"I have to agree that the description of the Cavalier painting, wicked Sir Hugo himself with his prim lips and his flaxen hair, does fit Scheiman."
"Scheiman is by no means so clear a case, else I should have noticed it when first I laid eyes on him. If Stapleton married in America —although legal marriage it could not have been, nor indeed would Sir Henry's have been to Beryl Stapleton, the supposed widow—the woman contributed a great deal more to her son's looks than did the father. Ears, eyes, cheekbones, and hands are all hers; only the mouth (which you will have noticed he takes care to conceal beneath a beard) and the stature are his father's."
"You wondered when the portrait of Sir Hugo had gone: If the surviving Baskerville took it with her rather than sell it with the others to Ketteridge, for the dubious privilege of preserving a memento of the family history perhaps, then its absence is innocent, whereas if it was removed after the sale, by Ketteridge or Scheiman—"
"Then the why is obvious: that Scheiman's family resemblance might not be seen by visitors to the house."
"Visitors such as Sherlock Holmes. I don't think I told you, by the way, that Ketteridge was interested in hiring you to investigate the hound sightings."
That brought a laugh, as I had thought it might do, albeit a brief one.
"What brought the resemblance to your mind?" I asked. Surely he hadn't picked up The Hound of the Baskervilles to read on the train?
"A number of things. Scheiman's interest in the antiquities of the moor, the dim lighting of the dining hall, how he spent the least amount of time possible with us—with me, who had known Stapleton. But, I have to admit, the actual possibility was got through hindsight.
"As I told you, the Ketteridge establishment interests me. It interested me when first I saw the man helping himself to Gould's liquor cabinet. He does not fit in Dartmoor, and does not seem eccentric enough to justify the oddity of his presence here.
"So while I was in town, I initiated some enquiries about Ketteridge and his secretary. The responses to my telegrams will take days, even weeks, but I did come across one thing of interest: The two men were not together when they boarded the ship coming over here. Ketteridge began his journey in San Francisco, but Scheiman joined the ship in New York."
"There could be an explanation for that."
"There could be any number of explanations. However, Ketteridge told us he came over in the summer, yet his passage was in early March."
I had to agree that although the oddity was hardly evidence of criminal activity, it did call for a closer examination of the two men.
"You've sent wires to New York and San Francisco?"
"And Portland and Alaska."
"So you think Ketteridge is involved."
"He may or may not be. Scheiman is definitely up to something."
The generality of the word something was unlike Holmes; after a moment's thought, and particularly when he would not look at me, I knew why.
"You believe that Scheiman is after Mycroft's tank," I said in disgust.
"It does not do to theorise in advance of one's facts," he said primly.
I made a rude remark about his facts, and went on. "If this is deteriorating into a spy hunt, Holmes, you don't need me. It's been a truly invigorating holiday from my books, but perhaps I may be allowed to take my leave."
"Two murders now, Russell. I should have thought that sufficient to overcome your distaste for the War Office."
I dropped my head back onto the chair and closed my eyes. "You really need me, Holmes?"
"I could ask Watson."
Dr Watson was only five years older than Holmes, but his heavy frame had aged as Holmes' wiry build and whip-hard constitution had not. I dismissed his halfhearted suggestion. "A cold day on the moor would cripple him." That Holmes might rely on police help or Mycroft's men was so improbable as to be unworthy of mention. "I'll stay and see it through. Although I can't promise that I won't blow up that flipping tank myself at the end of it."
"That's my Russell." He smiled. I scowled.
"Will you go down to see Miss Baskerville yourself, to ask about the painting?" I asked him.
"I should like to know as well some of the particulars concerning the sale of the Hall. Yes, I shall go myself. Now, you have yet to tell me about Elizabeth Chase's hedgehogs."
"One hedgehog, and it does not belong to her. It now resides in the garden of a friend of Miss Chase's in Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, where Miss Chase carried it to nurse it back to health after finding it on the twenty-eighth of July, its leg crushed by a fast-moving wheel and its back bitten by large teeth."
"Aha!"
"Indeed. Moreover, she goes on to offer us one large and spectral dog with a glowing eye and a taste for scones." To my great pleasure, this statement actually startled Holmes.
I told him about Elizabeth Chase's wounded hedgehog and about Samuel's encounter with the Hound, and after telling him I sat forward and pulled the map to me, marking with an X the spot between the stone row and the hut circles where she had heard the piteous cry of poorwee Tiggy and the place where Samuel had seen the dog. Holmes took the pencil and drew in the probable route of the coach as seen from Gibbet Hill, added a star shape to mark the adit in which he had found signs of life, and we studied the result: my X, his line, two Xs for the sightings of the coach in July, and a circle to show where Josiah Gorton had last been seen. All of them together formed a jagged line running diagonally across the face of the moor from Sourton Tor in the northwest to Cut Lane in the southeast, roughly six miles from one end to the other. The imaginary line's nearest point to Baskerville Hall was three miles, although the closest sighting, that of the courting couple, was more than four miles away.
I sat for a time in contemplation of the enigmatic line while Holmes slumped back into his chair, eyes closed and fingers steepled. When he spoke, his remark seemed at first oblique.
"I find I cannot get the phial of gold dust from my mind."
"Did you give it over for analysis?"
"I looked at it myself in the laboratory. Small granules of pure gold—not ore—with a pinch of some high-acid humus and a scraping of deteriorated granitic sand."
"Peat is highly acidic," I suggested.
"Peat, yes, but there was a tiny flat fragment that looked as if it might have been a decomposed leaf of some tough plant such as holly or oak."
"Wistman's Wood is oak."
"So are a number of other places around the moor. I shall ring the laboratory later today, to see if their more time-consuming chemical analyses have given them any more than I found. In the meanwhile, I think I can just catch the train to Plymouth, although it may mean stopping there the night. Perhaps you could go and ask Mrs Elliott if Gould's old dog cart is available."
"And if the pony can pull it." Red was still in residence at Baskerville Hall.
Holmes went up to put his shaving kit and a change of linen into his bag, and I put the breakfast things back on the tray and took them into the kitchen. There I found Mrs Elliott, looking somewhat dishevelled.
"Oh bless you, my dear. I don't know what I'm going to do. Rosemary and Lettice have taken to their beds with sick headaches—from crying no doubt; they'd be better off working and keeping their minds off that silly man, but there you have it."
"I'm sorry, Mrs Elliott. Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked hesitantly. "Washing up or something?"
She looked shocked. "That will not be necessary, mum. But thank you for the kind thought." She would have to be in a sorry state indeed before she allowed a guest to plunge her ladylike hands into a pan full of dishes.