The Hound of the Baskervilles: The Stapletons of Merripit House

In the bright morning sun, Baskerville Hall looked far less gloomy, and Sir Henry decided that they had simply been tired the night before.But after breakfast Watson met Mrs. Barrymore in the corridor, and her eyes were red and swollen; it was she who had been crying, and her husband had lied about it.Watson walked four miles to the village of Grimpen and learned that Holmes’s telegram had been handed to Mrs. Barrymore, not to the butler himself, so there was still no proof that he had not been in London.

On the way back, a small, slim man with a butterfly net came running after him; it was Stapleton, the naturalist of Merripit House.Stapleton already knew who Watson was, and he asked a little too eagerly what Sherlock Holmes thought of the case.Watson said only that he was visiting his friend, and Stapleton politely promised not to ask again.

As they crossed the moor, Stapleton pointed to a plain dotted with bright green patches: the great Grimpen Mire, where one wrong step meant death.Even as he spoke, a moor pony sank into the bog with a terrible cry, yet Stapleton said calmly that he knew a safe path to its very heart.Then a long, low, sad moan rose over the moor, and Stapleton said that the country people believed it was the hound calling for its prey.

Suddenly Stapleton dashed off across the mire after a rare moth, and while he was gone a beautiful dark-haired woman came up to Watson.“Go back!” she whispered. “Go straight back to London, and never set foot upon the moor again.”When her brother returned, Beryl Stapleton quickly began talking about orchids, and Watson realized that she had taken him for Sir Henry.

At Merripit House, a bleak farmhouse with elegant rooms inside, Stapleton explained that he had once run a school in the north before coming to the moor.Watson soon left, but on the path home he found Miss Stapleton waiting for him, out of breath from running by a short cut.

She begged him to forget her warning, but Watson refused and asked her plainly what danger she meant.She said only that she believed in the hound, that this place had always been fatal to the Baskervilles, and that Sir Henry should leave.Her brother must not know that she had spoken, she added, and then she was gone among the boulders, leaving Watson full of vague fears.