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Page 88
"Any other point, sir?"
"Well, we may have to apply to you again if Mrs.
Barclay should prove to be in serious trouble."
"In that case, of course, I'd come forward."
"But if not, there is no object in raking up this
scandal against a dead man, foully as he has acted.
You have at least the satisfaction of knowing that for
thirty years of his life his conscience bitterly
reproached him for this wicked deed. Ah, there goes
Major Murphy on the other side of the street.
Good-by, Wood. I want to learn if anything has
happened since yesterday."
We were in time to overtake the major before he
reached the corner.
"Ah, Holmes," he said: "I suppose you have heard that
all this fuss has come to nothing?"
"What then?"
"The inquest is just over. The medical evidence
showed conclusively that death was due to apoplexy.
You see it was quite a simple case after all."
"Oh, remarkably superficial," said Holmes, smiling.
"Come, Watson, I don't think we shall be wanted in
Aldershot any more."
"There's one thing," said I, as we walked down to the
station. "If the husband's name was James, and the
other was Henry, what was this talk about David?"
"That one word, my dear Watson, should have told me
the whole story had I been the ideal reasoner which
you are so fond of depicting. It was evidently a term
of reproach."
"Of reproach?"
"Yes; David strayed a little occasionally, you know,
and on one occasion in the same direction as Sergeant
James Barclay. You remember the small affair of Uriah
and Bathsheba? My biblical knowledge is a trifle
rusty, I fear, but you will find the story in the
first or second of Samuel."
Adventure VIII
The Resident Patient
Glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of
Memoirs with which I have endeavored to illustrate a
few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, I have been struck by the difficulty
which I have experienced in picking out examples which
shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those
cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force
of analytical reasoning, and has demonstrated the
value of his peculiar methods of investigation, the
facts themselves have often been so slight or so
commonplace that I could not feel justified in laying
them before the public. On the other hand, it has
frequently happened that he has been concerned in some
research where the facts have been of the most
remarkable and dramatic character, but where the share
which he has himself taken in determining their causes
has been less pronounced than I, as his biographer,
could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled
under the heading of "A Study in Scarlet," and that
other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria
Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and
Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian.
It may be that in the business of which I am now about
to write the part which my friend played is not
sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of
circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring
myself to omit it entirely from this series.
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