The Moor - Laurie R. King [95]
"You believe that Scheiman is after Mycroft's tank," I said in disgust.
"It does not do to theorise in advance of one's facts," he said primly.
I made a rude remark about his facts, and went on. "If this is deteriorating into a spy hunt, Holmes, you don't need me. It's been a truly invigorating holiday from my books, but perhaps I may be allowed to take my leave."
"Two murders now, Russell. I should have thought that sufficient to overcome your distaste for the War Office."
I dropped my head back onto the chair and closed my eyes. "You really need me, Holmes?"
"I could ask Watson."
Dr Watson was only five years older than Holmes, but his heavy frame had aged as Holmes' wiry build and whip-hard constitution had not. I dismissed his halfhearted suggestion. "A cold day on the moor would cripple him." That Holmes might rely on police help or Mycroft's men was so improbable as to be unworthy of mention. "I'll stay and see it through. Although I can't promise that I won't blow up that flipping tank myself at the end of it."
"That's my Russell." He smiled. I scowled.
"Will you go down to see Miss Baskerville yourself, to ask about the painting?" I asked him.
"I should like to know as well some of the particulars concerning the sale of the Hall. Yes, I shall go myself. Now, you have yet to tell me about Elizabeth Chase's hedgehogs."
"One hedgehog, and it does not belong to her. It now resides in the garden of a friend of Miss Chase's in Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, where Miss Chase carried it to nurse it back to health after finding it on the twenty-eighth of July, its leg crushed by a fast-moving wheel and its back bitten by large teeth."
"Aha!"
"Indeed. Moreover, she goes on to offer us one large and spectral dog with a glowing eye and a taste for scones." To my great pleasure, this statement actually startled Holmes.
I told him about Elizabeth Chase's wounded hedgehog and about Samuel's encounter with the Hound, and after telling him I sat forward and pulled the map to me, marking with an X the spot between the stone row and the hut circles where she had heard the piteous cry of poorwee Tiggy and the place where Samuel had seen the dog. Holmes took the pencil and drew in the probable route of the coach as seen from Gibbet Hill, added a star shape to mark the adit in which he had found signs of life, and we studied the result: my X, his line, two Xs for the sightings of the coach in July, and a circle to show where Josiah Gorton had last been seen. All of them together formed a jagged line running diagonally across the face of the moor from Sourton Tor in the northwest to Cut Lane in the southeast, roughly six miles from one end to the other. The imaginary line's nearest point to Baskerville Hall was three miles, although the closest sighting, that of the courting couple, was more than four miles away.
I sat for a time in contemplation of the enigmatic line while Holmes slumped back into his chair, eyes closed and fingers steepled. When he spoke, his remark seemed at first oblique.
"I find I cannot get the phial of gold dust from my mind."
"Did you give it over for analysis?"
"I looked at it myself in the laboratory. Small granules of pure gold—not ore—with a pinch of some high-acid humus and a scraping of deteriorated granitic sand."
"Peat is highly acidic," I suggested.
"Peat, yes, but there was a tiny flat fragment that looked as if it might have been a decomposed leaf of some tough plant such as holly or oak."
"Wistman's Wood is oak."
"So are a number of other places around the moor. I shall ring the laboratory later today, to see if their more time-consuming chemical analyses have given them any more than I found. In the meanwhile, I think I can just catch the train to Plymouth, although it may mean stopping there the night. Perhaps you could go and ask Mrs Elliott if Gould's old dog cart is available."
"And if the pony can pull it." Red