`A cunning preparation of it,' said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. `There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him.'
`You have saved my life.'
`Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?'
`Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything.
So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?'
`To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures to-night.
If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall.'
He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands.
`We must leave you now,' said Holmes. `The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man.
`It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,' he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. `Those shots must have told him that the game was up.'
`We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them.'
`He followed the hound to call him off - of that you may be certain.
No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure.'
The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.
`There's someone in here,' cried Lestrade. `I can hear a movement.
Open this door!'
A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.
But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement.
The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes - eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning - stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck.
`The brute!' cried Holmes. `Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle!
Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion.'
She opened her eyes again.
`Is he safe?' she asked. `Has he escaped?'
`He cannot escape us, madam.'
`No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?'
`Yes.'
`And the hound?'
`It is dead.'
She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
`Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!' She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. `But this is nothing - nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as Icould still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool.' She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke.
`You bear him no good will, madam,' said Holmes. `Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone.'
`There is but one place where he can have fled,' she answered.
`There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly.'
The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it.
`See,' said he. `No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire to-night.'
She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment `He may find his way in, but never out,' she cried. `How can he see the guiding wands to-night? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out to-day. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!'
It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted.
Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.
And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner.
