crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound
loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where
could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where
did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be
confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many
difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is
the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the
letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was
real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as
easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he
remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could
he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?
It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there
are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I
have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The
figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that
of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left
him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A
stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in
London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon
that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our
difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies.
My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and
wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to
anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely
shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his
anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end.
We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked
leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study
some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard
the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the
point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened
his door and called for me.
"Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He thinks
that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when
he, of his own free will, had told us the secret."
The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us.
"I may have spoken too warmly, sir," said he, "and if I have, I am
sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much
surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and
learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough
to fight against without my putting more upon his track."
"If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a
different thing," said the baronet, "you only told us, or rather your
wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help
yourself."
"I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir
Henry--indeed I didn't."
"The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over
the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only
want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr.
Stapleton's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it.
There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key."
"He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that.
But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you,
Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will
have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's
sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still
on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet
until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without
getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing
to the police."
"What do you say, Watson?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it
would relieve the tax-payer of a burden."
"But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?"
"He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all
that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was
hiding."
"That is true," said Sir Henry. "Well, Barrymore--"
"God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have
killed my poor wife had he been taken again."
"I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what
we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is
an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go."
With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated
and then came back.
"You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I
can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I
should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I
found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man.
It's about poor Sir Charles's death."
The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?"
"No, sir, I don't know that."
"What then?"
"I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman."
"To meet a woman! He?"
"Yes, sir."
"And the woman's name?"
"I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her
initials were L. L."
"How do you know this, Barrymore?"
"Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had
usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known
for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to
turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one
letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey,
and it was addressed in a woman's hand."
"Well?"
"Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have
done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was
cleaning out Sir Charles's study--it had never been touched since his
death--and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the
grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little
slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still
be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be
a postscript at the end of the letter, and it said: 'Please, please,
as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten
o'clock'. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L."
"Have you got that slip?"
"No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it."
"Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?"
"Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not
have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone."
"And you have no idea who L. L. is?"
"No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our
hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death."
"I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this
important information."
"Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us.
And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as
we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake
this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully
when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--"
"You thought it might injure his reputation?"
"Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been
kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to
tell you all that I know about the matter."
"Very good, Barrymore; you can go." When the butler had left us Sir
Henry turned to me. "Well, Watson, what do you think of this new
light?"
"It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before."
"So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the
whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is
someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think
we should do?"
"Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for
which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring
him down."
I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's
conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very
busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few
and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied
and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing
case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must
surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he
were here.
October 17th.--All day to-day the rain poured down, rustling on the
ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon
the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes,
he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of
that other one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was
he also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness?
In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the
sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face
and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into
the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass.
I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and
from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy
downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy,
slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray
wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow
on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of
Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of
human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which
lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace
of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights
before.
As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his
dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying
farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a
day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were
getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he
gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the
disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor
and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but
I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he
will see his little dog again.
"By the way, Mortimer," said I as we jolted along the rough road, "I
suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this
whom you do not know?"
"Hardly any, I think."
"Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L.
L.?"
He thought for a few minutes.
"No," said he. "There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I
can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose
initials are those. Wait a bit though," he added after a pause.
"There is Laura Lyons--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in
Coombe Tracey."
"Who is she?" I asked.
"She is Frankland's daughter."
"What! Old Frankland the crank?"
"Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on
the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault
from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father
refused to have anything to do with her because she had married
without his consent, and perhaps for one or two other reasons as
well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a
pretty bad time."
"How does she live?"
"I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more,
for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have
deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her
story got about, and several of the people here did something to
enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir
Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in
a typewriting business."
He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to
satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no
reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. To-morrow
morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this
