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 weatherbeaten 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 account. 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, grayish 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 island.'
"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
Esquimau?"
"Most certainly."
"But how?"
"Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supraorbital 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 half-penny paper as there
could be between your negro and your Esquimau. 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 speculation. Now, you would call it a
guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a
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 waste-paper baskets
of the hotels around 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 water-mark 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."
"Why should I not go?"
"There seems to be danger."
"Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from
human beings?"
"Well, that is what we have to find out."
"Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes,
and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of
my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer." His dark brows
knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the
fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative.
"Meanwhile," said he, "I have hardly had time to think over all that you have
told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one
sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now,
look here, Mr. Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right
away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and
lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing
strikes me."
"Is that convenient to you, Watson?"
"Perfectly."
"Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?"
"I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather."
"I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure," said his companion.
"Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!"
We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front
door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man
of action.
"Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!" He rushed into
his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frockcoat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and
Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the
direction of Oxford Street.
"Shall I run on and stop them?"
"Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your
company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a
very fine morning for a walk."
He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us
by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into
Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared
into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards
he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager
eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other
side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again.
"There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we
can do no more."
At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes
turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at
the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly
off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no
empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the
traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight.
"There now!" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with
vexation from the tide of vehicles. "Was ever such bad luck and such bad
management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record
this also and set it against my successes!"
"Who was the man?"
"I have not an idea."
"A spy?"
"Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very
closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be
known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen?
If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also
the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window
while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend."
"Yes, I remember."
"I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing
with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not
finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency
which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When
our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their
invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot,
but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past
them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that
if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one
obvious disadvantage."
"It puts him in the power of the cabman."
"Exactly."
"What a pity we did not get the number!"
"My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine
that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to
us for the moment."
"I fail to see how you could have done more."
"On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other
direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the
first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland
Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home
we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself
and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was
taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent,
we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man."
We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation,
and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us.
"There is no object in our following them," said Holmes. "The shadow has
departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our
hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within
the cab?"
"I could swear only to the beard."
"And so could I—from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one.
A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal
his features. Come in here, Watson!"
He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly
greeted by the manager.
"Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the
good fortune to help you?"
"No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life."
"My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you
had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability
during the investigation."
"Yes, sir, he is still with us."
"Could you ring him up?—thank you! And I should be glad to have change of
this five-pound note."
A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the
manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective.
"Let me have the Hotel Directory," said Holmes. "Thank you! Now,
Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the
immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?"
"Yes, sir."
"You will visit each of these in turn."
"Yes, sir."
"You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are
twenty-three shillings."
"Yes, sir."
"You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will
say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it.
You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some
holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You
could easily recognize it, could you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you
will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in
possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before
has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap
of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are
enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of
emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening.
And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the
cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture
galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel."