Watson is assigned to accompany Henry to Baskerville Hall

Sherlock Holmes’s decision to send Dr. Watson with Sir Henry Baskerville to Baskerville Hall turns a protective escort into a central part of the investigation. Holmes cannot leave London indefinitely, so Dr. Watson is to stay close to the threatened heir, watch the people around him, and report the particulars from which Holmes will build his conclusions. The assignment begins as an answer to an immediate danger; it becomes a test of how far an observer can remain both companion and investigator.

The decision and its stakes

Holmes recommends that Sir Henry travel to Devonshire without delay, but insists that he must not go alone. Dr. Mortimer is returning with him, yet Holmes judges that the doctor’s medical practice and the distance between his house and Sir Henry’s make him an unreliable source of constant protection. Sir Henry needs someone who can remain at his side, not merely someone willing to help when circumstances permit.

Holmes’s recommendation also answers the limits of his own availability. He says that he would try to be present if matters reached a crisis, but his consulting work and an urgent blackmail case prevent him from leaving London for an indefinite period. His absence is therefore not indifference: he delegates the fieldwork to a trusted friend while retaining control of the larger inquiry. The arrangement divides responsibility between Holmes, who will theorize, and Dr. Watson, who must gather what can be observed.

The danger has a financial as well as a personal dimension. Sir Charles Baskerville’s estate is valued at close to a million pounds. Because the estate is entailed, James Desmond, an elderly clergyman and distant cousin, would inherit the property if Sir Henry died; the money would also pass to Desmond unless its owner made a different will. Sir Henry has not yet made one, but says that the money should remain with the title and land, as his uncle intended. Holmes recognizes the estate as a prize for which someone might risk a desperate crime. The escort is thus charged with protecting a person whose survival determines the course of a vast inheritance.

Acceptance and terms of the commission

Holmes proposes Dr. Watson for the task by laying a hand on his arm and describing him as the man best worth having beside Sir Henry in a tight place. The nomination surprises Dr. Watson. Before he can answer, Sir Henry takes his hand and warmly asks him to come to Baskerville Hall; he stresses that Dr. Watson knows as much about the danger as he does. Holmes’s confidence and Sir Henry’s direct appeal make the proposal at once a professional duty and a personal commitment.

Dr. Watson accepts willingly. The prospect of adventure appeals to him, and he is pleased by Holmes’s trust and Sir Henry’s eagerness to have him as a companion. Holmes immediately specifies what that companionship must entail: careful reports, continuing observation, and the expectation that he will direct Dr. Watson’s actions if a crisis comes. They settle on Saturday’s 10:30 train from Paddington as their meeting point. The precise arrangement gives the mission a timetable as well as a purpose.

The departure proceeds as planned. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer are ready on the appointed day, and Dr. Watson travels with them toward Devonshire. Sherlock Holmes drives Dr. Watson to the station and gives him final instructions before he goes. The scene marks a transfer of the investigation’s daily work: Holmes remains behind, while Dr. Watson enters the setting where the people and risks surrounding Sir Henry can be examined at close quarters.

Observation, caution, and divided knowledge

Holmes explicitly tells Dr. Watson not to let theories or suspicions bias his mind. He is to report facts as fully as possible and leave the theorizing to Holmes. The distinction is fundamental to the assignment. Dr. Watson is not sent to confirm a preselected explanation; he is to attend to anything that might bear on the case, even indirectly, especially Sir Henry’s relations with his neighbours and any fresh information about Sir Charles Baskerville’s death.

Holmes has already made inquiries, but they have produced little. He considers James Desmond amiable and removes him from suspicion, yet warns Dr. Watson not to dispose of the John Barrymore household too quickly. If the couple are innocent, accusing them would be unjust; if guilty, dismissing them would sacrifice the chance to establish their guilt. Dr. Watson must keep them under observation alongside the groom, two moorland farmers, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer’s wife, the naturalist Stapleton, Stapleton’s sister, Frankland of Lafter Hall, and other neighbours. The instruction turns the estate and its vicinity into an investigative field, with ordinary social relations treated as potentially significant evidence.

The murder investigation makes that insistence on detail especially pertinent. Dr. Mortimer had reached Baskerville Hall soon after Sir Charles’s death and examined the path through Yew Alley, the apparent waiting place at the moor-gate, the change in the footprints, and the undisturbed body. He also identified fresh tracks at some distance, contrary to John Barrymore’s statement at the inquest that there were no traces around the body. Dr. Watson’s brief is to extend this attention to circumstances that may at first seem peripheral: Holmes wants a full account, not a filtered selection shaped by the observer’s guesses.

Holmes also gives the protection a concrete form. Dr. Watson has brought firearms, and Holmes orders him to keep his revolver close day and night and never relax his precautions. The advice makes clear that the danger cannot safely be treated as a matter of speculation, whether its source proves human or apparently supernatural. In London, Sir Henry had already declared that no devil or man would prevent him from going to the home of his family. Dr. Watson’s presence is meant to accompany that resolve with practical vigilance, not to persuade him to abandon the journey.

The assignment under pressure

On Dartmoor, the protective arrangement proves difficult to maintain. Sir Henry tells Dr. Watson that Holmes could not have foreseen what had happened since their arrival and insists that he must go out alone. Dr. Watson is caught between his instructions and his companion’s determination; before he can decide how to respond, Sir Henry takes his cane and leaves. Dr. Watson reproaches himself for allowing him out of sight and sets off toward Merripit House in an effort to catch up. The moment exposes a limit built into the commission: an escort can advise and follow, but cannot simply command a determined man.

The same fieldwork brings Dr. Watson into the personal conflict surrounding Sir Henry’s growing attachment to Stapleton’s sister. Sir Henry asks whether anything would prevent him from making a good husband to a woman he loves, and wonders what Stapleton can object to in him. Stapleton has refused even to let him touch her fingertips. Later, Sir Henry reports Stapleton’s apology: Stapleton said that his sister was everything in his life and that the prospect of losing her had shocked him into selfish and foolish behaviour. He asked Sir Henry to wait three months, cultivating her friendship without claiming her love; Sir Henry agreed. Dr. Watson’s account of the episode clears one mystery while revealing how the protective assignment overlaps with Sir Henry’s emotional life and the loyalties of the household.

The commission does not end with Dr. Watson merely watching Sir Henry. When Holmes returns to the investigation, he instructs Dr. Watson not to tell Sir Henry about the hound’s role in Selden’s death, because Sir Henry will need his nerve for the following day’s dinner engagement. Holmes tells Dr. Watson to excuse himself so that Sir Henry will go alone. The instruction temporarily reverses the original rule against leaving Sir Henry by himself: Holmes now judges secrecy and the planned ordeal more important than constant companionship. Dr. Watson’s task is therefore not an inflexible routine of protection. It requires him to follow Holmes’s changing assessment of danger, while bearing the consequences of what Sir Henry is and is not told.