The Hound of the Baskervilles quotes

“I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absentminded.

It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absentminded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.

”

“

A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean.

I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not—”

“Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since.

If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.

Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious.

Holmes shrugged his shoulders. “I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world,” said he. “

In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task.

Yet you must admit that the footmark is material.”

“Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire.

A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing.

”

He laughed at my bewildered expression. “

There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense.

A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends.

“

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

Where do you think that I have been?”

“

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr.

But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we’ll shut that window again, if you don’t mind.

It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought.

I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?”

“Whichever it is, my answer is fixed.

There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer.

” His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative.

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will.

For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters.

“There go two of my threads, Watson.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

We must cast round for another scent.”

He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message.

I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel.

I’ve been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I’m not easy in my mind about it.”

“About sending you.

It’s an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it.

Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.”

Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable.

It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow.

I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house.

“No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me.

Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.

Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry.”

October 17th.—All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor.

Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them.

And then I thought of that other one—the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluge—the unseen watcher, the man of darkness?

I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland’s skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive.

I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.

I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time.

“I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father’s dinner.”

The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat.

His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat.

He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent—the boy, perhaps—upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported.

Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.

If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them.

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.

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

“

Sir Henry’s falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry.

He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.”

“Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree.

It is not what we know, but what we can prove.

If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet.”

“What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot.

I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.

”

“

My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action.

Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument’s sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There’s the devilish cunning of it!

“I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well.

Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last.

”

But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron.

To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand.

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand.

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.

“I’ve been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning,” said the baronet. “I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise.

“That’s lucky for him—in fact, it’s lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter.

I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household.

Watson’s reports are most incriminating documents.”

“Ha, you see it now.

My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings.

It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.”

“Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings.

It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.

”

A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!” He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture.

I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.

I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive.

The little detective smiled. “

As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it.

”

I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog.

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.

Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.

Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve.

“It’s dead, whatever it is,” said Holmes. “

We’ve laid the family ghost once and forever.

”

“A dog!” said Holmes. “By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed.

He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear.

On an emergency he could keep the hound in the outhouse at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it.

“Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind.

Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed.

The barrister who has his case at his fingers’ ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more.