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 underrated 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."
Holmes' backhanded compliment underlies the bizarre relationship between the detective and his crony, Watson. Holmes enjoys leading Watson on, letting him think he has the right answer, when in fact the detective himself is holding all the cards. In as much as Watson serves as a stand-in for the readers, Holmes' coy little encouragement tempts us to try our hand at detection as well, even if we will never be as good at solving mysteries as Sherlock Holmes.
The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.
The appearance of the old-time manuscript signals a shift in the narrative's format from Watson's straight-up reporting to the land of make-believe, manuscripts and a redoubled dubiousness. Mortimer reads the manuscript in a folk tale style, suggesting the importance of supernatural and fantasy in adding suspense to the plot.
Throughout the novel, Doyle i