed the Doctor’s frustration for I had to mop his brow over thirty times as he cut and cleaned. I had rarely seen him so determined, but he managed to get the woman off the table alive.
Later, as I performed the mundane chore of sorting through his surgery papers, he sat in his workroom making a few notes and offering very little in the way of conversation. Then he got up, without even glancing in my direction, and disappeared through the locked door leading to the extraordinary room where he kept relics and other more private records of criminal cases. Clearly I was not be admitted to this inner sanctum again for the moment.
It took me some time to finish my work and at last I walked home, deliberately extending my journey until I reached the street where the beggar Samuel played his violin. The night was cold yet clear, and the stars above made a perfect setting for the player, who seemed in a kind of trance and did not notice me. But I paused some minutes to listen and am glad that I did, for it was a sound I was destined never to hear again in this world.
THE STRANGE STUDENT
Next day I resumed my studies and found myself sitting mournfully alongside my friends in Macfarlane’s pharmacology lecture hall. I say ‘mournfully’ because among the many dreary teachers in Edinburgh at that time, Macfarlane was without contest the dreariest of all. In fact he was probably the dullest lecturer I have ever known in my life.
The man’s idea of teaching was to walk up and down reciting endless lists and formulae that several centuries ago he had learned by heart. A small, nervous, bespectacled figure with a trim white beard, he rarely looked at his audience, and sometimes the words themselves became entirely incomprehensible, little more than a mumble.
‘I have in my time,’ he was saying on this occasion, ‘counted nineteen compounds which may be of use to help a patient suffering from the condition. And we list them for you in order of strength …’
On one side of me was Colin Stark, a cheerful student from Dundee. On the other was Neill, from the colonies, at that time my closest companion. He was a little older than me and his features generally bore an expression of amusement, but today he looked pained by Macfarlane’s ramblings and leant
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