"The London hikers?"
"Not quite, although he had found the farmhouse where they stayed. Unfortunately, being an informal hostelry, they do not keep records of their guests, and as the two Londoners had not made advance arrangements, there was little evidence as to whence they came. However, they were a memorable pair, even without the tale of the ghostly carriage they brought with them down the hilclass="underline" young, the man perhaps twenty-eight, the woman a year or two younger, who impressed the farmwife as being a 'proper lady,' or in other words, wealthy. The man, on the other hand, had a heavier accent, and seemed much more shaken by the idea of seeing a ghostly carriage on the moor than his wife was. He also had a bad limp and one 'special shoe,' and at some point during the stay told the farmer that he was studying to become a doctor."
The limp, the nerves, and the student's advanced age gave him away as a wounded soldier. I asked drily, "You mean to say you didn't get his regiment?"
"But of course. Not from the farmer, although he did give me the name of the village where the future doctor was injured during Second Ypres, and the War Office could have told me his regiment and thence his identity. However, I thought it simpler to phone around the teaching hospitals and enquire after a young man missing part of his foot. I found him straight off, at Bart's."
"So simple," I murmured.
"Regrettably so. Do you have the maps?"
"Upstairs. What is left of them." I trotted up and retrieved the pile, some of them pristine, hardly unfolded. Those for the north quarter had seen hard use, and I pulled open the still-damp sheets with care and laid them across the padded bench that sat in front of the fire. There happened to be an elderly cat upon it, but the animal did not seem to mind being covered up. No doubt, living in the Baring-Gould household, it had seen stranger usage.
He pored over the maps for a long time, then said, "Do we have the one-inch-to-the-mile here?"
I dug through and found it. He laid it out, found Mary Tavy and the nearby Gibbet Hill, and then took out a pencil. Using the side of a folded map as a straight edge and pulling the map to one side to find a flat place, he began to draw a series of short lines, fanning out from Gibbet Hill and touching the tops of half a dozen peaks and tors to the northeast of the hill. These were, I understood, the tors and hilltops visible from the peak.
"It was dark, and their sense of direction was sadly wanting, but they were quite definite that whatever they saw was to the northeast, that it wrapped around a hill, going from right to left, and after a minute or two disappeared behind a tor—probably, they thought, Great Links or Dunna Goat."
"And what exactly was it they saw?"
"A pair of lights, old-style lanterns rather than the new automobile headlamps, mounted on the upper front corners of a light-coloured square frame. They had with them a strong pair of field glasses."
"As if two lanterns on a coach built of bones."
"As you say."
"How would you judge them as witnesses?"
He shrugged. "Ramblers," he said dismissively. "The sort of young people who would read up on the more arcane myths and legends of an area and spend a week traipsing about, raising blisters and searching for Local Romance."
"Holmes, that sounds perilously close to what I have been doing this last week."
He looked startled. "My dear Russell, I was certainly not drawing a comparison between your search for information and the self-indulgent—"
"Of course not, Holmes. Did they see a dog, or any person either inside or driving?"
"Not to be certain, no, although they had convinced themselves that they saw a large black shadow moving with the horse."
"Of course they did. Was there anything else to be had in London?"
"There was, but I should like to delay until you've read something. Just remain there," he said, getting to his feet. "I won't be a moment."
He went out and, judging by the sounds of another door opening almost immediately he left the drawing room, I knew he was in Baring-Gould's study. A certain amount of time passed, and several muffled thuds, before he returned with a slim book in his hand. He tossed it in my lap and picked up his pipe from the ashtray on the table.
"How long is it since you've read that?" he asked.
"That," to my amazement, was Conan Doyle's account of The Hound of the Baskervilles, looking heavily read. "At least three years. I'm not certain," I replied.
"More than that, perhaps. I should like to consult with Gould for an hour or two; you have a look at that and see if anything within Baskerville Hall strikes you as it did me."
"But Holmes—"
"When I return, Russell. It won't take you long, and you might even find it amusing. Though perhaps," he added as he was going out the door, "not for the reasons Conan Doyle intended."
EIGHTEEN
Take my advice. Henceforth possess your mind with an idea, when about to preach. Drive it home. Do not hammer it till you have struck off the head. A final tap and that will suffice.
—Further Reminiscences
Actually, although I would have hesitated to admit it in Holmes' hearing, I enjoyed Conan Doyle's stories. They were not the cold, factual depictions of a case that Holmes preferred (indeed, when some years later he found that Conan Doyle had set a pair of stories in the first person, as if Holmes himself were describing the action, Holmes threatened the man with everything from physical violence to lawsuits if he dared attempt it again), but taken as Romance, they were entertaining, and I have nothing against the occasional dose of simple entertainment.
In any event, it was no great hardship to settle into my chair with the book and renew my acquaintance with Dr Mortimer, the antiquarian enthusiast who brings Holmes the curse of the Baskervilles, and with the young Canadian Sir Henry Baskerville, come to the moor to claim his title and his heritage. I met again the ex-headmaster Stapleton and the woman introduced as his sister, and the mysterious Barrymores, servants to old Sir Charles. The moor across which I had so recently wandered came alive in all its dour magnificence, and I was very glad this book had not been among my reading the previous weekend, leaving me to ride out on the moor with the image of the hound freshly imprinted on my mind. I could well imagine the terror raised by hearing the rhythm of four huge running paws (or the "thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank" of fog that Dr Watson described), the hoarse panting from between those massive jaws, even without the eerie glow of phosphorus on its coat to render it otherworldly:
A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.
So engrossed was I that I completely missed the reference Holmes had wanted me to see. Only when the Hound was dead did I recall the point of the exercise, and thumbed back to the previous chapter that described the evening when Holmes first saw the interior of Baskerville Hall. The reference startled me, and I sat deep in thought for twenty minutes or so, contemplating the "straight severe face" which was "prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye" until I heard the door behind me open.
I said over my shoulder, "You think Scheiman may be a Baskerville? Stapleton's son, even?"
"Stapleton's body was never found," Holmes pointed out unnecessarily as he resumed his chair on the other side of the fire. "I was never happy with Scotland Yard's conclusion, and always felt it possible that he had prepared an escape route and slipped through it while we were occupied elsewhere, but he was never seen, and after two weeks, Scotland Yard was satisfied with his fate in the mire and took their watch from the ports."