20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

As we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.

�You mustn’t blame me if you don’t get on with him,’ he said; �I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement so you must not hold me responsible.’

�If we don’t get on it will be easy to part company,’ I answered. �It seems to me, Stamford,’ I added, looking hard at my companion, �that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter.

Is this fellow’s temper so formidable, or what is it? Don’t be mealy mouthed about it.’

�It is not easy to express the inexpressible,’ he answered with a laugh. �Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes – it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.

To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.’

�Very right too.’

�Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.’

�Beating the subjects!’

�Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death; I saw him at it with my own eyes.

’

�And yet you say he is not a medical student?’

�No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.’ As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the great hospital: It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors.

Near the farther end a low arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.

This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work.