Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

‘Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.'

‘What do you make of it?'

‘It is very bewildering.'

‘It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?'

‘Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.'

‘He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?'

‘What then?'

‘He was running, Watson – running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart and fell dead upon his face.'

‘Running from what?'

‘There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.'

‘How can you say that?'

‘I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run
from
the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be.
Then again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the Yew Alley rather than in his own house?'

‘You think that he was waiting for someone?'

‘The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?'

‘But he went out every evening.'

‘I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he was to take his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning.'

Our breakfast-table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit, and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman.

‘This is Sir Henry Baskerville,' said Dr Mortimer.

‘Why, yes,' said he, ‘and the strange thing is, Mr Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it.'

‘Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?'

‘Nothing of much importance, Mr Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.'

He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, greyish in colour. The address, ‘Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel', was printed in rough characters; the post-mark ‘Charing Cross', and the date of posting the preceding evening.

‘Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?' asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor.

‘No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr Mortimer.'

‘But Dr Mortimer was, no doubt, already stopping there?'

‘No, I had been staying with a friend,' said the doctor. ‘There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel.'

‘Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.' Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran: ‘As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.' The word ‘moor' only was printed in ink.

‘Now,' said Sir Henry Baskerville, ‘perhaps you will tell me, Mr Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?'

‘What do you make of it, Dr Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?'

‘No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural.'

‘What business?' asked Sir Henry, sharply. ‘It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs.'

‘You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that,' said Sherlock Holmes. ‘We will confine ourselves for the present, with your permission, to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's
Times
, Watson?'

‘It is here in the corner.'

‘Might I trouble you for it – the inside page, please, with the leading articles?' He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. ‘Capital article this on Free Trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it. “You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country,
diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this land.” What do you think of that, Watson?' cried Holmes, in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. ‘Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?'

Dr Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.

‘I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind,' said he; ‘but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned.'

‘On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence.'

‘No, I confess that I see no connection.'

‘And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. “You”, “your”, “your”, “life”, “reason”, “value”, “keep away”, “from the”. Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?'

‘By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!' cried Sir Henry.

‘If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that “keep away” and “from the” are cut out in one piece.'

‘Well now – so it is!'

‘Really, Mr Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,' said Dr Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. ‘I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?'

‘I presume, doctor, that you could tell the skull of a Negro from that of an Esquimaux?'

‘Most certainly.'

‘But how?'

‘Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the –'

‘But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a
Times
article and the slovenly print of an
evening halfpenny paper as there could be between your Negro and your Esquimaux. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the
Leeds Mercury
with the
Western Morning News
. But a
Times
leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue.'

‘So far as I can follow you, then, Mr Holmes,' said Sir Henry Baskerville, ‘someone cut out this message with a scissors –'

‘Nail-scissors,' said Holmes. ‘You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over “keep away”.'

‘That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste –'

‘Gum,' said Holmes.

‘With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word “moor” should have been written?'

‘Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple, and might be found in any issue, but “moor” would be less common.'

‘Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr Holmes?'

‘There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe, is printed in rough characters. But
The Times
is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. “Life”, for example, is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a
hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption – and from whom?'

‘We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,' said Dr Mortimer.

‘Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculations. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in an hotel.'

‘How in the world can you say that?'

‘If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word, and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the wastepaper baskets of the hotels round Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated
Times
leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?'

He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes.

‘Well?'

‘Nothing,' said he, throwing it down. ‘It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a watermark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?'

‘Why, no, Mr Holmes. I think not.'

‘You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?'

‘I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel,' said our visitor. ‘Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?'

‘We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?'

‘Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting.'

‘I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting.'

Sir Henry smiled. ‘I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here.'

‘You have lost one of your boots?'

‘My dear sir,' cried Dr Mortimer, ‘it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr Holmes with trifles of this kind?'

‘Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine.'

‘Exactly,' said Holmes, ‘however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?'

‘Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on.'

‘If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?'

‘They were tan boots, and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out.'

‘Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?'

‘I did a good deal of shopping. Dr Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots – gave six dollars for them – and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet.'

‘It seems a singularly useless thing to steal,' said Sherlock Holmes. ‘I confess that I share Dr Mortimer's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found.'

‘And now, gentlemen,' said the baronet, with decision, ‘it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise, and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at.'

‘Your request is a very reasonable one,' Holmes answered. ‘Dr
Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us.'

Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket, and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise.

‘Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance,' said he, when the long narrative was finished. ‘Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death – well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman.'

‘Precisely.'

‘And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place.'

‘It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor,' said Dr Mortimer.

‘And also,' said Holmes, ‘that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger.'

‘Or it may be that they wish for their own purposes to scare me away.'

‘Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall.'