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cloud of dust, swirling mightily in the still shaft of light from the
miraculously unbroken torch that Ketteridge had dropped. It was only then that
I realised the rain had stopped. I did not imagine that the blast would be so
big.
It should not have been. Perhaps the cliff was unstable. I shall have to
leave you to deal with Scheiman. Can you do that?
Holmes, you can t go after Ketteridge without a weapon. At least wait until
we ve taken Scheiman s gun away from him.
Russell, I will not permit a second villain to escape me on this moor, he
said grimly. Follow when you can. He caught up the torch from the ground and
flung himself up the hill after Ketteridge.
I replaced the spent shell, and with great circumspection I went downstream to
the site of the blast, expecting at any moment to be pounced upon by the
murderous secretary. When I found him, though, he was quite incapable of
pouncing, being unconscious and half buried under tons of rock from the
collapsed hillside. I checked his pockets, removing the sturdy clasp knife I
found in one of them, and then set about digging him out.
One ankle was broken, and the bone above it as well, and I knew he would be
black from the waist down by the next day. If he lived that long. I dragged
him away, tied his hands behind his back, then took off my waterproof and my
woollen overcoat and tucked them securely around him. I would prefer that if
this escapade cost Scheiman his life, it be at the hands of a judge, not mine.
I did not find his gun, which must either have fallen from his pocket or been
flung from his grasp, but I knew that if I could not see it, he was not likely
to find it either. I turned to follow Holmes and Ketteridge up onto the moor.
From high on the remains of my protective tor it was an easy thing to find the
men, two beams of light moving across the darkling plain, perhaps half a mile
apart and going west. It was difficult to tell how far off the closer of the
torches was, but I thought not less than two miles. I started down the hill in
their wake.
Following the river upstream, I reached a place where it was little more than
a stream, and there I found Ketteridge s vehicle, the means Scheiman had
devised to frighten the moor dwellers: Lady Howard s coach. I took a moment to
look at it and found to my surprise that underneath the big square
superstructure with the remains of phosphorescent paint daubed on the corners
the glowing bones of the Lady s hapless husbands lay the same powerful
touring car that had carried us to and from Baskerville Hall, with the
standard Dunlop tyres replaced by large, highly inflated tubes that would
leave no tracks and also serve to underscore the ghostly silence of the thing.
They had probably been inspired by the secret amphibious tank, I
realised Mycroft would be incensed and, the horse that had appeared to be
pulling it must have been ridden by one of the men, with loose harnesses
jangling for effect. Abruptly, I remembered that I had no time to moon over
the device; I tore my attention from it and headed back out onto the moor.
My distance from the two men meant I had continually to climb the heights to
keep track of their progress, so that run as I might, I could not gain on
them. Each time I climbed, there were still the two of them, although the
distance between them slowly decreased, as Ketteridge had to choose his path
while Holmes merely followed. In fact, I began to wonder if Holmes was not
deliberately keeping his distance. I redoubled my efforts.
The wind had calmed considerably, but when I thought I heard a faint cracking
noise from the vast space before me, I could not be certain. I shone my light
desperately all around, found a rise, followed it, stood on my toes on a
boulder, and saw a light, one single light. It was not moving.
I ran. Oblivious of streams and stones and the hellish waterlogged dips and
gouges of an old peat works, I ran up a rise and down the other side and
splashed three steps into the bog that stretched out there before my interior
alarm sounded. I backed out laboriously, the muck hold ing fast at my boots
and calves and only letting go with a slow sucking noise. I staggered when my
heels hit solid ground and I sat down hard, then got to my feet and searched
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the basin. Rushes, Holmes had said, look for footing among the rushes, and
indeed, along the edges of the bog stood tussocks of thick grass in a rough
semicircle. Following those proved heavy going, but I did not sink in past my
lowest bootlaces, and I made the other side of the mire with no further harm.
Up that hill I went, and there below me, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, lay
the beam of a single torch, lying, by the looks of it, on the ground,
motionless.
I nervously checked to be sure the shotgun was loaded and went forward
stealthily until I could make out the dark figure sitting on the ground beside
the light. My heart gave one great thud of relief, like a shout, and subsided.
Holmes? I said. I thought I heard a shot.
He turned at my voice, and then looked back at the terrain before him. You
did, he said. He would not allow me to approach.
Approach? I asked, and walked up to stand by his side. His boots were mere
clots of black, viscous mud, as were his trouser legs past his knees.
I played my torch beyond him to see what he was staring at, and saw there at
our feet a stretch of smooth, finely textured turf, looking as if someone had
spread a large carpet of some pale green stuff across the floor of the moor.
On the side nearest us the carpet appeared scuffed, and the torchlight picked
out some gleaming black substance splashed across the centre of it that I
realised must be mud. The rest of the surface was pristine. A quaking bog,
Holmes had called it. A featherbed, was Baring-Gould s jocular name: a bed
beneath which Ketteridge now slept.
Holmes inclined his head at it. The moor took him, he said, and scrubbed
tiredly at his face with both hands. He got halfway across before he broke
through. I tried to pull him out, but he held the gun on me until the last
minute, until only his hand and his eyes were above the surface. He shot at me
when I tried to& I did attempt to save him.
I bent down to pick up his torch, and when I had put it in his hand I allowed
my fingers to rest briefly on the back of his neck. You said it yourself,
Holmes. The moor took him. Come, let us go home.
twenty-six
In my advanced old age I really entertain more delight in the beauties of
Nature and of Art than I did in my youth. Appreciation of what is good and
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