The Hound of the Baskervilles
you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?”
The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.
“I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.”
“And why were you holding a candle to the window?”
“Don’t ask me, Sir Henry—don’t ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.”
A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the window-sill, where the butler had placed it.
“He must have been holding it as a signal,” said I. “Let us see if there is any answer.”
I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely
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