“And have you made your will, Sir Henry?”
“No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I’ve had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle’s idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together.”
“Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone.”
“Dr. Mortimer returns with me.”
“But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the good will in the world, he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side.”
“Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?”
“If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer,85 and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor.”
“Whom would you recommend, then?”
Holmes laid his hand upon my arm.
“If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I.”
The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.
“Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson,” said he. “You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I’ll never forget it.”
The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion.
“I will come with pleasure,” said I. “I do not know how I could employ my time better.”
“And you will report very carefully to me,” said Holmes. “When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?”
“Would that suit Dr. Watson?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the 10:30 train86 from Paddington.”87
We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet.
“The proposition took me completely by surprise.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1901
“My missing boot!” he cried.
“May all our difficulties vanish as easily!” said Sherlock Holmes.
“But it is a very singular thing,” Dr. Mortimer remarked. “I searched this room carefully before lunch.”
“And so did I,” said Baskerville. “Every inch of it.”
“There was certainly no boot in it then.”
“In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching.”
The German was sent for, but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles’s death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.
Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:
Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall.
BASKERVILLE.
The second:
Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times.
CARTWRIGHT.88
“There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent.”
“We have still the cabman who drove the spy.”
“Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry.89 I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question.”
The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself.
“I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address90 had been inquiring for 2704,” said he. “I’ve driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me.”91
“I have nothing in the world against you, my good man,” said Holmes. “On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions.”
“Well, I’ve had a good day and no mistake,” said the cabman, with a grin. “What was it you wanted to ask, sir?”
“First of all your name and address, in case I want you again.”
“John Clayton, 3, Turpey Street, the Borough.92 My cab is out of Shipley’s Yard,93 near Waterloo Station.”
Sherlock Holmes made a note of it.
“Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o’clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street.”
The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed.
“Why, there’s no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,” said he. “The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective, and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone.”
“My good fellow, this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?”
“Yes, he did.”
“When did he say this?”
“When he left me.”
“Did he say anything more?”
“He mentioned his name.”
Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me.
“Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?”
“His name,” said the cabman, “was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“ ‘John Clayton, 3, Turpey Street, the Borough.’ ”
Richard Gutschmidt, Der Hund von Baskerville (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1903)
Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman’s reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh:
“A touch, Watson—an undeniable touch!” said he.94 “I feel a foil as quick and as supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?”
“Yes, sir, that was the gentleman’s name.”
“Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up, and all that occurred.”
“He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to Northumberland Hotel, and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the ran
k. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here.”
“ ‘His name,’ said the cabman, ‘was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.’ ”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1901
“This very door,” said Holmes.
“Well, I couldn’t be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up half-way down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along—”
“I know,” said Holmes.
“Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare, and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and said: ‘It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.’ That’s how I came to know the name.”
“I see. And you saw no more of him?”
“Not after he went into the station.”
“And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”
The cabman scratched his head. “Well, he wasn’t altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I’d put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff,95 and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don’t know as I could say more than that.”
“Colour of his eyes?”
“No, I can’t say that.”
“Nothing more that you can remember?”
“No, sir; nothing.”
“Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There’s another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good night!”
“Good night, sir, and thank you!”
John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of the shoulders and a rueful smile.
“Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began,” said he. “The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I’ve been checkmated in London.96 I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I’m not easy in my mind about it.”
“About what?”
“About sending you. It’s an ugly business, Watson, an ugly, dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.”
78 The modern Belgian school included the painters James Ensor (also a printmaker), Constantin Meunier, and Henry Van De Velde (also an architect). Ensor became a member of the XX group, twenty artists whose show in 1886 in Brussels included Gauguin and Odilon Redon.
The rock group They Might Be Giants recorded a song in 1994 entitled “Meet James Ensor,” about the famed artist. In a fine example of cultural feedback, the group was named after the quirky 1971 film They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott as a delusional judge who believes that he is Sherlock Holmes and co-starring Joanne Woodward as Dr. Mildred Watson, his would-be psychiatrist and love interest; the two team up to track down Moriarty. The film was directed by Anthony Harvey and written by James Goldman, author of the award-winning The Lion in Winter (1968), and was based on Goldman’s stageplay.
79 Alton is in Hampshire, on the river Wey, 16 miles north-east of Winchester. There are many breweries in the town, and, according to Baedeker’s Great Britain, “the ale known as ‘Alton Ale’ is much esteemed.” There is also an Alton in Staffordshire, 15 miles north-east of Stafford.
The Glades of the New Forest, a branch of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, the international Holmesian study group, carried out an expedition to Alton in 1993 to attempt to identify High Lodge. Jane Weller, in “The ‘High Lodge’ Picnic” and in a private communication to this editor, reports that the 1888 maps of Alton reveal no High Lodge, and that no one was listed in any of the directories or in the 1881 or 1891 Census with the name of Oldmore. In 1889, there was an Alton Lodge, located on High Street, at the highest point in the town, close to the railway station, and the occupants had the same name as a former mayor of Gloucester (but not Oldmore). Of course, there never has been a mayor of Gloucester named Oldmore.
80 In “The Final Problem,” Holmes speaks of handling “over a thousand cases.” Obviously there were many that were not of “capital importance,” and Watson chose to publish some of them (e.g., “The Yellow Face”) for their special features.
81 Of course Sir Henry was “dogged” in Dartmoor, too.
82 Why would Holmes ask about men with beards, when he earlier made it clear that he believed the beard to be false?
83 Over $3.7 million in U. S. currency—a vast fortune, over $85 million in today’s purchasing power. At least one statistical source estimates that the average net worth of the top 1 percent of the English population was about $265,000 in U.S. currency. Sir Henry—meet Lord Mount-James (of “The Missing Three-Quarter”), “one of the richest men in England”!
84 A limit on the right of succession, usually imposed by a testator’s will. By the time of The Hound of the Baskervilles, however, land in England could no longer be tied up for a greater period than the lives of persons in existence and twenty-one years thereafter. This is the current law of most of the United States as well, called the “rule against perpetuities.” The subjects of entail and means by which entail was often broken are considered in “Breaking the Entail,” by Robert S. Pasley. See also “The Priory School,” where James Wilder sought to have his illegitimate father, the Duke of Holdernesse, break the entail in his favour. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), the Bennet family, consisting of five daughters, must endure the loss of their Hertfordshire estate, Longbourn, to the girls’ father’s cousin, William Collins, because of the entail.
85 Michael P. Malloy, who dates “Charles Augustus Milverton” after The Hound of the Baskervilles, identifies the blackmail victim as Milverton’s murderess. Philip Cornell, in a fine piece entitled “Blackmail’s Dark Waters,” demonstrates that Holmes seems to react particularly strongly to cases of blackmail and to exhibit more sympathy for the victims of blackmail than he does for other victims (see, for example, “The ‘Gloria Scott,’ ” “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” “The Second Stain,” and most notably “Charles Augustus Milverton”). Cornell suggests that Holmes may have had an experience, either personally or in his family, that led to this intense aversion. Of course, we learn later that there was no blackmail case at hand here, but Cornell finds it noteworthy that when Holmes needs a pretext, it is a case of blackmail that springs to his lips.
86 In “The Railways of Dartmoor in the Days of Sherlock Holmes,” B. J. D. Walsh concludes that Watson and company would have taken either the 10:30 or the 10:35 to Exeter, arriving at 2:28 P.M., where they would have had to change for Coombe Tracey (which Walsh identifies with Bovey Tracey) on the Moretonhampstead Branch. Although there was a slower train at 11:45, only by taking the 10:30 or the 10:35 could they have had the chance of obtaining lunch at Exeter. Neither the 10:30 nor the 10:35 train had yet acquired a restaurant car, and they did not do so until July 1899 and October 1899, respectively. From Exeter, Walsh concludes, Watson and his friends would have caught the 4:12 P.M. train and, after changing at Newton Abbot, would have reached Bovey Tracey at 5:40.
Bernard Davies also considers the railway journeys, in “Railways and Roads in the Hound.” He identifies Coombe Tracey as Totnes and concludes that Watson and his party travelled not to Bovey but to Hemsworthy Gate, proceeding from there to Widecombe or in the general direction of Postbridge and Bellever.
87 The first Paddington Station was built in 1838, by engineer Isambard
Kingdom Brunel, as the London terminus of the Great Western Railway, serving the rural heartlands, the West Country, industrial Bristol, and the South Wales coalfields. It was at this station that Queen Victoria arrived on completing her first railway journey in 1842, on the Phlegethon, which travelled at 44 m.p.h. Reportedly, the Prince Consort asked afterward that future trains carrying the Queen travel more slowly. In 1853, Brunel began construction on the permanent terminus, working with eminent architect Matthew Digby Wyatt. Completed in 1855, its ironwork and art nouveau–like cement work created a light, elegant, and graceful structure. In 1854, the Great Western Hotel was opened adjacent to the station. Since its original construction, the station has been expanded and rebuilt numerous times.
88 Brad Keefauver finds it far-fetched that a fourteen-year-old wrote this telegram or that he could have accomplished the given task. He raises the possibility that young Cartwright had been waylaid by Stapleton.
89 By the “Registry,” Holmes presumably means the registration files of the Public Carriage Office. In 1895, more than 11,000 horse-drawn cabs serviced the streets of London, employing more than 20,000 horses. Regulation of the trade after 1850 was the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police, located in an annex to New Scotland Yard in Whitehall called “the Bungalow.” The PCO moved to 109 Lambeth Road in 1919, remaining there until 1966, when it moved to its present home, 15 Penton Street, Islington. On the formation of Transport for London in July 2000, charged with regulation of all surface transportation on behalf of the Greater London Authority, the Public Carriage Office became a part of that body.
90 “Are we to believe,” asks Brad Keefauver, “that Holmes wired the Official Registry with just his address?”
91 Baedeker cautions the London tourist: “Many of the London cabmen are among the most insolent and extortionate of their fraternity. The traveller, therefore, in his own and the general interest, should resist all attempts at overcharging, and should, in the case of persistency, demand the cabman’s number, or order him to drive to the nearest police court or station.”
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