Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson share rooms at 221B Baker Street in London. Holmes is the world's only consulting detective. Watson accompanies Holmes on his investigations and then publishes accounts of them.

A client has accidentally left behind his walking stick but not his calling card. Holmes deduces from the stick that his client is an unambitious country doctor who is popular with others. He continues that the doctor is recently retired from Charing Cross Hospital, under thirty years of age, and the owner of a medium-sized dog.

Dr. James Mortimer is all of those things. He has a strange tale to tell about a former patient who "died of fright." Sir Charles Baskerville was an elderly man recently returned from Canada to claim a vast family estate and fortune. He became terrified of the family legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles. The story...