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
to-night."
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 to-night? We planted them together, he and I, to
mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked
them out to-day. 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 realize 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 debris.
"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 fathomed. He could hide
his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those
cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an
emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but
it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he
regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This
paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the
creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the
family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to
death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even
as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw
such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his
track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving
your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too
closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have
done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again
now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man
than he who is lying yonder"--he swept his long arm towards the huge
mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it
merged into the russet slopes of the moor.
CHAPTER XV
A Retrospection
It was the end of November and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy
night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker
Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had
been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of
which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in
connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while
in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from
the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death
of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be
remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York.
My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had
attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was
able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery.
I had waited patiently for the opportunity, for I was aware that he
would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical
mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories
of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on
their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the
restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that
very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come
up for discussion.
"The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of
the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although
to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of
his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared
exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations
with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up
that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a
secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the
heading B in my indexed list of cases."
"Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events
from memory."
"Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in
my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting
out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers'
ends, and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds
that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head
once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere
has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. To-morrow some other
little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn
dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as
the case of the Hound goes, however, I will give you the course of
events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may
have forgotten.
"My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did
not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son
of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who
fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said
to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had
one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's.
He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and,
having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his
name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school
in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line
of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a
consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this
man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor,
died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute
into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name
to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes
for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England.
I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority
upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently
