Chapter: So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded
during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived
at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method
and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which
I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to
those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I
proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the
convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor.

October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house
is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the
dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the
hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon
their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a
black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself
of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present
danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.

And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of
incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is
at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall,
fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there
are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange
creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound
which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible,
impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of
nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the
air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may
fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one
quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to
believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of
these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must
needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes.
Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts
are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose
that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far
to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where
did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one
saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers
almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the
hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the
cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at
least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend
as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he
remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he
be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?

It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are
some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen
down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far
taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland.
Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us,
and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is
still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never
shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we
might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one
purpose I must now devote all my energies.

My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and
wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to
anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken
by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties,
but I will take my own steps to attain my own end.

We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave
to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little
time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of
voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was
under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called
for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He
thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down
when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret."

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 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. 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 today 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 deluged--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 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. Tomorrow 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 ecarte
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.

"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.

 As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: "Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock" . The letter was signed "L.L." Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials "L.L." living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.

