‘One day, however, I got word that he was dying. I hurried at once to the garden, mad that he should slip out of my clutches like that, and, looking through the window, I saw him lying in his bed, with his sons on each side of him. I’d have come through and taken my chance with the three of them, only even as I looked at him his jaw dropped, and I knew that he was gone. I got into his room that same night, though, and I searched his papers to see if there was any record of where he had hidden our jewels. There was not a line, however, so I came away, bitter and savage as a man could be. Before I left I bethought me that if I ever met my Sikh friends again it would be a satisfaction to know that I had left some mark of our hatred; so I scrawled down the sign of the four of us, as it had been on the chart, and I pinned it on his bosom. It was too much that he should be taken to the grave without some token from the men whom he had robbed and befooled.
‘We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat and dance his war-dance: so we always had a hatful of pennies after a day’s work. I still heard all the news from Pondicherry Lodge, and for some years there was no news to hear, except that they were hunting for the treasure. At last, however, came what we had waited for so long. The treasure had been found. It was up at the top of the house in Mr Bartholomew Sholto’s chemical laboratory. I came at once and had a look at the place, but I could not see how, with my wooden leg, I was to make my way up to it. I learned, however, about a trapdoor in the roof, and also about Mr Sholto’s supper-hour. It seemed to me that I could manage the thing easily through Tonga. I brought him out with me with a long rope wound round his waist. He could climb like a cat, and he soon made his way through the roof, but, as ill-luck would have it, Bartholomew Sholto was still in the room, to his cost. Tonga thought he had done something very clever in killing him, for when I came up by the rope I found him strutting about as proud as a peacock. Very much surprised was he when I made at him with the rope’s end and cursed him for a little bloodthirsty imp. I took the treasure-box and let it down, and then slid down myself, having first left the sign of the four upon the table to show that the jewels had come back at last to those who had most right to them. Tonga then pulled up the rope, closed the window, and made off the way that he had come.
‘I don’t know that I have anything else to tell you. I had heard a waterman speak of the speed of Smith’s launch, the Aurora, so I thought she would be a handy craft for our escape. I engaged with old Smith, and was to give him a big sum if he got us safe to our ship. He knew, no doubt, that there was some screw loose, but he was not in our secrets. All this is the truth, and if I tell it to you, gentlemen, it is not to amuse you – for you have not done me a very good turn – but it is because I believe the best defence I can make is just to hold back nothing, but let all the world know how badly I have myself been served by Major Sholto, and how innocent I am of the death of his son.’
‘A very remarkable account,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘A fitting wind-up to an extremely interesting case. There is nothing at all new to me in the latter part of your narrative except that you brought your own rope. That I did not know. By the way, I had hoped that Tonga had lost all his darts; yet he managed to shoot one at us in the boat.’
‘He had lost them all, sir, except the one which was in his blow-pipe at the time.’
‘Ah, of course,’ said Holmes. ‘I had not thought of that.’
‘Is there any other point which you would like to ask about?’ asked the convict affably.
‘I think not, thank you,’ my companion answered.
‘Well, Holmes,’ said Athelney Jones, ‘you are a man to be humoured, and we all know that you are a connoisseur of crime; but duty is duty, and I have gone rather far in doing what you and your friend asked me. I shall feel more at ease when we have our story-teller here safe under lock and key. The cab still waits, and there are two inspectors downstairs. I am much obliged to you both for your assistance. Of course you will be wanted at the trial. Good-night to you.’
‘Good-night, gentlemen both,’ said Jonathan Small.
‘You first, Small,’ remarked the wary Jones as they left the room. ‘I’ll take particular care that you don’t club me with your wooden leg, whatever you may have done to the gentleman at the Andaman Isles.’
‘Well, and there is the end of our little drama,’ I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. ‘I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective.’
He gave a most dismal groan.
‘I feared as much,’ said he. ‘I really cannot congratulate you.’
I was a little hurt.
‘Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?’ I asked.
‘Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way; witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.’
‘I trust,’ said I, laughing, ‘that my judgment may survive the ordeal. But you look weary.’
‘Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.’
‘Strange,’ said I, ‘how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe:
Schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf, Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.
‘By the way, apropos of this Norwood business, you see that they had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul.’
‘The division seems rather unfair,’ I remarked. ‘You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?’
‘For me,’ said Sherlock Holmes, ‘there still remains the cocaine-bottle.’ And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
CONTENTS
Epigraph
1 Mr Sherlock Holmes
2 The Curse of the Baskervilles
3 The Problem
4 Sir Henry Baskerville
5 Three Broken Threads
6 Baskerville Hall
7 The Stapletons of Merripit House
8 First Report of Dr Watson
9 The Light upon the Moor
10 Extract from the Diary of Dr Watson
11 The Man on the Tor
12 Death on the Moor
13 Fixing the Nets
14 The Hound of the Baskervilles
15 A Retrospection
This story owes its inception to my friend, Mr Fletcher Robinson, who has helped me both in the general plot and in the local details.
A.C.D.
1
Mr Sherlock Holmes
Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearthrug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a ‘Penang lawyer’. Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. ‘To James Mortimer, MRCS, from his friends of the CCH’, was engraved upon it, with the date ‘1884’. It was just a stick as the ol
d-fashioned family practitioner used to carry – dignified, solid, and reassuring.
‘Well, Watson, what do you make of it?’
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.
‘How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.’
‘I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,’ said he. ‘But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor’s stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.’
‘I think,’ said I, following so far as I could the methods of my companion, ‘that Dr Mortimer is a successful elderly medical man, well-esteemed, since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.’
‘Good!’ said Holmes. ‘Excellent!’
‘I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.’
‘Why so?’
‘Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one, has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.’
‘Perfectly sound!’ said Holmes.
‘And then again, there is the “friends of the CCH”. I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return.’
‘Really, Watson, you excel yourself,’ said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. ‘I am bound to say that in all accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.’
He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I have often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then, with an expression of interest, he laid down his cigarette, and, carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.
‘Interesting, though elementary,’ said he, as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. ‘There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.’
‘Has anything escaped me?’ I asked, with some self-importance. ‘I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have over-looked?’
‘I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.’
‘Then I was right.’
‘To that extent.’
‘But that was all.’
‘No, no, my dear Watson, not all – by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials “CC” are placed before that hospital the words “Charing Cross” very naturally suggest themselves.’
‘You may be right.’
‘The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor.’
‘Well, then, supposing that “CCH” does stand for “Charing Cross Hospital”, what further inferences may we draw?’
‘Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!’
‘I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country.’
‘I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start in practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?’
‘It certainly seems probable.’
‘Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff, he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician – little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago – the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absentminded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.’
I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.
‘As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you,’ said I, ‘but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man’s age and professional career.’
From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.
Mortimer, James, MRCS, 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson Prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled ‘Is Disease a Reversion?’ Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of ‘Some Freaks of Atavism’ (Lancet, 1882), ‘Do We Progress?’ (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow.
‘No mention of that local hunt, Watson,’ said Holmes, with a mischievous smile, ‘but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absentminded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absentminded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.’
‘And the dog?’
‘Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog’s jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been – yes, by Jove it is a curly-haired spaniel.’
He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.
‘My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?’
‘For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very doorstep, and there is the ring of its owner. Don’t move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for go
od or ill. What does Dr James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!’
The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which shot out between two keen, grey eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes’s hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy.
‘I am so very glad,’ said he. ‘I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world.’
‘A presentation, I see,’ said Holmes.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘From Charing Cross Hospital?’
‘From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.’
‘Dear, dear, that’s bad!’ said Holmes, shaking his head.
Dr Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment.
‘Why was it bad?’
Sherlock Holmes Page 29
