The Hound of the Baskervilles Part 24 (1/2)
For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears
Thenweight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted fro 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 gray 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 washim 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 ithin 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 e your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that hbourhood You will see it there beside the path
You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreed into the eht asyour ad in a for the tenant to return So you actually thought that I was the criminal?”
”I did not knoho you were, but I was determined to find out”
”Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize ht 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 entleman with the telescope, no doubt I could notupon 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?”
”Yes”
”To see Mrs Laura Lyons?”
”Exactly”
”Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and e unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case”
”Well, I alad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and thetoo much for my nerves But how in the na? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of black”