‘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 I could 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. On the
morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted
and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where
they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to
realize the horror of this woman’s life when we saw the
eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband’s
track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of
firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread
bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and
there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of
rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul
quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank
reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay
and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false
step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark,
quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations
around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as
we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some
malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene
depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it
held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had
passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of
cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark
thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he
stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been
there to drag him out he could never have set his foot
upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air.
‘Meyers, Toronto,’ was printed on the leather inside.
‘It is worth a mud bath,’ said he. ‘It is our friend Sir
Henry’s missing boot.’
‘Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight.’
‘Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set
the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the
game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at
this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so
far in safety.’
But more than that we were never destined to know,
though there was much which we might surmise. There
was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the
rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last
reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked
eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met
our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton
never reached that island of refuge towards which he
struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere
in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul