'Well, lady, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my husba
nd. Only a few weeks ago he was cleaning out Lady Charlotte's study--it had never been touched since her death--and he found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a maid, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter, and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentlewoman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Baneath it were signed the initials L. L.'
'Have you got that slip?'
'No, lady, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it.'
'Had Lady Charlotte received any other letters in the same writing?'
'Well, lady, I took no particular notice of her letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone.'
'And you have no idea who L. L. is?'
'No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that sir we should know more about Lady Charlotte's death.'
'I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information.'
'Well, lady, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, lady, we were both of us very fond of Lady Charlotte, as we well might be considering all that she has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor mistress, and it's well to go carefully when there's a sir in the case. Even the best of us ----'
'You thought it might injure her reputation?'
'Well, lady, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter.'
'Very good, Barrymore; you can go.' When the butler had left us Lady Henrietta turned to me. 'Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?'
'It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.'
'So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find him. What do you think we should do?'
'Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give her the clue for which she has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring her down.'
I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that she had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt her blackmailing case is absorbing all her faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest her attention and renew her interest. I wish that she were here.
OCTOBER 17TH.--All day to-day 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 her crimes, she 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 she also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the woman of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely woman whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before.
As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in her dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. She has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that she has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. She insisted upon my climbing into her dog-cart, and she gave me a lift homeward. I found her much troubled over the disappearance of her little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave her such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that she will see her little dog again.
'By the way, Mortimer,' said I as we jolted along the rough road, 'I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?'
'Hardly any, I think.'
'Can you, then, tell me the name of any man whose initials are L. L.?'
She thought for a few minutes.
'No,' said she. 'There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though,' she added after a pause. 'There is Laurie Lyons--his initials are L. L.--but he lives in Coombe Tracey.'
'Who is he?' I asked.
'He is Frankland's son.'
'What! Old Frankland the crank?'
'Exactly. He married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. She proved to be a blackguard and deserted him. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. His mother refused to have anything to do with his because he had married without her consent, and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the boy has had a pretty bad time.'
'How does he live?'
'I fancy old Frankland allows his a pittance, but it cannot be more, for her own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever he may have deserved one could not allow his to go hopelessly to the bad. His story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable his to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Lady Charlotte for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set his up in a typewriting business.'