The Hound o f the Baskervilles

Sherlockian Way of Thinking

4. Tracing the Source of the Anonymous Warning

A note at the Northumberland

An envelope is delivered to Sir Henry at the Northumberland Hotel.

Morning light slants through the windows of the Northumberland Hotel when the porter delivers an envelope to Sir Henry. Inside is a crude ransom of typography: words clipped from a newspaper and pasted into a single, terse warning—save for one hand-written word, which breaks the collage like a human whisper amid machinery:

“If you value your life or your reason, keep away from the moor.”

Holmes lays the page flat, not as a reader but as a chemist with a specimen. His method is calm and sequential—observation first, then hypothesis, then prediction and test.

1) Newspaper and type
He feels the paper, tilts it to the light, studies the ink bite and the letterforms. The texture is stiff, the print impression crisp, the serifs conservative. “The Times,” he concludes—an inference drawn from accumulated empirical knowledge of London dailies and their stock.

2) Handwriting and education
Only the word moor is penned by hand, clumsily—too clumsily. The letters are formed as if by someone masking a practiced hand. Holmes abduces that the writer is educated, yet determined not to appear so—an identity under wraps.

3) Perfume and proximity
He passes the sheet beneath his nose: a faint, decidedly feminine scent lingers. The fragrance is fresh—evidence that the note was prepared and posted in haste, and recently. (Abductive cue: scent does not linger long on paper.)

Holmes feels the paper, studies the ink bite and the letterforms, and colcludes "The Times."

4) Paste and pressure
The glue work is messy—ragged cuts, hurried edges, uneven pressure on the pasted words. No slow, careful craft here. Holmes imagines a nervous hand working under time pressure and fear.

Synthesis (profile + motive)
From these strands, Holmes weaves a profile: a woman of at least middle-class means (given ready access to The Times), acting in secrecy and haste, likely torn between sympathy and guilt. The warning is genuine, but the sender’s peril is real enough for her to disguise her hand. The logic is not theatrical; it is cumulative—each small property of the page becomes a premise toward a humane conclusion.

5. Suspicion Settles on Stapleton—From Watson’s Dispatches

“Let your eyes be mine upon the moor.”

Holmes remains in London while Watson escorts Sir Henry to Dartmoor. The arrangement is not a retreat but a design: Watson will send full, unvarnished reports. In those letters a pattern begins to pulse: the naturalist Stapleton and his “sister,” Beryl, appear in scene after scene, their presence oddly overdetermined, their behavior contradictory.

Watson’s observations, Holmes’s inferences

• Contradiction in conduct

Stapleton is all geniality with Sir Henry until affection stirs between Sir Henry and Beryl; then the geniality hardens into jealous prohibition. One man; two postures.

Abductive cue: strong, possessive control masquerading as fraternal care.

• Beryl’s covert warnings

Beryl finds chances—stolen, fearful—to urge Sir Henry to leave the moor. Her caution is real; her freedom to act, limited.

Inductive pattern: repeated whispers of danger from the same source imply constraint within the household.

• A past without provenance

From the converging lines, Holmes advances a hypothesis: they are not siblings at all but husband.

Locals know little of the Stapletons’ true background. No family threads, no verifiable history—only the naturalist’s easy charm and a convenient “sister.”

From these converging lines, Holmes advances a hypothesis: they are not siblings at all but husband and wife, their pretended kinship a useful mask.

Prediction (if the hypothesis is true):

They will keep others at arm’s length; true intimacy would expose the fiction.

Beryl’s fear will read less as a sister’s discomfort and more as a wife’s coercion.

Discreet inquiry into their past will turn up false names and a broken trail.

Verification:

As events unfold, the fiction collapses: they are indeed married. The deception’s purpose is now plain. If Beryl were known to be a wife, Sir Henry’s attentions would cool; by presenting her as a sister, Stapleton can lure and manipulate, deploying romance as bait. This is abduction in Holmes’s purest sense—choosing the most plausible explanation for an otherwise irrational arrangement, then testing it against life until it holds.

6. Into the Mire—Stapleton’s Disappearance, Presumed Death

The last flight

When the plot is finally exposed and the phosphorescent “hound” slain, Stapleton bolts for the one ally he truly knows: the moor itself. He has long walked its hidden tracks and counted on the Grimpen Mire to erase his footprints and his crimes alike.

Holmes and Watson follow in the dark: a ragged ribbon of steps leads away from the Hall; reeds crushed where a cautious boot faltered; in a hollow, the traces of a clandestine lair—food wrappers, a burned match, scraps of canvas.

Now the question is not whodunnit but whathappened: escaped, hiding, or dead?

The method of elimination

Escape? Implausible. Nets are out, eyes are watching, and time is short.

Concealment nearby? Unlikely. The known bolt-holes are blown; resources gone.

The mire? Remains.

The physical signs supports the conclusion: Stapleton is swallowed by the Grimpen Mire.

Hypothesis:

Stapleton attempted the crossing he had so often navigated, but misjudged the path in panic and darkness.

Predictions (hypothetico-deductive):
If that is true, there should be (a) a sequence of hurried prints trending toward the unstable ground, (b) signs of hesitation and misstep, (c) a terminal scuffle of reeds and mud with no outbound trail.

Observed:
Short, staggered footprints. Crushed sedge and sullen, bubbling ooze where the track ends—then nothing. No body is recovered, but the concordance of physical signs supports one overwhelming conclusion: Stapleton is swallowed by the very lie he engineered, the Grimpen Mire closing over the architect of terror.

Why these episodes matter

Across these three movements—an anonymous note in London, a chain of contradictions on the moor, a vanishing in the bog—Holmes exemplifies the same quiet architecture of thought:

Observation: the physical fact (paper, perfume, footprints, reeds).

Abduction: the most plausible story that binds the facts (an educated woman in fear; a sham siblinghood; a fatal misstep).

Deduction: specific consequences that must follow if the story is true.

Test: prediction against reality until only one account remains.

Holmes’s victory is not magic but method—the humane clarity that turns rumor into evidence and terror into truth. And so the “curse” dissolves under reason’s daylight: not a demon on the moor, but a man; not fate, but a plot; not prophecy, but footprints.