Chapter 13: Fixing the Nets
| The Hound of the Baskervilles |
Chapter 15: A Retrospection
Chapter 14
The Hound of the Baskervilles
One of Sherlock Holmes's defects — if, indeed, one may call it a
defect — was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his
full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfillment.
Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which
loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him.
Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never
to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for
those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often
suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive
in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we
were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said
nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action
would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the
cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side
of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor
once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the
wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure.
Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver
of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial
matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we
at last passed Frankland's house and knew that we were drawing
near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up
to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The
wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey
forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House.
"Are you armed, Lestrade?"
The little detective smiled.
"As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as
long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it."
"Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies."
"You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's
the game now?"
"A waiting game."
"My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place," said the
detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes
of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the
Grimpen Mire. "I see the lights of a house ahead of us."
"That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must
request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper."
We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for
the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two
hundred yards from it.
"This will do," said he. "These rocks upon the right make an
admirable screen."
"We are to wait here?"
"Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this
hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not,
Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those
latticed windows at this end?"
"I think they are the kitchen windows."
"And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?"
"That is certainly the dining-room."
"The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep
forward quietly and see what they are doing — but for heaven's
sake don't let them know that they are watched!"
I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which
surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached
a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained
window.
There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton.
They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the
round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and
wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought
of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing
heavily upon his mind.
As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir
Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing
at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of
boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other
side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the
naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the
orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a
curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so
inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed
me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I
crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell
them what I had seen.
"You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?" Holmes asked
when I had finished my report.
"No."
"Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other
room except the kitchen?"
"I cannot think where she is."
I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a
dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and
banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and
well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great
shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks
borne upon its surface. Holmes's face was turned towards it, and
he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift.
"It's moving towards us, Watson."
"Is that serious?"
"Very serious, indeed — the one thing upon earth which could
have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is
already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend
upon his coming out before the fog is over the path."
The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold
and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft,
uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its
serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the
silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower
windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them
was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There
only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men,
the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over
their cigars.
Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half
of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already
the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of
the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already
invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white
vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round
both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank
on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship
upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon
the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience.
"If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be
covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in
front of us."
"Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?"
"Yes, I think it would be as well."
So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until
we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white
sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and
inexorably on.
"We are going too far," said Holmes. "We dare not take the
chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all
costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on
his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I
think that I hear him coming."
A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank
in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as
through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the
clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed
close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us.
As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a
man who is ill at ease.
"Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!"
There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in
the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards
of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what
horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's
elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and
exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips
parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of
terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I
sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind
paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us
from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous
coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever
seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a
smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were
outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a
disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling,
more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face
which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.
With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down
the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So
paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass
before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both
fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which
showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however,
but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry
looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in
horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.
But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to
the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could
wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as
Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he
outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In
front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream
from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to
see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and
worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five
barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last
howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its
back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its
side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful,
shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The
giant hound was dead.
Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away
his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we
saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had
been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made
a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between
the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at
us.
"My God!" he whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's
name, was it?"
"It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the
family ghost once and forever."
In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was
lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it
was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the
two — gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now
in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping
with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were
ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and
as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the
darkness.
"Phosphorus," I said.
"A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the
dead animal. "There is no smell which might have interfered
with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry,
for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a
hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us
little time to receive him."
"You have saved my life."
"Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?"
"Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready
for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you
propose to do?"
"To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures
to-night. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with
you to the Hall."
He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and
trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat
shivering with his face buried in his hands.
"We must leave you now," said Holmes. "The rest of our
work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We
have our case, and now we only want our man.
"It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,"
he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path.
"Those shots must have told him that the game was up."
"We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened
them."
"He followed the hound to call him off — of that you may be
certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the
house and make sure."
The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from
room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant,
who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the
dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner
of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom
we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the
bedroom doors was locked.
"There's someone in here," cried Lestrade. "I can hear a
movement. Open this door!"
A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck
the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew
open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.
But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant
villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an
object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment
staring at it in amazement.
The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the
walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that
collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had
been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the
centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been
placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk
of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied,
so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to
secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was
that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat
and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the
lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes — eyes full of
grief and shame and a dreadful questioning — stared back at us.
In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and
Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her
beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a
whiplash across her neck.
"The brute!" cried Holmes. "Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and
exhaustion."
She opened her eyes again.
"Is he safe?" she asked. "Has he escaped?"
"He cannot escape us, madam."
"No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?"
"Yes."
"And the hound?"
"It is dead."
She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
"Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has
treated me!" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we
saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. "But
this is nothing — nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has
tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a
life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the
hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have
been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate sobbing
as she spoke.
"You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us
then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil,
help us now and so atone."
"There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the
mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had
made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where
he would fly."
The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes
held the lamp towards it.
"See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen
Mire to-night."
She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed
with fierce merriment
"He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How
can he see the guiding wands to-night? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I
could only have plucked them out to-day. Then indeed you
would have had him at your mercy!"
It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog
had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the
house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville
Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld
from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the
truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the
night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning
he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer.
The two of them were destined to travel together round the world
before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man
that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened
estate.
And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular
narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those
dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long
and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death
of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs.
Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through
the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life
when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on
her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula
of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog.
From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed
where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those
green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to
the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an
odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces,
while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the
dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations
around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we
walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant
hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim
and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we
saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us.
From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the
slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist
as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there
to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land
again. He held an old black boot in the air. "Meyers, Toronto,"
was printed on the leather inside.
"It is worth a mud bath," said he. "It is our friend Sir
Henry's missing boot."
"Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight."
"Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the
hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up,
still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight.
We know at least that he came so far in safety."
But more than that we were never destined to know, though
there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance
of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly
in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the
morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of
them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then
Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he
struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the
heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the
huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried.
Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he
had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft
half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned
mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the
miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding
swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of
gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A
skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the
debris.
"A dog!" said Holmes. "By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor
Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that
this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice,
and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not
pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in
the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was
only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his
efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the
luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was
suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and
by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the
poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did,
and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a
creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his
track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of
driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to
inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it,
as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson,
and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt
down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder" — he
swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the
russet slopes of the moor.
Chapter 13: Fixing the Nets
| The Hound of the Baskervilles |
Chapter 15: A Retrospection