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 postmark "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 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."
