The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

you had deduced it months ago, and decided that you wanted none of it."
    Kissing me briefly, he muttered, "I didn't know, I swear to you. I hoped, but I didn't dare to presume."
    As his lips met mine again – more by touch than by sight, for it was now well and truly nightfall – I thought to myself that at least that went some way towards explaining the business with Culverton Smith. He had not realised that he was forcing me to witness the death of the man I loved, although even deceiving a friend to that degree was no small matter and we would most assuredly be having words on the subject at a later time.
    "When I saw you on the tor that night," I whispered against his mouth, "I wondered what passion of hatred could inspire a man to linger in such a place."
    By way of reply, his arms tightened around me and he murmured, "Ah, John. You underestimate the feelings you inspire in others. Passion, yes, but never hatred."
    After an all-too-brief period, we were interrupted from the embrace in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. A terrible scream – a prolonged yell of horror and anguish burst out of the silence of the moor, and the cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.
    "Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?"
    Holmes had sprung away from me. "Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!"
    The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before.
    "Where is it?" Holmes whispered, and I knew from the shiver in his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. "Where is it, Watson?"
    "There, I think." I pointed into the darkness. "No, there!"
    Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.
    "The hound!" cried Holmes. "Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we should not reach him in time!"
    He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.
    I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead, like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground.
    "He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late."
    "No, no, surely not!"
    "Fool that I was to hold my hand! But, by heaven, if the worst has happened, we'll avenge him!"
    Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor and nothing moved upon its dreary face.
    "Can you see anything?"
    "Nothing."
    "But hark, what is that?"
    A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff, which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downwards upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him, and held it up again, with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his fingers, clotted by the ghastly pool that widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us – the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!
    There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit – the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.
    "The brute! The brute!" I cried, with