Disclaimer: Not mine...blah blah...not mine...

It is not often that I am taken by surprise, but I confess I was taken aback by Watson's statement. While Watson is a brave, loyal and intelligent comrade, he has never been one for observation and deduction. Indeed, I remember, when we had first met, his dismissing the idea of deducing anything meaningful from a logical sequence of observations as "ineffable twaddle". It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did, I found myself stupidly blurting out the single word, "What!"

Watson merely smirked.

"I thought you'd be surprised," said he.

"Indeed"

"Oh, and there is a lot more. I was going through Johnson's drawers, and I found more drugs, mostly opiates folded within his socks. Whoever had ransacked, and later murdered Johnson, was undoubtedly looking for them. There were no needle marks on his arms. Johnson was no addict. Neither did he trade in them – though there was a massive variety of drugs, many of them alkaloids, they were all tiny samples. He had labeled most of them, some he recognized, or had analysed, some had been named as extracts of plants, and there were some unlabelled ones too, drugs he had absolutely no idea about. I brought them to Lestrade's notice, but he did not think that they had any relevance to the case. At the time though, he was under the impression that the murder had been motivated by a burglary. In his words, 'every fifth man probably uses some drug or the other Doctor, Johnson's private life is no concern of ours.'"

"Really, Watson, you outdo yourself. I never would have expected you to go through somebody's sock drawer."

Watson looked sheepish. At my questioning glance he muttered that the day had been wet, and that he had needed to replace his socks.

At seeing me smile he said, "That is beside the point, Holmes. I brought back the drugs. They are in my desk drawer at Baker Street. I then went through the articles he had written, most of them had been published by the Telegraph, and none of them were on drugs. Their subjects varied from society gossip to politics. Apparently, our Mr. Johnson did not specialize in anything.

"I had been introduced to Miss Edwards and her brother by Lestrade. Mr. Edwards had known Johnson since their University days. They were both students of economics, and Edwards assured me that Johnson knew nothing of chemistry, medicine or botany. I am nearly certain somebody helped Johnson with the identification and labeling. I have been looking around the most obvious testing centres, and although I haven't had any luck so far, I met Stamford – he's still at Bart's – and he promised to look around. I have covered almost a third of London."

"My dear Watson, you have been most thorough."

"But why should these drugs be inducement to kill? As Lestrade said, every fifth man in London probably uses them."

"We shall see, Watson. We shall, see. Lestrade seems rather annoyed, doesn't he?"

Lestrade had just entered the restaurant, looking rather angry. He joined us at the table, muttered an apology for keeping us waiting and added something about constables needing constant spoon-feeding. A waiter came to take our order and Lestrade's mood improved considerably.

"All the post addressed to Mr. Johnson is picked up by Scotland Yard I trust," I asked Lestrade.

"Naturally." he replied

"Have you come across any bill from a hospital, college, or a pharmacy among Johnson's recent correspondence or perhaps from a chemist or botanist?"

He looked astonished, then said, "A Mr. Jason Murray, Chemist, sent a bill of £1 4d. I have it in the Johnson file down at the Yard."

"There you go, Watson." I said. Watson looked murderous.