The Hound of the Baskervilles

The morning sun shines through windows and makes the great house much more cheerful. Sir Henry is in good spirits, but Watson tells him about the sobbing woman, and he recalls hearing her, too. They ask Barrymore about it; he claims his wife did not cry last night, and the scullery maid sleeps in a different wing. However, Watson later encounters Mrs. Barrymore and notices her eyes are red and swollen.

Suspicious, Watson decides to ask the postmaster in the local village of Grimpen whether Barrymore truly received Sir Henry’s message from the day before. The postmaster’s boy says he gave it to Mrs. Barrymore, who said her husband was up in the loft, and that she would hand it to him. He did not see Barrymore himself.

Watson walks back across the moor toward the Hall. He is interrupted by a man in his 30s who hurries up to him while holding a butterfly net and specimen jar. The man is a naturalist named Stapleton who lives nearby. He says he hopes Sir Henry is not taking the giant hound stories seriously. Stapleton believes that Sir Charles took the stories seriously, and that he may have seen some sort of dog and promptly died of fright.

Having heard about the investigation from Dr. Mortimer, Stapleton wonders if Holmes has formed any opinions. Watson is tight-lipped, and Stapleton apologizes for intruding. He invites Watson to walk over to his own place, Merripit House, where he can introduce the doctor to his sister. Watson accepts.

As they walk, Stapleton says he loves Merripit House, where he has lived for the past two years. Arriving just after Sir Charles, Stapleton has learned of the land’s wonders and dangers. He points to a series of bright green spots on a flat area; they are part of the Grimpen Mire, bogs that suck horses and men down to their deaths. As they speak, a horse, stuck in a bog, whinnies desperately. Stapleton has learned a few pathways through the Mire so he can access a hillside that contains rare butterfly and plant specimens. He warns Watson not to try a crossing.

They two men hear a loud moaning sound that “swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur” (28). Stapleton says some locals think it is the giant hound, but he believes a bird, or perhaps the bog itself, makes that noise. Stapleton points to ancient walls that once housed Neolithic people who raised cattle and mined tin. A flying insect catches his attention, and he runs off in pursuit.

A beautiful woman appears on the path. Watson assumes she is Stapleton’s sister, but she has dark hair and a much darker complexion than her brother has. Instead of greeting Watson, she warns him to leave the moor and never return. She insists he not speak a word of her warning to her brother. She then asks him to fetch her a nearby orchid.

Stapleton returns without the insect and greets the woman as Beryl. She assumes Watson is Sir Henry, but he corrects her. She flushes with embarrassment but speaks as if their conversation had been limited to orchids. She invites him to visit their house.

Though grim on the outside, the house is tastefully furnished. Watson wonders why these two live alone on the moor. As if guessing his thoughts, Stapleton explains that he ran a school in the north, but illness took the lives of three students, and the misfortune forced his relocation. He has come to Dartmoor to study its plants and animals.

Stapleton asks if Sir Henry might like him to visit this evening; Watson thinks so and agrees to alert the baronet. Stapleton invites him to lunch, but Watson wants to get back to the Hall. He continues his walk but meets Beryl at a crossing; she has run along a shortcut to tell him to disregard her earlier words. Watson insists she explain herself.

Beryl believes the stories of the hound and wishes that the Hall’s heir not fall prey to the beast. She begs Watson to convince Sir Henry to leave. Watson asks why she keeps her thoughts secret from her brother. She says he wants a Baskerville to live here for the good he can do. Watson, his head filled with misgivings, trudges back to the Hall.

Watson writes to Holmes. He describes the grim countryside and the prehistoric dwellings that seem to fit the place better than the more modern buildings. He reports that, two weeks on, there has been no sign of the escaped convict, who would have trouble surviving out on the moor and therefore is probably long out of the area. Stapleton led a hike to the place with the two pointed stones where Hugo Baskerville is said to have lost his life to the giant hound. Meanwhile, Sir Henry has taken an interest in Beryl; Watson senses Stapleton’s quiet disapproval.

A neighbor, the elderly Mr. Frankland, lives a few miles away at Lafter Hall. He loves to sue people over petty disputes. Sometimes he fights for the townsfolk, and they adore him; at other times he pits himself against them. He also uses a telescope to scan the moor in search of the convict.

Barrymore agrees that he received Sir Henry’s message from his wife, and that he told her what to write in response. Late one night, Watson observes Barrymore in an empty upstairs room, standing at its window and peering out at the moor. Watson and Sir Henry say they will work together to reveal what Barrymore is up to.

Watson’s next letter to Holmes is crowded with reports of strange events around Baskerville Hall.

Sir Henry is smitten with Beryl, and he wants to visit her, but Watson must stick by him at all times. Sir Henry dissuades him and leaves, but Watson has second thoughts, climbs a hill on the moor, and spies Sir Henry walking with Beryl. They are deep in conversation. Just as Sir Henry tries to kiss her, Stapleton heads toward them across the moor. Beryl puts up a hand in protest, then they spin around and face Stapleton, who argues angrily with Sir Henry and orders his sister to follow him home.

Watson walks down to Sir Henry and confesses his spying. Sir Henry is miffed but more concerned that his courtship has failed so miserably. Beryl clearly likes him but spent their entire meeting warning him to leave. He even implied that he would marry her as his condition of moving away, but Stapleton arrived in a rage and accused him of taking baronial advantage of his sister. Sir Henry stood up to him, saying his intentions were honorable. He is extremely puzzled by the whole affair.

That evening, Stapleton visits and apologizes profusely, saying that he has always lived with his sister, and the idea of losing her company troubled him. He is now willing to support her marriage if Sir Henry refrains from making any plans for the next three months. Sir Henry agrees; the rift healed, Sir Henry will visit them for dinner the following Friday.

Wishing to solve the Barrymore mystery, Watson and Sir Henry sit up for two nights and finally hear the butler creeping down to the empty room. They follow and discover that Barrymore is signaling someone on the moor. Sir Henry insists on an explanation, but Barrymore refuses. His wife appears and confesses that her brother, the escaped convict Selden, lives on the moor and is starving, so she and her husband arrange with signals to bring him food. She still loves her brother, even though he turned bad.

Sir Henry sends the couple off to bed. He and Watson head out onto the moor in an attempt to capture the escapee. As they walk, it begins to rain, and they hear the terrible moaning cry that Watson noted when he met Stapleton on the moor. Sir Henry demands to know what it is; reluctantly, Watson tells him that the locals believe “it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles” (40).

The two men continue until they are within a stone’s throw of the candle Selden uses as a signal, which is protected in a rocky crevice. They wait, and the escapee appears, “[f]oul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair” (40), glancing about fearfully with “cunning eyes.” Selden runs, and Sir Henry and Watson give chase but lose him. As they catch their breath, Watson sees another man, tall and slender, silhouetted against the setting moon. Watson alerts Sir Henry, but by then the man is gone.

In his personal journal of October 16, Dr. Watson writes that Barrymore confronted Sir Henry, saying it is not right that they should take advantage of the Barrymores’ confessions by pursuing Selden. Barrymore swears that Selden will harm no one and will soon be on his way to South America. Sir Henry reluctantly agrees to hold off for now.

Grateful, Barrymore reveals that he knows the person Sir Charles went to see at the gate on the night he died. The baronet received a letter in a woman’s handwriting; Mrs. Barrymore found part of it amid the ashes in Sir Charles’s fireplace when she cleaned up his room. The unburned portion of the letter read, “Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o’ clock.” It was signed “LL” (43). Fearing a stain on the baronet’s reputation, the Barrymores kept silent. Watson writes to Holmes to report this new information.

On October 17, Watson hikes out across the moor in the evening rain, hoping to find some sign of the mysterious person he saw while chasing Selden. On the way back, he meets Dr. Mortimer driving a small cart and searching for his spaniel, who disappeared into the moor. Watson gets a ride back; as they travel, he asks if Dr Mortimer knows anyone with the initials LL. The surgeon thinks of only one: Frankland’s daughter, Laura Lyons, who was deserted by her husband and later helped by several wealthy people—including Sir Charles—to start up a small typing business on which she now survives.

That evening, Barrymore tells Watson that, the last time he saw Selden, Selden told him there is another man out on the moor—a gentleman who hides among the prehistoric stone huts and who gets food brought to him. Watson decides to find out, once and for all, who this interloper is.

Though reluctant to leave Sir Henry alone, Watson travels to Coombe Tracey, the village where Laura Lyons resides. He finds her in her rooms; she is very lovely, yet he senses something is wrong. She confesses that she wrote to Sir Charles, who helped fund her current business, requesting a meeting. Her cruel ex-husband was trying to force her to return to him, and payment of the divorce expenses might free her, once and for all, from that obligation. That very day, though, the expenses were paid by another party, and she did not go to her appointment with Sir Charles.

Watson leaves feeling only partly satisfied with her explanations. On his way back, he passes Frankland’s place, where the owner flags him down and invites him in for a drink. Frankland boasts of a court ruling just handed down that gives him victories in two separate suits—one forcing a right-of-way across a wealthy man’s property, and the other to prevent locals from picnicking on private property. He also claims to know Selden’s whereabouts based on the food delivered to him daily by a child courier.

Watson realizes the courier is feeding the mystery man and not Selden. He suggests that perhaps the boy is simply bringing food to his father, a shepherd. This irritates Frankland’s combative soul, and he points to a craggy hill, saying it is an unlikely place for a shepherd. At that moment, they notice a small figure climbing the hill. They race up to Frankland’s roof, where his telescope, aimed at the crags, shows the boy disappearing behind the hilltop.

Frankland is suing the local police, and he refuses to help them search for Selden. He demands that Watson keep the escapee’s location a secret. Watson agrees and continues on foot back toward Baskerville Hall.

As soon as he is out of Frankland’s view, Watson cuts into the moor and climbs the hill where the boy was seen. He finds that one of the ancient huts has a roof over it; inside are signs that someone lives there. A note scrawled on a paper reads, “Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey” (50). Watson waits in the shadows, preparing to confront the mysterious occupant when he returns.

He hears footsteps. A familiar voice calls out, “It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson […] I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in” (51).