"So, there I was in London having the time of my life when who should appear at my hotel but David, looking all excited and with a great plan for the two of us.
"Turns out David is a Baskerville." He swivelled again to look at Holmes, and I could see his teeth gleam as he turned back again. "Thought you might know that one, too. One of the reasons he came over here was to take a look at the family house that his father, who wasn't exactly legitimate, you might say, was cheated out of. So, when David gets to Plymouth, what does he hear but that the big old place is in the hands of one solitary little girl, who wants to find herself a tenant and move into town.
"Well, being a tenant isn't exactly what David has in mind, although he doesn't really have enough of the ready stuff to buy the Hall outright. He sits and thinks it over for a couple of days, and then comes to look me up with a proposition: He and I run a swindle, whatever kind of swindle I want, we share the results, and he can then afford to move in and become the lord of the manor."
"Hardly a peerage," Holmes said drily.
Ketteridge gave a dismissive wave with the wire clippers. "Well, I had to tell him that city jobs aren't exactly my strong point. Too many foreign ideas, and way too many, what do you call them, bobbies? But I invite him to dinner and he tells me about this place, and I begin to get a few ideas. A remote place like this, a man can have some room to set things up. So, we talk it over and we come to an agreement: I run the land-sale side of things, and he takes care of scaring people away from the piece of ground we're developing as well as giving me a hand with toting and hauling."
"Which he did by adapting some vehicle or other to resemble Lady Howard's coach, and then bringing in some large, dark dog to add to the charade. Actually," Holmes said, "I was rather wondering why you didn't make more extensive use of the dog."
Ketteridge laughed and shook his head over the wires. "Have you ever worked with a dog, Mr Holmes? Maybe the one we managed to get hold of was just particularly badly trained, but it was a real nightmare. Oh, it looked the part all right, and David even fixed a cute little contraption on its head to give it a 'glowing eye'—powered by a battery—but the whole point of having the dog was making it ghostly, and a hundred and twenty pounds of dog is anything but. Lock it in the stables and it howls and scratches the door down; turn it loose and it chases sheep and gets itself shot at; you have to feed it meat and then clean up after it so your ghostly dog isn't leaving great stinking piles across the countryside; and you never know, when you're off on a Lady Howard run, if the dog isn't going to take off. We did two trips out with the 'coach' back in July, and two in August, and halfway through the second one the damned animal lit off at high speed for a nearby farm where I'd guess there was a bitch on heat. We were unbelievably lucky there, because the family was away, all except one deaf old granny, but my nerves couldn't take it, and I had David get rid of the animal. I have to hand it to David's father, to go about his own version of the scheme with just a big dog. Damned if I know how he did it."
"And for this he planned to get the Hall and you would get—what?"
"Oh, I'd have the lion's share of the actual money—which only seemed fair since I was doing most of the expert work—and as we planned it, I'd then sell him Baskerville Hall—all fixed up and pretty as we made it—just as the swindle started, for what would be on paper a goodly sum but in actual fact would be less than a dollar. I'd take the blame and the profits and skip the country, he'd be left with egg on his face, having not only been so stupid as to choose such a crook for a boss but to have fallen for his boss's land scheme as well. But then again, he'd have all the linen in Baskerville Hall to wipe it off with. And," he paused again, this time sitting back on his heels to grin across at his assistant, "this clever devil even went and got himself engaged to that pasty-faced Baskerville woman. He was looking to have it all."
"Until Pethering."
Ketteridge uttered a monosyllabic curse, and went back to his work. "Yeah, until that blasted shrimp stumbled into our setup. Jesus, what a piece of luck. I mean, the old guy last month, that was one thing, but then he goes and cracks the nosey little mutt of a professor on the head."
"What else could I have done?" Scheiman shouted. "We couldn't let him go, and he sure wouldn't be paid off."
"You're absolutely right, David," Ketteridge said freely. It sounded like a familiar argument, one in which he was not terribly interested any longer. "But it did put paid to you taking over the Hall. Having the neighbours whispering among themselves that you had more to do with that damn American's swindle than it looks like is one thing, but actual murder, now, that's something I find neighbours are slow to overlook. No, David, like I've told you, you're just going to have to take your share of the money and abandon the Hall to the mice. Find a nice lady in some warm climate and set up a school there."
He stood up and dusted off his hands, and shone the torch over his work to check it: nineteen bits of broken tile, nineteen leads running to the main wire, all of them neat and dry and ready to go. And what was he planning to do with Holmes?
"You tidy up those pipes, David, and make sure I haven't left anything behind. I'll take Mr Holmes and meet you at the end of the wire. Up you go, Mr Holmes," he said, taking out his gun. "Just follow the wire." He aimed the torch at Holmes' feet, and followed him away from the tin works.
With Holmes held to a hobbling pace, they would be some minutes reaching the plunger that would set off the charges. I abandoned my post above the river and circled the bend to get there before them, and by the fitful light from the moon and the occasional pale flare of the faraway lightning, I scrambled down to the river, dislodging stones and risking life and limbs in my haste.
The plunging device stood ready, waiting only for its connexion to the wire and the lowering of its contact points. I hesitated only a moment before deciding that it did not actually matter if another tiny quantity of gold flakes found their way into the gozen of old tin mine, and it would make for an almighty distraction. I found my penknife and, with my torch shaded by a handkerchief and held between my knees on the ground, I hastily stripped the ends of the wire, looped them around the points, and screwed down the contacts as quickly as I could. I then picked it up and, tugging to make sure the wire was not caught on anything, stumbled rapidly downriver to the obscuring bend in the cliff face. I could hear nothing above the noise of running water, but in less than a minute I saw the glow of the moving torch, and I got ready to act. I did not know where Scheiman was, although I assumed he would not be far behind his boss, but I could think of no better plan. I did, I admit, say a fervent prayer for protection in an act of madness.
The torch approached, and I could hear a voice: Holmes talking loudly, which I hoped meant he expected me to be waiting in the only logical place, where indeed I was. I heard the sound of scuffling feet, and Ketteridge speaking sharply, and then they were on top of me.