Chapter 19

The Hound of the Baskervilles

We said goodbye to our unhappy friend, and an hour later we were at the station of Coombe Tracey. A boy was waiting on the platform.

“Any orders, sir?”

“You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have left behind, he is to send it to Baker Street.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And ask at the station office if there is a message for me.”

The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes gave to me. It ran:

Wire received. Coming down with warrant. Arrive five-forty.

Lestrade.

“That is in answer to the wire I sent this morning. He is the best of the professionals at Scotland

Yard, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we should call on Mrs. Laura Lyons.”

His plan was beginning to be clear. He would use the baronet to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, and they could act safely. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds.

Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office.

“I am investigating the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville,” said he. “My friend Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have told him, and also of what you have not told him about that matter.”

“What have I not told him?” she asked angrily.

“You have said that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o’clock. We know that was the place and hour of his death. What is the connection between these events?”

“There is no connection.”

“I don’t think so. This is a case of murder. And the evidence is against your friend Mr. Stapleton and his wife—”

The lady sprang from her chair.

“His wife!” she cried.

“The lady who called herself his sister is really his wife.”

“His wife!” she said again. “His wife! He is not a married man.”

Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

“Prove it to me! And if you can do so—!” Her eyes said more than any words.

“I am ready to do it,” said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. “Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is written ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur’. Do you recognize them?”

She looked at them and then at us with the hard face of a desperate woman.

“Mr. Holmes,” she said, “this man offered me marriage if I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the scoundrel. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why—why? Now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. When I wrote the letter I never meant any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.”

“I believe you, madam,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Perhaps it will be easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can correct me if I make any mistake. It was Stapleton’s idea to write the letter.”

“He dictated it.”

“I think that he said you could receive help from Sir Charles for your divorce?”

“Exactly.”

“And then after you had sent the letter?”

“He told me that it would hurt his self-respect if any other man gave the money for the divorce, and that he would give his last penny to help me.”

“And then you read the reports of the death in the paper?”

“Yes.”

“And he made you promise not to say that you were going to meet Sir Charles?”

“He did. He said that the death was mysterious, and that I should be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me and I was silent.”

“Our case becomes clearer,” said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the train from town. “But even now we have no clear evidence against this very cunning man.”

The London express came into the station, and a small man sprang from a carriage. We all three shook hands.

“Anything good?” he asked.

“Are you armed, Lestrade?”

The little detective smiled.

“As long as I have my trousers I have a pocket, and as long as I have my pocket I have something in it.”

“Good! My friend and I are also armed. The biggest case for years,” said Holmes. “We have two hours before we start. Never been here? I don’t think you will forget your first visit.”

About two hours later we were on our way to Merripit House.

“It does not seem a very cheerful place,” said the detective with a shiver, looking round him at the gloomy hills and at the fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. “I see the lights of a house ahead of us.”

“That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must ask you to walk on tiptoe and to talk only in a whisper.”

Holmes stopped us when we were about two hundred yards from the house.

“This will do,” said he.

“We are to wait here?”

“Yes. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What is the window, which shines so brightly?”

“That is the dining-room.”

“See what they are doing—but don’t let them know that they are watched!”

I tiptoed down the path and looked through the window.

There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat at the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking, but the baronet looked pale and frightened. Perhaps he thought of the lonely walk across the moor after his visit.

As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair. I heard the door open and the sound of boots on gravel. I saw the naturalist stop at the door of an outhouse. A key turned in a lock, and as he went in, there was a strange noise from inside. He was only a minute or so there, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and entered the house. I saw him in the dining room again, and I went quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen.

“You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?” Holmes asked when I had finished my report.

“No.”

“Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room?”

“I have no idea.”

I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a thick, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction.

“It’s moving towards us, Watson.”

“Is that serious?”

“Very serious, indeed it can ruin my plans. He can’t be very long, now. It is already ten o’clock. Our success and even his life may depend on his coming out before the fog is over the path.”

The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright. But the fog was drifting closer and closer to the house

“If he isn’t out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered.”

He dropped on his knees and put his ear to the ground. “Thank God, I think that I hear him coming.”

A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. The steps grew louder, and the baronet passed close to where we lay. As he walked he kept looking over his shoulder.

“Look out! It’s coming!” cried Holmes.

At the same moment Lestrade gave a shriek of terror and threw himself on the ground. I sprang to my feet, pistol in hand, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful beast which had sprung out on us from the fog. It was a hound, an enormous black hound. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes shone in the dark, its muzzle was luminous.

The huge black creature was running down the path, following our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed it to pass. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a cry of pain. It did not stop, however. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror.

Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. In front of us we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry. I saw the beast spring upon him. But the next moment Holmes shot five times into the creature’s side. It fell to the ground. The giant hound was dead.

Sir Henry had fainted and lay where he had fallen. We looked at his throat, but there was no injury, we had been in time. Then our friend’s eyes opened.

“My God!” he whispered. “What was it?”

“It’s dead, the curse of your family is over,” said Holmes.

It was a terrible creature which was lying before us. It was as large as a small lioness. Even now the muzzle shone, and the small, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I put my hand on the muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers shone in the darkness.

“Phosphorus,” I said.

“You have saved my life,” said Sir Henry. “What do you plan to do?”

“To leave you here. You are not strong enough for any adventures tonight. But we must arrest our man,” said Holmes.

We walked swiftly down the path to Merripit House.

The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room, but we could not see the man whom we were looking for. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.

“There’s someone in here,” cried Lestrade. “I can hear a movement. Open this door!”

Holmes struck the door with his foot and it opened. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.

In the centre of it there was a post, which had been placed at some period to support the roof. To this post a figure was tied, one towel passed round the throat and was tied at the back of the post. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes looked at us. As we untied her, Mrs. Stapleton fell on the floor in front of us.

“Is he safe?” she asked. “Has he escaped?”

“He cannot escape us, madam.”

“No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?”

“Yes.”

“And the hound?”

“It is dead.”

“Thank God!” she cried.

“Tell us then where we can find him,” said Holmes.

“There is only one place where he can be,” she answered. “There is an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there he made preparations.”

Holmes held the lamp to the window.

“See,” said he. “No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight. The fog is too thick.”

“He may find his way in, but never out,” she cried. “He cannot see the marks along the path through the mire. We put them together, he and I.”

It was evident to us that we could not go to the mire until the fog had lifted. We left Lestrade in the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. We told him the story of the Stapletons, he took bravely the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the night’s adventures had been a shock to his nerves, and in the morning he lay in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them would travel together round the world before Sir Henry became once more the hearty man he had been before he became master of Baskerville Hall.

On the morning after the death of the hound the fog lifted and Mrs. Stapleton showed us a path through the mire. Only once we saw that someone had passed that way before us. Some dark thing was projecting from the mire. It was an old black boot.

“It is our friend Sir Henry’s missing boot,” said Holmes.

“Thrown there by Stapleton last night.”

“Exactly. It shows that he reached this place yesterday. He used it to set the hound on the track of Sir Henry.”

As we at last came on the island, we all looked for his footsteps. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island on that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, this cold and cruel-hearted man had met his end.

We found the place where the hound had been kept. It was an old cottage with a post and a chain inside. There were a lot of bones all around, among them a small skeleton.

“A dog!” said Holmes. “A spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, he could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and there were those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. Sometimes he could keep the hound in the outhouse at Merripit, but it was always a risk. In the tin there is, no doubt, the luminous mixture to put on the dog. I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that we have never helped to stop a more dangerous man.”