"Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give
information."
"Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared
to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any
ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing."
"Who is he, then?"
"It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer."
I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken
an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the
wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin.
The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as
to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette
had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the
moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind
swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that
desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow
like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole
race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim
suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the
darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat
more closely around him.
We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back
on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to
threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough
and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew
bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with
giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and
roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline.
Suddenly we looked down into a cup-like depression, patched with
stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of
years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The
driver pointed with his whip.
"Baskerville Hall," said he.
Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining
eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of
fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on
either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars'
heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and
bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half
constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were
again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches
in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked
up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at
the farther end.
"Was it here?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, no, the Yew Alley is on the other side."
The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.
"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in
such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll
have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you
won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison
right here in front of the hall door."
The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay
before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a
heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front
was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a
window or a coat-of-arms broke through the dark veil. From this
central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced
with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more
modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy
mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the
steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.
"Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!"
A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door
of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the
yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand
down our bags.
"You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr.
Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me."
"Surely you will stay and have some dinner?"
"No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would
stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide
than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I
can be of service."
The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into
the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine
apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily
raftered with huge balks of age-blackened oak. In the great
old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled
and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were
numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin
window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the
coats-of-arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light
of the central lamp.
"It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very
picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same
hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes
me solemn to think of it."
I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about
him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed
down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had
returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of
us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a
remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and
pale, distinguished features.
"Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?"
"Is it ready?"
"In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms.
My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you
have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under
the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff."
"What new conditions?"
"I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we
were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have
more company, and so you will need changes in your household."
"Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?"
"Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir."
"But your family have been with us for several generations, have they
not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old
family connection."
I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white
face.
"I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth,
sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death
gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I
fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville
Hall."
"But what do you intend to do?"
"I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing
ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the
means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your
rooms."
A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall,
approached by a double stair. From this central point two long
corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all
the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and
almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern
than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous
candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our
arrival had left upon my mind.
But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of
shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the
dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their
dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black
beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling
beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the
colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have
softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little
circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed
and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety
of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency,
stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked
little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were
able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette.
"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose
one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at
present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived
all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will
retire early to-night, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in
the morning."
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my
window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the
hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising
wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its
cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the
long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling
that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.
And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet
wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep
which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the
quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the
old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there
came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was
the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn
by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently.
The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the
house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but
there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of
the ivy on the wall.
CHAPTER VII
The Stapletons of Merripit House
The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface
from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon
both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry
and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high
mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats
of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in
the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the
chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening
before.
"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!"
said the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our
drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and
well, so it is all cheerful once more."
"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered.
"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think,
sobbing in the night?"
"That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard
something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more
of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream."
"I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a
woman."
"We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked
Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to
me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still
as he listened to his master's question.
"There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One
is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my
wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from
her."
And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I
met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her
face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern
set expression of mouth. But her tell-tale eyes were red and glanced
at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the
night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken
the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why
had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round
this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an
atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first
