AI-Generated Graded Readers 　　Masaru Uchida, Gifu University 　　 　　Publication webpage: 　　https://www1.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/a1/ai-generated_graded_readers.html 　　 　　Publication date: April 17, 2026 　　 　　About This Edition 　　 　　This book is a simplified English adaptation created for extensive reading practice. 　　The text was generated using ChatGPT and prepared for intermediate English learners as part of an educational project. 　　 　　Target reading level: CEFR A2-B1 　　 　　This edition aims to support fluency development through accessible vocabulary, expanded narration, and improved readability while preserving the original story structure. 　　 　　Source Text 　　 　　Original work: The Hound of the Baskervilles 　　Author: Arthur Conan Doyle 　　 　　Source: Project Gutenberg 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/ 　　 　　Full text available at: 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2852/pg2852.txt 　　 　　The original text is in the public domain. 　　 　　Copyright and Use 　　 　　This simplified edition is intended for educational and non-commercial use only. 　　 　　The source text is provided by Project Gutenberg under its public domain policy. 　　Users should refer to the Project Gutenberg License for full terms: 　　 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html 　　 　　This adaptation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited for readability and educational purposes. 　　 　　Disclaimer 　　 　　This edition is an educational adaptation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Project Gutenberg.

　　
　　Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Simplified Edition, Adapted and Simplified by ChatGPT)
　　
Part 1

　　Sherlock Holmes was sitting at the breakfast table when I came into our room at Baker Street. He was often late in the morning, unless he had worked all night, but that day he was already awake and quiet. Near the fireplace I saw the walking stick that our visitor had left behind the night before. I picked it up and looked at it with interest. It was a strong, heavy stick with a round head and a wide silver band under it. On the band were the words: “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.” and below that was the date 1884.
　　“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, though his back was turned to me, “what do you think of it?” I stared at him in surprise. I had made no sound that should tell him what I was doing. “How did you know I was studying the stick?” I asked. Holmes said calmly, “I do not have eyes in the back of my head, but I do have a bright coffee-pot in front of me. I can see your actions in that. Now tell me what you can learn about the owner.”
　　I was pleased by the challenge, because I had long watched Holmes at work and wanted to test myself. So I looked again at the stick and tried to follow his method. I said that the man must be a doctor, older rather than young, successful in his work, and respected by the people around him. The gift looked serious and solid, not cheap or careless. It seemed to belong to a country doctor, I added, because the end of the stick was badly worn from much walking. I also guessed that “C.C.H.” might be the name of a local hunting club whose members had thanked him for some medical help.
　　Holmes smiled and lit a cigarette. To my great pleasure, he praised me warmly at first. He said that I often spoke too little of my own abilities, and that even if I was not a genius, I had a useful mind that could bring light to another man’s thoughts. I confess that his words made me very happy, for he did not often praise me so openly. Then he took the stick from my hand and examined it more closely. He looked at it with his eyes, then with a lens, and after that he sat down again with a thoughtful face.
　　“You were not fully wrong,” he said at last, “but most of your ideas miss the mark.” I felt my pride fall at once. Holmes went on in his calm, dry way and said that the owner was certainly a country doctor and certainly a man who walked a good deal. But the rest, he said, needed work. “A gift to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunting club,” he explained. “And when I see the letters C.C.H., I think first of Charing Cross Hospital.” That was simple enough once he said it, and I had to admit that he was probably right.
　　From there Holmes built his picture of the man, step by step. If the stick came from friends at Charing Cross Hospital, then Dr. Mortimer had once worked in London before moving to the country. If the gift was made when he left the hospital, then he had probably not been a great doctor with an important London practice, because such a man would not leave the city for a small country life. So he had likely been a house-surgeon or some young doctor near the start of his career. The date on the stick showed that he had left five years earlier. Holmes therefore changed my “serious middle-aged doctor” into a man under thirty, kind by nature, not very ambitious, absent-minded, and the owner of a favorite dog.
　　“A dog too?” I said, laughing. Holmes pointed to the marks on the stick. A dog had often carried it in its mouth, holding it near the middle. The teeth marks were plain enough once he showed them to me. The jaw was too wide for a terrier, he said, but not wide enough for a mastiff. He was still speaking when he suddenly stopped and looked toward the window with sharp interest. “It is a curly-haired spaniel,” he said. “And if you want proof, Watson, the dog itself is now at our door, together with its master.”
　　A moment later our visitor came in. He surprised me at once. I had expected a common country doctor, thick and solid, but Dr. James Mortimer was a tall, thin man with a long nose and bright grey eyes behind gold glasses. His clothes were decent but untidy, and though he was not old, he already bent forward when he walked. There was something eager and gentle in his face, but also something strange and restless. As soon as he saw the stick in Holmes’s hand, he hurried toward it with clear relief. He said he had not been sure whether he had left it in our rooms or at another office, and he was very glad to have it back.
　　Holmes asked at once whether it had been a gift from Charing Cross Hospital. Dr. Mortimer looked surprised and said yes, it had come from friends there. But then Holmes made one of his rare small mistakes. He guessed that the gift had marked Mortimer’s move from hospital work to country practice. Mortimer corrected him. The gift, he said, had been given when he married. He had left the hospital because he needed to make a home of his own. Holmes accepted the correction with good grace. He said that our deductions were not entirely wrong, only a little bent out of shape.
　　The man then showed more of his odd nature. He insisted that Holmes should call him “Mister” Mortimer rather than “Doctor,” because he held only the title M.R.C.S. He called himself a man who merely picked up little pieces of knowledge from the edge of a great unknown world. Then he turned to me politely and said that he had heard my name before. After that he fixed his eyes on Holmes with open delight and spoke in a way so unusual that I could hardly keep a straight face. He admired Holmes’s skull, the shape of his head, and even asked whether he might run a finger along it. He added that a cast of Holmes’s skull would look very fine in a museum.
　　Holmes did not seem offended. He waved Dr. Mortimer into a chair and invited him to smoke. He had noticed from the doctor’s finger that he rolled his own cigarettes. Mortimer quickly pulled out paper and tobacco and made one with long, quick fingers that moved like insects. Holmes watched him in silence, but I knew from his eyes that he was deeply interested. Our visitor was clearly clever, but he was also absent-minded, odd, and more than a little foolish in ordinary social matters. Even so, he did not seem dangerous. He seemed instead like a man whose mind lived in strange studies and who had come to us because something had shaken him badly.
　　Holmes soon brought him back to the real point. “You did not come here only to study my head,” he said. Dr. Mortimer agreed at once. He said he had come because he was not a practical man and now faced a very serious and unusual problem. Then he made the mistake of saying that Holmes was the second greatest expert in Europe. Holmes lifted his eyebrows and asked who, then, was the first. Mortimer answered honestly that Bertillon would always appeal most to the truly scientific mind. Holmes grew cold at once and told him that perhaps he should consult Bertillon instead.
　　Dr. Mortimer saw his mistake and tried to repair it. He said that while Bertillon might satisfy the purely scientific man, Holmes stood alone in dealing with real affairs. Holmes let the matter pass, though not warmly. He leaned a little forward and spoke in a firmer tone. “That is enough, Dr. Mortimer,” he said. “Please stop going around the subject. Tell me clearly what problem has brought you here, and what help you want from me.” At that moment I felt, as I often did beside Holmes, that we were standing at the very edge of a new adventure, though we could not yet see its full shape.

Part 2

　　Dr. Mortimer put a folded paper on his knee and said that he had an old manuscript in his pocket. Holmes answered at once that he had already noticed it when the doctor entered the room. Mortimer then said that it was a very old family paper. Holmes took only a quick look at the edge of it and said that it must come from the early eighteenth century, unless it was false. Dr. Mortimer looked surprised and asked how he could know that so easily.
　　Holmes explained that he had seen part of the paper while the doctor was speaking. He said that a man who studied old documents should be able to judge the date within ten years or so. Mortimer then pulled the paper from his pocket and said that Holmes had been close, but not exact. The paper, he said, was dated 1742. He added that Sir Charles Baskerville had given it into his care, and that the sudden death of Sir Charles three months earlier had caused great talk in Devonshire.
　　Dr. Mortimer spoke with real feeling when he named the dead man. He said that Sir Charles had been not only his patient but also his friend. He described him as a practical, strong-minded man, not at all foolish or dreamy. Yet even such a man, he said, had taken this old paper very seriously. More than that, Sir Charles had come to fear that some dark end might truly wait for him. Holmes flattened the yellow paper on his knee, while I looked over his shoulder at the faded writing and the large date at the top.
　　Mortimer told us that the paper held an old family story, a legend that had passed down in the Baskerville line. Holmes answered that he understood that well enough, but he wanted to know why such a story mattered now, in a real and urgent problem. Mortimer said that the modern matter must be decided within twenty-four hours, but the legend was closely tied to it. With Holmes’s permission, he began to read. Holmes leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and listened without a word.
　　The story said that many people had told the tale of the Baskerville hound, but that this version came down directly from Hugo Baskerville’s own family line. It warned the sons of the family to learn from the past, to fear evil in their own hearts, and to remember that sin could bring punishment across generations. Then it turned to Hugo Baskerville himself, who had lived in the time of the Great Rebellion. He was described as a violent, cruel, and godless man. His neighbors might have accepted his wild behavior, but his special pleasure in cruelty made his name hated across the countryside.
　　This Hugo, the paper said, became deeply interested in the daughter of a farmer who lived near Baskerville Hall. The girl feared him and always kept away, because she knew his bad name. One autumn day, when her father and brothers were away, Hugo and several wicked friends rode to the farm, seized the girl, and carried her back to the Hall. They shut her in an upper room while they sat below, drinking, shouting, and singing far into the night. The paper said that Hugo, when drunk, used words so terrible that they might have cursed the very air.
　　At last the girl, driven wild with fear, escaped in a brave and desperate way. Ivy still covered the south wall of the Hall, and by holding to it she climbed down from the upper part of the house. Then she ran out across the moor toward her father’s farm, which lay several miles away. Some time later Hugo left his drinking friends to visit his prisoner, bringing food and drink. Instead, he found an empty room. When he saw that she was gone, his anger was like madness.
　　The old paper said that Hugo rushed back into the dining room and leapt onto the great table. In front of all his friends, he swore that he would give body and soul to the powers of evil if only he might catch the girl before she reached home. One of the drunken men cried that they should set the hounds on her trail. Hugo agreed at once. He called for his horse, gave the dogs a piece of the girl’s clothing so that they could follow her smell, and rode out over the moor in the moonlight, with the hounds crying behind him.
　　For a time the other men were too drunk and too confused to understand what had happened. Then they suddenly saw how terrible the matter had become. In great disorder they called for horses, pistols, and more wine, but at last they gathered themselves and rode after Hugo. There were thirteen of them. The moon shone brightly, and they followed the road that the poor girl must have taken if she hoped to reach her home. Even then, they were no longer full of laughter.
　　After a mile or two they met a shepherd on the moor and asked whether he had seen the chase. The man was shaking with fear and could hardly speak. At last he said that he had seen the girl running, with the hounds behind her. But he had seen something worse than that. He said that Hugo had ridden past him on his black horse, and that behind Hugo there had run a great black hound, silent and terrible, such a creature as no man would ever wish to see near him. At that, the drunken men cursed the shepherd and rode on, though fear had already begun to enter their hearts.
　　Soon they saw Hugo’s horse rushing back across the moor by itself, covered with foam, its bridle hanging loose and its saddle empty. That sight made them afraid in earnest. They drew closer together as they rode. Still they followed on, though any one of them, if alone, would gladly have turned back. At last they came upon the hounds, but the dogs themselves had lost all courage. Instead of running on, they stood close together at the head of a narrow valley, whining, shrinking away, and staring ahead with raised hair and wide eyes.
　　Most of the men would go no farther, but three, either the bravest or the most drunk, rode slowly down into the valley. There the ground opened into a wider place, where two ancient stones stood in the moonlight. In the center of that clear space lay the girl, dead from fear and tiredness before she could reach safety. Near her lay Hugo Baskerville. But it was not the sight of those two bodies that filled the riders with horror. Over Hugo there stood a huge black beast shaped like a hound, but larger than any hound ever seen by mortal eyes.
　　The paper said that the beast was tearing at Hugo’s throat when the three riders saw it. Then it lifted its blazing eyes and bloody mouth toward them. They screamed and fled across the moor in terror. One of them, the story said, died that same night from what he had seen, and the other two were broken men for the rest of their lives. Such was the beginning of the Baskerville curse. The writer ended by warning his sons never to cross the moor at those dark hours when evil powers are strongest.
　　When Dr. Mortimer finished reading, he pushed his glasses up and looked across at Holmes. Holmes only yawned and flicked the end of his cigarette into the fire. Mortimer asked whether he did not find the story interesting. Holmes answered that it might interest a collector of fairy tales, but that it could not yet mean much to a man who dealt in facts. Then Mortimer calmly took out a newspaper and said that he would give Holmes something more recent and practical.
　　It was a report from the Devon County Chronicle, printed only a few days after the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Holmes leaned forward more seriously now, and Mortimer began to read again. The report said that Sir Charles had become loved and respected in the county because of his kindness and generosity. He had made a great fortune in South Africa, come back to England, and settled at Baskerville Hall only two years earlier. Though he had no children, he had planned many improvements for the house and the land, and he had given money freely to local people and local charities.
　　The newspaper then turned to the night of his death. It said that Sir Charles had long suffered from heart trouble and nervous weakness. Each evening he usually walked in the yew alley before going to bed, and on the night of May fourth he went out as usual, planning to leave for London the next day. When he did not return, Barrymore the butler went looking for him and found his body at the far end of the alley. The ground was wet, so his footsteps could be followed. Near the gate leading from the alley to the moor, it seemed that he had stood still for some time. Then he had gone on, and after that his footprints seemed strange, as if he had walked on his toes.
　　The newspaper report said there were no signs of violence on the body, though Sir Charles’s face was so twisted in fear that even Dr. Mortimer had at first hardly known him. The doctors decided that he had died from heart failure. The report ended by saying that this sensible explanation was good for the district, since the next heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, would now be more likely to come and live at the Hall. When Mortimer finished, he folded the paper again and said that these were the public facts. Holmes thanked him and said the case did indeed sound interesting. Then he asked for the private facts.
　　At that, Dr. Mortimer became much more serious. He said that he had not spoken openly before because he did not wish to support foolish local superstition, and because anything darker would make Baskerville Hall impossible to live in. He said that Sir Charles had grown more and more afraid in the last few months. Though he would walk in his own grounds, he would not cross the moor at night. He truly believed that some dreadful fate hung over his family. More than once he had asked Dr. Mortimer whether he had ever seen some strange creature on the moor, or heard the sound of a hound in the dark.
　　Mortimer then told us of one evening, about three weeks before the death. He had come to the Hall and was standing with Sir Charles near the door when the older man suddenly stared over his shoulder in terrible fear. Mortimer turned quickly and thought that he saw a large black calf moving away at the head of the drive. He searched for it, but it had vanished. The sight left Sir Charles badly shaken. It was on that same evening that Sir Charles gave Mortimer the old family paper. Mortimer had tried to think little of the matter at the time, but now he could not forget it.
　　He went on to say that he himself had advised Sir Charles to go to London, hoping that a change of place would calm his mind and help his weak heart. Another neighbor, Mr. Stapleton, had agreed. But before the journey could happen, the death came. Mortimer rode to Baskerville Hall within an hour of Barrymore’s message and saw everything for himself. He followed the footprints in the yew alley, saw the place by the gate where Sir Charles had waited, noticed the change in the tracks, and examined the body before it had been moved. There was no wound on Sir Charles, but one thing in the official story was false.
　　Barrymore had told the inquest that there were no marks on the ground near the body. Mortimer now said that Barrymore himself had not noticed any, but he had. Holmes asked at once whether they were the footprints of a man or a woman. For a moment Dr. Mortimer looked from Holmes to me, and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Mr. Holmes,” he said, “they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.”

Part 3

　　I admit that a cold feeling passed through me when Dr. Mortimer spoke of the huge hound’s footprints. His voice shook, and it was plain that the memory still held power over him. Holmes, however, did not draw back. On the contrary, he leaned forward with sharp interest, and his eyes became bright and hard. He asked one quick question after another, not in a dreamy way, but like a man building a clear picture from small facts.
　　Mortimer answered that he had seen the marks as clearly as he saw us. Holmes wanted to know why he had said nothing before, and the doctor replied that it would have done no good. The prints had been some distance from the body, and no one else had noticed them. If he himself had not known the old family story, he might not have cared about them either. Holmes then asked whether there were many dogs on the moor, but Mortimer said that this had not been a sheep-dog or any common animal. It had been enormous.
　　Holmes next turned to the place itself. He asked what the night had been like, whether it had been raining, how wide the yew alley was, and whether there was grass beside the path. He also asked about the little gate that opened from the alley onto the moor. Mortimer answered carefully: the night had been damp, but not wet with fresh rain; the alley lay between two high yew hedges; and the gate had been closed and locked. Still, a man or beast could have climbed over it without much trouble.
　　Then Holmes came to the point that interested him most. He asked whether the strange prints had been on the path or on the grass. Mortimer said that no marks could be seen on the grass, but the hound’s prints had stood at the edge of the path on the side nearest the gate to the moor. Holmes asked again what had been seen by the gate itself. Mortimer answered that the gravel there had been confused with Sir Charles’s own footprints, and that he could make out nothing more. He had, however, one strong reason for believing that Sir Charles had waited there for several minutes.
　　Holmes’s face changed when he heard this. He wanted to know how Mortimer had judged the waiting time, and Mortimer answered in a way Holmes openly admired. The ash had dropped twice from Sir Charles’s cigar, which showed that he had stood still at the gate for some little time. Holmes called him a true colleague after our own heart, but his pleasure quickly turned to impatience. He struck his hand against his knee and cried that if only he himself had been there, the gravel might have told him everything. Instead, that chance was gone.
　　Mortimer then returned to the darker side of the matter. Holmes pressed him, asking why he still hesitated. At last the doctor admitted what he had tried not to say openly. Since Sir Charles’s death, he had heard several stories of a great creature seen on the moor, something bright, terrible, and not like any known animal. He had questioned the witnesses himself. One was a countryman, one a farrier, and one a farmer, and all had described the same fearful thing. The whole district, he said, was now living under a shadow of fear.
　　Holmes asked him directly whether he believed the matter to be supernatural. Mortimer answered honestly that he did not know what to believe. Holmes replied that he had so far kept his work within this world and would prefer not to fight the powers of hell themselves, if such powers truly stood behind the case. Even so, he reminded Mortimer that the footprint was a real, material thing. Mortimer only answered that the first hound in the old story had also been material enough to tear out a man’s throat. There was a strange silence after that.
　　Holmes then cut to the heart of the present problem. If Mortimer half believed in a devil on the moor, why had he come to Sherlock Holmes at all? Mortimer replied that he had not come mainly to ask for help in solving Sir Charles’s death. What he wanted was advice about Sir Henry Baskerville, the heir, who would arrive at Waterloo Station in a little more than an hour. He explained that after Sir Charles died they had searched for the younger man and found that he had been farming in Canada. By all reports he was an excellent fellow. Holmes asked whether there were any other claimants to the Baskerville estate.
　　Mortimer said there were none. Sir Charles had been the eldest of three brothers. The second brother had died young, leaving a son, Henry. The third brother, Rodger, had been the black sheep of the family, wild and dangerous, very like old Hugo Baskerville in the family painting. He had fled England, gone to Central America, and died there years before. Henry, then, was the last of the Baskerville line. Mortimer was now speaking not simply as a doctor, he said, but as one of the men responsible for Sir Charles’s will.
　　Holmes listened with his eyes half closed, and then answered in his cool way that if there truly were some evil force against the Baskervilles, it ought to be able to harm Sir Henry in London just as easily as in Devonshire. A power that could act only in one parish seemed absurd to him. Mortimer did not enjoy this dry manner, but he still asked for advice. Holmes gave it at once. Mortimer was to meet Sir Henry, say nothing yet about the danger, and bring him to Baker Street the next morning. He wanted twenty-four hours to think.
　　After Mortimer left, Holmes settled into one of those moods of inward delight that meant an interesting problem had truly caught him. He sent me away for the day, asking only that I order tobacco for him and keep clear until evening. When I returned at nearly nine, our room was thick with smoke. Holmes sat in his chair like a dark shape inside a cloud. He had not moved far from that spot, yet he told me that he had spent the day in Devonshire, at least in spirit.
　　He had studied a large map of the moor and already knew the shape of the district. He showed me Baskerville Hall, the yew alley, Grimpen village, Lafter Hall, a house that might belong to Stapleton the naturalist, two lonely farmhouses, and far away the prison at Princetown. All around these few points lay the empty moor. Holmes said that it was a fine stage for a tragedy. Then he returned to the question that troubled him most. Had Sir Charles died only from fear, or had a crime been done?
　　He dismissed one foolish idea at once. Sir Charles had not been walking on his toes down the alley, as some had claimed. He had been running. He had run for his life until his weak heart failed him and he fell dead. The real question, said Holmes, was what had driven him to such terror. If danger had come from the moor, then Sir Charles, in panic, had run away from the house instead of toward safety. That made sense only if his mind had been broken by fright. Holmes also believed that Sir Charles had been waiting at the gate for someone that night, and not merely taking his usual walk.
　　By morning Holmes was fully ready for the meeting. Our breakfast things had scarcely been cleared when Dr. Mortimer arrived with Sir Henry Baskerville. The young man was about thirty, strongly built, dark-eyed, and full of life. He had spent much time outdoors, and there was something firm and confident in the way he stood and looked at us. Yet he came with a puzzled face, and almost before he sat down he told Holmes that he had been about to visit him even without Mortimer’s suggestion. He had, he said, a small mystery of his own.
　　Holmes invited him to sit and asked what had happened since his arrival in London. Sir Henry said it was perhaps nothing more than a joke, but he had received a strange message that morning. He placed an envelope upon the table. It was cheap, grey paper, and the address, “Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel,” had been printed in rough letters. The postmark showed Charing Cross and the letter had been posted the evening before. Holmes’s first question was simple and sharp: who had known that Sir Henry would stay at the Northumberland Hotel?
　　No one, Sir Henry said. The choice had been made only after he met Dr. Mortimer. Mortimer himself had not been staying there before. Holmes murmured that someone was taking a very close interest in Sir Henry’s movements. Then he removed the folded half-sheet inside the envelope and spread it before us. Across the middle was a warning made of printed words cut from a newspaper and pasted onto the page. It read: “As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.” Only the word “moor” had been written by hand.
　　Sir Henry asked bluntly what the thing meant and who had sent it. Holmes turned first to Dr. Mortimer and asked whether this at least proved that the danger was not supernatural. Mortimer answered that the sender might still believe in supernatural danger. At that, Sir Henry became impatient and demanded to know what business they were talking about. He said, with some justice, that everyone in the room seemed to know more about his affairs than he did himself. Holmes promised that before Sir Henry left the room, he would be told what he needed to know.
　　For the moment, however, Holmes wanted to study the document. He asked me for yesterday’s Times and turned to the inside page with the leading articles. He found one line, read a piece of it aloud, and then asked me whether I saw the connection. I did not at first, and neither did Sir Henry. Then Holmes pointed out that the warning had been cut almost entirely from that article. The words “your,” “life,” “reason,” “keep away,” and “from the” all came from it. Only “moor” had been written by hand because the sender had not found it easily in print.
　　Holmes was delighted with his own little discovery, though he explained it in the plainest way. A man trained in such matters, he said, could tell one printed page from another as easily as a doctor could tell one kind of skull from another. The type in the Times was as clear to him as a face. He added that the sender was almost certainly educated, because the Times was not a paper read by uneducated people. Yet the address had been printed in rough letters, which meant the sender had tried to hide his own handwriting. That suggested that Sir Henry might know it if he saw it.
　　He pointed out one detail after another. The pasted words were not set in a straight line, which might show hurry or excitement. The ink and pen used for the address were both poor, the kind commonly found in hotels. From that Holmes drew the idea that the letter had been prepared in some hotel near Charing Cross. If he had the time, he said, he would gladly search the waste-paper baskets of those hotels until he found the remains of the cut-up newspaper. He examined the paper again very closely, but found no mark or watermark to help him further. Still, he had learned a good deal, and his eyes showed that the chase had truly begun.

Part 4

　　Sir Henry then remembered another strange thing and asked whether it was worth mentioning. Holmes told him that anything unusual might matter. Sir Henry said that one of his boots had gone missing at the Northumberland Hotel. He had put both outside his room the night before, and in the morning only one was there. Dr. Mortimer tried to laugh it off and said the hotel would surely find it, but Holmes did not laugh. He asked at once whether the missing boot was old or new.
　　Sir Henry answered that it was new. He had bought the pair only the night before in the Strand, and he had not even worn them yet. Holmes seemed more interested than before, though he did not explain why. Then, because Sir Henry had demanded the truth, Holmes gave him a clear account of the case so far. He told him about the old family legend, Sir Charles’s death, the strange footprints, and the warning that now seemed to hang over the Baskerville family. Sir Henry listened with a dark, serious face.
　　When Holmes had finished, he asked the practical question. Was it wise for Sir Henry to go to Baskerville Hall at all? Sir Henry answered at once and with real fire. He said that no devil in hell and no man on earth would keep him from going to the home of his own family. His face flushed, and for the first time I saw plainly the proud, stubborn nature that belonged to the Baskervilles. Even Holmes, I think, respected him more for that answer.
　　Yet Sir Henry also said that he needed time to think. Too much had been placed before him all at once. He invited Holmes and me to lunch with him and Dr. Mortimer at the hotel at two o’clock, and said that by then he would know his own mind more clearly. Then he and Mortimer chose to walk back instead of taking a cab. The moment the front door closed behind them, Holmes sprang up like a different man. His laziness vanished in one instant.
　　“Hat and boots, Watson,” he cried. “Quick.” In less than half a minute he had changed his clothes, and we were in the street after our two visitors. They were still far ahead of us, walking toward Oxford Street. Holmes would not let me run forward and stop them, for he did not wish them to know that we were following. So we kept our distance and went after them through the busy streets, watching as carefully as we could.
　　In Regent Street they paused before a shop window, and Holmes did the same. Then suddenly he gave a low cry of pleasure. On the other side of the street a hansom cab had been standing with a man inside. As Sir Henry and Mortimer stopped, the cab had stopped too. Now it moved on slowly again. Holmes caught sight of the face inside and pulled me forward at once. He was certain that we had found the man who was watching Sir Henry.
　　We ran for another cab, jumped in, and ordered our driver to follow the first one. But London traffic is a hard master, and our chance slipped away almost at once. The cab we wanted moved quickly through the street and was lost in the crowd before we could get near it. Holmes leaned forward, angry but alert, watching every turning point. At last all that remained to us was the number of the cab, which he had seen clearly. It was a small gain, but it was something.
　　Holmes had also seen one other important thing. The man inside had a black beard. This mattered at once, because it gave us a possible face to connect with the danger. Still, Holmes was not fully satisfied even then. He warned me that a beard could be false, and a clever enemy would hide himself in the simplest way possible. The man had shown enough of his face to prove that he was pale and watchful, but not enough to be identified easily. Once again we had a clue, but not the whole truth.
　　At two o’clock we went to the Northumberland Hotel. Sir Henry met us with a new piece of bad news. Not only had the missing boot not been found, but now the other boot, an old black one, had disappeared as well. The first boot lost had been one of the new brown pair, but now that one had been returned while the old black boot had vanished in its place. This was far too strange to be simple hotel carelessness. Holmes said so at once.
　　The matter of the boots seemed foolish on the surface, and even Sir Henry laughed at it in an irritated way. But Holmes did not treat it lightly. He said that a common mistake can happen once, but not in such a neat and changing form. First one boot, then another, and of different kinds. Someone wanted something from Sir Henry’s footwear, and Holmes was determined to remember that fact. Even at the time, I felt that he had laid hold of something real.
　　We then had lunch together, and during the meal little was said about the case. But afterward, in a private room, Holmes returned to the subject. He asked Sir Henry what he had decided. Sir Henry answered that he would go to Baskerville Hall at the end of the week. Holmes said that on the whole he thought this was wise. In London, with millions of people all around us, it was hard to discover who was following Sir Henry and why. If harm was truly intended, London might even be the more dangerous place.
　　Holmes then surprised both our companions by telling them that they had been followed from Baker Street that very morning. Dr. Mortimer started in real alarm and asked by whom. Holmes answered that he did not yet know, but asked whether there was any man in Devonshire, among their neighbors or servants, who wore a full black beard. Mortimer thought for a moment and then named Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall. Barrymore, he said, had exactly such a beard.
　　Holmes did not jump to a conclusion, but he took the point seriously. He asked where Barrymore was at present. Mortimer said that Barrymore was at the Hall, preparing for Sir Henry’s arrival. Holmes replied that this must be tested, not assumed. He wrote one telegram to Barrymore at Baskerville Hall asking whether all was ready for Sir Henry. Then he wrote another to the postmaster at Grimpen, asking that the first telegram be placed in Barrymore’s own hand, and that a reply be sent back if Barrymore was absent.
　　Sir Henry asked then who Barrymore really was. Mortimer explained that he was the son of the former caretaker and that he and his wife had served the family for years. They were thought to be a respectable couple. Sir Henry pointed out, however, that while no Baskerville lived at the Hall they enjoyed a very fine house and an easy life there. Holmes listened quietly and then asked whether Barrymore and his wife had received money under Sir Charles’s will. Mortimer answered that they had each received five hundred pounds.
　　This led Holmes to a line of questions that showed how large the matter truly was. Mortimer admitted that he himself had received a thousand pounds, and that many smaller sums had gone to others and to public charities. The rest, however, had gone to Sir Henry. Holmes asked how much that residue was. When Mortimer answered that it was about seven hundred and forty thousand pounds, even Holmes raised his eyebrows. The whole estate, Mortimer said, came close to a million.
　　Holmes said quietly that such a sum might tempt a desperate man to play a desperate game. He then asked the next natural question. If anything happened to Sir Henry, who would inherit? Mortimer answered that the estate would pass to the Desmond family, distant cousins, and that James Desmond was an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland. Mortimer had met him and spoke of him as a very holy and gentle man. Holmes took note of the name, though he did not suggest open suspicion.
　　After we left the hotel, Holmes and I spent the afternoon following the few threads still in our hands. We made inquiries in the district around Charing Cross, hoping to find the hotel from which the warning letter had been sent. Holmes believed that if we found the cut remains of the Times article in some waste-paper basket, we might reach the sender. But London is large, and our search gave us nothing certain. The man who moved against us knew his work and left little behind him.
　　Holmes also used the number of the hansom cab to trace the driver. By evening the man came to Baker Street. His name was John Clayton, and he was an honest enough fellow, pleased by the money Holmes offered him. He told us that on that morning he had taken up a gentleman near Trafalgar Square. The man had ordered him first to watch Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry, and later to follow Sherlock Holmes himself. Clayton had learned Holmes’s name because the passenger had spoken it aloud.
　　Holmes asked for a description. Clayton said that the man looked about forty, was a little shorter than Holmes, wore good clothes, had a pale face, and had a black beard cut square at the end. He could say little more. He had not noticed the eye color, and after the man left the cab at Waterloo Station he had seen nothing further. Holmes paid him, but when the cabman was gone he gave a small, bitter smile. Once again the trail had ended in smoke.
　　What most struck Holmes was not merely that the man had escaped, but the coolness with which he had done it. He had known Sir Henry had come to Baker Street. He had recognized Holmes in Regent Street. He had guessed that Holmes would trace the cab by its number and question the driver. So before vanishing, he had even made the driver remember the name “Sherlock Holmes.” It was an open salute from one clever enemy to another. Holmes did not enjoy being beaten, but I think he enjoyed being challenged.
　　“This time,” he said to me, “we have an opponent worth our steel.” He admitted that in London he had been checkmated, at least for the moment. Then he turned to the future. Since Sir Henry was set on going to Baskerville Hall, someone must go with him, watch over him, and report every detail. Holmes himself would remain in London and work the case from there. The task in Devonshire, he told me, must fall to me.
　　I answered at once that I was ready. Holmes then gave his instructions with great care. I was to stay close to Sir Henry and never leave him to face danger alone if it could be helped. I was to observe Barrymore and his wife, the neighbors, the Hall, the moor, and every little event that might bear upon the case. Above all, I was to send full and exact reports to Baker Street. Holmes did not want guesses. He wanted facts.
　　Yet for all his cool manner, I could see that he was uneasy. He said the business was ugly and dangerous, and the more he saw of it the less he liked it. I laughed a little, perhaps because I was pleased that he trusted me with such a mission. But Holmes did not laugh. He told me plainly that he would be very glad to see me back safe and sound in Baker Street when the matter was done. That serious note stayed with me long after the conversation ended.
　　So the decision was made. Sir Henry Baskerville would go to Devonshire, and I would go with him as Holmes’s eyes and ears. Behind us in London, Holmes would continue to pull at the threads that had not yet broken. Before us lay Baskerville Hall, the empty moor, the dark story of the family, and an enemy who was already moving in secret around us. We had not solved the mystery. We had only stepped closer to its center.

Part 5

　　On the day set for our journey, Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready at the station, and I went with them as planned. Holmes drove there with me and gave me his last instructions before we left London. He said that he did not want to fill my mind with his own theories. What he wanted from me was something simpler and more important. I was to send him facts, and plenty of them.
　　I asked him what kind of facts he meant. Holmes said that I must watch everything that might touch the case, even from a distance. He wanted to know about Sir Henry’s relations with the people around him, about anything new connected with Sir Charles’s death, and about every person living near the Hall. Holmes also told me that he had made further inquiries in London, but nothing useful had come from them. Only one thing seemed clear: James Desmond, the next heir after Sir Henry, was too old and too kind to be the man behind this danger.
　　I then asked whether it would not be better to send the Barrymores away at once. Holmes answered strongly that this would be a mistake. If they were innocent, it would be cruel. If they were guilty, we would lose our best chance of watching them and learning the truth. So, he said, they must remain where they were, and I must keep them on my list of suspects. He then named the others whom I should study: the groom at the Hall, the two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer, Mrs. Mortimer, Mr. Stapleton the naturalist, Stapleton’s sister, Mr. Frankland, and the other few neighbors in that lonely place.
　　Holmes next asked whether I had brought a weapon. I told him that I had taken my revolver. He approved at once and said I must keep it near me night and day. He warned me never to grow careless, not even for a short time. His manner was serious, and I could see that he truly feared some danger that he could not yet name. Even then, standing in the busy station, I felt a shadow fall across our journey.
　　Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry already had places in a first-class carriage. Holmes asked them whether there had been any fresh signs of the man who had followed them in London. Mortimer answered that for the last two days they had watched carefully whenever they went out, and they were sure no one had followed them. Holmes asked whether they had stayed together the whole time. Mortimer admitted that they had not. He had spent one afternoon at the museum of the College of Surgeons, while Sir Henry had gone to the park alone.
　　Holmes shook his head at this and said that it had been careless. He begged Sir Henry not to go about alone again. Some serious misfortune, he said, might come if he did. Then Holmes asked one last question about the missing boot. Sir Henry said that the old black boot was still gone and seemed lost forever. Holmes answered only that this was very interesting. Then the train began to move.
　　As we left, Holmes called out one last warning. He told Sir Henry to remember the old family story and to stay away from the moor in the dark hours of night. I looked back through the window and saw Holmes standing on the platform, tall and still, watching us go. There was something grave and lonely in that sight. It remained in my mind long after London had fallen behind us.
　　The journey itself was quick and pleasant. As the train moved farther west, the country slowly changed around us. The soil grew redder, the stone became granite, and the fields looked rich and wet under the softer sky of the West Country. Sir Henry watched eagerly from the window and cried out with pleasure whenever some part of the Devon land caught his eye. He said that he had seen many parts of the world since he was a boy, but none of them seemed to him as beautiful as this.
　　Dr. Mortimer, in his strange half-medical way, spoke of Devon men and the shape of their heads. Sir Henry laughed, but there was strong feeling beneath his laughter. He told us that he had been only a boy when his father died. He had never really known Baskerville Hall. Soon after his father’s death he had gone to America and grown up there. So now, he said, the Hall and the moor were as new to him as they were to me.
　　A little later Dr. Mortimer pointed through the window and said that Sir Henry’s wish had been granted. There was the first true sight of the moor. Beyond green fields and low woods, far off in the distance, rose a grey hill with a broken top, dark and lonely against the sky. It looked like a place from a dream, not from common life. Sir Henry sat staring at it in silence, and I could see how deeply that first view touched him.
　　As I looked at him, I thought how true a Baskerville he seemed. He wore rough country clothes and spoke with something of an American manner, yet there was pride, courage, and strength in his face. His dark brows, his keen eyes, and the firm set of his mouth all spoke of a man who would meet danger boldly. If a hard task lay before us on that moor, I felt that I at least had a brave companion beside me. That thought gave me some comfort.
　　At last the train stopped at a small station in the country. Outside the fence a carriage was waiting for us. The station-master and the porters gathered round, clearly thinking our arrival an event of importance. Yet one thing struck me at once. Near the gate stood two men in dark uniforms, holding rifles and watching us closely. Their presence looked strangely severe in such a quiet and simple place.
　　Our driver, a hard-faced little man named Perkins, soon explained the reason. An escaped convict was somewhere on the moor. He had been free for three days, and soldiers were watching the roads and the stations, though no one had yet caught sight of him. Mortimer said that the farmers would be glad of the reward for information. Perkins answered that five pounds was small comfort if a man first had his throat cut. This, he said, was no common criminal.
　　The convict was Selden, the Notting Hill murderer. I remembered the case well, because Holmes had once taken an interest in it. The crime had been savage and uselessly cruel, and later there had been doubts about whether the man was fully sane. The thought of such a creature hiding out there on the empty moor added a fresh darkness to everything around us. Even Sir Henry fell quiet after that, and drew his coat closer about him.
　　We drove first through rich and peaceful country, with fields on both sides and old houses half hidden among trees. But always behind the green land there rose the dark line of the moor. Soon the road turned upward into deep lanes, worn by wheels through many years, with high banks heavy with moss and ferns. We crossed a narrow stone bridge and followed a noisy stream through a valley of oak and fir. Sir Henry delighted in every turn of the road, but I could not shake off a feeling of sadness.
　　It was late in the year. Yellow leaves lay across the lane and fell softly upon us as we passed. There was beauty in the place, but it was the beauty of something fading and going still. At one point we saw a mounted soldier standing black and hard against the sky on the top of a heath-covered rise, watching the road with his rifle ready. It seemed to me that all this fair country had one eye turned toward the wild land beyond it.
　　Then the open moor spread out before us, wide and empty, with broken rocks and rough hills rising from it here and there. A cold wind came down across it and made us shiver. Somewhere on that barren land the murderer was hiding like a hunted beast, full of hate for the world. The sight of the place, the cold air, and the dark evening sky all worked together upon the mind. What had seemed strange in London now began to feel heavy and real.
　　After a time we looked down into a hollow where twisted trees bent under years of storm. Above them rose two narrow towers. Perkins lifted his whip and said simply, “Baskerville Hall.” Sir Henry stood up in the carriage to look, his face bright and eager. A few minutes later we had reached the gates. They were old iron gates set between weather-beaten stone pillars, and on the pillars stood the Baskerville boars’ heads. Beside them was the black ruin of the old lodge, while opposite stood a new building begun by Sir Charles.
　　We passed through the gate into a long avenue where old trees met overhead and made a dark tunnel. The sound of the wheels grew soft under the leaves. At the far end the house shone faintly like a grey shape in the deepening dusk. Sir Henry asked in a low voice whether this was the place where his uncle had died, and Mortimer answered that the yew alley lay on the other side. Sir Henry said that such a place was enough to frighten any man, but added quickly that he would change it. Within six months, he said, he would put electric lights all along that dark way.
　　The drive opened at last onto a wide grassy space before the Hall. In the fading light I saw a heavy central block of building covered with ivy, with two ancient towers rising from it, and darker wings of black stone stretching on either side. A dull light shone from the deep windows, and smoke rose from one of the high chimneys. A tall man came out from the porch to open the carriage door. Behind him, in the warm yellow light of the entrance, stood the shadow of a woman.
　　This man was Barrymore. He was tall and well-made, with a square black beard and a pale, handsome face. His manner was quiet and correct, like that of a trained servant, but there was something striking in his appearance. The woman behind him, whom I took to be his wife, helped with the luggage. Dr. Mortimer soon left us, saying that his wife was waiting for him at home and that he had work to do. Sir Henry asked him to stay for dinner, but he refused and drove away down the dark avenue.
　　When the door shut behind us, we found ourselves standing in the great hall of the house. It was large, high, and old, with black oak beams overhead, a huge fireplace, stained glass, and walls covered with panels, antlers, and coats of arms. Sir Henry warmed his hands by the fire and looked around him with deep feeling. He said that it was just as he had imagined an old family home would be. To think, he said, that his people had lived there for five hundred years made him feel almost solemn.
　　Barrymore then told Sir Henry that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. But he also said, in a careful voice, that he and his wife wished to leave the Hall when it became convenient. Sir Henry was surprised and asked whether they truly wanted to end so old a family connection. Barrymore answered that both he and his wife had been deeply attached to Sir Charles. His death had shaken them badly, and the house now caused them pain. Sir Henry asked what they would do, and Barrymore replied that Sir Charles’s generosity had left them enough money to start some small business.
　　Barrymore showed us upstairs. A square gallery ran round the top of the hall, and from it long passages stretched away to the bedrooms. My room was close to Sir Henry’s. These chambers were much newer than the old central part of the building, and their paper, candles, and ordinary comfort softened the first dark impression made by the Hall. Yet the dining-room below remained gloomy even with a lamp burning. It was long and shadowy, with a raised part for the family, a gallery above, and rows of silent ancestors looking down from the walls.
　　We spoke little during dinner. It seemed almost impossible to speak freely in such a room. Afterward we went into the billiard-room and smoked. Sir Henry said frankly that the place was not cheerful, and that he could now understand how his uncle, living there alone, might have become nervous and uneasy. He suggested that we go early to bed and trust that the house would look friendlier in the morning. I was glad enough to agree.
　　Before I slept, I drew back my curtain and looked out. I could see the grass before the front door, the dark trees moving in the rising wind, and beyond them the broken line of rocks and the long low curve of the moor under a cold half-moon. It was exactly in keeping with the rest of the day. Yet that was not my last impression. Long after I lay down, sleep would not come. Then, in the deep silence of the night, I heard a woman sobbing somewhere in the house, low, broken, and full of sorrow. I sat up and listened, but no other sound followed except the far clock and the soft movement of ivy against the wall.

Part 6

　　The next morning changed the whole look of Baskerville Hall. Sunlight came through the tall windows, touched the dark wood of the dining room, and made the coats of arms shine with soft color. Sir Henry laughed at our gloomy thoughts of the night before and said that we had judged the house unfairly because we had been tired from the journey and chilled by the evening air. In the bright morning it looked less like a place of fear and more like a great old home. For a little while I almost agreed with him.
　　Yet one thing still troubled me. I asked whether he too had heard a woman sobbing in the night. He said that in his half-sleep he had thought he heard something of that kind, but after no second sound came he had taken it for a dream. I told him that I had heard it clearly and that I was sure it had come from somewhere inside the house. At once Sir Henry rang for Barrymore and asked him about it.
　　The butler listened with a face that seemed to grow even paler than before. He answered that there were only two women in the house, the kitchen-maid and his wife, and that the sound could not possibly have come from Mrs. Barrymore. His voice was calm, but I did not trust him. A little later, after breakfast, I met Mrs. Barrymore alone in the passage, and the truth stood plain upon her face. Her eyes were red and swollen, and no woman could have looked so if she had not been weeping deeply.
　　This discovery sharpened my suspicion at once. If Mrs. Barrymore had cried in the night, her husband must know it. Yet he had lied directly to Sir Henry. Why had he done so? Why should sorrow hide itself in that house as if it were shame? Around Barrymore, with his handsome face and black beard, there seemed to gather more mystery every hour. He had found Sir Charles’s body, and on many points we still had only his word.
　　My mind went back at once to the black-bearded man in the hansom cab in London. Could Barrymore have been the same man? The cabman had described someone a little shorter, but such details are easily mistaken. There was one simple thing I could do. Holmes had sent the test telegram to see whether Barrymore was truly at the Hall, and now I could go to Grimpen and learn exactly how that message had been delivered. Whatever the answer, it would at least be a fact to report.
　　Sir Henry was kept busy that morning with papers and accounts connected with the estate, so my absence would do no harm. I set out on foot across the edge of the moor. It was a pleasant walk of about four miles, and at last I reached the little grey village of Grimpen, where the inn and Dr. Mortimer’s house stood a little above the smaller cottages. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, remembered the telegram perfectly well.
　　He said that it had indeed been sent to Mr. Barrymore exactly as ordered. But when I pressed him, the truth became less useful. His son had taken the message to Baskerville Hall. Barrymore himself had not been seen. Mrs. Barrymore had received the telegram and said that her husband was up in the loft, and the boy had simply handed it to her. That was all.
　　So Holmes’s test had not proved what we wanted it to prove. Barrymore may have been at the Hall, but no one outside the house had actually seen him there at that moment. As I walked back across the lonely road, my thoughts turned in circles around that fact. If Barrymore had indeed been in London, if he had watched Sir Henry there, and if he had also been the last man to see Sir Charles alive, what did it all mean? Was he working for himself, or for some other person hidden behind him?
　　None of the easier answers satisfied me. Sir Henry himself had suggested that perhaps the Barrymores wished to frighten away the heir so that they could keep their good life at the Hall. But such a motive felt too small for the dark and careful plot that seemed to spread around us. There had been the warning letter, the missing boots, the shadow in the cab, and now lies inside the house itself. Holmes had said that this case was one of the most complex he had ever faced, and for once I felt the full weight of that judgment.
　　I was still turning these thoughts over in my mind when I heard quick steps behind me and a voice calling my name. I turned and saw a stranger hurrying toward me. He was a small, thin man with a clean-shaven face, fair hair, sharp features, and bright grey eyes. He wore a grey suit and carried a green butterfly-net in one hand and a tin box for plants over his shoulder. I guessed at once that this must be Stapleton of Merripit House.
　　He introduced himself in a friendly way and explained that Dr. Mortimer had pointed me out from his window as I passed. Since we were going in the same direction, he had decided to overtake me and make my acquaintance. He asked after Sir Henry and seemed honestly pleased to hear that the young baronet had reached the Hall safely. He said that the whole district had feared Sir Henry might choose not to live there after what had happened to Sir Charles.
　　Then he spoke of the old story of the Baskerville hound. He smiled as he mentioned the peasants, who, he said, would swear that they had seen such a creature on the moor. Yet though he smiled, I thought I saw something more serious in his eyes. He believed, or half believed, that Sir Charles’s mind had been so shaken by the family legend that the sudden sight of a dog on the moor might have been enough to kill him. When he asked what view Sherlock Holmes took, I felt a sudden check in my mind.
　　Stapleton had no difficulty in recognizing me. He said that anyone who knew the stories of Holmes must know Dr. Watson too. His manner was polite, but it was plain that he wished to learn what Holmes had sent me to do and what we suspected. I answered carefully that I was only visiting Sir Henry and had come with no special plan. Stapleton accepted this with a quick smile and said that I was right to be cautious. He then invited me to come with him to Merripit House and meet his sister.
　　I hesitated at first, thinking of my duty to Sir Henry. But then I remembered Holmes’s instructions. I was to study the neighbors. Sir Henry would be busy for another hour or two, and no danger was likely to fall on him in broad daylight while he sat over estate papers. So I accepted. We turned off the road and followed a narrow grass path across the moor.
　　Stapleton seemed to know every yard of that land. He spoke of it with real love, calling it vast, barren, mysterious, and full of secrets. He said that though he had lived there only two years, he had explored nearly every part of it. Soon he pointed toward a broad level stretch of ground to the north and asked whether I noticed anything remarkable there. I saw only patches of bright green among the darker earth.
　　He laughed and told me that those bright green places were the most dangerous ground on the whole moor. It was the great Grimpen Mire. A false step there meant death. Even as he spoke, he gave a sudden cry and pointed. Out among the green sedges something brown was tossing and rolling. Then a long neck rose in pain, and a terrible cry came over the moor.
　　It was a pony sinking in the mire. I shall not easily forget the horror of it. The poor animal struggled wildly, lifted its head again and again, and then was slowly drawn down until it vanished. Stapleton watched with less feeling than I did and said that this was the second pony lost in two days. In dry weather they wandered there and did not understand the danger until the bog had them.
　　He told me that even now, after the autumn rains, he himself could cross parts of the mire by certain hidden paths and reach the little islands of firm ground within it. Rare plants and butterflies could be found there, he said, if one had the knowledge and nerve to reach them. When I said lightly that I might try my luck there one day, he turned sharply and warned me never to attempt it. Only by remembering a number of difficult landmarks could he go in and come back alive.
　　Then another sound came over the moor, one that chilled me far more than the sight of the sinking pony. It was a long, low cry, full of sadness and terror, rising and falling across the wide empty land. It seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere at once. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression and said that the country people called it the Hound of the Baskervilles, crying out for its prey. I felt a real shiver pass through me.
　　I asked what he himself believed. He said that bogs sometimes made strange sounds, or perhaps it was some rare bird, like a bittern. But I was not satisfied. That had not sounded to me like mud or water or even any ordinary bird. It had sounded like a living voice, lonely and dreadful. The empty moor around us, broken only by dark rocks and far cries of birds, made the explanation of the peasants feel less foolish than it had in London.
　　As if to change the subject, Stapleton next pointed to the hillside, where many grey stone circles lay scattered over the slope. They were not sheep-pens, he explained, but the homes of prehistoric men. Long ages ago people had lived thickly on the moor, keeping cattle and digging tin from the hills. Their round huts, their hearths, and the traces of their work still remained because almost no one had lived there since. The place seemed to me more and more like a land where the dead had never wholly gone away.
　　While he was speaking, a small insect flew across the path. In an instant Stapleton became a different creature. With extraordinary speed he rushed after it, net in hand, leaping from tuft to tuft and never thinking of danger. He looked so eager and so light in motion that for a moment I forgot everything else. Then I heard steps behind me and turned. A woman stood near the path, coming from the direction of Merripit House.
　　I had no doubt at once that this was Miss Stapleton. She was very beautiful, dark where her brother was fair, tall, elegant, and full of life in every line of her face. There was something proud and noble in her bearing, and on that lonely moor she looked almost unreal. She came quickly toward me, and I lifted my hat, ready to speak. But before I could say a word she stopped and spoke first.
　　“Go back,” she said. “Go straight back to London, at once.” I could only stare at her in amazement. Her eyes shone with fear and urgency, and she struck the ground with her foot as if every second mattered. When I asked why I should return, she answered that she could not explain, but begged me for God’s sake to go and never set foot on the moor again. Then, hearing her brother coming back, she changed at once and began talking about flowers as if nothing unusual had passed between us.
　　Stapleton returned flushed from the chase, and I saw from his quick eyes that he noticed something strange in the air, though he could not know what had been said. His sister at once made the same mistake she had made at first: she pretended that she had thought I was Sir Henry Baskerville. When I gave my true name, a look of annoyance crossed her face. It was plain that she had indeed intended her warning for Sir Henry and not for me. Still, she invited me on to the house, and her brother pressed me to come.
　　Merripit House stood bleak and lonely on the moor, with a poor little orchard around it and an old servant who seemed as dry and worn as the place itself. Inside, however, the rooms were large and much better furnished than I had expected, clearly with a woman’s taste behind them. Looking from the windows across the endless broken moor, I could not help wondering how such an educated man and such a striking woman had come to bury themselves there. Stapleton answered almost as if he had read my thoughts.
　　He told me his history freely enough. He had once kept a school in the north of England and had loved the work of shaping young minds. Then illness had come, an epidemic had broken out, and three boys had died. The school had never recovered, much of his money had been lost, and at last he and his sister had come south to this lonely place. Yet he claimed to be happy, since botany and zoology gave him endless work on the moor.
　　Miss Stapleton agreed that they were happy, but there was no warmth in her voice. Her brother spoke of books, study, and good neighbors, and said how much they had valued the friendship of Sir Charles. He then asked whether he might call that afternoon on Sir Henry. I answered that Sir Henry would surely be pleased. Stapleton was eager, friendly, and intelligent, but behind all his easy talk I felt a restlessness that kept my mind on guard.
　　He invited me upstairs to see his collection of butterflies and moths, but I refused. My thoughts were too full of what had happened on the path. The sight of the sinking pony, the terrible cry on the moor, and above all the urgent warning from Miss Stapleton had left me uneasy and dark in spirit. I wanted to be back with Sir Henry. So I excused myself and set off again toward Baskerville Hall.
　　Yet the matter was not ended. Before I had reached the main road, I was astonished to see Miss Stapleton sitting on a rock beside the path, waiting for me. She was breathing hard and her face was bright from her effort. She said that she had run all the way to catch me before I returned to the Hall. She had come, she said, to ask me to forget the foolish words she had spoken, since they had no application to me.
　　I told her that I could not forget them. I was Sir Henry’s friend, and anything that touched his safety touched me closely too. I begged her to tell me why she had wished Sir Henry to go back to London. For a moment she seemed uncertain, almost ready to trust me. Then she hardened again and said that I made too much of the matter. She and her brother had been deeply shaken by Sir Charles’s death, and because the old man had believed in the family curse, she too had felt some fear when another Baskerville came to live there.
　　When I pressed her to be more exact, she would not. She asked only whether I knew the story of the hound and then said plainly that she believed it. If I had any influence over Sir Henry, she said, I should use it to take him away from a place that had brought death again and again to his family. The world was wide. Why should he choose to live where danger waited? But when I asked what danger she meant, she said she knew nothing definite.
　　One question still troubled me, and I put it to her directly. If she had meant only this general fear, why should she have wished to hide her warning from her brother? There was nothing in such a belief that he could object to hearing. At that she gave the most practical answer of all. Stapleton, she said, strongly wished Baskerville Hall to remain occupied because he believed it was good for the poor people of the district. He would be very angry if he knew she had said anything that might drive Sir Henry away.
　　With that she ended the matter and would say no more. She turned quickly and was gone among the rocks before I could stop her. I walked back to Baskerville Hall with my mind full of doubt. Miss Stapleton had certainly wished to warn Sir Henry, and she had done so in real fear. Yet the reason she gave me was thin and incomplete. Behind her words there lay something hidden, and I felt more strongly than ever that on that moor every friendly face might still be keeping some dangerous secret.

Part 7

　　From this point in the story, I began to keep a more exact record of events by writing reports to Sherlock Holmes. Looking back now, I can see that these letters show my thoughts more clearly than memory alone could ever do. At the time, I did not understand the full shape of the danger around us. I could only describe what I saw, what I heard, and what I feared. So this part may best be told as the substance of my first long report from Baskerville Hall.
　　I wrote to Holmes that the longer one stayed near the moor, the more deeply its spirit entered the mind. It was not only large and empty. It was also full of old signs of human life, so old that modern England seemed far away. Everywhere one could see the stone huts of forgotten people, their graves, and the tall stones that may once have marked their temples. Walking there, a man could almost believe that time itself had gone backward.
　　Yet I reminded Holmes that such thoughts, though powerful, were not the true reason for my letter. He cared for facts, not moods. So I turned back to Sir Henry Baskerville and the people around him. I said that little of importance had happened for a few days, but now matters had begun to move again. What seemed at first like a quiet pause had really been the gathering of darker things.
　　I first mentioned the escaped convict upon the moor. By then many people believed that he must have gone away, since nearly two weeks had passed without a clear sight of him. There were hiding places enough among the stone huts and broken hills, but there was little food. Unless he stole sheep, he could not easily stay alive out there for long. So the lonely farmers of the district had begun to sleep more easily.
　　I next gave Holmes a fuller picture of our neighbors. Dr. Mortimer, I wrote, was as kind and strange as ever, a learned man who could lose himself in skulls, bones, and old remains while living men around him walked into danger. Then there was Stapleton, clever, active, and full of knowledge about the moor, though I could not forget the uneasiness he caused me. His sister remained even more interesting. She had clearly tried to warn Sir Henry through me, but the reason she gave afterward did not explain the fear in her face.
　　I also told Holmes about Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He was an elderly man with a loud voice, strong opinions, and a great love of law cases. He seemed to live in a constant state of argument with the whole world. He was one of those men who can be both absurd and useful at the same time. His foolishness was often almost comic, but in that lonely country even such a man added something to the life around us.
　　Frankland had another strange habit. He spent long hours with a telescope, searching the moor in hope of catching sight of the escaped convict. In any other place such behavior would have seemed merely silly, but on that moor it gave him a strange importance. Every person there, in one way or another, had turned his eyes toward the waste land. It lay over all our lives like a dark sea. No one could quite escape its pull.
　　Then I returned to the matter that seemed most urgent: the Barrymores. I repeated for Holmes how I had heard the woman sobbing in the night, how Barrymore had denied that it was his wife, and how the truth had shown itself the next morning in Mrs. Barrymore’s tear-swollen eyes. I reminded Holmes that this black-bearded butler had also been the man who found Sir Charles’s body. It was natural, therefore, that my suspicions had grown stronger around him.
　　I described my visit to the postmaster at Grimpen and how little it had finally proved. The telegram from London had indeed reached Baskerville Hall, but not in Barrymore’s own hand. Mrs. Barrymore had taken it, saying her husband was in the loft. Neither the postmaster’s boy nor the postmaster himself had actually seen Barrymore at that moment. So Holmes’s clever test had failed to settle the point, and I was left where I had begun.
　　Still, I told Holmes that I had at least informed Sir Henry of the matter. In his plain, direct way, he called Barrymore up and asked him about the telegram. Barrymore answered without much trouble that he had received it, though not from the boy himself. Mrs. Barrymore had brought it up to him, and she had also written the answer. Later that day Barrymore himself returned to the subject and asked Sir Henry whether he had done anything to lose his master’s trust. Sir Henry had to calm him and assure him that all was well.
　　This did not make me trust him any more. On the contrary, the whole business left me with the feeling that the man was always ready with an answer. Mrs. Barrymore, meanwhile, remained a puzzle. She was a heavy, respectable, stern-looking woman who seemed the least likely person in the world to hide strong feeling. Yet I had already heard her cry bitterly, and since then I had seen clear signs of tears on her face more than once. Some private pain was eating at her heart.
　　One night, however, things moved from suspicion to action. I am a light sleeper, and because I was on guard in that house, I slept more lightly than usual. In the middle of the night I heard a soft step outside my door. I rose, opened it very carefully, and saw Barrymore moving down the passage with perfect silence, carrying a candle in his hand. He was dressed, and there was something so secret in his movement that I followed him at once.
　　He went along the corridor until he reached a room at the far end of the house. I watched from the shadow as he entered. There, holding the candle before him, he stood by the western window and looked out over the moor with intense attention. His face, seen in profile against the faint glass, was pale and tight with strain. He seemed to be waiting for some sign. Then suddenly he gave a deep groan, like a man in pain or disappointment, and put out the light.
　　I slipped back to my own room before he returned. Soon afterward I heard his steps passing once more along the corridor. Later still, after I had fallen into a light sleep, I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, though I could not tell from where the sound came. That was all. Yet it was enough to prove that some secret business was going on in Baskerville Hall, and that Barrymore was at the center of it.
　　The next morning I examined the room from which he had looked out. I found that the western window gave the clearest near view of the moor of any window in the house. From there alone one might hope to see a signal or a person in the darkness below. At first I tried to explain the thing in some simple way. Perhaps, I thought, Barrymore had some hidden meeting with a woman, and his wife’s sorrow came from that. But even as I formed the idea, it seemed too small and too common for the dark air that hung over the Hall.
　　Because of this, Sir Henry and I made a plan. We agreed that if Barrymore should return to the window again that night, we would catch him in the act and force the truth from him. Before that night came, however, another piece of useful information reached me. While driving with Dr. Mortimer, I asked him whether he knew any woman in the district whose initials were L. L. He thought a little and then named Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey, the daughter of old Frankland.
　　Mortimer told me that she had married an artist named Lyons against her father’s wishes. The marriage had gone badly, and the man had deserted her. Her father would do little for her, and she had been left in a difficult and doubtful position. Stapleton had helped her, Sir Charles had helped her, and Mortimer himself had given a little money so that she might earn her living by typewriting. At once I felt that this woman might be tied in some important way to the death of Sir Charles.
　　That evening, before I could end my report, I had one more conversation with Barrymore that seemed of great value. I asked whether the escaped convict, his wife’s brother, had gone at last. Barrymore said that he hoped so, for the man had brought nothing but trouble. He had not seen him lately, though food left out for him had once disappeared. Then Barrymore startled me by adding that perhaps the food had been taken not by Selden, but by another man on the moor.
　　I put down my coffee and stared at him. He said that Selden had told him of this second man more than a week earlier. This stranger too was hiding out there, but Barrymore did not think he was a convict. He spoke with sudden real feeling and said that he did not like it, not at all. There was someone else on the moor, unknown to us all, living secretly among the rocks and huts. When I ended my report to Holmes, that was the last and darkest fact I had to give him.

Part 8

　　My next report to Holmes began by telling him that events were now moving quickly at last. During the early days of my stay, I had often felt as if I were walking in circles around the mystery, touching the edges of it but never getting nearer to its heart. Now, however, several things had changed within a very short time. Some parts of the case had grown clearer, while others had become darker than ever.
　　I told Holmes first that Sir Henry and I had carried out the plan we had made after Barrymore’s secret visit to the western window. We agreed to watch that corridor together and to stop him if he returned there again in the night. So we sat late in Sir Henry’s room, smoking in silence and listening for the slightest sound in the house. The Hall was very still, and the hours seemed long.
　　At last, deep in the night, we heard the soft step that I had heard before. We opened the door gently and saw the same dark figure moving silently down the passage with a candle in his hand. There could be no doubt this time. It was Barrymore again, and he was once more going toward the empty room at the end of the corridor.
　　Sir Henry and I followed him with the greatest care. When we reached the room, we found him standing at the window exactly as I had seen him before, holding the candle against the glass and staring out into the blackness of the moor. His face was drawn tight with expectation. He looked not like a servant doing some small secret thing, but like a man waiting for an answer on which much depended.
　　We stepped in upon him at once. Sir Henry demanded to know what this midnight business meant and why Barrymore had chosen to lie to us. For a moment the man was so startled that he could say nothing at all. His face seemed to lose all color, and his hand shook so much that the candle-light trembled across the wall and window.
　　Then Sir Henry suddenly pointed out through the glass and gave a sharp cry. Far away on the moor there shone a second light, small and steady, answering the one in Barrymore’s hand. It stood on the dark waste like a star fallen to the earth. At that sight, Barrymore’s silence broke, but not into clear truth. He hesitated, evaded, and struggled like a man caught in a trap.
　　Sir Henry was in no mood to be patient. He seized Barrymore and forced him to speak. Still the butler tried to resist, saying only that he meant no harm and begging us not to press him. Then, all at once, the door flew open and Mrs. Barrymore rushed in, white-faced and trembling, with tears already rising in her eyes. She begged us not to blame her husband and cried that if anyone had done wrong, it was she.
　　Her story came out in broken words, but it was true enough. The escaped convict Selden was her own brother. He had hidden upon the moor after his escape, and she could not bear to leave him to starve like a hunted animal. Barrymore had helped her for love of her, not from any friendship for the man himself. The signal at the window was simply to tell Selden when food was ready and when the coast was clear.
　　Barrymore then spoke more openly. He said that Mrs. Barrymore had grown up with this unhappy brother and could not cast him off even after his terrible crime. Selden, he added, would not remain much longer. A ship could be reached from the coast, and before many days he might be on his way to South America. Barrymore pleaded that once the man was gone we should hear no more of him, and that to hand him over now would be cruel to his wife beyond words.
　　I confess that the story moved me, and Sir Henry too was touched by the woman’s grief. Yet another feeling soon rose above pity. Here was a murderer, known and near at hand, hiding within reach of us on the moor. Sir Henry said bluntly that whatever Selden was to his sister, he remained a danger to the whole countryside. If we knew where he was, it was our duty to do what we could to catch him.
　　Mrs. Barrymore threw herself into fresh tears and begged us not to go after him. Barrymore, seeing that he could not hold us back by silence any longer, gave the place where his wife usually left food. He said that Selden might even now be watching for the signal. Sir Henry’s mind was fixed. The moment the distant light still burned on the moor, he felt that we should use our chance at once. I could not refuse to go with him.
　　So we hurried downstairs, seized our coats, and went out into the night. The air was cold and sharp, and the whole land seemed to lie waiting under the moon. Across the dark grounds and out toward the moor we made our way as fast as we could. The answering light still shone before us, faint but steady, drawing us onward like a point of fate.
　　We had not gone far before the ground grew rough under our feet. The moor by night is no place for fast running, and yet we did our best. At last we came near the place from which the light had shown, but even then it was not easy to see where the man was hiding. The land was broken with stones, low hills, and old huts. We advanced carefully, hoping to take him by surprise.
　　Suddenly a dark figure sprang up among the rocks. For one instant the moon showed us a lean, wild face and the crouching body of a man ready to fly like an animal. Then he was off across the moor. We ran after him at once. He moved with amazing speed and knowledge of the ground, turning among stones and over rough places where we could hardly keep our feet.
　　We pursued him for a long time, but the distance between us only grew greater. Sir Henry and I were both out of breath at last, and to continue farther would have been useless. So we stopped and sat panting upon two rocks, watching Selden grow smaller and smaller until the darkness swallowed him. We had failed to catch him, and the bitter waste around us seemed almost to laugh at our effort.
　　It was at that very moment, when the chase was clearly over, that something happened which startled me more than the sight of the convict himself. As we turned to go back, I happened to look toward a distant tor. The moon was low, and its silver light lay behind the sharp black edge of the rock. Upon the very top of it there stood the figure of a man, still and dark against the sky.
　　I saw him with complete clearness. He was not Selden. He was much taller and thinner, standing with his legs apart, his arms folded, and his head bent as if he were looking out over the whole dreadful moor. There was something so silent and commanding in his attitude that he seemed less like a living man than like the spirit of the place itself. I cried out and pointed him to Sir Henry.
　　But in the instant during which I turned to seize his arm, the figure vanished. The tor stood there as before, hard and black under the moon, but the man was gone. Sir Henry had not seen him clearly and said that it was probably one of the warders still searching for the convict. This may indeed have been so, but I was not satisfied. The man had stood too far from the line of Selden’s flight, and his whole air was different from that of any common watcher.
　　As we made our way back to Baskerville Hall, our thoughts were very different from what they had been when we set out. So far as the Barrymores were concerned, we now knew the reason for their secret signals and the cause of Mrs. Barrymore’s grief. That part of the mystery had been greatly cleared. Yet this relief only threw other matters into stronger darkness.
　　There was still the unknown man on the tor. There was still the second hidden figure on the moor of whom Barrymore had spoken. There was still Miss Stapleton’s warning, the strange cry sometimes heard across the waste, and above all the danger that seemed to gather around Sir Henry wherever he went. I ended my report to Holmes by saying that the moor remained as secret and unreadable as ever, and that I wished more strongly than before that he himself were with us.

Part 9

　　At this point I could no longer continue simply by copying from my reports to Holmes. The events were now coming too quickly, and my own thoughts and feelings had become part of the story in a more direct way. So I turned back to the diary I had kept during those days at Baskerville Hall. What follows is drawn from those notes. It begins on the morning after our failed chase of Selden and after the strange sight of the man standing on the tor.
　　October 16 was a dark, wet, miserable day. Low clouds rolled around the house and from time to time lifted just enough to show the sad lines of the moor beyond. Thin streams shone on the hillsides, and the great stones flashed cold and silver whenever a little light touched them. The whole land looked worn, wet, and lonely. Inside the Hall our mood matched the weather.
　　Sir Henry had fallen into a black reaction after the excitements of the night before. I myself felt a heavy pressure at my heart, not only from tiredness, but from something worse. Danger seemed to be near us all the time, and yet I could not give it a clear shape. That uncertainty was perhaps the hardest part of all. A man can face what he understands more easily than what he cannot name.
　　And indeed I had reason enough for such feelings. First there was the death of Sir Charles, so strangely fitting the old family story. Then there were the stories from the country people, all speaking of some great creature on the moor. Twice with my own ears I had heard a cry like the distant voice of a hound. I refused to believe in a ghostly beast from hell, but facts remained facts, and they pressed hard upon the mind.
　　If there were truly some huge hound roaming free upon the moor, many things might be explained. Yet that natural answer brought its own difficulties. Where could such a creature be hidden? How did it live? Why had no one found it in daylight? And beyond the hound there still remained the human side of the case: the man in the cab in London, the warning letter, and the dark watcher whom I had seen standing upon the tor. The farther I went, the more the natural and unnatural seemed to twist together.
　　Of one point at least I was fairly certain. The man on the tor was not anyone whom I had yet met in Devonshire. He was taller than Stapleton and thinner than Frankland. He might possibly have been Barrymore, but we had left Barrymore behind us at the Hall, and I could not believe that he had followed us across the moor unseen. So again the same idea returned. There was a stranger near us, just as there had been a stranger in London, and he had not yet let us go.
　　My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all this and make him my partner in a direct search. My second thought was better. He was already deeply shaken by the strange cry we had heard on the moor, and I saw no advantage in filling his mind with my half-formed suspicions. So I resolved to work more quietly, to speak little, and to keep my own eyes open. If I could find that unknown man, I believed we might reach the center of the whole problem.
　　That same morning there was a small but important scene after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak privately with Sir Henry, and their voices soon rose in the study so that I could hear their anger from the billiard-room. After some time Sir Henry called me in. Barrymore stood before us very pale, but outwardly controlled. He said that he felt badly treated because we had hunted his wife’s brother upon the moor after he and his wife had trusted us with the secret.
　　Sir Henry answered him plainly and with justice. Barrymore had not truly trusted us. He and his wife had hidden the matter until it was forced from them. Barrymore replied that he had not believed we would use the knowledge against Selden. He begged us again not to help the police, saying that the poor fellow would soon be out of the country and on his way to South America. To give him up now, he said, would destroy Mrs. Barrymore with grief.
　　Sir Henry turned to me and asked what I thought. I said that if the man were soon gone, the public would at least be rid of him without cost. There was, of course, the danger that Selden might attack someone before he escaped, but Barrymore swore that he would not. They had provided him with all he needed. To commit another crime, Barrymore said, would only reveal his hiding place. In the end Sir Henry, though reluctant, agreed to say nothing.
　　Barrymore thanked him warmly and then, after turning to leave, came back with hesitation. He said that because Sir Henry had been kind to him and his wife, he wished to give something in return. He had never told another living soul what he was now about to say. It concerned Sir Charles Baskerville’s death. At those words both Sir Henry and I rose at once. Barrymore did not claim to know how Sir Charles had died, but he said he knew why the old man had been at the gate that night.
　　“It was to meet a woman,” Barrymore said. That statement struck us like a blow. Sir Charles, whom all had respected, had gone secretly to the gate at ten o’clock to meet a woman. Barrymore could not give her full name, but he could give her initials. They were L. L. When Sir Henry demanded how he knew this, Barrymore explained that on the morning before Sir Charles died, only one letter had arrived for him, and Barrymore had noticed it because Sir Charles usually received many.
　　It had come from Coombe Tracey and had been written in a woman’s hand. Barrymore had thought nothing further of it until weeks later, when Mrs. Barrymore was cleaning Sir Charles’s study and found the remains of a burned letter in the grate. Most of it had crumbled to ash, but one small corner still held together long enough to be read. It seemed to be the end of the letter, perhaps the postscript. It asked Sir Charles, as he was a gentleman, to burn the letter and to be at the gate at ten o’clock. Below were the initials L. L.
　　The slip itself had fallen to dust almost at once, so it could not be shown to us. Still, the fact mattered greatly. Sir Henry asked why Barrymore had hidden such important information. The butler answered that his own family trouble had come upon him at once after Sir Charles’s death and that he had seen no good in stirring up a matter involving a woman. He had also wished to spare Sir Charles’s reputation, if that could be done. Now, however, he thought it unfair to keep the fact from us any longer.
　　When Barrymore had gone, Sir Henry and I looked at each other across a darker mystery than before. Yet in the darkness there was at least one point of light. If we could find this woman L. L., we might learn why Sir Charles had gone to the gate and what had happened before his death. I said that Holmes must be told at once, for here surely was the clue he had long wanted. So I returned to my room and wrote him a full account of the morning’s conversation.
　　It seemed to me then that Holmes had been very busy with other matters in London. His recent letters to me had been short and offered little comment on the information I had sent. But I felt certain that this new fact must draw him back to full attention. I wished with all my heart that he were there beside me. Though I had learned much, I still felt that I was handling pieces of the puzzle rather than the whole.
　　October 17 brought still worse weather. Rain fell all day upon the ivy and dripped heavily from the roof. Again and again I found myself thinking of the two hidden men on the moor. There was Selden, wicked and hunted, lying perhaps in some stone hut under that cruel rain. But there was also the other man, the watcher, the stranger. Was he too out there in the storm, waiting with some fixed purpose of his own? The thought would not leave me.
　　Toward evening I put on my waterproof and walked far out across the soaked moor, following dark guesses rather than any clear plan. I climbed at last to the black tor where I had seen the unknown figure two nights before. From that high point I looked over the wide, sad land. Rain swept across the hills in grey curtains. Far away, half hidden by mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. Except for the old stone huts scattered on the slopes, there was no sign of human life anywhere.
　　As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer in his dog-cart, returning from a distant farmhouse. He kindly insisted on giving me a lift. I found him troubled over the loss of his little spaniel, which had wandered onto the moor and not returned. I tried to comfort him, but I remembered the pony in the Grimpen Mire and could not think hopefully of the dog’s chances. Then, while we jolted along the rough road, I put to him a question that had been forming in my mind ever since Barrymore spoke.
　　I asked whether he knew any woman in the neighborhood whose initials were L. L. At first he said no. Then, after thinking for a little time, he remembered Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey. She was Frankland’s daughter, he said. She had married an artist named Lyons against her father’s wishes. The marriage had ended badly, her husband had left her, and old Frankland had given her little help. So various people in the district had helped set her up in a small typewriting business. Stapleton had helped, Sir Charles had helped, and Mortimer himself had given something too.
　　This answer struck me at once as important. Here at last was a real woman whose initials matched the letter, and whose life had become tied in some way to both Stapleton and Sir Charles. Mortimer naturally wanted to know why I was asking, but I had learned caution from Holmes and gave him no clear answer. To stop his questions, I turned him instead toward one of his favorite subjects and asked about the shape of Frankland’s skull. The rest of the drive was full of craniology and nothing else.
　　That same stormy evening I had one more conversation worth recording. Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and later he and Sir Henry were busy with cards. Barrymore brought my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to question him again. I asked whether his “precious relation,” as I called Selden, had gone at last from the moor. Barrymore answered that he hoped so, for the man had brought nothing but trouble. He had not seen Selden for three days, though food left for him had disappeared as usual.
　　Then, with my cup still halfway to my lips, I heard the words that startled me more than anything else that day. Barrymore said that perhaps the food had not been taken by Selden at all. There was another man upon the moor. I stared at him and demanded how he knew this. Barrymore said that Selden himself had told him more than a week before. This second man was hiding too, but he did not seem to be a convict. Barrymore spoke then with sudden real force and said that he did not like it at all.
　　I pressed him to explain. He waved his hand toward the rain-dark window and said that there was foul play somewhere and black villainy brewing. Look at Sir Charles’s death, he said. Look at the cries heard at night upon the moor. Look at this hidden stranger who watched and waited. What was he waiting for? Barrymore could not say, but he was sure it meant no good to any Baskerville. He would be glad, he said, when new servants came to the Hall and Sir Henry was safely gone from the place.
　　When I asked what Selden had said about the stranger, Barrymore answered that the convict had seen him once or twice but had learned little. At first Selden thought he might be one of the police, but soon decided he had some purpose of his own. He seemed to be, in Selden’s words, a kind of gentleman. He lived among the old stone huts on the hillside. Most curious of all, he had a boy working for him, bringing him whatever food and supplies he needed. That detail struck my mind at once and hard.
　　After Barrymore left, I stood for a long time by the black window looking out at the racing clouds and the broken trees beyond the glass. It was a wild night even inside the Hall. What must it be, then, in some little stone hut upon the moor? What fierce purpose could drive a man to hide there through wind and rain, with only a boy to serve him, and to spend night after night watching the Hall and those around it? I felt with sudden certainty that in that lonely hut lay the very center of the mystery. I swore to myself that before another day had passed, I would do everything in my power to reach it.

Part 10

　　The next day brought me nearer to the heart of the mystery than any day before it. I had already written to Holmes about the letter signed L. L., and the thought of it did not leave me. It seemed to me that if I could speak directly with this woman, Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey, I might at last break through one of the walls that had stood before us from the beginning. So I resolved to lose no time.
　　I went to Coombe Tracey and found Mrs. Laura Lyons in her office. She was a handsome woman, with something proud and unhappy in her face. I saw at once that life had not used her gently. Yet she also had strength, and when I first spoke to her of Sir Charles Baskerville and of the evening of his death, she met my questions not with fear, but with defiance. It was plain that she knew more than she wished to say.
　　At first she denied everything. Then, when I told her plainly that we knew Sir Charles had gone to the gate to meet a woman, and that Barrymore had seen the remains of her letter, she changed. She admitted that she had indeed written to Sir Charles and had asked him to be at the gate at ten o’clock. She had wished to ask his help in a private matter of great importance to her. She insisted, however, that there had been no unworthy reason in the meeting. Sir Charles, she said, had often helped people in trouble, and she hoped he would help her too.
　　When I pressed her to say why she had not gone to the gate after asking for the meeting, she became stubborn again. She said only that something had happened to prevent her, and that she had written no second message to Sir Charles. So he had gone there in good faith, expecting to find her, while she stayed away. That fact alone seemed to me deeply important. Yet she would not tell me what had changed her mind.
　　I then reminded her that Sir Charles had died at that very hour and place. Surely, I said, she must have felt some duty to speak after learning that. At this her face changed for a moment, and I thought she might break down. But she only answered that she had learned of his death the next morning and had then understood that silence was her safest course. She would say no more. No persuasion, no sharp question, and no appeal to her conscience could move her further.
　　Though I gained no full confession, I came away with one clear belief. Mrs. Laura Lyons was holding something back because another person stood behind her. She herself had not killed Sir Charles, and she had not gone to the gate. But some influence stronger than truth or duty had closed her lips. The moment I left her office, one name rose in my mind above all others. That name was Stapleton.
　　My thoughts were so full of this that I scarcely noticed the road at first as I walked back over the moor. Then suddenly chance gave me a new line to follow. On the hillside before me I saw a small boy carrying a bundle. His path was not toward any farm or village. It led instead toward the lonely group of ancient stone huts among the rocks. In that instant Barrymore’s words came back to me. The unknown man on the moor had a boy who brought him food and what he needed.
　　I dropped behind a rise in the ground and watched carefully. The boy moved quickly and with purpose, as if he knew the way well. Every few moments he looked around him, not like a child at play, but like a messenger who had been warned to be careful. When I was certain of his direction, I began to follow him from cover to cover, keeping as low as the rough land allowed.
　　The task was not easy. The moor is wide and bare, and a man may be seen there from far off if he is careless. More than once I had to throw myself flat among stones while the boy stopped and looked about him. But little by little I gained on him. At last he reached the broken group of stone huts and passed out of my sight among them. Then I ran forward quickly, determined that this time the hidden man should not escape me.
　　The old huts stood silent and lonely on the hillside, black against the afternoon sky. Most were no more than rings of stones, broken and open to the wind. But one still had enough of its walls and roof to give shelter. It was toward this hut that the boy had gone. I crept up to it with my revolver ready in my hand, for I did not know what sort of man I might find inside. My heart beat fast with the sense that the long search might now be ending.
　　The hut was empty. At first I thought I had been tricked again, and disappointment hit me hard. But when I looked more closely I saw clear signs that someone had indeed been living there. A blanket lay in one corner. There were a few tins, a bottle, and some rough food. The place had the air not of an accident, but of regular use. Then upon a flat stone in the middle I saw something that drove all other thoughts from my mind.
　　It was a paper, and on it were written the words: “Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey.” For one cold second I could only stare at it. Someone had watched me leave Baskerville Hall that morning, had followed my movements, and had sent word of them to the man in this hut. My first feeling was anger. My second was that I myself had been hunted while thinking I was the hunter.
　　In the next instant a voice spoke behind me. “It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson. I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than inside.” I spun round with my revolver half raised, and there, sitting quietly upon a rock, was Sherlock Holmes. He looked thin, brown, and very much pleased with himself. I have seldom felt such a mix of relief, joy, and annoyance in one moment.
　　For a little while I could hardly trust myself to speak. Holmes smiled at my face and said that he had expected some surprise, but perhaps not quite so much. I answered more sharply than was polite. He had left me to struggle alone, he had hidden himself while watching me, and he had let me believe that he was far away in London. Holmes took the rebuke with more patience than I expected. He said that he knew my anger was natural, but that secrecy had been necessary.
　　He then explained matters very simply. He had indeed come down to Devonshire soon after me and had taken this hut as his secret base. Cartwright, the same boy who had once helped him in London, had been bringing food and messages from Coombe Tracey. Holmes had wanted full freedom to watch the enemy without being watched himself, and he feared that if even I knew where he was, some chance word or look might betray him. He said that I had been far more useful to him by acting honestly in ignorance than I could have been by sharing his hiding place.
　　Though I was still hurt, I knew in my heart that he was right. He praised my work warmly and said that my reports had been of the greatest value. Without them, he told me, he could not have moved so surely. That praise softened me at once, as it always did when it came from Holmes. I sat down beside him upon the rock, and for the first time in many days I felt that the burden of the case was no longer mine alone.
　　Holmes next asked for a full account of my visit to Laura Lyons. I told him all: her admission that she had written to Sir Charles, her refusal to say why she had not gone, and my growing suspicion that Stapleton stood behind her silence. Holmes listened with very close attention. When I had finished, he nodded and said that this fitted perfectly with what he had already learned. Mrs. Lyons, he said, had been used as a tool.
　　Then he gave me the most astonishing fact of all. The woman who passed as Stapleton’s sister was not his sister at all. She was his wife. I stared at him in utter amazement. In one blow, Miss Stapleton’s fear, her warning to Sir Henry, and Stapleton’s jealous control over her all became clearer. Holmes said that the man had once, by carelessness, told us a true piece of his own history. He had spoken of having been a schoolmaster in the north of England. Such a man, Holmes said, is easy to trace.
　　By following that thread he had learned that a private school had failed under ugly circumstances and that the master had disappeared with his wife. The names had changed, but the descriptions matched. When Holmes added to this the man’s known love of insects, the chain became complete. Stapleton, then, was a married man pretending to be free. Mrs. Laura Lyons, thinking him unmarried, had no doubt expected to become his wife once she obtained her divorce. That was why she trusted him and kept his secrets.
　　“Then he is our enemy,” I said. “He followed us in London. He set that warning in motion. And the warning itself came from her, from Mrs. Stapleton.” Holmes answered that this was exactly how he read the case. The wife had tried to save Sir Henry when she could, but always under terrible pressure from her husband. Stapleton, meanwhile, had woven a net out of fear, lies, and other people’s weakness. We could now see more of the shape of his villainy, though not yet every detail.
　　I asked Holmes what the man wanted in the end. Holmes’s face grew hard, and he spoke in a low voice. It was murder, he said: cold, deliberate murder. He would not yet tell me every step of the plan, because one or two points still needed proof. But his net was closing. Stapleton, he believed, was already nearly in our hands. Only one danger remained. If the villain struck before we were ready, Sir Henry might still be lost.
　　Holmes then gave me strict instructions. I was to say nothing to Sir Henry about the hound or about Mrs. Stapleton’s true relation to her husband. Sir Henry, he reminded me, was expected at Merripit House the next day. Holmes wanted him to go there, watched but unsuspecting, because the time had nearly come when Stapleton would make his move. I did not like the thought, but Holmes was firm. He said that we must let the fish run a little longer before we struck.
　　Evening had now begun to fall over the moor, and the whole wide land turned purple and grey beneath us. The wind moved softly among the stones, and far away Baskerville Hall showed only as two thin towers against the last light. Holmes rose and said that we had better return. We had taken only a few steps when out of the silence there burst a scream so terrible that it froze my blood where I stood. It was a long cry of fear and pain, rising higher and higher until it broke off suddenly in the dark.

Part 11

　　That terrible cry broke across our talk like a knife, but I should first say what I had been telling Holmes in the moments just before it came. I had given him a full account of Sir Henry’s growing attachment to Miss Stapleton and of the scene I had watched that afternoon upon the moor. Sir Henry had gone to meet her, and I, unwillingly acting as his guard from a distance, had seen them walking together in close and earnest conversation. Then Stapleton had rushed upon them in a state of violent anger and broken up the meeting.
　　I told Holmes that from what I had seen, Sir Henry had clearly spoken of love. He had drawn Miss Stapleton toward him, and though she had seemed troubled, there had been feeling enough between them to show that this was no light matter. Stapleton’s behavior had been so wild and fierce that even from my distant hill I could see how deeply he objected to any such understanding. Later, Sir Henry himself had admitted to me that he had offered marriage and that the brother had interfered most violently.
　　Yet the matter had not ended in open war. Afterward Stapleton had come to Baskerville Hall to apologize for his behavior. He had blamed his anger on great affection for his sister and had spoken of the lonely life they lived together on the moor. Sir Henry, who is generous by nature, had accepted the apology. It was even arranged that he should dine at Merripit House on the following Friday, though Miss Stapleton would not be present. Holmes listened very closely and said that this dinner might prove most important.
　　We had scarcely finished speaking of it when the scream came from across the dark moor. It was not like any common cry of fear. It rose in the night with such horror and pain that both Holmes and I stood frozen for one instant before action returned to us. Then we ran at once toward the sound with all the speed we had. The ground was rough and broken, and in the darkness each step carried danger, but we dared not slow down.
　　Again the scream came, farther off now and yet more dreadful, as if the unhappy man who uttered it were being driven across the moor in blind terror. Then we heard another sound mixed with it, low, deep, and savage, though I could not say with certainty what creature made it. Holmes ran ahead of me, moving with astonishing speed over the broken ground. He called that if Sir Henry had indeed gone out alone upon the moor, we might already be too late.
　　At last the cries stopped. A dead silence followed, so sudden and complete that it was worse than the noise had been. We forced our way between the rocks and up a steep place where the moonlight lay pale upon the stones. There, below us in a dark hollow at the foot of a cliff, we saw a still figure upon the ground. Holmes checked himself with a sharp breath, and for a moment neither of us moved.
　　We climbed down to the body. It lay twisted among the stones in a shape that told its own story before any word was spoken. The poor man had fallen headlong from the rocks above and broken his neck. Even in that first moment, however, my heart was full of only one thought. The clothes were Sir Henry’s. I knew the suit, the cap, and the boots at once, and a great wave of horror and self-reproach swept over me.
　　Holmes was as deeply shaken as I was, though his pain came out in a different way. He said bitterly that in trying to build the case fully and strike only when sure, he had thrown away the life of the very man he had come to save. He blamed himself more heavily than he blamed me, and I in turn could hardly bear the thought that while following his orders and doing my duty, I had still allowed Sir Henry to go to his death. For a little time we stood there like men stunned.
　　Holmes spoke through clenched teeth of the hound and of Stapleton. He said that uncle and nephew had now both been murdered, the first driven to death by terror and the second hunted down over the moor. Yet he forced himself, even in that moment, to think like the investigator he always was. If this was Sir Henry, then the body itself showed no wound except the fall. Without proof of the beast, the whole case might still slip from our hands. That thought seemed only to deepen his anger.
　　We climbed a little way up the rocks and looked out across the moonlit moor. Far away there shone a single yellow light, and Holmes and I knew that it must come from Merripit House. I cried that we ought to seize Stapleton at once and drag the truth from him. Holmes answered that knowledge was not enough. We must have proof that would hold. One rash move, he said, and the man might yet escape us, even now.
　　So we came back to the body, preparing to do what little could still be done. Then suddenly Holmes gave a strange cry, bent low, and began to laugh and grip my hand in wild relief. For one instant I thought the strain had broken his self-control. Then I saw what he had seen. Across the dead man’s face there lay a beard. Not Sir Henry’s firm, clean face, but the dark, brutal features of Selden, the escaped convict.
　　The change in our feelings was immediate and violent. The tragedy remained dreadful, but it was no longer the death of our friend. I remembered at once that Sir Henry had given his old clothes to Barrymore, and Barrymore had passed them on to Selden for his escape. That explained everything we saw before us. Selden had worn the baronet’s old suit, his cap, and his boots. By that fatal exchange of clothing, he had drawn death to himself.
　　Holmes said at once that the stolen boot from the London hotel had now become clear in meaning. The hound must have been set on Sir Henry’s scent from some article of clothing, most likely that missing boot. Meeting Selden instead, but smelling Sir Henry upon the clothes, it had run the convict down over the moor. Yet Holmes still pointed to one deep question. How had Selden known enough fear to run screaming for his life? To hear a dog might not have terrified such a hard man. He must have seen or sensed something worse.
　　We had scarcely begun to consider what should be done with the body when another figure approached across the moor. We saw first the red glow of a cigar, then the neat outline of a man moving toward us with a quick, easy step. It was Stapleton. Holmes whispered instantly that I must say nothing to betray our suspicions. If Stapleton guessed how much we knew, all our plans might break apart in one moment.
　　The naturalist came up with an air of startled concern and then stopped sharply when he saw the body. His first words were whether it could possibly be Sir Henry. The question was too quick, too ready, and too full of inward fear for my liking. Yet when we told him that the dead man was Selden, a visible change passed over him. It seemed to me that amazement and disappointment crossed his face together before he mastered himself.
　　Stapleton asked how the man had died. Holmes answered in his most open and ordinary tone that my explanation seemed enough: Selden had probably been half mad from exposure and fear, had rushed wildly over the moor, and had fallen to his death among the rocks. Stapleton then asked whether we had heard anything besides the scream. He even mentioned the stories of the phantom hound in a careful, almost casual way. Holmes and I both replied that we had heard nothing of that kind.
　　Holmes then played his part with admirable coolness. He said that he intended to return to London the next day and that the case had not proved as useful as he had hoped. Stapleton watched him with very sharp eyes while this was said, and I could see that he was trying to decide whether Holmes had truly failed or was only pretending to fail. At last he seemed satisfied, or at least partly so. That alone made Holmes’s false show worth the risk.
　　Stapleton suggested that we carry the body not to Merripit House, where it might terrify his sister, but only far enough to cover it and leave it safe until morning. This seemed reasonable, and we agreed. So together we arranged what could be done there upon the moor. Then Holmes and I refused Stapleton’s invitation to come back with him and turned instead toward Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to go home alone under the moon.
　　As soon as we were out of his hearing, Holmes told me plainly why he had spoken as he did. It was important, he said, that Stapleton should believe him discouraged and on the point of leaving Devonshire. A man who thinks danger has passed often becomes careless. Holmes wanted just such carelessness now. The trap was nearly ready, but not quite. A few more facts were needed before we could strike safely.
　　I asked whether we ought to tell Sir Henry all that we now knew about Stapleton and his wife. Holmes answered no. For one thing, Sir Henry’s generous nature might lead him to confront the man too early. For another, the dinner at Merripit House on Friday was now of the greatest importance. Holmes believed Stapleton would attempt something soon, perhaps at once, because his plans had twice gone wrong. The man would not dare delay too long while Holmes remained near him.
　　So we reached the Hall with our minds full of the strange change the night had brought. We had gone out believing that Sir Henry Baskerville lay dead upon the moor. We returned knowing that he still lived, but also knowing that the danger around him was more real than ever. Selden’s death had shown us the working of the hound, the purpose of the stolen boot, and the cold force of Stapleton’s design. Yet the final proof still stood just beyond our reach, and until we seized that proof, Sir Henry’s life hung by the thinnest thread.

Part 12

　　When Holmes and I returned to Baskerville Hall that night after Selden’s death, Sir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see him. Recent events had made him feel that Holmes must soon come down from London in person. Even so, he raised his eyebrows when he found that my friend had arrived without luggage and seemed in no hurry to explain where he had been living. Between us we found what he needed, and before long we were sitting over a late supper in the Hall, speaking more freely than before.
　　Yet before that meal there had been one sad duty. I had to tell Barrymore and his wife that Selden was dead. To Barrymore it may have brought a kind of relief, for the danger and secrecy were ended at last. But Mrs. Barrymore broke down completely. She wept into her apron with the deep grief of a woman who had not forgotten the child her brother once had been. To the world he had become a cruel and hateful man. To her he was still the wild boy who had once held her hand.
　　At supper Sir Henry told Holmes that he had kept his promise not to go out alone that day, though he had been tempted to do so. Stapleton, he said, had sent over a message inviting him to Merripit House. Holmes answered dryly that it was well he had not gone, for he might indeed have had a very lively evening. Sir Henry then asked what progress had really been made in the case. He and I, he said, did not feel much wiser than when we first came down to Devonshire.
　　Holmes replied that the matter had been both difficult and complicated, but that the shape of it was now growing clear. Some points still needed light, yet the light was coming. He then let Sir Henry know enough of what had happened to make him understand the seriousness of the danger, though not so much as to shake his nerve. Holmes still refused to speak openly of the hound. He wanted Sir Henry to think, for the present, that Selden had died by accident after wild fear and flight across the moor.
　　It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that Holmes drew me back into the great hall with a candle in his hand. He led me to one of the old family portraits upon the wall. It showed a hard, severe face under a broad black hat and long curling hair. At first I saw only the picture of an old Baskerville from another age. Then Holmes stepped onto a chair and covered the hat and hair with his hand so that only the central face remained clear.
　　I gave a cry at once. The face of Stapleton sprang out of the canvas. The likeness was so strong that there could be no doubt of the family line. Holmes said that his eyes had been trained to look through disguise and ornament. We now had one more missing link. Stapleton was not merely a schemer who had placed himself near the Baskervilles. He was a Baskerville himself, a man with blood-right enough to dream of the inheritance if the line before him should fail.
　　This discovery put a savage brightness into Holmes’s eyes. He said that before another night ended, he believed Stapleton would be fluttering helplessly in our net like one of his own butterflies. He even laughed, one of those rare sharp bursts of laughter that in him always seemed to promise ill to someone else. I went to bed with a strange mix of hope and dread in my mind. We were surely close now, but closeness to the end is often the most dangerous point of all.
　　Holmes was awake before me the next morning. When I dressed and looked from the window, I saw him coming up the drive after some early walk. He rubbed his hands with the energy of a man ready for action and said that the nets were all spread and the drag would soon begin. He had already sent notice to Princetown about Selden’s death and had also arranged matters with Cartwright, who was still helping him quietly from Coombe Tracey. The game, he said, had now moved into its final stage.
　　After breakfast Holmes turned to Sir Henry and asked in a very ordinary tone whether Stapleton had fixed the dinner for that day. Sir Henry answered that he had. Holmes then said that the invitation must be accepted and kept. Sir Henry looked surprised, and I think a little hurt, because he had begun to feel that we treated him more like a piece in the game than a man in danger. Holmes saw this and spoke more gently. He said that he would explain everything in good time, but for the present Sir Henry must trust him fully.
　　That same morning Holmes and I drove to Coombe Tracey to see Laura Lyons together. I had visited her once already, but now Holmes intended to go directly at the truth. We found her in her office, and from the moment he began to speak it was plain that he meant to spare neither her pride nor her nerves. He told her openly that we were investigating the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and that Dr. Watson had already informed him of what she had said and of what she had held back.
　　She answered at first with defiance. When Holmes said that she had asked Sir Charles to meet her at the gate at ten o’clock on the very night and hour of his death, she insisted there was no connection between the two things. Holmes then struck at the heart of her silence. He said plainly that we regarded the case as one of murder, and that the evidence might involve not only her friend Mr. Stapleton but also his wife. At the word “wife” she sprang up from her chair as if struck.
　　She cried that Stapleton was not a married man. Holmes calmly told her that the woman who passed as Stapleton’s sister was in truth his wife. Laura Lyons’s face went white with disbelief and anger. She demanded proof, and Holmes had come prepared to give it. He laid before her a photograph of Stapleton and the woman together under another name, taken some years earlier in York, and added written descriptions from people who had known them when they kept a school in the north.
　　She looked through the papers and then sat rigid with rage. All at once the whole truth of her own position came to her. Stapleton had offered to marry her if she could free herself from her unhappy husband. He had lied to her at every step. He had used her, not loved her. Once this became clear, her resistance fell away. She said bitterly that she had been no more than a tool in his hands, and that there was now no reason left to protect him.
　　Her story, once begun, came out quickly. Stapleton had taken a strong interest in her troubles and had encouraged her to seek a divorce. He had told her that Sir Charles Baskerville, if approached in the right way, might give money to help with the legal cost. At Stapleton’s urging she had written the letter asking Sir Charles to meet her at the gate at ten o’clock. Then, on the very day fixed for the meeting, Stapleton had come to her and persuaded her not to go. He said that the money might be found elsewhere and that the interview was no longer needed.
　　Laura Lyons now saw what we saw. Sir Charles had gone to the gate because of her letter, but she herself had been kept away in order to leave him alone and undefended. She swore that she had known nothing of Stapleton’s marriage and nothing of any deeper plot against Sir Charles. Holmes questioned her carefully, but her answers only strengthened what he had already concluded. She had been deceived, guided, and used from first to last. Her evidence did not complete the case by itself, but it cleared one great shadow away.
　　As we drove back across the country, Holmes was very thoughtful. He said that one more part of the chain had closed firmly around Stapleton, yet there remained the question of the hound itself and the difficulty of catching our man in such a way that no jury could doubt his guilt. He did not speak much more than that, but I could feel his mind running swiftly ahead. By then I had learned that when Holmes grew quiet at such a moment, some dangerous plan was already forming.
　　Back at Baskerville Hall we found a new arrival waiting for us. It was Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard, whom Holmes had sent for privately. The little detective looked dry, hard, and practical as ever, and his plain London manner seemed almost comic against the dark old setting of the Hall. Yet Holmes was clearly pleased to have him there. Whatever happened next, he wanted an official witness at his side.
　　During tea Holmes finally laid out the plan. Sir Henry was to go to Merripit House that evening exactly as arranged. He was to dine with Stapleton and behave as naturally as possible. But there was one change. He must say that he intended to walk home across the moor and therefore send his carriage back early. This point was vital. Stapleton must believe that Sir Henry would return alone and on foot through the darkness.
　　Sir Henry listened with a face that showed both courage and strain. He asked whether we truly meant to use him as bait. Holmes did not soften the truth. He said that unless we caught Stapleton in the very act, the man might slip away from us again and perhaps forever. It was a hard demand to make of any man, but Sir Henry proved himself equal to it. He agreed without complaint, though I could see that his nerves had already been worn thin by the events of the last days.
　　Holmes then gave him very careful instructions. He must leave Merripit House after dinner and walk home across the moor path by the direct route. He must not wander from it, must not delay, and must not show by word or look that anything unusual was planned. Holmes, Lestrade, and I would be near at hand, hidden and ready. If Stapleton made his move, we meant to be upon him before he could escape.
　　Evening came down slowly and heavily over the Hall. There was no wild storm that night, but a damp chill lay upon the moor, and a white mist had begun to gather in the lower places. The sight of it troubled Holmes more than once. He went to the window and looked out with narrow eyes, measuring the air like a man who knows how easily weather can ruin the finest human plans. Still, he said that we must go on. Too much depended upon that night to draw back now.
　　At last Sir Henry set out for Merripit House. The rest of us waited only long enough to be sure that he had gone beyond all chance of being watched from the Hall. Then Holmes, Lestrade, and I made ourselves ready and followed by another way into the dark. We had come to the last stage at last. Behind us stood the Hall, black and silent. Before us lay the moor, the mist, Merripit House, and somewhere in that growing darkness the beast and the man who meant to set it loose.

Part 13

　　I have often said that one of Holmes’s great habits was to keep the last part of his plan inside his own mind until the very moment of action. On that night upon the moor, while Lestrade, Holmes, and I rode through the dark in a hired carriage, I felt that habit more strongly than ever. We were close to the end of the case, and yet Holmes still told us very little. I could only watch his face in the weak light and know that every thought in him was fixed on the trial ahead.
　　We left the carriage near the road and went on foot toward Merripit House. Holmes moved us quietly into hiding behind some rocks about two hundred yards from the house. From there we could see the dining-room window shining warmly through the darkness. The rest of the house was dim. The moor around us lay silent and cold under the half-moon.
　　Holmes sent me forward to look through the dining-room window. Creeping along the low wall of the orchard, I looked in and saw only two men inside: Sir Henry and Stapleton. Coffee, wine, and cigars were on the table. Stapleton seemed lively and busy in talk, but Sir Henry looked pale and distracted. Then Stapleton rose and left the room.
　　I heard his steps outside and saw him cross the orchard to the small outhouse in the corner. He unlocked the door, went in for a short moment, and came out again. While he was inside, I heard a strange scuffling sound. Then he locked the door once more and returned to the dining-room. That was all I could see, so I crept back and told Holmes what had happened.
　　Holmes’s first question was not about Stapleton, but about Mrs. Stapleton. Was she in the dining-room? I said no. He asked where she could be, since there was no other light in the house except the kitchen. I could give no answer. Then Holmes turned his eyes toward the Grimpen Mire, and I saw at once what truly troubled him. A white wall of fog was drifting slowly toward the house.
　　The mist shone in the moonlight like a pale frozen sea. At first it lay low, but every minute it came nearer and rose higher. Soon thin streams of it were touching the orchard wall. Holmes stamped his foot in impatience and said that this was the one thing on earth that could ruin his plan. If Sir Henry did not leave the house soon, the path across the moor would be covered.
　　We drew back once as the fog pushed nearer, but Holmes would not retreat too far. If we moved back too much, Sir Henry might pass us before we could help him. So at last we held our ground and waited with all our nerves stretched tight. Holmes knelt and pressed his ear to the earth. Then he whispered that he thought he heard Sir Henry coming.
　　A little later we saw him step out of the drifting mist into the clear moonlight. He walked quickly and looked over his shoulder again and again, like a man already troubled in spirit. He passed close to where we lay hidden and went on up the path. Then Holmes gave a sudden sharp whisper. The thing was coming.
　　From inside the fog there came a light, quick sound like hard feet striking the ground. We stared into that white moving wall, unable to guess what shape might break from it. Then all at once it came. I have seen many terrible things in my life, but never one more dreadful than that creature which burst out upon us from the mist.
　　It was a huge black hound, far larger than any ordinary dog, with fire seeming to pour from its mouth and burn in its eyes. Its face, jaws, and neck shone with a bluish light that made it seem less like a living beast than a monster from some nightmare. Even knowing now the trick of it, I can still remember the shock of that first sight. For one instant fear held all three of us like iron.
　　Then the hound rushed past us after Sir Henry. Holmes and I fired together, and the beast gave a horrible cry, but it did not stop. Ahead of us Sir Henry turned, saw what was behind him, and threw up his hands in terror. The hound sprang at him and brought him down upon the path. In the next second Holmes ran like a madman and emptied his revolver into the creature. The great beast rolled over, struggled wildly for a moment, and then lay still.
　　We bent over Sir Henry at once. By God’s mercy he had no wound. The beast had reached him, but we had killed it in time. He was faint and shaking with horror, but alive. When he could speak, he asked in a whisper what the thing had been. Holmes answered that whatever it had been, it was dead now, and the old family ghost had ended there upon the moor.
　　Looking closely at the body, the truth became plain enough. The beast was a savage cross between mastiff and bloodhound, huge, lean, and cruel. Its shining fire was not real fire at all. When I put my hand upon its mouth, my fingers came away glowing. It was phosphorus, spread carefully over the creature to make it seem supernatural. Holmes said at once that the dog had been prepared in a cunning way, with no smell strong enough to spoil its power of scent.
　　Sir Henry was in no state for more adventure, so we left him sitting on a rock while we turned at once toward Merripit House. Holmes believed Stapleton must have heard the shots and known that his game was lost. Even so, we searched every room of the house. There was no sign of him. Only one bedroom upstairs was locked, and from inside came a faint sound.
　　We burst the door open and found, not Stapleton, but Mrs. Stapleton tied to a post in the center of the room and wrapped round with sheets like a prisoner. When we cut her loose, we saw marks of violence on her neck and arms. Holmes called Stapleton a brute, and I agreed with all my heart. She had been badly used, nearly half fainting with pain and exhaustion.
　　The first thing she asked was not whether her husband had escaped, but whether Sir Henry was safe. When we told her that he was alive and that the hound was dead, she gave a deep sigh of relief. Then her whole feeling toward Stapleton broke out at last. She said that he had used, beaten, and deceived her, and that whatever love she once felt had turned into bitter hatred. Holmes asked her where Stapleton would go now.
　　She answered that there was only one possible place. In the heart of the Grimpen Mire lay a little island of firm ground, reached by a hidden path marked with sticks. There Stapleton had kept the hound and had made a secret refuge for himself. But the fog had now covered the mire, and without the guiding marks no man could cross it safely. She laughed almost wildly and said that he might perhaps find his way in, but never find his way out.
　　Since the fog truly made pursuit impossible, we had to wait until morning. Lestrade remained at Merripit House, while Holmes and I led Sir Henry back to Baskerville Hall. There at last we had to tell him the truth about Mrs. Stapleton and the dark trick that had been played upon his heart. He bore the blow bravely, but the shock of the night was too much for him. By morning he had fallen into a fever under Dr. Mortimer’s care.
　　When daylight came and the fog lifted, we went with Mrs. Stapleton to the edge of the Grimpen Mire. She showed us the narrow way marked from tuft to tuft across the foul ground. The place was truly hateful. The mud shook under our feet, the swamp pulled at our boots, and a smell of decay hung in the air. More than once we sank deeply and had to struggle back to safety.
　　Along that dangerous path we found one clear sign. Sticking up from the mire was an old black boot, and inside it was the name of the maker in Toronto. It was Sir Henry’s missing boot. Holmes said that Stapleton must have kept it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon Sir Henry’s track. Then, while fleeing through the mire, he had thrown it away. So far, at least, we knew that he had come.
　　But farther than that we could prove nothing. No footsteps remained in the bog, and when at last we reached the little island, there was still no sign of the man himself. Holmes believed, and I still believe, that Stapleton lost the path in the fog and was swallowed by the great mire. Somewhere under that dark slime the cruel man was buried forever. No grave was dug for him, but the moor had taken him.
　　On the island we found the remains of his secret work. There was an old abandoned mine, broken huts, a chain, bones, and the place where the hound had been kept. Among the rubbish lay the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer’s missing spaniel. Holmes said that this solved one more small mystery. We also found the stuff with which the beast had been painted to make it shine in the dark. The whole plan now stood before us in its ugly completeness.
　　Some weeks later, when the business had ended and Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were in London preparing for a long sea journey, Holmes and I sat again by the fire in Baker Street. At last he was ready to explain the whole story from the beginning. He said that from the enemy’s side the case had been much simpler than it first appeared to us. What seemed to us a maze had really been one steady and wicked plan.
　　Stapleton, Holmes said, was indeed a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles. His father had fled to South America, married there, and had a child. That child was the man we knew as Stapleton. Later he came to England, changed his name more than once, and with his wife, Beryl Garcia of Costa Rica, tried to make a living by keeping a school in the north. When that failed, he came south, carrying with him his clever brain, his greed, and his dangerous nature.
　　Once near Baskerville Hall, he learned that only two lives stood between him and the estate: Sir Charles and Sir Henry. From the first, Holmes said, he meant harm. He settled close to the Hall, pretended that his wife was his sister, and made friends with Sir Charles and the neighbors. He also learned from Dr. Mortimer that Sir Charles had a weak heart and believed strongly in the family curse. From that knowledge came the shape of the murder.
　　Stapleton bought the hound in London and hid it in the Grimpen Mire, where he could keep it safe and unseen. At first he hoped that his wife might draw Sir Charles into some private meeting and so deliver him to death. But she refused to help in that direct way. Then chance gave him another tool: Laura Lyons. By pretending that he was unmarried, he won her trust and made her believe he would marry her one day. Through her he got the letter that called Sir Charles to the gate on the fatal night.
　　Having arranged the meeting, he prevented Laura Lyons from coming. Sir Charles waited alone. Stapleton then brought the painted hound to the gate, let it loose, and drove the old man in terror down the yew alley. Sir Charles’s weak heart gave way before the beast could even touch him. The hound stayed mostly on the grass, which is why there were few tracks. Then Stapleton called it off and hid it again, leaving behind a death that looked impossible and almost supernatural.
　　When Sir Henry appeared as heir, Stapleton at once turned to him. Holmes said that Stapleton first hoped to destroy Sir Henry in London before he ever reached Devonshire. That was why he and his wife came up to town, why he wore the false black beard, and why the warning letter was sent. Mrs. Stapleton, fearful of her husband but eager to save Sir Henry if she could, cut words from a newspaper and sent the warning in a disguised form. It was her only safe way to act.
　　Stapleton also needed something that carried Sir Henry’s scent. So he bribed someone at the hotel to steal a boot. The first one taken was new and therefore useless, because it did not yet hold Sir Henry’s smell. So it was returned, and an old one was stolen instead. Holmes said that this small foolish-looking matter had been one of the most important clues in the whole case. It proved that we were dealing with a real hound and not some shadowy invention.
　　Holmes went on to explain his own actions. When he smelled white jessamine on the warning letter, he began to suspect the hand of a woman. Soon after, the scent, the false sister, and Stapleton’s history began to join together in his mind. That is why he came secretly to Devonshire instead of remaining openly with us. Cartwright helped him there, bringing food and carrying messages, while Holmes watched both Stapleton and, through Watson, the rest of the case.
　　He said kindly that my reports had been of real service to him, especially the details that helped prove Stapleton’s identity and the truths hidden inside the Barrymore mystery. Yet even after all that, Holmes still lacked proof strong enough for a court. That was why he had been forced to use Sir Henry as bait at the final dinner. He admitted openly that this was a hard and dangerous choice, and that the terrible appearance of the hound had nearly made the plan cost our friend his life.
　　Holmes then spoke of Mrs. Stapleton’s part in the affair. She had lived under a mix of fear and control for a long time. At moments she tried to warn Sir Henry, but never in a way that would immediately destroy herself. When Stapleton saw Sir Henry falling in love with her, he felt a jealous rage even though Sir Henry’s visits helped his own plan. On the final day, however, she learned too much and turned openly against him. That was why he tied her up before sending the hound after Sir Henry.
　　I asked Holmes one question that still troubled me. If Stapleton had succeeded, how could he ever have claimed the Baskerville estate without bringing suspicion on himself? Holmes answered that there were several possible ways. He might have claimed from South America, or used a disguise, or even worked through another man as his tool. Holmes would not say which road Stapleton would have chosen. He only said that a mind as daring and dishonest as his would surely have found some path.
　　When Holmes ended, the whole case lay clear before me at last, sadder and simpler than it had once seemed. There had been no demon hound from hell, only a savage dog, a painted trick, and a man greedy enough to kill for money and position. Yet the terror had been real enough. It had broken one old man’s heart, driven another to the edge of death, and left ruin behind it in many lives. Holmes, looking into the fire, said quietly that we had never yet helped to hunt down a more dangerous man.
　　After that he rose, shook off the last of the Baskerville case, and asked whether I would join him for the evening. But my own thoughts still remained for some time on the dark moor, the drifting fog, the glow around the hound’s mouth, and the lonely island in the mire where the whole black design had come together. Only much later did I feel fully sure that the shadow of Baskerville Hall had at last lifted from us all.