解説　場面 81「調べる朝」

The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.

前章をなす私の日記の抜粋で、物語は10月18日まで進んだ。このころから、奇妙な出来事は恐ろしい結末へ向けて急速に動き始めた。その後数日の出来事は消えることなく記憶に刻まれており、当時の覚え書きを見なくても語ることができる。私は、二つのきわめて重要な事実を突き止めた翌日から話を始めよう。一つは、クーム・トレーシーのローラ・ライオンズ夫人がチャールズ・バスカヴィル卿へ手紙を書き、まさに彼が死を迎えた場所と時刻に会う約束をしていたこと。もう一つは、荒れ地に潜む男が丘の斜面にある石小屋のどれかにいるということだ。この二つの事実をつかみながら、なお暗い箇所へさらに光を当てられないとすれば、私には知力か勇気のどちらかが欠けているに違いないと思った。