The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

by G. S. Denning

  Then the salad fork sunk an inch and a half into my chest.

  Let me just say that—to this day—I still possess no idea how anyone could throw a two-ounce fork with such power and precision. The thing penetrated my coat, my shirt and several muscle layers, pinning my pectoralis major to my external and internal intercostals. In one instantaneous blow, I lost most of the control over my firing arm. A wave of admiration swept through me.

  Followed closely by a wave of pain.

  I cried out and raised my gun to shoot him, but as I said, the function of my right arm was mightily impaired. I had to lean my whole body back to bring the pistol high enough and my shot went wide. Still, this was enough to cause Selden to reflect that—not only had he made the mistake of bringing a fork to a gunfight—he was no longer in possession of said fork. He kneed the prostrate Sir Henry in the ribcage and fled back over the rocky outcropping from whence he had come. I fired again as he leapt over the rocks, then once more as he flashed between two bushes. I don’t think I came too close. Sir Henry came up behind me, gasping for breath and asked, “Hit the bastard?”

  “I can’t aim,” I told him, through gritted teeth. “Pull the fork out!”

  “What fork?” he asked, but then saw for himself and gasped, “Oh! How’d he do that?”

  “Pull it out!”

  “Why me? You’re the doctor.”

  “Well, yes, but it’s your fork.”

  “Mine?”

  “Note its weight and the unmistakable gleam of good silver. Combine these observations with the knowledge that Barrymore is Selden’s main source of supply. Or, if that is too much work, have a look at the handle, which is embossed with the Baskerville family crest.”

  “Damn it, Barrymore,” Sir Henry growled. “This is too much!”

  “Pull it out!”

  Sir Henry marched over to me and expressed his frustration with John Barrymore by reclaiming his lost cutlery with one quick yank. I gave a grunt of pain and sank to my knees. Inwardly I congratulated myself that I had let Sir Henry’s excellent brandy dull my senses; I was rather pleased not to be feeling the full extent of the pain that must have been occurring in my chest. As I reflected on this happy chance, I became conscious of a sound behind me.

  It sounded like laughter.

  I turned to examine the moor behind me, but the moon was in my eyes so everything was in silhouette. Luckily, my quarry was careless. There on the top of one of the tors stood the distinct silhouette of a man. I could not see much of him due to the light in my eyes (and, if I am honest, a few tears). I did not know him to be tall or short, young or old. All I could say was that he was on the skinnier side and that he had seen me spy him. His laughter immediately died and he dropped down on the other side of the tor and disappeared.

  Sir Henry just caught a glimpse of him as he fled. “Who’s that?” he wondered.

  “We must go,” I said, struggling to my feet. “If the hound has a mortal master, it may well be that man we have just seen. He might have gone to set the hound on you and—by the sound of that last howl—the beast is close. We haven’t much time.”

  Even Sir Henry—brave as he was—could not receive such news with impunity. “So… you think that howl was really it, then? The Hound of the Baskervilles?”

  “Well… Stapleton thought it was a bird…”

  “What? And the man is supposed to be a naturalist?”

  I laughed (though perhaps a bit grimly) and said, “We must hurry. If the hound is anything like the locals say, we are badly overmatched. I have only three shots left and my aim is compromised.”

  “You came out to hunt a murderer on a haunted moor with only six shots?” asked Sir Henry.

  “Well,” I reminded him, “you brought a stick.”

  8

  GIVEN THAT I HAD ONLY THREE BULLETS LEFT IN MY gun and roughly the same number of brandies left in my bloodstream, it was lucky for Sir Henry and me that we did not encounter the hound on the way home. We mounted the steps wordlessly and retreated to our rooms. I paused long enough to do a cursory dressing on my fork-wound, then fell into bed to sleep.

  Dawn did not wake me, nor did the other members of the household as they began their day. I think it was the pain in my chest or the hollow gnawing of my belly that finally did it. Only time would cure the former, but I knew a fitting treatment for the latter. I threw on my dressing gown and stepped out into the hall, in search of breakfast. There I surprised Sir Henry, who was just leaving his own room, walking stick in hand, dressed in his Savile Row finest.

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “Are you going out?”

  “Oh. Er… yes,” he replied.

  I knew from his tone that he had meant to sneak out without my knowing. “Not out upon the moor! Without me? After last night’s encounters?”

  “Yeah, without you. Definitely without you.”

  Being fresh from slumber, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. “Beryl Stapleton,” I cried. “You’re going out to meet Beryl Stapleton!”

  I cannot convey the fury that rose in me as I realized this. The emotion was ridiculous and my better self tried to find some rational reason for my anger. Here is the best I could find: that for Sir Henry to endanger his person was tantamount to him disrespecting the labor I had spent trying to save him.

  Ah, what a wonderful rationale it was…

  It would have been even better if it had not been a complete lie. Which it was. I know, because I remember the idea that followed it.

  Good, I thought (and almost said), Go out upon the moor. Give yourself to the hound, or whatever man wishes you ill. When you are dead, I shall take Beryl’s hand and we will laugh at what a fool you were.

  As unkind as my thoughts were towards Sir Henry in that moment, his were just as hostile to me. He positively shouted, “Of course I’m going to see her! She’s hands-down the best thing about this whole damned moor! Don’tcha see? I’m risking my neck, being out here. And what do I get for it? Her! I’ve got this house and all this money, sure, but what I need is a wife! I can’t believe my luck, finding a girl like that out in the middle of nowhere. And if you think I’m gonna waste my chance because I’m scared of some dog, you’ve got another thing comin’!”

  At these words, my world flooded with white-hot rage. My thoughts immediately flew to the pistol I had in my room, just behind me. I could shoot him.

  No, that was offside. Bit of a social blunder, shooting one’s host. Well… I could do it for his own good—wound him in the leg, to keep him from going out and getting himself killed. It would be easy. I was good at wounding legs; just ask Barrymore.

  But what would that accomplish? Beryl might feel sorry for him. She would coo and fuss over the wound and I should seem the villain. I! Ridiculous!

  Sir Henry brushed past me and made for the exit as I fumed, helplessly. The gentleman in me made a brief appearance to say that, of course, I ought to let him go. He was quite right. A great house requires a lord and a lady and a line of succession. The Baskervilles—now dwindled to Sir Henry alone—must be replenished.

  Then again, what if he were killed? What if my momentary lapse was all the opportunity our hidden antagonist needed to bring his wicked plans to fruition? Did it matter that I, personally, did not want to leave Sir Henry alone with Beryl? No, that was not the point. My job was to protect him, wasn’t it? How could I not follow him? I must. I went for my gun. I wanted my gun.

  Only to protect Sir Henry, of course.

  Only to protect him.

  My hands were fumbling and uncertain as I loaded and checked the Webley, but I knew I must hurry if I wished to prevent disaster. All my progress was arrested, however, when I passed my mirror. Wait! I couldn’t let Beryl see me in a dressing gown! She could never love a fellow who looked like that. Could she?

  I think I wasted twenty minutes dressing and preening, before I burst forth onto the moor. All my efforts at grooming were soon undone as I charged down the lane after Sir Henry. Ye
t I made it all the way to Merripit House without any sign of him. At first I howled that he had given me the slip. Then the horrible notion occurred to me that he was in there with her, alone. I don’t know what made me think I had the license to burst in upon them, but that is what I did. I tore open the door and rushed in, screaming for Sir Henry to show himself.

  But he was not there.

  Nobody was.

  I ran throughout the house, checking every door lest they were hiding from me, but the cottage was empty. Where had they gone? My head reeled and I realized I was near to fainting. Had I just… had I run from Baskerville Hall to Merripit House? The walk was enough to wind me. Had I just…

  It didn’t matter. I had more running left to do. I hadn’t found them yet. Where else could they be? There was no other path to the house. No! There was! The day Beryl intercepted me (ah… Beryl, most perfect of creatures) she’d caught me as I’d passed the back garden. Was there a garden path?

  Half a circuit outside Merripit House revealed a lovely little rose garden, bordered by short hedges and featuring a tiny gazebo with a rocking bench, just big enough for two. But it was empty, all empty. For an instant I despaired, but then came the sound of voices drifting across the moor. I raced along the path between the garden and the main road. I went as silently as I could, but swiftly, pistol in my hand.

  I heard them before I saw them. Or rather, I heard Sir Henry. He was professing his love, I realized. He was saying how painful it was to be parted from her. At the moment, he sounded more like a bad poet than a lumberjack. To my ear he was mewling, whining, practically crying like a baby. How unseemly! How unlike a man!

  I could do much better.

  Grinning, I threw myself down behind a low row of rocks to watch her reject him. To my everlasting joy, she was not professing love back. Instead, she took his hands in hers and said, “Sir Henry, please listen. We haven’t much time. I wanted to tell you: you must leave this place. You can never be safe here.”

  “I don’t care, Beryl! Come on and marry me, eh? I’ll make you so happy—you’ll see. Come and live in that big ol’ house with me and make it a place worth livin’ in.”

  “Hank… you’re the most wonderful man I’ve met and I would wed you if I could…”

  Something about the way she said it led me to realize that I could absolutely hit Sir Henry from here, if I steadied my pistol on the rock.

  Luckily for Sir Henry, she continued, “…but it cannot be. You must go. That is why I… sent for you this morning: to tell you to forget me. Forget this place. Forget Baskerville Hall. Take your inheritance; go be happy some place in this wide world, far from here.”

  “It’s too late for that! Don’t you get it? I’m not gonna be happy here—I’m not gonna be happy anywhere—unless I got you with me! Come on, Beryl. Marry me.”

  I had the little bastard in my sights. I had become sure that the only way to save Sir Henry from the repercussions of this folly was to shoot him right in the face.

  Twice.

  At least.

  But fortune was ever the friend of that man. As I pulled back the hammer, I was distracted by the sight of a shapeless blob of green mesh, bobbing towards the pair through the gorse: Jack Stapleton’s butterfly net. In a moment he cleared the scrub and the man himself came into view, red as a beet and clad in his ridiculous beekeeper’s garb. Why a man needed to have every inch of skin covered from top to toe in order to hunt harmless butterflies was beyond me, but I was delighted to see him charge the two lovers, demanding, “Beryl! What is this? What are you doing? Have you been carrying on with this… this cad, without my knowledge? I had thought you a man of honor, Sir Henry, but now I see you for what you are!”

  Beryl began to protest that it was an innocent encounter, that Sir Henry had been out for a walk and she had seen him. Stapleton was having none of it. “Get back in the house! Back to the house now, harlot!”

  Beryl turned and ran, tears in her eyes—whether from shame, from sadness or from rage, I could not tell. Sir Henry turned on Stapleton and berated him for his terrible treatment of his sister. The two of them locked horns and began to shout each other down for some three or four minutes.

  I sat in my rocky hiding place, utterly stunned. I am a creature of reason, usually. What had been wrong with me? Probably the same thing that was wrong with Stapleton and Sir Henry; the two of them were behaving like absolute schoolboys. I struggled to understand what motivated such heights of passion in the three of us. Ever since hearing that Sir Henry was meeting Beryl Stapleton, I had been… someone else entirely. With a horrified gasp, I reached up to lower the hammer of my Webley, which I had cocked and leveled at the very man I was here to save. Whatever could have made me do such a thing? Turning from the two arguing figures, I began retracing my thoughts since waking.

  The fatigue of my long, irrational run from Baskerville Hall swept over me. I had reopened my fork-wound, so I rubbed at it as I waited for my breath to return. I did not even hear Sir Henry’s footsteps until he stormed past my hiding place, on his way back to the road. I gave a gasp of surprise and he turned towards me. Alarm, then rage, then regret, then curiosity swept across his face in an avalanche of expression which gave me to realize: he was just as confused as I. Eventually, he settled on stammering, “Oh… hullo, Watson. What are you doing here?”

  “Well I… I came to make sure you were safe, didn’t I? That is my job, after all.”

  “Oh,” he muttered, then, “Thanks,” then, “I suppose you saw… all that mess, eh?”

  “I did,” I confessed.

  “Not my finest hour, I guess. Or Stapleton’s. Did you hear the way he treated Beryl? I swear, I coulda killed him!”

  “It was a most unseemly display,” I agreed. “I must say, all three of us seem to be quite out of our senses this morning.”

  “What came over us?” Sir Henry asked.

  I shook my head in wonder, and opined, “Who can say? I tell you, I am beginning to believe the moor has an effect on the intellect. What else could explain such strange passions? Why are you and I and Stapleton so overwrought? Whatever could make old Sir Charles wander out to the moor gate, alone, at night?”

  Sometimes framing the question in the correct fashion will provide the answer. What temptation could draw Sir Charles out alone upon the moor? Why not the same one that had just led Sir Henry to do the same—and the same one that had almost made me shoot him in spite of my better sense? I knew of only one thing that could cause such madness in us all.

  Beryl Stapleton.

  I did not voice this discovery, but pondered it to myself. We both sat in silence for a bit, then Sir Henry began to pace. His mood grew visibly worse for a few moments, until at last he savagely kicked a nearby log and complained, “I was such a damned fool!”

  “Sir Henry! Your foot!”

  “I don’t care.” He sank back down upon the rock and complained, “What happened, Watson? She seemed to like me before. Now I’ve spilled my guts and she doesn’t care at all.”

  A wave of jealousy began to grow in me, but my better reason shoved it back down. I deflected to another topic. “I think I had better take a look at that foot, Sir Henry.”

  “Why bother? Here, I’ll spoil the surprise: it’s busted.”

  I felt a wave of pity for him.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s get you to the main road. I’ll head back to Baskerville Hall and return with the trap. We’ll get you home.”

  “Too much bother,” he said. “Mortimer’s cottage ain’t far off; we might as well head there.”

  He tried to stand up, but as soon as he placed his weight on the damaged foot, he gave a grunt of pain and sank down again. I shook my head and told him, “If we are to go that way, Sir Henry, there is one unpleasantry we must first address.”

  I knelt down before him, grasped the boot in both hands, and pulled it off as quickly as I could. He gave a howl of pain. It didn’t take a doctor to see that his foot was not its pr
oper shape.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s get you up. Put your arm over my shoulder.”

  I helped him hobble through the scrubby hills towards Mortimer’s cottage. Mortimer himself was just finishing lunch when we arrived. “Watson? Sir Henry? What brings you to—Oh… I see. Best come inside.”

  We made Sir Henry as comfortable as we could in Mortimer’s little office, while I told him, “I have not yet palpated the foot, but I suspect we have multiple dislocations of the phalanges and perhaps fractures there or in the metatarsals. I have no bandages with me, have you any on hand?”

  “I do,” Mortimer said, “and something better, besides. I know the London way is to wait until four o’clock, but here on the moor it is never too early for tea and morphine.”

  He put the kettle on and disappeared into his workshop. In a moment he reappeared with a generous dose of morphine in an ancient brass syringe. The needle was badly worn, as if it had been re-sharpened again and again—never successfully. Sir Henry made a horrible face when it jabbed him, but by the time the tea was brewed he was slumped on the sofa, smiling.

  James Mortimer proved to be as apt a physician as any I have ever met, or else he had a particular aptitude for bones. Sir Henry had dislocated his three small toes and we suspected a fracture to his smallest metatarsal, but this was not as bad as I had feared. We soon had the toes set back in place and gingerly wrapped the whole foot in plaster. Plastering is not such difficult work as setting bones, but instead of relaxing to the lighter task, Mortimer grew visibly more anxious. As we worked, he kept glancing over at me and whetting his lips as if to speak, but he never did.

  It made me nervous.

  I found myself trying to recall any reason other than his meekness that made me assume he was not the man who sought Henry’s life. Casually as I could, I asked, “Is there something on your mind, Mortimer?”