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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 [729] 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. [730] 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 deluge–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 [731] 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 Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have
been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly
developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an
inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland’s skull belonged, and
so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with
Sherlock Holmes for nothing.
I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous
and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one
more strong card which I can play in due time.
Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played
�cart� afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the
chance to ask him a few questions.
“Well,” said I, “has this precious relation
of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?”
“I don’t know, sir. I hope to Heaven that he has
gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I’ve not heard of him since I left
out food for him last, and that was three days ago.”
“Did you see him then?”
“No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that
way.”
“Then he was certainly there?”
“So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who
took it.”
I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at
Barrymore.
“You know that there is another man then?”
“Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, sir.”
“How do you know of him then?”
“Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more.
He’s in hiding, too, but he’s not a convict as far as I can make out. I
don’t like it, Dr. Watson–I tell you straight, sir, that I don’t like
it.” He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness.
“Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this
matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell
me, frankly, what it is that you don’t like.”
Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his
outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.
[732] “It’s
all these goings-on, sir,” he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed
window which faced the moor. “There’s foul play somewhere, and there’s
black villainy brewing, to that I’ll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir
Henry on his way back to London again!”
“But what is it that alarms you?”
“Look at Sir Charles’s death! That was bad enough,
for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There’s not a
man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out
yonder, and watching and waiting! What’s he waiting for? What does it mean? It means
no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it
all on the day that Sir Henry’s new servants are ready to take over the Hall.”
“But about this stranger,” said I. “Can you
tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he
was doing?”
“He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives
nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had
some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was
doing he could not make out.”
“And where did he say that he lived?”
“Among the old houses on the hillside–the stone huts
where the old folk used to live.”
“But how about his food?”
“Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him
and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants.”
“Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some
other time.” When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked
through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept
trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What
passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And
what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut
upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely.
I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to
reach the heart of the mystery.
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