The Curse of the Baskervilles
- Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes.
- It's old—it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles.
- Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville.
- And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business.
- The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse
Why the Baskerville Family Is So Afraid of Dogs
- This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the "Great Rebellion" (the English Civil War of 1642-1651).
- He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up.
- One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies.
- She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches.
- Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her.
- (Why do people in these stories never seem to learn that selling your soul is never a good idea?)
- Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds.
- The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really?
- So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds.
- They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's.
- The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville.
- But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers (now painfully sober) watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out.
- Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story—it's just a fairy tale.
- So Dr. Mortimer continues his story.
- Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously.
- He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes.
- But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him.
- Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville.
- And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints—the footprints of a giant dog. (Dun dun dun.)