August 15th, 1889

Holmes and I had a particular client make a visit today. However, before he made his appearance, we found something of his he had left behind. There was a cane lying on the front steps when we returned, although Holmes could not find a calling card anywhere on the premise. The cane was well used, the iron ferrule worn down enough to be smooth and round. There was also an engraving present on the cane, dedicated to the name James Mortimer, M.R.C.S. The cane was, or so I thought, presented to the receiver by some sort of hunt club, due to the initials C.C.H., but Sherlock seemingly knew better and put the abbreviation down to the Charing Cross Hospital. I figured the man to be elderly, the walking stick presented after many years of service, perhaps a country practitioner. Something I mustn't forget is the fact that it was a Penang Lawyer stick, because I know Sherlock will cast it out of his mind and it may be of importance. I wasn't wrong about that, I'm sure of it. Unsurprisingly, Sherlock knew far more than I did just by observation, and it appears I was wrong about quite a bit. He did do something I've never heard him say in so many words before, though, and that was compliment me in my skills. He said something along the lines of "you are not yourself luminous, but a conductor of light." I do believe he meant to say I help him to his deductions, and the acknowledgement stuck with me even though he immediately leapt, like a hound himself, to correct me. With one glance at the stick, he could tell the man, James, had a dog, and that this dog wasn't particularly large, but not too small either. He had me look up the name in the medical dictionary, and we discovered he was not in fact old, but a young man. Why, we could not correctly decipher before meeting the man himself, but Sherlock surprised me with giving the exact breed of dog the man owned moments later. The dog was in fact standing on the porch, but I didn't realize this for a few moments.

On to the man himself, James Mortimer first appeared a nervous and slightly absent-minded man, for reasons to be revealed to us shortly. Holmes and I quickly learned he had left for the country not out of the lack of ambition, but on grounds to start a family. There he had met a man named Charles Baskerville, and they, by happenstance, became good friends. This brings us to the fact of the manuscript he was carrying in his coat pocket, one which Sherlock pinned to the correct time period by writing style and paper color. The man's skills are truly amazing, though I rarely like to admit it to his face. He knows it well enough himself. The story inside the script was a strange one, and could only be categorized as a fairy tale. The general idea of the thing was that Charles's ancestor, Hugo, had committed a sin and therefore cursed his family and himself. A great hound of hell had torn out his throat, and touched no one else, even though there were three witnesses. And that, the three men who witnessed it. Of all of them, one died from unknown causes and the other two lost their minds! It seems strange, and highly unlikely. The lady they had been chasing after had died of fright and fatigue, but her face was said to be twisted into a gruesome expression of fright. There was something lodged in the back of my brain in regard to the details, but I couldn't quite reach it. I didn't bring it up, because I didn't want to throw Holmes off, but I'm going out later and I'll try to figure it out then. The strangest part of the tale, however, wasn't in the script itself. Charles Baskerville, the friend of our client, had died recently and abruptly. The public records didn't reveal anything strange, but Mortimer looked around the scene more thoroughly and found the footprints of a great hound! He said it was bigger than any canine on this Earth, and he was at a loss for explantation. Sherlock quickly wished to dismiss any supernatural thought until it was the last possible option, and I'm inclined to agree with him, but this case is strange. I'm not so sure. Regardless of all the oddities, I'm still stuck on Sherlock's compliment. It's nice to know my deduction skills are improving.

John Watson