Sir Henry was very pleased to see Sherlock Holmes. "How is the case going, Mr Holmes? Have you made any sense of it yet?" Holmes said the matter would be solved before very long, if when the time came, Sir Henry would do exactly what he was told to do, without argument. to this Sir Henry agreed. Then he went to his room.

Once he had gone, Holmes and I went to the dining-hall. On the walls hung paintings of the Baskervilles going back over three hundred years. Holmes moved from painting to painting, looking very carefully at each in turn. Then he went back and held a lamp to one i particular, studying it closely. It was a portrait of a man in black velvet and lace—the wicked Sir Hugo who had started it all.

"Look at it, Watson."

I did so. I noticed the thin-lipped mouth, the cold eye and the stern expression.

"Now look again!" said Holmes.

He stood on a chair and put his hand over the broad hat and the curling hair, so that only the face was visible.

I started in surprise. The likeness between the face of Sir Hugo and the man we knew as Stapleton was almost beyond belief. "It looks like Stapleton!" I said.

Holmes laughed. "Yes, Stapleton must have Baskerville blood in him. Now we can guess why he is an enemy to Sir Henry. Never mind, tomorrow night I shall trap him. Not a word of this to Sir Henry."

Holmes was up early in the morning and seemed to be in good spirits. Sir Henry had been invited to visit Stapleton that evening. He asked Holmes and myself if we would like to go with him. "I'm afraid not," said Holmes. "You will have to go alone, as Watson and I must be in London on important business."

This was news to me, but I said nothing. Sir Henry looked disappointed. "I would like to go to London with you."

"You must stay here," said Holmes. "Remember you promised to carry out all my instructions without question. I want you to go to your friend Stapleton's tonight, as planned. Afterwards you are to walk home by the path across the moor. Tell Stapleton you intend to do this."

"But that's the very thing you have told me never to do," replied sir Henry.

"Trust me," insisted Holmes. "This time you may do it with safety. It will take great courage. You must not stray away from the moor path leading from Stapleton's house to Grimpen village. Keep on that path at all costs." I was as puzzled by all this as was Sir Henry, but I kept quiet.

A couple of hours later we left Baskerville Hall for the railway station. At the platform Holmes dismissed the carriage driver. When the driver was out of sight he told me we were not going anywhere. Part of his plan was to let Stapleton believe we were in London, so that he would then feel safe to attack Sir Henry. This was exactly what Holmes wanted him to do. I was not completely surprised. Sherlock Holmes rarely told his full plans to anyone, including myself.

We had a meal and talked more about Stapleton. Holmes had photographs, copies of statements from witnesses and various documents. They proved that Stapleton had lived under different names, in different parts of England, for some time.

After the meal Holmes hired a driver and carriage. He had still not told me what we were to do or what we were to expect. Off we drove in the darkness. The presence of the driver meant we could not talk openly. I could feel my heart beating when we were back on the moor.

The driver put us down near to Baskerville Hall, and we turned in the direction of Stapleton's house and began to walk. It seemed a long way. Over towards Grimpen Marsh lay a huge bank of fog. Holmes stopped about two hundred yards from the house. "This will do," he said. "These rocks will give us cover."

We got into a hollow behind the rocks, but although we could see the house, we were too far away to see what was happening inside.

After some minutes Holmes asked me to creep forward to see what Sir Henry and Stapleton were doing, and I tiptoed to the low orchard wall. At one place I could see through the uncurtained window into the room where they were dining.

Stapleton was talking. Sir Henry looked pale. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk back across the moor was on his mind.

As I watched, Stapleton left the room. He came outside and went into an outhouse. I heard a curious scuffling noise, then after a minute or so he came out, locked then door and returned to Sir Henry. I crept back and reported to Holmes what I had seen.

By this time, the bank of fog over Grimpen Marsh had begun drifting in our direction. "This is serious, Watson. It's moving towards us. Sir Henry must leave before the fog reaches the path. His life depends on it. He can't be long now, it's already after ten."

Every minute we waited, the fog drifted closer. The first thin wisps had reached the farthest wall of Stapleton's orchard. Slowly it crept around the trees. "If he doesn't come soon, we shall lose him," said Holmes. "We must move back a little onto higher ground." Still the fog swept slowly on. Holmes knelt down and put his ear to the ground. "I think I can hear him coming."

Then I heard him too. We crouched down among the rocks staring hard into the fog as the footsteps grew louder. Sir Henry came out of the fog, walking swiftly. He passed us. Every now and then he looked behind him, like a frightened man.

"Watson!" cried Holmes. "It's coming."

About fifty yards from where we were a dreadful shape burst out of the fog. I sprang to my feet. It was a hound; an enormous black hound. Light seemed to come from its mouth and flicker around its eyes and jaws. Never have I seen anything so hellish. With long bounds it followed hard on the track of our friend, Sir Henry. We were so shocked we let it pass us before we recovered our nerves. Then Holmes and I fired together. It gave a howl of pain, but did not stop.

Sir Henry had turned and was looking in helpless terror at the thing which was hunting him down.

But the cry of pain from the hound had told us that it was a living thing, and not a ghost-dog. Holmes ran after the hound. We heard the screams of Sir Henry. The beast had hurled him to the ground and was about to attack his throat. Holmes put five shots from his revolver into the creature. It rolled over on to its back, pawed the air and then fell still. I stooped over it, with my pistol drawn, but the giant hound was dead.

Sir Henry had fainted. His eyelids quivered. I gave him some brandy from my flask.

"My God!" he whispered. "What was it?"

"Whatever it was, it is dead," said Holmes. "The family ghost has been killed for ever."

The size of the creature was huge. It was neither pure bloodhound, nor pure mastiff, but a mixture of the two, and as large as a small lioness. The head and jaws seemed to glow with a bluish light. I put my hand on its head, and as I lifted my fingers they too gleamed blue in the darkness.

"Phosphorus," I said.

"A clever preparation of it," replied Holmes.

We knew that the sound of the shots must have warned Stapleton that the game was up. The three of us went to his house and searched it room by room, but our quarry had gone. Holmes had planned well, for Stapleton's only escape route was through Grimpen Marsh. Since it would have been useless to try to find him in the fog, we returned to Baskerville Hall. On the way, Sherlock Holmes told Sir Henry how Stapleton had plotted to kill him.

On the morning after the death of the hound, the fog lifted and Dr Mortimer guided us to a pathway through Grimpen Marsh. The rotting reeds and slimy water-plants gave off a smell of decay, and several times we sank thigh-deep into the quivering mud.

We saw traces that someone had passed that way before us. Further on we found Stapleton's hat, lost by him the night before in his flight through the fog. That was the last sign we saw of him. If the earth told a true story, somewhere in the heart of Grimpen Marsh, sucked down in the foul slime, Stapleton was buried for ever.

In an old hut, where Stapleton had kept the hound, we found a very strong chain, a pile of gnawed bones and a tin containing the paste mixture used on the creature's head and jaws, to make it appear ghostly. This must certainly have helped to frighten Sir Charles to death.

Stapleton had not dared to keep the hound at his house, except on the nights of the attacks on Sir Charles and Sir Henry. He had kept it hidden, but he could not quieten its voice.

There were still many points which I did not understand. Some days later, on the train back to London, Holmes explained.

Stapleton was indeed a Baskerville. This was something we had not expected, for Dr Mortimer had told us in the beginning that Sir Henry was the last of the Baskervilles.

It was not so. Rodger, the brother of Sir Charles, had not died of yellow fever in Brazil. In fact he had married and had one son, also called Rodger. That son we knew later under the name of Stapleton.

When Stapleton came to England he found out that only one or two lives stood between him and the rich estate of Baskerville.

To begin with, his plans were vague. His first act was to live near to Baskerville Hall. His second was to become friendly with Sir Charles.

When Sir charles told him the story of the Baskerville curse, Stapleton thought of a way to make it come true. From another friend, Dr Mortimer, he had learned that Sir Charles had a weak heart, and that any violent shock would kill him. He bought the dog in London, from dealers in the Fulham Road. It was the strongest, biggest and most savage animal they could find.

No one knows how many times Stapleton waited with the hound in the darkness without success. Then one night, as Sir Charles strolled along the drive, Stapleton released his hound. Sir Charles ran in terror and his heart failed. Stapleton called off the hound and took it back to his hut on Grimpen Marsh.

It is just possible that Stapleton did not know then of another Baskerville living in Canada. If so, he must have had a shock himself when he learned of Sir Henry. It meant he had to plan another death.

By the time Holmes was found by me, when he was in hiding on the moor, he had worked out most of the case against Stapleton. He knew also that he would have to catch Stapleton in the act, for nothing could be proved against him. So Sir Henry had to be used as bait, to make Stapleton act.

One thing still puzzled me. If Sir Henry had been killed, how could Stapleton have claimed the Baskerville title without giving himself away? He had lived in the district for two years under a false name and there would have been two strange deaths.

Even Holmes had no real answer to this. It is likely that Stapleton would have returned quietly to Brazil and claimed the Baskerville fortune from there under his real name, Rodger Baskerville. By doing so he would have had no need to come to England at all.

Only one thing is certain: that cruel and evil man would have tried to find a way.

(The End)