“You thought it might injure his reputation?”
“Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter.”
“Very good, Barrymore; you can go.”
When the butler had left us, Sir Henry turned to me. “Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?”
“It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.”
“So I think. But if we can only trace L.L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?”
“Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down.”
I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning’s conversation for Holmes.144 It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here.
October 17th.—All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor fellow! Whatever his crimes,145 he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one—the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluge—the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the Great Mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the Black Tor146 upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in grey wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before.
“In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Der Hund von Baskerville (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1903)
As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving his dog-cart over a rough moorland track, which led from the outlying farm-house of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart and he gave me a lift homewards. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again.
“By the way, Mortimer,” said I, as we jolted along the rough road, “I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?”
“Hardly any, I think.”
“Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L.L.?”
He thought for a few minutes. “No,” said he. “There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can’t answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit, though,” he added, after a pause. “There is Laura Lyons147—her initials are L.L.—but she lives in Coombe Tracey.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“She is Frankland’s daughter.”
“What? Old Frankland the crank?”
“Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault, from what I hear, may not have been entirely on one side.148 Her father refused to have anything to do with her, because she had married without his consent, and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time.”
“From its craggy summit I look out myself across the melancholy downs.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902
“How does she live?”
“I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved, one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business.”
He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent,149 for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Franklin’s skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.
I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time.
Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played écarté150 afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions.
“Well,” said I, “has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?”
“I don’t know, sir. I hope to Heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I’ve not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago.”
“Did you see him then?”
“No, sir; but the food was gone when next I went that way.”
“Then he was certainly there?”
“So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it.”
I sat with my coffee-cup half-way to my lips, and stared at Barrymore.
“You know that there is another man, then?”
“Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, sir.”
“How do you know of him, then?”
“Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He’s in hiding, too, but he’s not a convict, so far as I can make out. I don’t like it, Dr. Watson—I tell you straight, sir, that I don’t like it.” He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness.
“Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don’t like.”
Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst, or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.
“It’s all these goings-on, sir,” he cried, at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. “There’s foul play somewhere, and there’s black villainy brewing, to that I’ll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!”
“But what is it that alarms you?”
“Look at Sir Charles’s death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There’s not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look
at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What’s he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry’s new servants are ready to take over the Hall.”
“But about this stranger,” said I. “Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?”
“He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one, and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay151 of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out.”
“And where did he say that he lived?”
“Among the old houses on the hillside—the stone huts where the old folk used to live.”
“ ‘You know that there is another man, then?’ ”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902
“But how about his food?”
“Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings him all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants.”
“Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time.”
When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor? What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time? And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial? There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery.
138 Compelled, argues Robert Pattrick, by the missing page—see note 125, above, and note 144, below.
139 “How are they making arrangements to get their convict relation on board a ship bound for South America?” asks Brad Keefauver. “A pair of country servants do not have the connections to get a wanted criminal to a place half a world away.” He proposes that Moriarty employed Selden, engineered the prison break, and arranged the trip to South America.
140 Dr. Watson’s attitude is reminiscent of the English penal policy of “transportation,” the government program of removal of criminals from England and shipping them to America or the Australian colonies, which ended in England in the late 1860s only when the receiving countries refused to accept any more transportees. Both Dr. Watson and the government seem to believe that so long as a criminal is removed from England, it little matters where he or she goes or whether the convict continues in his or her criminal ways.
141 According to the Police Code, “An accessory before the fact is one who, directly or indirectly, so counsels, procures, commands, or instigates another, that a crime is committed… . A person aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of an offence punishable on summary conviction is liable to the same punishment as the principal offender (11 & 12 Vict., c. 43, s.5).” But in fact it appears that Holmes, Watson, and indeed Sir Henry are accessories after the fact, for, according to the Police Code, “An accessory after the fact is one (except married women screening their husbands) who, knowing a felony to have been committed, receives, comforts, or assists the felon in such manner as to enable him to escape from punishment.” Punishment for an accessory after the fact is universally less stringent than that for the principal offender, except in cases of sedition or treason.
142 What is it that they heard? That the criminal—described earlier as a man who had committed a murder of “peculiar ferocity” and exhibited “wanton brutality”—had a sister? Mrs. Barrymore certainly never suggested that Selden had repented or changed in any way. Sir Henry’s condonation here seems incredible.
143 William S. Baring-Gould suggests that Coombe Tracey is a conflation of Widecombe and Bovey Tracey. The latter village is a station on the Great Western Railway about 6 miles from Newton Abbot and was the demesne of William de Tracey, one of the murderers of St. Thomas à Becket. Philip Weller notes (and rejects) numerous additional candidates, including Combe (no railway station); Ashburton (too close to candidates for Baskerville Hall); Buckfastleigh (not an express station); South Brent (too close to Hall sites); Ivybridge (too far from Moor); Newton Abbot (same); and Totnes (same). See also note 86, above.
144 W. W. Robson suggests that this may be the “missing page” mentioned by Watson (see text accompanying note 125), although an alternate explanation is tendered by Donald Yates (see note 210, below). Robert R. Pattrick, in a careful analysis entitled “Watson Writes from Baskerville Hall,” concludes that the “missing page” was another letter from Watson largely containing the conversation with Laura Lyons (which Watson ultimately had to quote from his diary) and that the letter was never received by Holmes, because it was either lost by the Post Office or kept by a local resident as a souvenir.
145 See note 142, above.
146 According to Sabine Baring-Gould’s A Book of Dartmoor, Black Tor lies about one and one-half miles to the south-west of Princetown and has on it a logan stone that can be rocked by means of a natural handle. Philip Weller states that there are at least four Black Tors on Dartmoor, and that a better candidate is the one adjacent to Shipley Tor, just over two miles to the south-south-west of Hayford Hall, a strong candidate for Baskerville Hall (see Appendix 4). Again, this may be a description, rather than a place name, which Watson later altered. See note 131, above.
147 It has delighted a generation of Sherlockians that “Laura Lyons” was the Playmate of the Month in the February 1976 issue of Playboy magazine. Hugh M. Hefner, publisher of Playboy, in an interview with this editor published in the Baker Street Journal discussing his long affinity with Sherlock Holmes, stated for the first time that this was her real name, ending years of speculation.
148 Is Dr. Mortimer implying that she committed adultery? See note 160, below, for the husband’s grounds for divorce.
149 Compare Christ’s advice to the apostles in Matthew 10:16: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Watson chooses this phrase (rather than a more colloquial comparison to an owl) to suggest a devious purpose to his “wisdom.”
150 A card game for two people, played widely during the first quarter of the nineteenth century in the Paris salons, and related to euchre—with both possibly deriving from the Spanish game triumph. The piquet pack of 32 cards is used, made up of the seven through the king of each suit, plus the ace. The value of the cards is almost the same as in whist, except that the king has a ranking higher than that of (in descending order of importance) the jack, ace, and ten; hence the ace can take the ten. As in whist, trumps are the most powerful cards, with a seven of trumps being able to take the king of another suit. Rounds proceed until a player reaches 5 points, and if both players have 5, the goal becomes another 5 points. Points are achieved by winning most or all of the tricks; having the king of trumps, or dealing it as the trump card; and beating an opponent who reaches a state of vulnerability (with that condition having two definitions, depending upon whether one is the dealer or the non-dealer).
151 Slang for a job, situation, or purpose, also used by Hall Pycroft in “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk.”
CHAPTER
XI
THE MAN ON THE TOR152
THE EXTRACT FROM my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the 18th of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start, then, from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey153 had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his d
eath, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.
I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery, and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest.
When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady who was sitting before a Remington typewriter,154 sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit.155
The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose.156 Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was.
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