With that man in the field one's morning paper presented
infinite possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace,
Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell
me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest
tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider
which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults,
purposeless outrage -- to the man who held the clue all could
be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student
of the higher criminal world no capital in Europe offered
the advantages which London then possessed. But now ----"
He shrugged his shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state
of things which he had himself done so much to produce.
At the time of which I speak Holmes had been back for some months,
and I, at his request, had sold my practice and returned to share
the old quarters in Baker Street. A young doctor, named Verner,
had purchased my small Kensington practice, and given with
astonishingly little demur the highest price that I ventured to
ask -- an incident which only explained itself some years later
when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes's, and
that it was my friend who had really found the money.
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