The Hound of the Baskervilles
pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped,
panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head,
but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was
dead.
Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his
collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw
that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in
time. Already our friend’s eyelids shivered and he made a feeble
effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the
baronet’s teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us.
“My God!” he whispered. “What was it? What, in heaven’s name, was
it?”
“It’s dead, whatever it is,” said Holmes. “We’ve laid the family
ghost once and forever.”
In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was
lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it
was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of
the two—gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now
in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping
with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were
ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and
as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the
darkness.
“Phosphorus,” I said.
“A cunning preparation of it,” said Holmes, sniffing at the dead
animal. “There is no smell which might have interfered with his
power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having
exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not
for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to
receive him.”
“You have saved my life.”
“Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?”
“Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for
anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to
do?”
“To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures
tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with
you to the Hall.”
He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale
and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he
sat shivering with his face buried in his hands.
“We must leave you now,” said Holmes. “The rest of our work must
be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and
now we only want our man.
“It’s a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,” he
continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. “Those
shots must have told him that the game was up.”
“We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them.”
“He followed the hound to call him off—of that you may be
certain. No, no, he’s gone by this time! But we’ll search the
house and make sure.”
The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to
room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us
in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but
Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house
unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing.
On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.
“There’s someone in here,” cried Lestrade. “I can hear a
movement. Open this door!”
A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the
door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew
open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.
But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant
villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an
object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment
staring at it in amazement.
The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls
were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that
collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had
been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the
centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been
placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk
of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied,
so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to
secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was
that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and
was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower
part of the face, and over it two dark eyes—eyes full of grief
and shame and a dreadful questioning—stared back at us. In a
minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs.
Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful
head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash
across her neck.
“The brute!” cried Holmes. “Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle!
Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and
exhaustion.”
She opened her eyes again.
“Is he safe?” she asked. “Has he escaped?”
“He cannot escape us, madam.”
“No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?”
“Yes.”
“And the hound?”
“It is dead.”
She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
“Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated
me!” She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with
horror that they were all mottled with bruises. “But this is
nothing—nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and
defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of
deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope
that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been
his dupe and his tool.” She broke into passionate sobbing as she
spoke.
“You bear him no good will, madam,” said Holmes. “Tell us then
where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help
us now and so atone.”
“There is but one place where he can have fled,” she answered.
“There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire.
It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made
preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he
would fly.”
The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held
the lamp towards it.
“See,” said he. “No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire
tonight.”
She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed
with fierce merriment.
“He may find his way in, but never out,” she cried. “How can he
see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and
I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have
plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at
your mercy!”
It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog
had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house
while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville
Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld
from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth
about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night’s
adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay
delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two
of them were destined to travel together round the world before
Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had
been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.
And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular
narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those
dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and
ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of
the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton
to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It
helped us to realise the horror of this woman’s life when we saw
the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband’s
track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm,
peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the
end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the
path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those
green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the
stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour
of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a
false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark,
quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around
our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked,
and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was
tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful
was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that
someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft
of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing
was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the
path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he
could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an
old black boot in the air. “Meyers, Toronto,” was printed on the
leather inside.
“It is worth a mud bath,” said he. “It is our friend Sir Henry’s
missing boot.”
“Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight.”
“Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the
hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still
clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight.
We know at least that he came so far in safety.”
But more than that we were never destined to know, though there
was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding
footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon
them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass
we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them
ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton
never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled
through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of
the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass
which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is
forever buried.
Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had
hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled
with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it
were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven
away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one
of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones
showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a
tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the _débris_.
“A dog!” said Holmes. “By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor
Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that
this place contains any secret which we have not already