The Hound of the Baskervilles
instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs with all our weary
senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a
step in the passage.
Very stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the
distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out
in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery and the
corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had
come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse
of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded as he
tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as
before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and
shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We
shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we
dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the
precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old
boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed
impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the
man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied
in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and
peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in
hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as
I had seen him two nights before.
We had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to
whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked
into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the
window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and
trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white
mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he
gazed from Sir Henry to me.
“What are you doing here, Barrymore?”
“Nothing, sir.” His agitation was so great that he could hardly
speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his
candle. “It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that
they are fastened.”
“On the second floor?”
“Yes, sir, all the windows.”
“Look here, Barrymore,” said Sir Henry sternly, “we have made up
our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you
trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies!
What were you doing at that window?”
The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands
together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and
misery.
“I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.”
“And why were you holding a candle to the window?”
“Don’t ask me, Sir Henry—don’t ask me! I give you my word, sir,
that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it
concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.”
A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the
trembling hand of the butler.
“He must have been holding it as a signal,” said I. “Let us see
if there is any answer.” I held it as he had done, and stared out
into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black
bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the
moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation,
for a tiny pinpoint of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the
dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square
framed by the window.
“There it is!” I cried.
“No, no, sir, it is nothing—nothing at all!” the butler broke in;
“I assure you, sir—”
“Move your light across the window, Watson!” cried the baronet.
“See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it
is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder,
and what is this conspiracy that is going on?”
The man’s face became openly defiant. “It is my business, and not
yours. I will not tell.”
“Then you leave my employment right away.”
“Very good, sir. If I must I must.”
“And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of
yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred
years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot
against me.”
“No, no, sir; no, not against you!” It was a woman’s voice, and
Mrs. Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than her husband,
was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt
might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling
upon her face.
“We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our
things,” said the butler.
“Oh, John, John, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir
Henry—all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake and
because I asked him.”
“Speak out, then! What does it mean?”
“My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him
perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food
is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to
which to bring it.”
“Then your brother is—”
“The escaped convict, sir—Selden, the criminal.”
“That’s the truth, sir,” said Barrymore. “I said that it was not
my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have
heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not
against you.”
This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at
night and the light at the window. Sir Henry and I both stared at
the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly
respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most
notorious criminals in the country?
“Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We
humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way
in everything until he came to think that the world was made for
his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as
he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered
into him until he broke my mother’s heart and dragged our name in
the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is
only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold;
but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I
had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why
he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could
not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night,
weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what
could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then
you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on
the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he
lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he
was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there
was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him.
Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there
we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an
honest Christian woman and you will see that if there is blame in
the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose
sake he has done all that he has.”
The woman’s words came with an intense earnestness which carried
conviction with them.
“Is this true, Barrymore?”
“Yes, Sir Henry. Every word of it.”
“Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget
what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk
further about this matter in the morning.”
When they were gone we looked out of the window again. Sir Henry
had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our
faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one
tiny point of yellow light.
“I wonder he dares,” said Sir Henry.
“It may be so placed as to be only visible from here.”
“Very likely. How far do you think it is?”
“Out by the Cleft Tor, I think.”
“Not more than a mile or two off.”
“Hardly that.”
“Well, it cannot be far if Barrymore had to carry out the food to
it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By
thunder, Watson, I am going out to take that man!”
The same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the
Barrymores had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had
been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an
unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse.
We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him
back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent
nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands.
Any night, for example, our neighbours the Stapletons might be
attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which
made Sir Henry so keen upon the adventure.
“I will come,” said I.
“Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we
start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be
off.”
In five minutes we were outside the door, starting upon our
expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull
moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves.
The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and
again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving
over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a
thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in
front.
“Are you armed?” I asked.
“I have a hunting-crop.”
“We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a
desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at
our mercy before he can resist.”
“I say, Watson,” said the baronet, “what would Holmes say to
this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil
is exalted?”
As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast
gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon
the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind
through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a
rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again
and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident,
wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face
glimmered white through the darkness.
“My God, what’s that, Watson?”
“I don’t know. It’s a sound they have on the moor. I heard it
once before.”
It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood
straining our ears, but nothing came.
“Watson,” said the baronet, “it was the cry of a hound.”
My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice
which told of the sudden horror which had seized him.
“What do they call this sound?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The folk on the countryside.”
“Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call
it?”
“Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?”
I hesitated but could not escape the question.