Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Book 0: Sherlock Complete Set

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson face a mystery on the moors in this classic caper from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The country doctor had come to 221B Baker Street, the famous lodgings of Sherlock Holmes, with an eerie tale—the legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles, the devil-beast that haunted the lonely moors around the Baskervilles’ ancestral home. The tale warned the descendants of that ancient family never to venture out on the moor. But Sir Charles Baskerville was now dead—and the footprints of a giant hound have been found near his body. Would the new heir of the Baskervilles meet the same dreadful fate? Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend, Dr. Watson, are faced with their most terrifying case in this wonderful classic of masterful detection and bone-chilling suspense. Includes an Afterword by Anne Perry

Release date: July 1, 2001

Publisher: Signet

Print pages: 159

Sample

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Picardy Place in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, son of Charles Altamount Doyle and Mary (Foley)
Doyle, and one of seven children who survived to adulthood. The Doyles were an artistic family, the most successful being
Arthur’s uncle ‘Dickie’ Doyle, the noted illustrator for Punch, but his father suffered from alcoholism and later epilepsy, and was eventually committed to a mental hospital. Conan Doyle
maintained a distant relationship with him, but it was his mother, whom he affectionately referred to as ‘the Ma’am’, who
encouraged his love of literature, and he remained close to her throughout his life. The young Arthur was educated at the
northern Jesuit school Stonyhurst, going on to study medicine at Edinburgh and was an enthusiastic reader and storyteller
from a young age, as well as being an active sportsman.


Conan Doyle incurred the wrath of his rich relations when he announced he was an agnostic. Rejecting their strict Catholicism
and cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882. There he met his first wife,
Louise Hawkins or ‘Touie’, and the couple were married in 1885, later having two children, a son and a daughter. But in 1897
Conan Doyle met and instantly fell in love with Jean Leckie. They maintained a platonic relationship for ten years and Conan
Doyle struggled with his feelings of guilt and deep affection for his wife and his passion for Jean. When in 1906 Touie died
of consumption, Conan Doyle genuinely mourned her. He finally married Jean in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter, living
very happily together on their estate in Sussex, Windlesham, until Conan Doyle’s death in 1930.


It was in the year after his first marriage that Conan Doyle began toying with a character called Sherrinford Holmes. This
was to become the first Sherlock Holmes story, his ‘shilling shocker’, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. And so the celebrated detective was born, with the faithful Dr Watson at his side. Conan Doyle consistently
gave credit for the character to Dr Joseph Bell, an old tutor of his from Edinburgh University whose precision and powers
of deduction Conan Doyle greatly admired. On the origins of the name, he commented that ‘I made thirty runs [at cricket] against
a bowler by the name of Sherlock, and I always had a kindly feeling for the name’.


But it was in the new, popular literary magazine the Strand that the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes really took off, with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ appearing in 1891. It was an instant
hit. Sidney Paget created the distinctive illustrations of Holmes, based on his younger brother Walter, depicted in a deerstalker
(the pipe would come later). This iconic image became etched in the public’s mind and was more glamorous than Conan Doyle
had envisaged; ‘the handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful, but uglier, Sherlock, and perhaps from the point
of view of my lady readers it was as well.’


By this time Conan Doyle had given up practising medicine entirely to write. He yearned to concentrate on his historical novels
and, despite his success, saw Holmes as ‘taking his mind from better things’. So, after only two years, in 1893 he decided
to kill him off in ‘The Final Problem’, where Holmes famously met his end alongside his nemesis Professor Moriarty. The public
outcry was instant: women wept, men donned black armbands and subscriptions to the Strand plummeted by over 20,000, yet Conan Doyle was unmoved:‘I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.’ It wasn’t until 1901 that Holmes
reappeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles (a story that predated his death) and, with the public clamouring for more, Doyle finally brought him back to life in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903). By the beginning of the twentieth
century the fan base for Sherlock Holmes was massive and far-reaching, from a Boston cabby in America to Abdul Hamid II, the
then Sultan of Turkey, and has continued growing to this day. There have been countless stage productions and films, with
Holmes defined by such actors as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and Michael Caine. And the stories weren’t merely entertainment;
the investigative methods Conan Doyle used are said to have had a huge influence on police processes at the time.


Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s name will always be synonymous with Sherlock Holmes, his volume of works was huge and wide-ranging,
including historical fiction such as Micah Clarke and The White Company, histories of the Boer War and World War One, as well as the Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World (seen as the inspiration for Michael Crichton’s hugely popular Jurassic Park) and The Poison Belt. Conan Doyle’s fascination with spiritualism very much governed his outlook later on in life and he wrote The Coming of the Fairies in response to the case of the Cottingley fairies. Many fans found it hard to associate the creator of a detective so wedded
to cool logic and fact with this ardent champion of the supernatural, but he never swayed in his beliefs.


Conan Doyle died in 1930 at the age of seventy-one, with his beloved Jean by his side and was buried in the grounds of Windlesham,
with the headstone inscribed, at his request, ‘Steel True, Blade Straight’. Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘I had a great admiration
for him. Of course I read every Sherlock Holmes story … [they] have certainly found a permanent place in English literature.’


Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all
night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind
him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a ‘Penang lawyer’.
Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. ‘To James Mortimer, MRCS, from his friends of the CCH’,
was engraved upon it, with the date ‘1884’. It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry
– dignified, solid and reassuring.


‘Well, Watson, what do you make of it?’

Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.

‘How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.’

‘I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,’ said he. ‘But, tell me, Watson, what do you
make of our visitor’s stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental
souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.’


‘I think,’ said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, ‘that Mr Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical
man, well esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.’


‘Good!’ said Holmes. ‘Excellent!’

‘I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting
on foot.’


‘Why so?’

‘Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner
carrying it. The thick iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.’


‘Perfectly sound!’ said Holmes.

‘And then again, there is the “friends of the CCH”. I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose
members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return.’


‘Really, Watson, you excel yourself,’ said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. ‘I am bound to say that
in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually under-rated your
own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing
genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.’


He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his
indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to
apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his
naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked
over it again with a convex lens.


‘Interesting, though elementary,’ said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. ‘There are certainly one or
two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.’


‘Has anything escaped me?’ I asked with some self-importance. ‘I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?’

‘I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to
be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this
instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.’


‘Then I was right.’

‘To that extent.’

‘But that was all.’

‘No, no, my dear Watson, not all – by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more
likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials CC are placed before that hospital the words Charing
Cross very naturally suggest themselves.’


‘You may be right.’

‘The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start
our construction of this unknown visitor.’


‘Well, then, supposing that CCH does stand for Charing Cross Hospital, what further inferences may we draw?’


‘Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!’

‘I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country.’

‘I think that we might venture a little further than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable
that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their goodwill? Obviously at
the moment when Dr Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start in practice for himself. We know there
has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching
our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?’


‘It certainly seems probable.’

‘Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would
not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been
a house-surgeon or a house-physician – little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago – the date is on the
stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow
under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as
being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.’


I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.


‘As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you,’ said I, ‘but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars
about the man’s age and professional career.’ From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.


‘Mortimer, James, MRCS, 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner
of the Jackson Prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled “Is Disease a Reversion?” Corresponding member of the
Swedish Pathological Society. Author of “Some Freaks of Atavism” (Lancet, 1882) and “Do We Progress?” ( Journal of Psychology, March 1883). Medical officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley and High Barrow.’


‘No mention of that local hunt, Watson,’ said Holmes with a mischievous smile, ‘but a country doctor, as you very astutely
observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable,
unambitious and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials,
only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and
not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.’


‘And the dog?’

‘Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog’s jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is
too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been – yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel.’


He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction
in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.


‘My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?’

‘For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very doorstep, and there is the ring of its owner. Don’t move,
I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic
moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for
good or ill. What does Dr James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!’


The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall,
thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, grey eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly
from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was
dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head
and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes’s hand, and he ran towards
it with an exclamation of joy. ‘I am so very glad,’ said he. ‘I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping
Office. I would not lose that stick for the world.’


‘A presentation, I see,’ said Holmes.


‘Yes, sir.’

‘From Charing Cross Hospital?’

‘From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.’

‘Dear, dear, that’s bad!’ said Holmes, shaking his head.

Dr Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment.

‘Why was it bad?’

‘Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?’

‘Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a
home of my own.’


‘Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all,’ said Holmes. ‘And now, Dr James Mortimer—’

‘Mr, sir, Mr – a humble MRCS.’

‘And a man of precise mind, evidently.’

‘A dabbler in science, Mr Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr
Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not—’


‘No, this is my friend Dr Watson.’

‘Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much,
Mr Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have
. . .