Alex remembered that he was unarmed. Geoffrey had a raythrower, but this party only had Holmes’ revolver and Toowey’s gnarled staff. He gulped and tried to dismiss thoughts of the thing that had slugged him last night. “A nice day,” he remarked to Holmes.

  “It is, is it not? However,” said Holmes, brightening up, “some of the most bloodcurdling crimes have been committed on fine days. There was, for example, the Case of the Dismembered Bishop—I don’t believe I have ever told you about it, Watson. Do you have your notebook to hand?”

  “Why, no,” said Alex, somewhat startled.

  “A pity,” said Holmes. “I could have told you not only about the Dismembered Bishop, but about the Leaping Caterpillar, the Strange Case of the Case of Scotch, and the Great Ghastly Case—all very interesting problems. How is your memory?” he asked suddenly.

  “Why—good, I guess,” said Alex.

  “Then I will tell you about the Case of the Leaping Caterpillar, which is the shortest of the lot,” commenced Holmes. “It was considerably before your time, Watson. I was just beginning to attract attention with my work; and one day there was a knock on the door and in came the strangest—”

  “Here be Baskerville Hall, laike,” said Farmer Toowey.

  An imposing Tudoresque pile loomed behind its screen of trees. They went up to the door and knocked. It opened and a corpulent Hoka in butler’s black regarded them with frosty eyes. “Tradesmen’s entrance in the rear,” he said.

  “Hey!” cried Alex.

  The butler took cognizance of his humanness and became respectful. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “I am somewhat near-sighted and—I am sorry, sir, but Sir Henry is not at home.”

  “Where is he, then?” asked Holmes, sharply.

  “In his grave, sir,” said the butler, sepulchrally.

  “Huh?” said Alex.

  “His grave?” barked Holmes. “Quick, man! Where is he buried?”

  “In the belly of the Hound, sir. If you will pardon the expression.”

  “Aye, aye,” nodded Farmer Toowey. “Yan Hound, ee be a hungry un, ee be.”

  A few questions elicited the information that Sir Henry, a bachelor, had disappeared one day several weeks ago while walking on the moors, and had not been heard from since. The butler was surprised to learn that he had been seen only last night, and brightened visibly. “I hope he comes back soon, sir,” he said. “I wish to give notice. Much as I admire Sir Henry, I cannot continue to serve an employer who may at any moment be devoured by monsters.”

  “Well,” said Holmes, pulling out a tape measure, “to work, Watson.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” This time Alex asserted himself. He couldn’t see waiting around all night while Holmes measured this monstrosity of a mansion. “We’ve got a ppussjan to catch, remember?”

  “Just a little measurement,” begged Holmes.

  “No!”

  “Not even one?”

  “All right.” Jones relented at the wistful tone. “Just one.”

  Holmes beamed and, with a few deft motions, measured the butler.

  “I must say, Watson, that you can be quite tyrannical at times,” he said. Then, returning to Hoka normal: “Still, without my Boswell, where would I be?” He set off at a brisk trot, his furry legs twinkling in the late sunlight. Alex and Toowey stretched themselves to catch up.

  They were well out on the moor again when the detective stopped and, his nose twitching with eagerness, leaned over a small bush from which one broken limb trailed on the ground. “What’s that?” asked Alex.

  “A broken bush, Watson,” said Holmes snappishly. “Surely even you can see that.”

  “I know. But what about it?”

  “Come, Watson,” said Holmes, sternly. “Does not this broken bush convey some message to you? You know my methods. Apply them.”

  Alex felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the original Dr. Watson. Up until now he had never realized the devilish cruelty inherent in that simple command to apply the Holmesian methods. Apply them—how?

  He stared fiercely at the bush, which continued to ignore him, without being able to deduce more than that it was (a) a bush and (b) broken. “Uh—a high wind?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Ridiculous, Watson,” retorted Holmes. “The broken limb is green; doubtless it was snapped last night by something large passing by in haste. Yes, Watson, this confirms my suspicions. The Hound has passed this way on its way to its lair, and the branch points us the direction.”

  “They be tu Grimpen Mire, a be,” said Farmer Toowey dubiously. “Yan mire be impassable, un be.”

  “Obviously it is not, if the Hound is there,” said Holmes. “Where it can go, we can follow. Come, Watson!” And he trotted off, his small body bristling with excitement.

  They went through the brush for some minutes until they came to a wide boggy stretch with a large signboard in front of it.

  GRIMPEN MIRE

  FOUR MILES SQUARE

  DANGER!!!!!!

  “Watch closely, Watson,” said Holmes. “The creature has obviously leaped from tussock to tussock. We will follow his path, watching for trampled grass or broken twigs. Now, then!” And bounding past the boundary sign, Holmes landed on a little patch of turf, from which he immediately soared to another one.

  Alex hesitated, gulped, and followed him. It was not easy to progress in jumps of a meter or more, and Holmes, bouncing from spot to spot, soon pulled away. Farmer Toowey cursed and grunted behind Alex. “Eigh, ma oold boons can’t tyke the leaping na moor, they can’t,” he muttered when they paused to rest. “If we’d knowed the Mire were tu be zo much swink, we’d never a builted un, book or no book.”

  “You made it yourselves?” asked Alex. “It’s artificial?’

  “Aye, lad, that un be. ’Twas in the book, Grimpen Mire, an’ un swall’d many a man doon, un did. Many brave hee-arts lie asleep in un deep.” He added apologetically: “Ow-ers be no zo grimly, though un tried hard. Ow-ers, yeou oonly get tha feet muddy, a-crossing o’t. Zo we stay well away fran it, yeou understand.”

  Alex sighed.

  The sun was almost under the hills now, and long shadows swept down the moor. Alex looked back, but could not make out any sign of Hall, village, or search party. A lonesome spot—not exactly the best place to meet a demoniac Hound, or even a ppussjan. Glancing ahead, he could not discern Holmes either, and he put on more speed.

  An island—more accurately, a large hill—rose above the quaking mud. Alex and Toowey reached it with a final leap. They broke through a wall of trees and brush screening its stony crest. Here grew a wide thick patch of purple flowers. Alex halted, looked at them, and muttered an oath. He’d seen those blossoms depicted often enough in news articles.

  “Nixl weed,” he said. “So this is the ppussjan hideout!”

  Dusk came swiftly as the sun disappeared. Alex remembered again that he was unarmed and strained wildly through the gathering dimness. “Holmes!” he called. “Holmes! I say, where are you, old fellow?” He snapped his fingers and swore. Damn! Now I’m doing it!

  A roar came from beyond the hilltop. Jones leaped back. A tree stabbed him with a sharp branch. Whirling around, he struck out at the assailant. “Ouch!” he yelled. “Heavens to Betsy!” he added, though not in precisely those words.

  The roar lifted again, a bass bellow that rumbled down to a savage snarling. Alex clutched at Farmer Toowey’s smock. “What’s that?” he gasped. “What’s happening to Holmes?”

  “Might be Hound’s got un,” offered Toowey, stolidly. “We hears un eatin’, laike.”

  Alex dismissed the bloodthirsty notion with a frantic gesture. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  “Ridiculous I may be,” said Toowey stubbornly, “but they girt Hound be hungry, for zartin sure.”

  Alex’s fear-tautened ears caught a new sound—footsteps from over the hill. “It’s—coming this way,” he hissed.

  Toowey muttered something that sounded like “dessert.”

  Setting his teeth, Alex plunged forward. He topped the hill and sprang, striking a small solid body and crashing to earth. “I say, Watson,” came Holmes’ dry, testy voice, “this really won’t do at all. I have told you a hundred times that such impetuosity ruins more good police officers than any other fault in the catalogue.”

  “Holmes!” Alex picked himself up, breathing hard. “My God, Holmes, it’s you! But that other noise—the bellowing—?”

  “That,” said Holmes, “was Sir Henry Baskerville when I took the gag out of his mouth. Now come along, gentlemen, and see what I have found.”

  Alex and Toowey followed him through the nixl patch and down the rocky slope beyond it. Holmes drew aside a bush and revealed a yawning blackness. “I thought the Hound would shelter in a burrow,” he said, “and assumed he would camouflage its entrance. So I merely checked the bushes. Do come in, Watson, and relax.”

  Alex crawled after Holmes. The tunnel widened into an artificial cave, about two meters high and three square, lined with a spray-plastic—not too bad a place. By the vague light of Holmes’ bull’s-eye, Alex saw a small cot, a cookstove, a radio transceiver, and a few luxuries. The latter, apparently, included a middle-aged Hoka in the tattered remnants of a once-fine tweed suit. He had been fat, from the way his skin hung about him, but was woefully thin and dirty now. It hadn’t hurt his voice, though—he was still swearing in a loud bass unusual for the species, as he stripped the last of his bonds from him.

  “Damned impertinence,” he said. “Man isn’t even safe on his own grounds any more. And the rascal had the infernal nerve to take over the family legend—my ancestral curse, dammit!”

  “Calm down, Sir Henry,” said Holmes. “You’re safe now.”

  “I’m going to write to my M.P.,” mumbled the real Baskerville. “I’ll tell him a thing or two, I will. There’ll be questions asked in the House of Commons, egad!”

  Alex sat down on the cot and peered through the gloom. “What happened to you, Sir Henry?” he asked.

  “Damned monster accosted me right on my own moor,” said the Hoka, indignantly. “Drew a gun on me, he did. Forced me into his noisome hole. Had the unmitigated gall to take a mask of my face. Since then he’s kept me on bread and water. Not even fresh bread, by Godfrey! It—it isn’t British! I’ve been tied up in this hole for weeks. The only exercise I got was harvesting his blinking weed for him. When he went away, he’d tie me up and gag me—” Sir Henry drew an outraged breath. “So help me, he gagged me with my own school tie!”

  “Kept as slave and possibly hostage,” commented Holmes. “Hm. Yes, we’re dealing with a desperate fellow. But Watson, see here what I have to show you.” He reached into a box and pulled out a limp, black object with an air of triumph. “What do you think of this, Watson?”

  Alex stretched it out: a plastimask of a fanged monstrous head, grinning like a toothpaste ad. When he held it in shadow, he saw the luminous spots on it. The Hound’s head!

  “Holmes!” he cried. “The Hound is the—the—”

  “Ppussjan,” supplied Holmes.

  “How do you do?” said a new voice, politely.

  Whirling around, Holmes, Alex, Toowey, and Sir Henry managed, in the narrow space, to tie themselves in knots. When they had gotten untangled, they looked down the barrel of a raythrower. Behind it was a figure muffled shapelessly in a great, trailing black coat, but with the head of Sir Henry above it.

  “Number Ten!” gulped Alex.

  “Exactly,” said the ppussjan. His voice had a Hoka squeakiness, but the tone was cold. “Fortunately, I got back from scouting around before you could lay an ambush for me. It was pathetic, watching that search party. The last I saw of them, they were headed for Northumberland.”

  “They’ll find you,” said Alex, with a dry voice. “You don’t dare hurt us.”

  “Don’t I?” asked the ppussjan, brightly.

  “I zuppoze yeou du, at that,” said Toowey.

  Alex realized sickly that if the ppussjan’s hideout had been good up to now, it would probably be good until his gang arrived to rescue him. In any case, he, Alexander Braithwaite Jones, wouldn’t be around to see.

  But that was impossible. Such things didn’t happen to him. He was League plenipotentiary to Toka, not a character in some improbable melodrama, waiting to be shot. He—

  A sudden wild thought tossed out of his spinning brain: “Look here, Ten, if you ray us you’ll sear all your equipment here too.” He had to try again; no audible sounds had come out the first time.

  “Why, thanks,” said the ppussjan. “I’ll set the gun to narrow-beam.” Its muzzle never wavered as he adjusted the focusing stud. “Now,” he asked, “have you any prayers to say?”

  “I—” Toowey licked his lips. “Wull yeou alloo me to zay one poem all’t’ way through? It have given me gree-at coomfort, it have.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “By the shores of Gitchee Gumee—”

  Alex knelt too—and one long human leg reached out and his foot crashed down on Holmes’ lantern. His own body followed, hugging the floor as total darkness whelmed the cave. The raybeam sizzled over him—but, being narrow, missed and splatted the farther wall.

  “Yoiks!” shouted Sir Henry, throwing himself at the invisible ppussjan. He tripped over Alex and went rolling to the floor. Alex got out from underneath, clutched at something, and slugged hard. The other slugged back.

  “Take that!” roared Alex. “And that!”

  “Oh, no!” said Sherlock Holmes in the darkness. “Not again, Watson!”

  They whirled, colliding with each other, and groped toward the sounds of fighting. Alex clutched at an arm. “Friend or ppussjan?” he bellowed.

  A raybeam scorched by him for answer. He fell to the floor, grabbing for the ppussjan’s skinny legs.

  Holmes climbed over him to attack the enemy. The ppussjan fired once more, wildly, then Holmes got his gun hand and clung. Farmer Toowey yelled a Hoka battle cry, whirled his staff over his head, and clubbed Sir Henry.

  Holmes wrenched the ppussjan’s raythrower loose. It clattered to the floor. The ppussjan twisted in Alex’s grasp, pulling his leg free. Alex got hold of his coat. The ppussjan slipped out of it and went skidding across the floor, fumbling for the gun. Alex fought the heavy coat for some seconds before realizing that it was empty.

  Holmes was there at the same time as Number Ten, snatching the raythrower from the ppussjan’s grasp. Ten clawed out, caught a smooth solid object falling from Holmes’ pocket, and snarled in triumph. Backing away, he collided with Alex. “Oops, sorry,” said Alex, and went on groping around the floor.

  The ppussjan found the light switch and snapped it. The radiance caught a tangle of three Hokas and one human. He pointed his weapon. “All right!” he screeched. “I’ve got you now!”

  “Give that back!” said Holmes indignantly, drawing his revolver.

  The ppussjan looked down at his own hand. It was clutching Sherlock Holmes’ pipe.

  Whitcomb Geoffrey staggered into the George and Dragon and grabbed the wall for support. He was gaunt and unshaven. His clothes were in rags. His hair was full of burrs. His shoes were full of mud. Every now and then he twitched, and his lips moved. A night and half a day trying to superintend a Hoka search party was too much for any man, even an IBI man.

  Alexander Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Farmer Toowey, and Sir Henry Baskerville looked sympathetically up from the high tea which the landlord was serving them. The ppussjan looked up too, but with less amiability. His vulpine face sported a large black eye, and his four-legged body was lashed to a chair with Sir Henry’s old school tie. His wrists were bound with Sir Henrys regimental colors.

  “I say, Gregson, you’ve had rather a thin time of it, haven’t you?” asked Holmes. “Do come have a spot of tea.”

  “Whee-ar’s the s’arch party, lad?” asked Farmer Toowey.

  “When I left them,” said Geoffrey, dully, “they were resisting arrest at Potteringham Castle. The earl objected to their dragging his duckpond.”

  “Wull, wull, lad, the-all ull be back soon, laike,” said Toowey, gently.

  Geoffrey’s bloodshot eyes fell on Number Ten. He was too tired to say more than: “So you got him after all.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Alex. “Want to take him back to Headquarters?”

  With the first real spirit he had shown since he had come in, Geoffrey sighed. “Take him back?” he breathed. “I can actually leave this planet?”

  He collapsed into a chair. Sherlock Holmes refilled his pipe and leaned his short furry form back into his own seat.

  “This has been an interesting little case,” he said. “In some ways it reminds me of the Adventure of the Two Fried Eggs, and I think, my dear Watson, that it may be of some small value to your little chronicles. Have you your notebook ready?…Good. For your benefit, Gregson, I shall explain my deductions, for you are in many ways a promising man who could profit by instruction.”

  Geoffrey’s lips started moving again.

  “I have already explained the discrepancies of Sir Henry’s appearance in the tavern,” went on Holmes implacably. “I also thought that the recent renewed activity of the Hound, which time-wise fitted in so well with the ppussjan’s arrival, might well be traceable to our criminal. Indeed, he probably picked this hideout because it did have such a legend. If the natives were frightened of the Hound, you see, they would be less likely to venture abroad and interfere with Number Ten’s activities; and anything they did notice would be attributed to the Hound and dismissed by those outsiders who did not take the superstition seriously. Sir Henry’s disappearance was, of course, part of this program of terrorization; but also, the ppussjan needed a Hoka face. He would have to appear in the local villages from time to time, you see, to purchase food and to find out whether or not he was being hunted by your bureau, Gregson. Watson has been good enough to explain to me the process by which your civilization can cast a mask in spray-plastic. The ppussjan’s overcoat is an ingenious, adaptable garment; by a quick adjustment, it can be made to seem either like the body of a monster, or, if he walks on his hind legs, the covering of a somewhat stout Hoka. Thus, the ppussjan could be himself, or Sir Henry Baskerville, or the Hound of the Baskervilles, just as it suited him.”