The Hound of the Baskervilles: Death on the Moor

For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my
ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a
crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be
lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could
belong to but one man in all the world.

“Holmes!” I cried—“Holmes!”

“Come out,” said he, “and please be careful with the revolver.”

I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone
outside, his grey eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon
my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and
alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the
wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other
tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike
love of personal cleanliness which was one of his
characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen
as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.

“I never was more glad to see anyone in my life,” said I as I
wrung him by the hand.

“Or more astonished, eh?”

“Well, I must confess to it.”

“The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no
idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that
you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door.”

“My footprint, I presume?”

“No, Watson, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your
footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously
desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I
see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know
that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it
there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that
supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut.”

“Exactly.”

“I thought as much—and knowing your admirable tenacity I was
convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach,
waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I
was the criminal?”

“I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out.”

“Excellent, Watson! And how did you localise me? You saw me,
perhaps, on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so
imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?”

“Yes, I saw you then.”

“And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this
one?”

“No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where
to look.”

“The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make
it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens.” He
rose and peeped into the hut. “Ha, I see that Cartwright has
brought up some supplies. What’s this paper? So you have been to
Coombe Tracey, have you?”