No. 10, Baker Street

by Gwen Herat

More famous than No. 10, Downing Street in London, this was the address of a sleuth named Sherlock Holmes and his friend and partner, Dr. Watson who happens to share rooms and live at 221B, Baker Street and naturally the office was located at the same address which became so famous that clients from all parts of England came in their hundreds to meet the famous detective to solve their cases and also to consult Dr. Watson who by now was a highly acclaimed physician.

But don't for a moment think the story belongs to both these men. There is yet another, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only is he the narrator but a mind weighed down by a problem at Dartmoor before the story moved over to Devonshire, only to become one of the most chilling and fiery detective stories of all time, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

It all started in March 1901 when Conan Doyle was taking a break with a good friend of his Fletcher Robinson at Cromer in Norfolk. That night in the hotel the two men started talking about ghosts and ungodly creatures for no reason when suddenly Robinson recalled an incident and told Doyle of an ongoing legend about a hound that supposedly haunted the moors of Dartmoor. After a while he told his friend to forget about it; might be just a spread by the folk around here but not before he had aroused the imagination of Doyle. He seized the opportunity that lay bared before him in the legend as the basis for an exciting story. With the help of his friend, Robinson, he worked out a plot. Later, he visited Dartmoor for an on-the-spot investigation to some locations.

Did he hear the whine of a hound? Might have been imagination. He was driven by an old coachman who also happened to know about the rumour of the hound and the two discussed on their way to the locations. The coachman's name was Bankerville and somehow Doyle got carried away by the unusual Gothic sounding name and decided to use it in the title of the book he just commenced writing.

Doyle realised the need for a powerful central character as he started writing the story to unravel the mystery. Since the character of the detective had to be a catalyst figure to unravel the mystery, he was faced with the idea whether to invent a new character above Sherlock Holmes who had not figured that brightly in his previous books such as, The Study in Scarlet where he had difficulty in persuading the publishers to take on the script and was forced to sell it for only twenty-ofive pounds. This story was narrated by Dr. John Watson who shared a room with Holmes and never realised they would become famous together and share over fifty adventures turned out by Doyle. Years later, The study in Scarlet became a classic-supreme. They were in the advent of sharing a glory they never imagined. The Hound of Baskervilles was just stirring under the pen of Doyle.

Doyle had no reason to believe that when he created Sherlock Holmes, it was going to overpower his practice as a doctor that was booming when he wrote the novel. The bizarre elements connected in the story was an extra ingredient in which the very sedate doctor had unearthed, that took him on a journey that was going to grip his readers in the most harrowing story ever told to that date.

And when the book hit the shelves, everyone was thinking how a doctor could turn out to be such a smashing writer. His friends and colleagues were already asking him to abandon his flourishing medical career and turn around to be a magnificent writer where his wealth lay. This was because when he was practising as a doctor at Southsea in 1886 and weighed down by long and dull periods between patients he tried his hand at writing. Here as he matured in writing he hit upon the idea of writing a classic on a detective who was able to solve most of his scientific research and their outcome, rather than leaving them in laboratories to waste away. His deduction paid off.

Thus Sherlock Holmes saw the day.

It was a mere idea but completed his ideas into words, chilling as they came as no other in the annals of detective history. When publishers heard of the impending literary bout, they were excited because by now they already knew the name of Sherlock Holmes. Even the readers, one and all were fascinated, stood in rows at bookshops long before the first book in the first print came out. In a matter of days there were no copies left on the shelves.

Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, Dr. John H. Watson and Sherlock Holmes simply marvelled at the turn of events.

And to go back and recall how all these happened, is how it started. The Hound of the Baskervilles was serialised in the Strand Magazine first and ran for nine months, when it exploded in success and became the best of Sherlock Holmes' solving mysteries. From the Dartmoor locations, the hound would come out only to go at the throat of its victim and leave behind the massacred corpse and wait for his next victim. And it continues, sending spasms of fear around Devonshire.And where was this terrible hound? Doyle placed him over the green pastures of the abandoned fields and would appear in the thick of night only to pounce on his next victim and tear out his throat. The hills rose to form silhouettes as an eery backdrop to the hound's hideout, this monstrous hound on the stroll.And Doyle never disappoints the reader. The creature leaps out of the fog on its frightened prey and death concluded in the most horrible, appalling and chilling drama.

Sherlock Holmes who was the supreme thinker with power to banish darkness beyond the powers, dismisses the existence of phantom hound. Because, at the end of the story, they found a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones that showed where the animal had been confined. The hound had died earlier.