The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  “Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!” I cried, with some bitterness. “I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes.”

  “My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is evident176 that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living at the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment.”

  “But why keep me in the dark?”

  “For you to know could not have helped us, and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me—you remember the little chap at the Express office—and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread177 and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable.”

  “Then my reports have all been wasted!” My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them.

  Holmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket.

  “Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case.”

  I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes’s praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said, and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor.

  “That’s better,” said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. “And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons—it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow.”

  The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill, and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied.

  “This is most important,” said he, when I had concluded. “It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?”

  “I did not know of a close intimacy.”

  “There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife—”

  “His wife?”

  “I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife.”

  “Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?”

  “Sir Henry’s falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.”

  “But why this elaborate deception?”

  “Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.”

  All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible—a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart.

  “It is he, then, who is our enemy—it is he who dogged us in London?”

  “So I read the riddle.”

  “And the warning—it must have come from her!”

  “Exactly.”

  The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed though the darkness which had girt me so long.

  “But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?”

  “Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the North of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it—the name was different—had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete.”

  The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.

  “If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?” I asked.

  “That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife.”

  “And when she is undeceived?”

  “Why, then we may find the lady of service.178 It must be our first duty to see her—both of us—tomorrow. Don’t you think, Watson, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville Hall.”

  The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violent sky.

  “One last question, Holmes,” I said, as I rose. “Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?”

  Holmes’s voice sank as he answered—“It is murder, Watson—refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day—two at the most—and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side—Hark!”

  A terrible scream—a prolonged yell of horror and anguish burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.

  “Oh, my God!” I gasped. “What is it? What does it mean?”

  “Night had settled upon the moor.” Frederic Dorr Steele, Later Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. II, 1952. Originally prepared as a publicity drawing for Twentieth-Century Fox’s film The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), appearing in trade journals.

  Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness.

  “Hush!” he whispered. “Hush!”

  The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before.

  “Where is it?” Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. “Where is it, Watson?”

&nb
sp; “There, I think.” I pointed into the darkness.

  “No, there!”

  Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.

  “The hound!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!”

  He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.

  I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead, like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground.

  “He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late.”

  “No, no, surely not!”

  “Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened, we’ll avenge him!”

  Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor and nothing moved upon its dreary face.

  “Can you see anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But, hark, what is that?”

  A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff, which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downwards upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him, and held it up again, with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us—the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!

  “It was a prostrate man face downwards upon the ground.”

  Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902

  There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit—the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.

  “The brute! the brute!” I cried, with clenched hands. “Oh, Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate.”

  “I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know—how could I know—that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?”

  “That we should have heard his screams—my God, those screams!—and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed.”

  “It was a prostrate man face downwards upon the ground.” Frederic Dorr Steele, Later Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. II, 1952. Originally prepared as a publicity drawing for Twentieth-Century Fox’s film The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), appearing in trade journals.

  “He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered—the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast, which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!”

  We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then, as the moon rose, we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady, yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed.

  “Why should we not seize him at once?”

  “Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet.”

  “What can we do?”

  “There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend.”

  Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears.

  “We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?”

  He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed!

  “A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!”

  “It was a prostrate man face downwards upon the ground.”

  Richard Gutschmidt, Der Hund von Baskerville (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1903)

  “A beard?”

  “It is not the baronet—it is—why, it is my neighbour, the convict!”

  With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead,179 the sunken animal eyes. It was, indeed, the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock—the face of Selden, the criminal. Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap—it was all Sir Henry’s. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy.

  “Then the clothes have been the poor fellow’s death,” said he. “It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry’s—the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability—and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?”

  “He heard him.”

  “To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?”

  “A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct—”

  “I presume nothing.”

  “Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there.”180

  “My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain for ever a mystery. The question no
w is, what shall we do with this poor wretch’s body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens.”

  “I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police.”

  “It was the face of Selden, the criminal.”

  Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902

  “Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what’s this? It’s the man himself, by all that’s wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions—not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground.”

  A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again.

  “Why, Dr. Watson, that’s not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what’s this? Somebody hurt? Not—don’t tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!”

  He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers.

  “Who—who’s this?” he stammered.

  “It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown.”

  Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me.

  “He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man.”

  Richard Gutschmidt, Der Hund von Baskerville (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1903)

  “Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?”

  “He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry.”

  “I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry.”

  “Why about Sir Henry in particular?” I could not help asking.

  “Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way”—his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes’s—“did you hear anything else besides a cry?”