The True Ending of The Hound of the Baskervilles – Page Nine “Beryl and I have some unfinished business back at Merripit House,” said Stapleton with a wink. “We’ll be along in an hour or so. We’ll drop Mortimer’s dog off at his place on the way.” “Be sure and tell him about the party,” said Sir Henry. “May I take the hound with me?” “Certainly,” said Stapleton. “He is half yours now.” “Come on, boy!” called Sir Henry, and the hound happily followed him down the path in the direction of Baskerville Hall. After they disappeared into the fog, we heard a vicious snarling, a horrible scream, and the sound of bones being crunched between powerful jaws.             No, that was only wishful thinking on my part. As the rest of the assembled personages drifted away toward the Hall, I said, “Holmes, this is too happy an ending. The Strand Magazine will never accept my account of the case unless I change various aspects of it. My readers expect violence and bloodshed, and I will give it to them. Stapleton will be a wife-beater and will deceive Laura Lyons into luring Sir Charles to the yew alley, where Sir Charles will die of a heart attack. Selden will really be a murderer, one whose crimes were so atrocious that the jury spared his life because they doubted that anyone who could commit such deeds could be totally sane. He will be attacked by the hound and really fall to his death. The moor pony will be sucked down into the Grimpen Mire, which I will depict as virtually bottomless. Lyons will not become a monk but will remain a cad and a bounder. At the climax of the story the hound will try to rip Sir Henry’s throat out, and you and I will shoot it dead while Lestrade lies cowering on the ground. Stapleton will disappear, and we will find indications that he has perished in the mire. We will also discover some bones and curly tufts of hair in the hound’s lair, which will be all that is left of Dr. Mortimer’s spaniel.” “Well, Watson,” Holmes said with a shiver, “That is certainly the most ghastly and repulsive chain of events I have ever heard of. You propose to kill off not only the people but the poor animals, too. You have a truly sick and twisted imagination. Your bloodthirsty fans will love it. I predict that the book, which I suggest that you title The Hound of the Baskervilles, will become one of the all-time best-sellers. It will no doubt be dramatized repeatedly on the stage and in other media that we cannot yet even conceive of.” “Thank you, Holmes,” I said, swelling with pride. “Of course,” he went on, “you always play fast and loose with the facts of my cases, even on such an elementary matter as our home address. As you know, Baker Street is only three blocks long; to the north it becomes York Place and then Upper Baker Street, and to the south it becomes Orchard Street. Moreover, Baker Street itself is numbered from 1 to 42 up the east side and back down the west side from 44 to 85, with no number 43 and most certainly no 221. You also claimed in The Sign of Four to have an experience of women that extends over many nations and three separate continents, but I know for a fact that before your marriage to Miss Morstan at the end of that case, your experience of women extended no farther than the streetwalkers in Soho Square.” “But they were from many nations and three separate continents,” I pointed out. “And, of course, this being the Victorian Era, I only paid them to talk to me.”  “You have also depicted me in your stories as an eccentric dope addict who keeps his pipe tobacco in a shoe and lays waste to his own flat by sticking his unanswered correspondence to the mantelpiece with a jackknife and shooting bullet holes in the wall. Furthermore, by repeatedly claiming that I have an aversion to women, you make me appear to be a homosexual—not, of course, that there is anything wrong with that, but it is not true. I am attracted to women, but, because of certain traumatic experiences in my early youth, only to bald oriental women with wooden legs, and there are not many of them around. Anyway, I am used to your distortions. But what about all of these other people whose reputations you are prepared to drag through the mud to boost the sales of your sensationalistic tale? What is to keep them from hiring solicitors and suing your pants off?”             “I do not foresee a problem,” I replied. “Sir Henry, the Stapletons, and Brother Tobias will be living out here in the middle of nowhere and will probably never even be aware of my book. Sir Charles and Laura Baskerville and the Seldens will be in London and will no doubt read it; but Sir
Charles and his wife will not be portrayed in a bad light, so they will have no complaint to make, and I will pay off the Seldens out of the massive royalties I expect to receive. And if anyone should make trouble, I will have published the work, as usual, under the name of that ophthalmologist I made up, A. Conan Doyle, so they will have no one to sue.”             “And you will, as usual, cut me in on the proceeds?” asked Holmes.             “Your usual half,” I replied. “Very well, then,” said Holmes. “Distort all you please. Now, let us go on to Baskerville Hall for Sir Henry’s party. If you will pass me your medical kit, I will mix us up a seven-percent solution. That should get us into the proper convivial spirit.”             And, arm in arm, we walked into the fog-bank.
	THE END