The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence,but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain.Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder,more urgent than before.
“Where is it?” Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he,the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. “Where is it, Watson?”
“There, I think.” I pointed into the darkness.
“No, there!”
Again the agonised cry swept through the silent night,louder and much nearer than ever.And a new sound mingled with it, a deep,muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing,rising and falling like the low,constant murmur of the sea.
“The hound!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, come!Great heavens, if we are too late!”
He had started running swiftly over the moor,and I had followed at his heels.But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.
I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted.He stamped his feet upon the ground.
“He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late.”
“No, no, surely not!”
“Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson,see what comes of abandoning your charge!But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we’ll avenge him!”
Blindly we ran through the gloom,blundering against boulders,forcing our way through gorse bushes,panting up hills and rushing down slopes,heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come.At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him,but the shadows were thick upon the moor,and nothing moved upon its dreary face.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nothing.”
“But, hark, what is that?”
A low moan had fallen upon our ears.There it was again upon our left!On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realise that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us—the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!
There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit—the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.
“The brute!The brute!” I cried with clenched hands. “Oh Holmes,I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate. ”
“I am more to blame than you, Watson.In order to have my case well rounded and complete,I have thrown away the life of my client.It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career.But how could I know—how _could_ I know—that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?”
“That we should have heard his screams—my God, those screams!—and yet have been unable to save him!Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death?It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant.And Stapleton, where is he?He shall answer for this deed.”
“He shall. I will see to that.Uncle and nephew have been murdered—the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!”
We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body,overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed.
“Why should we not seize him at once?”
“Our case is not complete.The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree.It is not what we know, but what we can prove.If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet. ”
“What can we do?”
“There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow.Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend. ”
Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body,black and clear against the silvered stones.The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears.
“We must send for help, Holmes!We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall.Good heavens, are you mad?”
He had uttered a cry and bent over the body.Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand.Could this be my stern, self-contained friend?These were hidden fires, indeed!
“A beard!A beard!The man has a beard!”
“A beard?”
“It is not the baronet—it is—why, it is my neighbour, the convict!”
With feverish haste we had turned the body over,and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold,clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead,the sunken animal eyes.It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock—the face of Selden, the criminal.
Then in an instant it was all clear to me.I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap—it was all Sir Henry’s. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy.
“Then the clothes have been the poor devil’s death,” said he. “It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry’s—the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability—and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?”