Essential Novelists - Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur Conan Doyle

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 made 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.”

      ––––––––

      Chapter 4

      Sir Henry Baskerville

      ––––––––

      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 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 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 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