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The Missing Boots

On his first morning at the Northumberland Hotel, Sir Henry finds that one of a brand-new pair of tan boots, set outside his door to be varnished, has vanished. It seems a singularly useless thing to steal, and though Dr. Mortimer is sure it is merely mislaid, Holmes takes the trifle seriously.

Chapter V. Three Broken Threads

The puzzle deepens strangely. An old black boot now goes missing in its turn, and then the first new brown one quietly reappears under a cabinet in a room that had been searched twice over. The whole series of small mysteries leaves even Holmes baffled.

Chapter XII. Death on the Moor

Over the body of the dead convict on the rocks, Holmes reasons that the hound must have been laid on the trail from some article of Sir Henry's, in all probability the boot taken at the hotel.

Chapter XIV. The Hound of the Baskervilles

In the Grimpen Mire, along the line of the murderer's flight, Holmes fishes an old black boot from the bog. It is Sir Henry's missing boot, retained in the hand after it had served to scent the hound and flung away as its owner fled.

Chapter XV. A Retrospection

Explained in full: Stapleton needed an old, worn boot to give the hound Sir Henry's scent. The first procured for him by a bribed servant was new and useless, so he returned it and took an old one instead, and that very anxiety over an old boot first proved to Holmes that a real hound was in the case.

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