THE VALLEY OF FEAR
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
CONTENTS
PART I—The Tragedy of Birlstone
Chapter I—The Warning
Chapter II—Sherlock Holmes Discourses
Chapter III—The Tragedy of Birlstone
Chapter IV—Darkness
Chapter V—The People of the Drama
Chapter VI—A Dawning Light
Chapter VII—The Solution
PART II—The Scowrers
Chapter I—The Man
Chapter II—The Bodymaster
Chapter III—Lodge 341, Vermissa
Chapter IV—The Valley of Fear
Chapter V—The Darkest Hour
Chapter VI—Danger
Chapter VII—The Trapping of Birdy Edwards
Epilogue
Illustrations
“What’s this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it’s witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?”
For an instant I could have sworn that the faintest shadow of a smile flickered over the woman’s lips.
“Watson, would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic.”
“If your heart is as big as your body, and your soul as fine as your face, then I’d ask for nothing better,” said McMurdo.
It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming out.
“Oh, Jack, I implore you to give it up!”
“Not a sound, for your lives!” McMurdo whispered.
PART I
The Tragedy of Birlstone
Chapter I
The Warning
“I am inclined to think—” said I.
“I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I’ll
admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. “Really,
Holmes,” said I severely, “you are a little trying at times.”
He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate
answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his hand, with his untasted
breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had
just drawn from its envelope. Then he took the envelope itself, held it
up to the light, and very carefully studied both the exterior and the
flap.
“It is Porlock’s writing,” said he thoughtfully. “I can hardly doubt
that it is Porlock’s writing, though I have seen it only twice before.
The Greek e with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is
Porlock, then it must be something of the very first importance.”
He was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation
disappeared in the interest which the words awakened.
“Who then is Porlock?” I asked.
“Porlock, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification mark; but
behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he
frankly informed me that the name was not his own, and defied me ever
to trace him among the teeming millions of this great city. Porlock is
important, not for himself, but for the great man with whom he is in
touch. Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal
with the lion—anything that is insignificant in companionship with what
is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister—in the highest
degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. You have
heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?”
“The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as—”
“My blushes, Watson!” Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
“I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public.”
“A touch! A distinct touch!” cried Holmes. “You are developing a
certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must
learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are
uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the
wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every
deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might
have made or marred the destiny of nations—that’s the man! But so aloof
is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in
his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you
have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s
pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the
celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends
to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there
was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a
man to traduce? Foul-mouthed doctor and slandered professor—such would
be your respective rôles! That’s genius, Watson. But if I am spared by
lesser men, our day will surely come.”
“May I be there to see!” I exclaimed devoutly. “But you were speaking
of this man Porlock.”
“Ah, yes—the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain some little way
from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link—between
ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able
to test it.”
“But no chain is stronger than its weakest link.”
“Exactly, my dear Watson! Hence the extreme importance of Porlock. Led
on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the
judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by
devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information
which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and
prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the
cipher, we should find that this communication is of the nature that I
indicate.”
Again Holmes flattened out the paper upon his unused plate. I rose and,
leaning over him, stared down at the curious inscription, which ran as
follows:
534 C2 13 127 36 31 4 17 21 41 DOUGLAS 109 293 5 37 BIRLSTONE 26
BIRLSTONE 9 47 171
“What do you make of it, Holmes?”
“It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information.”
“But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?”
“In this instance, none at all.”
“Why do you say ‘in this instance’?”
“Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily as I do
the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the
intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly
a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which
page and which book I am powerless.”
“But why ‘Douglas’ and ‘Birlstone’?”
“Clearly because those are words which were not contained in the page
in question.”
“Then why has he not indicated the book?”
“Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning which is
the delight of your friends, would surely prevent you from inclosing
cipher and message in the same envelope. Should it miscarry, you are
undone. As it is, both have to go wrong before any harm comes from it.
Our second post is now overdue, and I shall be surprised if it does not
bring us either a further letter of explanation, or, as is more
probable, the very volume to which these figures refer.”
Holmes’s calculation was fulfilled within a very few minutes by the
appearance of Billy, the page, with the very letter which we were
expecting.
“The same writing,” remarked Holmes, as he opened the envelope, “and
actually signed,” he added in an exultant voice as he unfolded the
epistle. “Come, we are getting on, Watson.” His brow clouded, however,
as he glanced over the contents.
“Dear me, this is very disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all our
expectations come to nothing. I trust that the man Porlock will come to
no harm.
“‘Dear Mr. Holmes,’ he says, ‘I will go no further in this matter. It
is too dangerous—he suspects me. I can see that he suspects me. He came
to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this envelope
with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher. I was able to
cover it up. If he had seen it, it would have gone hard with me. But I
read suspicion in his eyes. Please burn the cipher message, which can
now be of no use to you.
“‘FRED PORLOCK.’”
Holmes sat for some little time twisting this letter between his
fingers, and frowning, as he stared into the fire.
“After all,” he said at last, “there may be nothing in it. It may be
only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may
have read the accusation in the other’s eyes.”
“The other being, I presume, Professor Moriarty.”
“No less! When any of that party talk about ‘He’ you know whom they
mean. There is one predominant ‘He’ for all of them.”
“But what can he do?”
“Hum! That’s a large question. When you have one of the first brains of
Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back,
there are infinite possibilities. Anyhow, Friend Porlock is evidently
scared out of his senses—kindly compare the writing in the note to that
upon its envelope; which was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened
visit. The one is clear and firm. The other hardly legible.”
“Why did he write at all? Why did he not simply drop it?”
“Because he feared I would make some inquiry after him in that case,
and possibly bring trouble on him.”
“No doubt,” said I. “Of course.” I had picked up the original cipher
message and was bending my brows over it. “It’s pretty maddening to
think that an important secret may lie here on this slip of paper, and
that it is beyond human power to penetrate it.”
Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the
unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. “I
wonder!” said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. “Perhaps
there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let
us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man’s
reference is to a book. That is our point of departure.”
“A somewhat vague one.”
“Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my mind upon it,
it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications have we as to this
book?”
“None.”
“Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher message
begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as a working
hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the cipher refers.
So our book has already become a _large_ book, which is surely
something gained. What other indications have we as to the nature of
this large book? The next sign is C2. What do you make of that,
Watson?”
“Chapter the second, no doubt.”
“Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the
page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if
page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first
one must have been really intolerable.”
“Column!” I cried.
“Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is not
column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we begin to
visualize a large book printed in double columns which are each of a
considerable length, since one of the words is numbered in the document
as the two hundred and ninety-third. Have we reached the limits of what
reason can supply?”
“I fear that we have.”
“Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation, my dear
Watson—yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been an unusual one, he
would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he had intended, before his
plans were nipped, to send me the clue in this envelope. He says so in
his note. This would seem to indicate that the book is one which he
thought I would have no difficulty in finding for myself. He had it—and
he imagined that I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very
common book.”
“What you say certainly sounds plausible.”
“So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in
double columns and in common use.”
“The Bible!” I cried triumphantly.
“Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough! Even
if I accepted the compliment for myself I could hardly name any volume
which would be less likely to lie at the elbow of one of Moriarty’s
associates. Besides, the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he
could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination.
This is clearly a book which is standardized. He knows for certain that
his page 534 will exactly agree with my page 534.”
“But very few books would correspond with that.”
“Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down to
standardized books which anyone may be supposed to possess.”
“Bradshaw!”
“There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous
and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself
to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The
dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. What then is
left?”
“An almanac!”
“Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not touched the
spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of Whitaker’s Almanac. It
is in common use. It has the requisite number of pages. It is in double
column. Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I
remember right, quite garrulous towards the end.” He picked the volume
from his desk. “Here is page 534, column two, a substantial block of
print dealing, I perceive, with the trade and resources of British
India. Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is ‘Mahratta.’ Not,
I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one hundred and
twenty-seven is ‘Government’; which at least makes sense, though
somewhat irrelevant to ourselves and Professor Moriarty. Now let us try
again. What does the Mahratta government do? Alas! the next word is
‘pig’s-bristles.’ We are undone, my good Watson! It is finished!”
He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows
bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy,
staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden
exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from which he
emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.
“We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!” he cried. “We are
before our time, and suffer the usual penalties. Being the seventh of
January, we have very properly laid in the new almanac. It is more than
likely that Porlock took his message from the old one. No doubt he
would have told us so had his letter of explanation been written. Now
let us see what page 534 has in store for us. Number thirteen is
‘There,’ which is much more promising. Number one hundred and
twenty-seven is ‘is’—‘There is’ “—Holmes’s eyes were gleaming with
excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the
words—“‘danger.’ Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson. ‘There is
danger—may—come—very soon—one.’ Then we have the name
‘Douglas’—‘rich—country—now—at
Birlstone—House—Birlstone—confidence—is—pressing.’ There, Watson! What
do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the green-grocer had such
a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for it.”
I was staring at the strange message which I had scrawled, as he
deciphered it, upon a sheet of foolscap on my knee.
“What a queer, scrambling way of expressing his meaning!” said I.
“On the contrary, he has done quite remarkably well,” said Holmes.
“When you search a single column for words with which to express your
meaning, you can hardly expect to get everything you want. You are
bound to leave something to the intelligence of your correspondent. The
purport is perfectly clear. Some deviltry is intended against one
Douglas, whoever he may be, residing as stated, a rich country
gentleman. He is sure—‘confidence’ was as near as he could get to
‘confident’—that it is pressing. There is our result—and a very
workmanlike little bit of analysis it was!”
Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work,
even as he mourned darkly when it fell below the high level to which he
aspired. He was still chuckling over his success when Billy swung open
the door and Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard was ushered into the
room.
Those were the early days at the end of the ’80’s, when Alec MacDonald
was far from having attained the national fame which he has now
achieved. He was a young but trusted member of the detective force, who
had distinguished himself in several cases which had been intrusted to
him. His tall, bony figure gave promise of exceptional physical
strength, while his great cranium and deep-set, lustrous eyes spoke no
less clearly of the keen intelligence which twinkled out from behind
his bushy eyebrows. He was a silent, precise man with a dour nature and
a hard Aberdonian accent.
Twice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain success,
his own sole reward being the intellectual joy of the problem. For this
reason the affection and respect of the Scotchman for his amateur
colleague were profound, and he showed them by the frankness with which
he consulted Holmes in every difficulty. Mediocrity knows nothing
higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius, and
MacDonald had talent enough for his profession to enable him to
perceive that there was no humiliation in seeking the assistance of one
who already stood alone in Europe, both in his gifts and in his
experience. Holmes was not prone to friendship, but he was tolerant of
the big Scotchman, and smiled at the sight of him.
“You are an early bird, Mr. Mac,” said he. “I wish you luck with your
worm. I fear this means that there is some mischief afoot.”
“If you said ‘hope’ instead of ‘fear,’ it would be nearer the truth,
I’m thinking, Mr. Holmes,” the inspector answered, with a knowing grin.
“Well, maybe a wee nip would keep out the raw morning chill. No, I
won’t smoke, I thank you. I’ll have to be pushing on my way; for the
early hours of a case are the precious ones, as no man knows better
than your own self. But—but—”
The inspector had stopped suddenly, and was staring with a look of
absolute amazement at a paper upon the table. It was the sheet upon
which I had scrawled the enigmatic message.
“Douglas!” he stammered. “Birlstone! What’s this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it’s
witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get
those names?”
[Illustration: “What’s this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it’s witchcraft! Where
in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?”]
“It is a cipher that Dr. Watson and I have had occasion to solve. But
why—what’s amiss with the names?”
The inspector looked from one to the other of us in dazed astonishment.
“Just this,” said he, “that Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was
horribly murdered last night!”
Chapter II
Sherlock Holmes Discourses
It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed. It
would be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even excited by
the amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of cruelty in his
singular composition, he was undoubtedly callous from long
overstimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled, his intellectual
perceptions were exceedingly active. There was no trace then of the
horror which I had myself felt at this curt declaration; but his face
showed rather the quiet and interested composure of the chemist who
sees the crystals falling into position from his oversaturated
solution.
“Remarkable!” said he. “Remarkable!”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Interested, Mr. Mac, but hardly surprised. Why should I be surprised?
I receive an anonymous communication from a quarter which I know to be
important, warning me that danger threatens a certain person. Within an
hour I learn that this danger has actually materialized and that the
person is dead. I am interested; but, as you observe, I am not
surprised.”
In a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts about
the letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on his hands and
his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow tangle.
“I was going down to Birlstone this morning,” said he. “I had come to
ask you if you cared to come with me—you and your friend here. But from
what you say we might perhaps be doing better work in London.”
“I rather think not,” said Holmes.
“Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!” cried the inspector. “The papers will be
full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where’s the mystery
if there is a man in London who prophesied the crime before ever it
occurred? We have only to lay our hands on that man, and the rest will
follow.”
“No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your hands on the
so-called Porlock?”
MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed him. “Posted
in Camberwell—that doesn’t help us much. Name, you say, is assumed. Not
much to go on, certainly. Didn’t you say that you have sent him money?”
“Twice.”
“And how?”
“In notes to Camberwell post office.”
“Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?”
“No.”
The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. “Why not?”
“Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first wrote that I
would not try to trace him.”
“You think there is someone behind him?”
“I know there is.”
“This professor that I’ve heard you mention?”
“Exactly!”
Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he glanced
towards me. “I won’t conceal from you, Mr. Holmes, that we think in the
C.I.D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in your bonnet over this
professor. I made some inquiries myself about the matter. He seems to
be a very respectable, learned, and talented sort of man.”
“I’m glad you’ve got so far as to recognize the talent.”
“Man, you can’t but recognize it! After I heard your view I made it my
business to see him. I had a chat with him on eclipses. How the talk
got that way I canna think; but he had out a reflector lantern and a
globe, and made it all clear in a minute. He lent me a book; but I
don’t mind saying that it was a bit above my head, though I had a good
Aberdeen upbringing. He’d have made a grand meenister with his thin
face and gray hair and solemn-like way of talking. When he put his hand
on my shoulder as we were parting, it was like a father’s blessing
before you go out into the cold, cruel world.”
Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. “Great!” he said. “Great! Tell
me, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview was, I
suppose, in the professor’s study?”
“That’s so.”
“A fine room, is it not?”
“Very fine—very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes.”
“You sat in front of his writing desk?”
“Just so.”
“Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?”
“Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my face.”
“It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the professor’s
head?”
“I don’t miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you. Yes, I
saw the picture—a young woman with her head on her hands, peeping at
you sideways.”
“That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze.”
The inspector endeavoured to look interested.
“Jean Baptiste Greuze,” Holmes continued, joining his finger tips and
leaning well back in his chair, “was a French artist who flourished
between the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course to his working
career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed the high opinion formed
of him by his contemporaries.”
The inspector’s eyes grew abstracted. “Hadn’t we better—” he said.
“We are doing so,” Holmes interrupted. “All that I am saying has a very
direct and vital bearing upon what you have called the Birlstone
Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called the very centre of it.”
MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. “Your thoughts
move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out a link or two,
and I can’t get over the gap. What in the whole wide world can be the
connection between this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?”
“All knowledge comes useful to the detective,” remarked Holmes. “Even
the trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled ‘La
Jeune Fille à l’Agneau’ fetched one million two hundred thousand
francs—more than forty thousand pounds—at the Portalis sale may start a
train of reflection in your mind.”
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
“I may remind you,” Holmes continued, “that the professor’s salary can
be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven
hundred a year.”
“Then how could he buy—”
“Quite so! How could he?”
“Ay, that’s remarkable,” said the inspector thoughtfully. “Talk away,
Mr. Holmes. I’m just loving it. It’s fine!”
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration—the
characteristic of the real artist. “What about Birlstone?” he asked.
“We’ve time yet,” said the inspector, glancing at his watch. “I’ve a
cab at the door, and it won’t take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But
about this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that you
had never met Professor Moriarty.”
“No, I never have.”
“Then how do you know about his rooms?”
“Ah, that’s another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice
waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came.
Once—well, I can hardly tell about the once to an official detective.
It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over his
papers—with the most unexpected results.”
“You found something compromising?”
“Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have now
seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man.
How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a
station master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred
a year. And he owns a Greuze.”
“Well?”
“Surely the inference is plain.”
“You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an
illegal fashion?”
“Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so—dozens of
exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web
where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the
Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your own
observation.”
“Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it’s more
than interesting—it’s just wonderful. But let us have it a little
clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary—where does the
money come from?”
“Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?”
“Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? I
don’t take much stock of detectives in novels—chaps that do things and
never let you see how they do them. That’s just inspiration: not
business.”
“Jonathan Wild wasn’t a detective, and he wasn’t in a novel. He was a
master criminal, and he lived last century—1750 or thereabouts.”
“Then he’s no use to me. I’m a practical man.”
“Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would
be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at
the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles—even Professor
Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals,
to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent.
commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all
been done before, and will be again. I’ll tell you one or two things
about Moriarty which may interest you.”
“You’ll interest me, right enough.”
“I happen to know who is the first link in his chain—a chain with this
Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men,
pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every
sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian
Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself.
What do you think he pays him?”
“I’d like to hear.”
“Six thousand a year. That’s paying for brains, you see—the American
business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It’s more
than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty’s
gains and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it my
business to hunt down some of Moriarty’s checks lately—just common
innocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn
on six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?”
“Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?”
“That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should know
what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; the
bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the Crédit Lyonnais
as likely as not. Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I
commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty.”
Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as the
conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest. Now his
practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a snap to the
matter in hand.
“He can keep, anyhow,” said he. “You’ve got us side-tracked with your
interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts is your remark
that there is some connection between the professor and the crime. That
you get from the warning received through the man Porlock. Can we for
our present practical needs get any further than that?”
“We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime. It is, as
I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable, or at least an
unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the source of the crime is as
we suspect it to be, there might be two different motives. In the first
place, I may tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his
people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in
his code. It is death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man—this
Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the arch-criminal’s
subordinates—had in some way betrayed the chief. His punishment
followed, and would be known to all—if only to put the fear of death
into them.”
“Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes.”
“The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinary
course of business. Was there any robbery?”
“I have not heard.”
“If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in
favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on
a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to
manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is
some third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the
solution. I know our man too well to suppose that he has left anything
up here which may lead us to him.”
“Then to Birlstone we must go!” cried MacDonald, jumping from his
chair. “My word! it’s later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen,
five minutes for preparation, and that is all.”
“And ample for us both,” said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to
change from his dressing gown to his coat. “While we are on our way,
Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it.”
“All about it” proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was
enough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of the
expert’s closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands
together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A long
series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a
fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special
gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That
razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes’s eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue,
and his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for
work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to
MacDonald’s short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The
inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a
scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours
of the morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend,
and hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual
at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very
cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to
run.
“DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD,” said the letter which he read to
us,—“Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope.
This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can
get for Birlstone, and I will meet it—or have it met if I am too
occupied. This case is a snorter. Don’t waste a moment in getting
started. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find
something after his own heart. We would think the whole had been fixed
up for theatrical effect if there wasn’t a dead man in the middle of
it. My word! it _is_ a snorter.”
“Your friend seems to be no fool,” remarked Holmes.
“No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge.”
“Well, have you anything more?”
“Only that he will give us every detail when we meet.”
“Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he had been
horribly murdered?”
“That was in the inclosed official report. It didn’t say ‘horrible’:
that’s not a recognized official term. It gave the name John Douglas.
It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head, from the discharge
of a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was close
on to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly one
of murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was one
which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That’s
absolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes.”
“Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The
temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the
bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at
present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It’s the
chain between that we are going to trace.”
Chapter III
The Tragedy of Birlstone
Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant
personality and to describe events which occurred before we arrived
upon the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards.
Only in this way can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned
and the strange setting in which their fate was cast.
The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of
half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex.
For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the last few years
its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of
well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around.
These woods are locally supposed to be the extreme fringe of the great
Weald forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern chalk
downs. A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants
of the increased population; so there seems some prospect that
Birlstone may soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It
is the centre for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge
Wells, the nearest place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the
eastward, over the borders of Kent.
About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its
huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone. Part of this
venerable building dates back to the time of the first crusade, when
Hugo de Capus built a fortalice in the centre of the estate, which had
been granted to him by the Red King. This was destroyed by fire in
1543, and some of its smoke-blackened corner stones were used when, in
Jacobean times, a brick country house rose upon the ruins of the feudal
castle.
The Manor House, with its many gables and its small diamond-paned
windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the early
seventeenth century. Of the double moats which had guarded its more
warlike predecessor, the outer had been allowed to dry up, and served
the humble function of a kitchen garden. The inner one was still there,
and lay forty feet in breadth, though now only a few feet in depth,
round the whole house. A small stream fed it and continued beyond it,
so that the sheet of water, though turbid, was never ditchlike or
unhealthy. The ground floor windows were within a foot of the surface
of the water.
The only approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and
windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants
of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this
right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but
actually was raised every evening and lowered every morning. By thus
renewing the custom of the old feudal days the Manor House was
converted into an island during the night—a fact which had a very
direct bearing upon the mystery which was soon to engage the attention
of all England.
The house had been untenanted for some years and was threatening to
moulder into a picturesque decay when the Douglases took possession of
it. This family consisted of only two individuals—John Douglas and his
wife. Douglas was a remarkable man, both in character and in person. In
age he may have been about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a
grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous
figure which had lost nothing of the strength and activity of youth. He
was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat offhand in his manners,
giving the impression that he had seen life in social strata on some
far lower horizon than the county society of Sussex.
Yet, though looked at with some curiosity and reserve by his more
cultivated neighbours, he soon acquired a great popularity among the
villagers, subscribing handsomely to all local objects, and attending
their smoking concerts and other functions, where, having a remarkably
rich tenor voice, he was always ready to oblige with an excellent song.
He appeared to have plenty of money, which was said to have been gained
in the California gold fields, and it was clear from his own talk and
that of his wife that he had spent a part of his life in America.
The good impression which had been produced by his generosity and by
his democratic manners was increased by a reputation gained for utter
indifference to danger. Though a wretched rider, he turned out at every
meet, and took the most amazing falls in his determination to hold his
own with the best. When the vicarage caught fire he distinguished
himself also by the fearlessness with which he reentered the building
to save property, after the local fire brigade had given it up as
impossible. Thus it came about that John Douglas of the Manor House had
within five years won himself quite a reputation in Birlstone.
His wife, too, was popular with those who had made her acquaintance;
though, after the English fashion, the callers upon a stranger who
settled in the county without introductions were few and far between.
This mattered the less to her, as she was retiring by disposition, and
very much absorbed, to all appearance, in her husband and her domestic
duties. It was known that she was an English lady who had met Mr.
Douglas in London, he being at that time a widower. She was a beautiful
woman, tall, dark, and slender, some twenty years younger than her
husband; a disparity which seemed in no wise to mar the contentment of
their family life.
It was remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew them best, that
the confidence between the two did not appear to be complete, since the
wife was either very reticent about her husband’s past life, or else,
as seemed more likely, was imperfectly informed about it. It had also
been noted and commented upon by a few observant people that there were
signs sometimes of some nerve-strain upon the part of Mrs. Douglas, and
that she would display acute uneasiness if her absent husband should
ever be particularly late in his return. On a quiet countryside, where
all gossip is welcome, this weakness of the lady of the Manor House did
not pass without remark, and it bulked larger upon people’s memory when
the events arose which gave it a very special significance.
There was yet another individual whose residence under that roof was,
it is true, only an intermittent one, but whose presence at the time of
the strange happenings which will now be narrated brought his name
prominently before the public. This was Cecil James Barker, of Hales
Lodge, Hampstead.
Cecil Barker’s tall, loose-jointed figure was a familiar one in the
main street of Birlstone village; for he was a frequent and welcome
visitor at the Manor House. He was the more noticed as being the only
friend of the past unknown life of Mr. Douglas who was ever seen in his
new English surroundings. Barker was himself an undoubted Englishman;
but by his remarks it was clear that he had first known Douglas in
America and had there lived on intimate terms with him. He appeared to
be a man of considerable wealth, and was reputed to be a bachelor.
In age he was rather younger than Douglas—forty-five at the most—a
tall, straight, broad-chested fellow with a clean-shaved, prize-fighter
face, thick, strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of masterful black eyes
which might, even without the aid of his very capable hands, clear a
way for him through a hostile crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but
spent his days in wandering round the old village with his pipe in his
mouth, or in driving with his host, or in his absence with his hostess,
over the beautiful countryside. “An easy-going, free-handed gentleman,”
said Ames, the butler. “But, my word! I had rather not be the man that
crossed him!” He was cordial and intimate with Douglas, and he was no
less friendly with his wife—a friendship which more than once seemed to
cause some irritation to the husband, so that even the servants were
able to perceive his annoyance. Such was the third person who was one
of the family when the catastrophe occurred.
As to the other denizens of the old building, it will suffice out of a
large household to mention the prim, respectable, and capable Ames, and
Mrs. Allen, a buxom and cheerful person, who relieved the lady of some
of her household cares. The other six servants in the house bear no
relation to the events of the night of January 6th.
It was at eleven forty-five that the first alarm reached the small
local police station, in charge of Sergeant Wilson of the Sussex
Constabulary. Cecil Barker, much excited, had rushed up to the door and
pealed furiously upon the bell. A terrible tragedy had occurred at the
Manor House, and John Douglas had been murdered. That was the
breathless burden of his message. He had hurried back to the house,
followed within a few minutes by the police sergeant, who arrived at
the scene of the crime a little after twelve o’clock, after taking
prompt steps to warn the county authorities that something serious was
afoot.
On reaching the Manor House, the sergeant had found the drawbridge
down, the windows lighted up, and the whole household in a state of
wild confusion and alarm. The white-faced servants were huddling
together in the hall, with the frightened butler wringing his hands in
the doorway. Only Cecil Barker seemed to be master of himself and his
emotions; he had opened the door which was nearest to the entrance and
he had beckoned to the sergeant to follow him. At that moment there
arrived Dr. Wood, a brisk and capable general practitioner from the
village. The three men entered the fatal room together, while the
horror-stricken butler followed at their heels, closing the door behind
him to shut out the terrible scene from the maid servants.
The dead man lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the
centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink dressing gown, which
covered his night clothes. There were carpet slippers on his bare feet.
The doctor knelt beside him and held down the hand lamp which had stood
on the table. One glance at the victim was enough to show the healer
that his presence could be dispensed with. The man had been horribly
injured. Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun with
the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. It was clear that
this had been fired at close range and that he had received the whole
charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The triggers had
been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more
destructive.
The country policeman was unnerved and troubled by the tremendous
responsibility which had come so suddenly upon him. “We will touch
nothing until my superiors arrive,” he said in a hushed voice, staring
in horror at the dreadful head.
“Nothing has been touched up to now,” said Cecil Barker. “I’ll answer
for that. You see it all exactly as I found it.”
“When was that?” The sergeant had drawn out his notebook.
“It was just half-past eleven. I had not begun to undress, and I was
sitting by the fire in my bedroom when I heard the report. It was not
very loud—it seemed to be muffled. I rushed down—I don’t suppose it was
thirty seconds before I was in the room.”
“Was the door open?”
“Yes, it was open. Poor Douglas was lying as you see him. His bedroom
candle was burning on the table. It was I who lit the lamp some minutes
afterward.”
“Did you see no one?”
“No. I heard Mrs. Douglas coming down the stair behind me, and I rushed
out to prevent her from seeing this dreadful sight. Mrs. Allen, the
housekeeper, came and took her away. Ames had arrived, and we ran back
into the room once more.”
“But surely I have heard that the drawbridge is kept up all night.”
“Yes, it was up until I lowered it.”
“Then how could any murderer have got away? It is out of the question!
Mr. Douglas must have shot himself.”
“That was our first idea. But see!” Barker drew aside the curtain, and
showed that the long, diamond-paned window was open to its full extent.
“And look at this!” He held the lamp down and illuminated a smudge of
blood like the mark of a boot-sole upon the wooden sill. “Someone has
stood there in getting out.”
“You mean that someone waded across the moat?”
“Exactly!”
“Then if you were in the room within half a minute of the crime, he
must have been in the water at that very moment.”
“I have not a doubt of it. I wish to heaven that I had rushed to the
window! But the curtain screened it, as you can see, and so it never
occurred to me. Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas, and I could not
let her enter the room. It would have been too horrible.”
“Horrible enough!” said the doctor, looking at the shattered head and
the terrible marks which surrounded it. “I’ve never seen such injuries
since the Birlstone railway smash.”
“But, I say,” remarked the police sergeant, whose slow, bucolic common
sense was still pondering the open window. “It’s all very well your
saying that a man escaped by wading this moat, but what I ask you is,
how did he ever get into the house at all if the bridge was up?”
“Ah, that’s the question,” said Barker.
“At what o’clock was it raised?”
“It was nearly six o’clock,” said Ames, the butler.
“I’ve heard,” said the sergeant, “that it was usually raised at sunset.
That would be nearer half-past four than six at this time of year.”
“Mrs. Douglas had visitors to tea,” said Ames. “I couldn’t raise it
until they went. Then I wound it up myself.”
“Then it comes to this,” said the sergeant: “If anyone came from
outside—_if_ they did—they must have got in across the bridge before
six and been in hiding ever since, until Mr. Douglas came into the room
after eleven.”
“That is so! Mr. Douglas went round the house every night the last
thing before he turned in to see that the lights were right. That
brought him in here. The man was waiting and shot him. Then he got away
through the window and left his gun behind him. That’s how I read it;
for nothing else will fit the facts.”
The sergeant picked up a card which lay beside the dead man on the
floor. The initials V.V. and under them the number 341 were rudely
scrawled in ink upon it.
“What’s this?” he asked, holding it up.
Barker looked at it with curiosity. “I never noticed it before,” he
said. “The murderer must have left it behind him.”
“V.V.—341. I can make no sense of that.”
The sergeant kept turning it over in his big fingers. “What’s V.V.?
Somebody’s initials, maybe. What have you got there, Dr. Wood?”
It was a good-sized hammer which had been lying on the rug in front of
the fireplace—a substantial, workmanlike hammer. Cecil Barker pointed
to a box of brass-headed nails upon the mantelpiece.
“Mr. Douglas was altering the pictures yesterday,” he said. “I saw him
myself, standing upon that chair and fixing the big picture above it.
That accounts for the hammer.”
“We’d best put it back on the rug where we found it,” said the
sergeant, scratching his puzzled head in his perplexity. “It will want
the best brains in the force to get to the bottom of this thing. It
will be a London job before it is finished.” He raised the hand lamp
and walked slowly round the room. “Hullo!” he cried, excitedly, drawing
the window curtain to one side. “What o’clock were those curtains
drawn?”
“When the lamps were lit,” said the butler. “It would be shortly after
four.”
“Someone had been hiding here, sure enough.” He held down the light,
and the marks of muddy boots were very visible in the corner. “I’m
bound to say this bears out your theory, Mr. Barker. It looks as if the
man got into the house after four when the curtains were drawn, and
before six when the bridge was raised. He slipped into this room,
because it was the first that he saw. There was no other place where he
could hide, so he popped in behind this curtain. That all seems clear
enough. It is likely that his main idea was to burgle the house; but
Mr. Douglas chanced to come upon him, so he murdered him and escaped.”
“That’s how I read it,” said Barker. “But, I say, aren’t we wasting
precious time? Couldn’t we start out and scout the country before the
fellow gets away?”
The sergeant considered for a moment.
“There are no trains before six in the morning; so he can’t get away by
rail. If he goes by road with his legs all dripping, it’s odds that
someone will notice him. Anyhow, I can’t leave here myself until I am
relieved. But I think none of you should go until we see more clearly
how we all stand.”
The doctor had taken the lamp and was narrowly scrutinizing the body.
“What’s this mark?” he asked. “Could this have any connection with the
crime?”
The dead man’s right arm was thrust out from his dressing gown, and
exposed as high as the elbow. About halfway up the forearm was a
curious brown design, a triangle inside a circle, standing out in vivid
relief upon the lard-coloured skin.
“It’s not tattooed,” said the doctor, peering through his glasses. “I
never saw anything like it. The man has been branded at some time as
they brand cattle. What is the meaning of this?”
“I don’t profess to know the meaning of it,” said Cecil Barker; “but I
have seen the mark on Douglas many times this last ten years.”
“And so have I,” said the butler. “Many a time when the master has
rolled up his sleeves I have noticed that very mark. I’ve often
wondered what it could be.”
“Then it has nothing to do with the crime, anyhow,” said the sergeant.
“But it’s a rum thing all the same. Everything about this case is rum.
Well, what is it now?”
The butler had given an exclamation of astonishment and was pointing at
the dead man’s outstretched hand.
“They’ve taken his wedding ring!” he gasped.
“What!”
“Yes, indeed. Master always wore his plain gold wedding ring on the
little finger of his left hand. That ring with the rough nugget on it
was above it, and the twisted snake ring on the third finger. There’s
the nugget and there’s the snake, but the wedding ring is gone.”
“He’s right,” said Barker.
“Do you tell me,” said the sergeant, “that the wedding ring was _below_
the other?”
“Always!”
“Then the murderer, or whoever it was, first took off this ring you
call the nugget ring, then the wedding ring, and afterwards put the
nugget ring back again.”
“That is so!”
The worthy country policeman shook his head. “Seems to me the sooner we
get London on to this case the better,” said he. “White Mason is a
smart man. No local job has ever been too much for White Mason. It
won’t be long now before he is here to help us. But I expect we’ll have
to look to London before we are through. Anyhow, I’m not ashamed to say
that it is a deal too thick for the likes of me.”
Chapter IV
Darkness
At three in the morning the chief Sussex detective, obeying the urgent
call from Sergeant Wilson of Birlstone, arrived from headquarters in a
light dog-cart behind a breathless trotter. By the five-forty train in
the morning he had sent his message to Scotland Yard, and he was at the
Birlstone station at twelve o’clock to welcome us. White Mason was a
quiet, comfortable-looking person in a loose tweed suit, with a
clean-shaved, ruddy face, a stoutish body, and powerful bandy legs
adorned with gaiters, looking like a small farmer, a retired
gamekeeper, or anything upon earth except a very favourable specimen of
the provincial criminal officer.
“A real downright snorter, Mr. MacDonald!” he kept repeating. “We’ll
have the pressmen down like flies when they understand it. I’m hoping
we will get our work done before they get poking their noses into it
and messing up all the trails. There has been nothing like this that I
can remember. There are some bits that will come home to you, Mr.
Holmes, or I am mistaken. And you also, Dr. Watson; for the medicos
will have a word to say before we finish. Your room is at the Westville
Arms. There’s no other place; but I hear that it is clean and good. The
man will carry your bags. This way, gentlemen, if you please.”
He was a very bustling and genial person, this Sussex detective. In ten
minutes we had all found our quarters. In ten more we were seated in
the parlour of the inn and being treated to a rapid sketch of those
events which have been outlined in the previous chapter. MacDonald made
an occasional note; while Holmes sat absorbed, with the expression of
surprised and reverent admiration with which the botanist surveys the
rare and precious bloom.
“Remarkable!” he said, when the story was unfolded, “most remarkable! I
can hardly recall any case where the features have been more peculiar.”
“I thought you would say so, Mr. Holmes,” said White Mason in great
delight. “We’re well up with the times in Sussex. I’ve told you now how
matters were, up to the time when I took over from Sergeant Wilson
between three and four this morning. My word! I made the old mare go!
But I need not have been in such a hurry, as it turned out; for there
was nothing immediate that I could do. Sergeant Wilson had all the
facts. I checked them and considered them and maybe added a few of my
own.”
“What were they?” asked Holmes eagerly.
“Well, I first had the hammer examined. There was Dr. Wood there to
help me. We found no signs of violence upon it. I was hoping that if
Mr. Douglas defended himself with the hammer, he might have left his
mark upon the murderer before he dropped it on the mat. But there was
no stain.”
“That, of course, proves nothing at all,” remarked Inspector MacDonald.
“There has been many a hammer murder and no trace on the hammer.”
“Quite so. It doesn’t prove it wasn’t used. But there might have been
stains, and that would have helped us. As a matter of fact there were
none. Then I examined the gun. They were buckshot cartridges, and, as
Sergeant Wilson pointed out, the triggers were wired together so that,
if you pulled on the hinder one, both barrels were discharged. Whoever
fixed that up had made up his mind that he was going to take no chances
of missing his man. The sawed gun was not more than two foot long—one
could carry it easily under one’s coat. There was no complete maker’s
name; but the printed letters P-E-N were on the fluting between the
barrels, and the rest of the name had been cut off by the saw.”
“A big P with a flourish above it, E and N smaller?” asked Holmes.
“Exactly.”
“Pennsylvania Small Arms Company—well-known American firm,” said
Holmes.
White Mason gazed at my friend as the little village practitioner looks
at the Harley Street specialist who by a word can solve the
difficulties that perplex him.
“That is very helpful, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. Wonderful!
Wonderful! Do you carry the names of all the gun makers in the world in
your memory?”
Holmes dismissed the subject with a wave.
“No doubt it is an American shotgun,” White Mason continued. “I seem to
have read that a sawed-off shotgun is a weapon used in some parts of
America. Apart from the name upon the barrel, the idea had occurred to
me. There is some evidence then, that this man who entered the house
and killed its master was an American.”
MacDonald shook his head. “Man, you are surely travelling overfast,”
said he. “I have heard no evidence yet that any stranger was ever in
the house at all.”
“The open window, the blood on the sill, the queer card, the marks of
boots in the corner, the gun!”
“Nothing there that could not have been arranged. Mr. Douglas was an
American, or had lived long in America. So had Mr. Barker. You don’t
need to import an American from outside in order to account for
American doings.”
“Ames, the butler—”
“What about him? Is he reliable?”
“Ten years with Sir Charles Chandos—as solid as a rock. He has been
with Douglas ever since he took the Manor House five years ago. He has
never seen a gun of this sort in the house.”
“The gun was made to conceal. That’s why the barrels were sawed. It
would fit into any box. How could he swear there was no such gun in the
house?”
“Well, anyhow, he had never seen one.”
MacDonald shook his obstinate Scotch head. “I’m not convinced yet that
there was ever anyone in the house,” said he. “I’m asking you to
conseedar” (his accent became more Aberdonian as he lost himself in his
argument) “I’m asking you to conseedar what it involves if you suppose
that this gun was ever brought into the house, and that all these
strange things were done by a person from outside. Oh, man, it’s just
inconceivable! It’s clean against common sense! I put it to you, Mr.
Holmes, judging it by what we have heard.”
“Well, state your case, Mr. Mac,” said Holmes in his most judicial
style.
“The man is not a burglar, supposing that he ever existed. The ring
business and the card point to premeditated murder for some private
reason. Very good. Here is a man who slips into a house with the
deliberate intention of committing murder. He knows, if he knows
anything, that he will have a deeficulty in making his escape, as the
house is surrounded with water. What weapon would he choose? You would
say the most silent in the world. Then he could hope when the deed was
done to slip quickly from the window, to wade the moat, and to get away
at his leisure. That’s understandable. But is it understandable that he
should go out of his way to bring with him the most noisy weapon he
could select, knowing well that it will fetch every human being in the
house to the spot as quick as they can run, and that it is all odds
that he will be seen before he can get across the moat? Is that
credible, Mr. Holmes?”
“Well, you put the case strongly,” my friend replied thoughtfully. “It
certainly needs a good deal of justification. May I ask, Mr. White
Mason, whether you examined the farther side of the moat at once to see
if there were any signs of the man having climbed out from the water?”
“There were no signs, Mr. Holmes. But it is a stone ledge, and one
could hardly expect them.”
“No tracks or marks?”
“None.”
“Ha! Would there be any objection, Mr. White Mason, to our going down
to the house at once? There may possibly be some small point which
might be suggestive.”
“I was going to propose it, Mr. Holmes; but I thought it well to put
you in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if anything
should strike you—” White Mason looked doubtfully at the amateur.
“I have worked with Mr. Holmes before,” said Inspector MacDonald. “He
plays the game.”
“My own idea of the game, at any rate,” said Holmes, with a smile. “I
go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police.
If I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because
they have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to
score at their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the
right to work in my own way and give my results at my own time—complete
rather than in stages.”
“I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we
know,” said White Mason cordially. “Come along, Dr. Watson, and when
the time comes we’ll all hope for a place in your book.”
We walked down the quaint village street with a row of pollarded elms
on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars,
weather-stained and lichen-blotched, bearing upon their summits a
shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of
Birlstone. A short walk along the winding drive with such sward and
oaks around it as one only sees in rural England, then a sudden turn,
and the long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay
before us, with an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it.
As we approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful
broad moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold, winter
sunshine.
Three centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries of
births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings of fox
hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business should have
cast its shadow upon the venerable walls! And yet those strange, peaked
roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a fitting covering to grim and
terrible intrigue. As I looked at the deep-set windows and the long
sweep of the dull-coloured, water-lapped front, I felt that no more
fitting scene could be set for such a tragedy.
“That’s the window,” said White Mason, “that one on the immediate right
of the drawbridge. It’s open just as it was found last night.”
“It looks rather narrow for a man to pass.”
“Well, it wasn’t a fat man, anyhow. We don’t need your deductions, Mr.
Holmes, to tell us that. But you or I could squeeze through all right.”
Holmes walked to the edge of the moat and looked across. Then he
examined the stone ledge and the grass border beyond it.
“I’ve had a good look, Mr. Holmes,” said White Mason. “There is nothing
there, no sign that anyone has landed—but why should he leave any
sign?”
“Exactly. Why should he? Is the water always turbid?”
“Generally about this colour. The stream brings down the clay.”
“How deep is it?”
“About two feet at each side and three in the middle.”
“So we can put aside all idea of the man having been drowned in
crossing.”
“No, a child could not be drowned in it.”
We walked across the drawbridge, and were admitted by a quaint,
gnarled, dried-up person, who was the butler, Ames. The poor old fellow
was white and quivering from the shock. The village sergeant, a tall,
formal, melancholy man, still held his vigil in the room of Fate. The
doctor had departed.
“Anything fresh, Sergeant Wilson?” asked White Mason.
“No, sir.”
“Then you can go home. You’ve had enough. We can send for you if we
want you. The butler had better wait outside. Tell him to warn Mr.
Cecil Barker, Mrs. Douglas, and the housekeeper that we may want a word
with them presently. Now, gentlemen, perhaps you will allow me to give
you the views I have formed first, and then you will be able to arrive
at your own.”
He impressed me, this country specialist. He had a solid grip of fact
and a cool, clear, common-sense brain, which should take him some way
in his profession. Holmes listened to him intently, with no sign of
that impatience which the official exponent too often produced.
“Is it suicide, or is it murder—that’s our first question, gentlemen,
is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe that this man
began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing it; that he then
came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud into a corner behind
the curtain in order to give the idea someone had waited for him,
opened the window, put blood on the—”
“We can surely dismiss that,” said MacDonald.
“So I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has been
done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done by someone
outside or inside the house.”
“Well, let’s hear the argument.”
“There are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or the
other it must be. We will suppose first that some person or persons
inside the house did the crime. They got this man down here at a time
when everything was still and yet no one was asleep. They then did the
deed with the queerest and noisiest weapon in the world so as to tell
everyone what had happened—a weapon that was never seen in the house
before. That does not seem a very likely start, does it?”
“No, it does not.”
“Well, then, everyone is agreed that after the alarm was given only a
minute at the most had passed before the whole household—not Mr. Cecil
Barker alone, though he claims to have been the first, but Ames and all
of them were on the spot. Do you tell me that in that time the guilty
person managed to make footmarks in the corner, open the window, mark
the sill with blood, take the wedding ring off the dead man’s finger,
and all the rest of it? It’s impossible!”
“You put it very clearly,” said Holmes. “I am inclined to agree with
you.”
“Well, then, we are driven back to the theory that it was done by
someone from outside. We are still faced with some big difficulties;
but anyhow they have ceased to be impossibilities. The man got into the
house between four-thirty and six; that is to say, between dusk and the
time when the bridge was raised. There had been some visitors, and the
door was open; so there was nothing to prevent him. He may have been a
common burglar, or he may have had some private grudge against Mr.
Douglas. Since Mr. Douglas has spent most of his life in America, and
this shotgun seems to be an American weapon, it would seem that the
private grudge is the more likely theory. He slipped into this room
because it was the first he came to, and he hid behind the curtain.
There he remained until past eleven at night. At that time Mr. Douglas
entered the room. It was a short interview, if there were any interview
at all; for Mrs. Douglas declares that her husband had not left her
more than a few minutes when she heard the shot.”
“The candle shows that,” said Holmes.
“Exactly. The candle, which was a new one, is not burned more than half
an inch. He must have placed it on the table before he was attacked;
otherwise, of course, it would have fallen when he fell. This shows
that he was not attacked the instant that he entered the room. When Mr.
Barker arrived the candle was lit and the lamp was out.”
“That’s all clear enough.”
“Well, now, we can reconstruct things on those lines. Mr. Douglas
enters the room. He puts down the candle. A man appears from behind the
curtain. He is armed with this gun. He demands the wedding ring—Heaven
only knows why, but so it must have been. Mr. Douglas gave it up. Then
either in cold blood or in the course of a struggle—Douglas may have
gripped the hammer that was found upon the mat—he shot Douglas in this
horrible way. He dropped his gun and also it would seem this queer
card—V.V. 341, whatever that may mean—and he made his escape through
the window and across the moat at the very moment when Cecil Barker was
discovering the crime. How’s that, Mr. Holmes?”
“Very interesting, but just a little unconvincing.”
“Man, it would be absolute nonsense if it wasn’t that anything else is
even worse!” cried MacDonald. “Somebody killed the man, and whoever it
was I could clearly prove to you that he should have done it some other
way. What does he mean by allowing his retreat to be cut off like that?
What does he mean by using a shotgun when silence was his one chance of
escape? Come, Mr. Holmes, it’s up to you to give us a lead, since you
say Mr. White Mason’s theory is unconvincing.”
Holmes had sat intently observant during this long discussion, missing
no word that was said, with his keen eyes darting to right and to left,
and his forehead wrinkled with speculation.
“I should like a few more facts before I get so far as a theory, Mr.
Mac,” said he, kneeling down beside the body. “Dear me! these injuries
are really appalling. Can we have the butler in for a moment?... Ames,
I understand that you have often seen this very unusual mark—a branded
triangle inside a circle—upon Mr. Douglas’s forearm?”
“Frequently, sir.”
“You never heard any speculation as to what it meant?”
“No, sir.”
“It must have caused great pain when it was inflicted. It is
undoubtedly a burn. Now, I observe, Ames, that there is a small piece
of plaster at the angle of Mr. Douglas’s jaw. Did you observe that in
life?”
“Yes, sir, he cut himself in shaving yesterday morning.”
“Did you ever know him to cut himself in shaving before?”
“Not for a very long time, sir.”
“Suggestive!” said Holmes. “It may, of course, be a mere coincidence,
or it may point to some nervousness which would indicate that he had
reason to apprehend danger. Had you noticed anything unusual in his
conduct, yesterday, Ames?”
“It struck me that he was a little restless and excited, sir.”
“Ha! The attack may not have been entirely unexpected. We do seem to
make a little progress, do we not? Perhaps you would rather do the
questioning, Mr. Mac?”
“No, Mr. Holmes, it’s in better hands than mine.”
“Well, then, we will pass to this card—V.V. 341. It is rough cardboard.
Have you any of the sort in the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
Holmes walked across to the desk and dabbed a little ink from each
bottle on to the blotting paper. “It was not printed in this room,” he
said; “this is black ink and the other purplish. It was done by a thick
pen, and these are fine. No, it was done elsewhere, I should say. Can
you make anything of the inscription, Ames?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
“What do you think, Mr. Mac?”
“It gives me the impression of a secret society of some sort; the same
with his badge upon the forearm.”
“That’s my idea, too,” said White Mason.
“Well, we can adopt it as a working hypothesis and then see how far our
difficulties disappear. An agent from such a society makes his way into
the house, waits for Mr. Douglas, blows his head nearly off with this
weapon, and escapes by wading the moat, after leaving a card beside the
dead man, which will, when mentioned in the papers, tell other members
of the society that vengeance has been done. That all hangs together.
But why this gun, of all weapons?”
“Exactly.”
“And why the missing ring?”
“Quite so.”
“And why no arrest? It’s past two now. I take it for granted that since
dawn every constable within forty miles has been looking out for a wet
stranger?”
“That is so, Mr. Holmes.”
“Well, unless he has a burrow close by or a change of clothes ready,
they can hardly miss him. And yet they _have_ missed him up to now!”
Holmes had gone to the window and was examining with his lens the blood
mark on the sill. “It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably
broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can
trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a
more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What’s
this under the side table?”
“Mr. Douglas’s dumb-bells,” said Ames.
“Dumb-bell—there’s only one. Where’s the other?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Holmes. There may have been only one. I have not
noticed them for months.”
“One dumb-bell—” Holmes said seriously; but his remarks were
interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.
A tall, sunburned, capable-looking, clean-shaved man looked in at us. I
had no difficulty in guessing that it was the Cecil Barker of whom I
had heard. His masterful eyes travelled quickly with a questioning
glance from face to face.
“Sorry to interrupt your consultation,” said he, “but you should hear
the latest news.”
“An arrest?”
“No such luck. But they’ve found his bicycle. The fellow left his
bicycle behind him. Come and have a look. It is within a hundred yards
of the hall door.”
We found three or four grooms and idlers standing in the drive
inspecting a bicycle which had been drawn out from a clump of
evergreens in which it had been concealed. It was a well used
Rudge-Whitworth, splashed as from a considerable journey. There was a
saddlebag with spanner and oilcan, but no clue as to the owner.
“It would be a grand help to the police,” said the inspector, “if these
things were numbered and registered. But we must be thankful for what
we’ve got. If we can’t find where he went to, at least we are likely to
get where he came from. But what in the name of all that is wonderful
made the fellow leave it behind? And how in the world has he got away
without it? We don’t seem to get a gleam of light in the case, Mr.
Holmes.”
“Don’t we?” my friend answered thoughtfully. “I wonder!”
Chapter V
The People of the Drama
“Have you seen all you want of the study?” asked White Mason as we
reentered the house.
“For the time,” said the inspector, and Holmes nodded.
“Then perhaps you would now like to hear the evidence of some of the
people in the house. We could use the dining room, Ames. Please come
yourself first and tell us what you know.”
The butler’s account was a simple and a clear one, and he gave a
convincing impression of sincerity. He had been engaged five years
before, when Douglas first came to Birlstone. He understood that Mr.
Douglas was a rich gentleman who had made his money in America. He had
been a kind and considerate employer—not quite what Ames was used to,
perhaps; but one can’t have everything. He never saw any signs of
apprehension in Mr. Douglas: on the contrary, he was the most fearless
man he had ever known. He ordered the drawbridge to be pulled up every
night because it was the ancient custom of the old house, and he liked
to keep the old ways up.
Mr. Douglas seldom went to London or left the village; but on the day
before the crime he had been shopping at Tunbridge Wells. He (Ames) had
observed some restlessness and excitement on the part of Mr. Douglas
that day; for he had seemed impatient and irritable, which was unusual
with him. He had not gone to bed that night; but was in the pantry at
the back of the house, putting away the silver, when he heard the bell
ring violently. He heard no shot; but it was hardly possible he would,
as the pantry and kitchens were at the very back of the house and there
were several closed doors and a long passage between. The housekeeper
had come out of her room, attracted by the violent ringing of the bell.
They had gone to the front of the house together.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs he had seen Mrs. Douglas
coming down it. No, she was not hurrying; it did not seem to him that
she was particularly agitated. Just as she reached the bottom of the
stair Mr. Barker had rushed out of the study. He had stopped Mrs.
Douglas and begged her to go back.
“For God’s sake, go back to your room!” he cried. “Poor Jack is dead!
You can do nothing. For God’s sake, go back!”
After some persuasion upon the stairs Mrs. Douglas had gone back. She
did not scream. She made no outcry whatever. Mrs. Allen, the
housekeeper, had taken her upstairs and stayed with her in the bedroom.
Ames and Mr. Barker had then returned to the study, where they had
found everything exactly as the police had seen it. The candle was not
lit at that time; but the lamp was burning. They had looked out of the
window; but the night was very dark and nothing could be seen or heard.
They had then rushed out into the hall, where Ames had turned the
windlass which lowered the drawbridge. Mr. Barker had then hurried off
to get the police.
Such, in its essentials, was the evidence of the butler.
The account of Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, was, so far as it went, a
corroboration of that of her fellow servant. The housekeeper’s room was
rather nearer to the front of the house than the pantry in which Ames
had been working. She was preparing to go to bed when the loud ringing
of the bell had attracted her attention. She was a little hard of
hearing. Perhaps that was why she had not heard the shot; but in any
case the study was a long way off. She remembered hearing some sound
which she imagined to be the slamming of a door. That was a good deal
earlier—half an hour at least before the ringing of the bell. When Mr.
Ames ran to the front she went with him. She saw Mr. Barker, very pale
and excited, come out of the study. He intercepted Mrs. Douglas, who
was coming down the stairs. He entreated her to go back, and she
answered him, but what she said could not be heard.
“Take her up! Stay with her!” he had said to Mrs. Allen.
She had therefore taken her to the bedroom, and endeavoured to soothe
her. She was greatly excited, trembling all over, but made no other
attempt to go downstairs. She just sat in her dressing gown by her
bedroom fire, with her head sunk in her hands. Mrs. Allen stayed with
her most of the night. As to the other servants, they had all gone to
bed, and the alarm did not reach them until just before the police
arrived. They slept at the extreme back of the house, and could not
possibly have heard anything.
So far the housekeeper could add nothing on cross-examination save
lamentations and expressions of amazement.
Cecil Barker succeeded Mrs. Allen as a witness. As to the occurrences
of the night before, he had very little to add to what he had already
told the police. Personally, he was convinced that the murderer had
escaped by the window. The bloodstain was conclusive, in his opinion,
on that point. Besides, as the bridge was up, there was no other
possible way of escaping. He could not explain what had become of the
assassin or why he had not taken his bicycle, if it were indeed his. He
could not possibly have been drowned in the moat, which was at no place
more than three feet deep.
In his own mind he had a very definite theory about the murder. Douglas
was a reticent man, and there were some chapters in his life of which
he never spoke. He had emigrated to America when he was a very young
man. He had prospered well, and Barker had first met him in California,
where they had become partners in a successful mining claim at a place
called Benito Canyon. They had done very well; but Douglas had suddenly
sold out and started for England. He was a widower at that time. Barker
had afterwards realized his money and come to live in London. Thus they
had renewed their friendship.
Douglas had given him the impression that some danger was hanging over
his head, and he had always looked upon his sudden departure from
California, and also his renting a house in so quiet a place in
England, as being connected with this peril. He imagined that some
secret society, some implacable organization, was on Douglas’s track,
which would never rest until it killed him. Some remarks of his had
given him this idea; though he had never told him what the society was,
nor how he had come to offend it. He could only suppose that the legend
upon the placard had some reference to this secret society.
“How long were you with Douglas in California?” asked Inspector
MacDonald.
“Five years altogether.”
“He was a bachelor, you say?”
“A widower.”
“Have you ever heard where his first wife came from?”
“No, I remember his saying that she was of German extraction, and I
have seen her portrait. She was a very beautiful woman. She died of
typhoid the year before I met him.”
“You don’t associate his past with any particular part of America?”
“I have heard him talk of Chicago. He knew that city well and had
worked there. I have heard him talk of the coal and iron districts. He
had travelled a good deal in his time.”
“Was he a politician? Had this secret society to do with politics?”
“No, he cared nothing about politics.”
“You have no reason to think it was criminal?”
“On the contrary, I never met a straighter man in my life.”
“Was there anything curious about his life in California?”
“He liked best to stay and to work at our claim in the mountains. He
would never go where other men were if he could help it. That’s why I
first thought that someone was after him. Then when he left so suddenly
for Europe I made sure that it was so. I believe that he had a warning
of some sort. Within a week of his leaving half a dozen men were
inquiring for him.”
“What sort of men?”
“Well, they were a mighty hard-looking crowd. They came up to the claim
and wanted to know where he was. I told them that he was gone to Europe
and that I did not know where to find him. They meant him no good—it
was easy to see that.”
“Were these men Americans—Californians?”
“Well, I don’t know about Californians. They were Americans, all right.
But they were not miners. I don’t know what they were, and was very
glad to see their backs.”
“That was six years ago?”
“Nearer seven.”
“And then you were together five years in California, so that this
business dates back not less than eleven years at the least?”
“That is so.”
“It must be a very serious feud that would be kept up with such
earnestness for as long as that. It would be no light thing that would
give rise to it.”
“I think it shadowed his whole life. It was never quite out of his
mind.”
“But if a man had a danger hanging over him, and knew what it was,
don’t you think he would turn to the police for protection?”
“Maybe it was some danger that he could not be protected against.
There’s one thing you should know. He always went about armed. His
revolver was never out of his pocket. But, by bad luck, he was in his
dressing gown and had left it in the bedroom last night. Once the
bridge was up, I guess he thought he was safe.”
“I should like these dates a little clearer,” said MacDonald. “It is
quite six years since Douglas left California. You followed him next
year, did you not?”
“That is so.”
“And he had been married five years. You must have returned about the
time of his marriage.”
“About a month before. I was his best man.”
“Did you know Mrs. Douglas before her marriage?”
“No, I did not. I had been away from England for ten years.”
“But you have seen a good deal of her since.”
Barker looked sternly at the detective. “I have seen a good deal of
_him_ since,” he answered. “If I have seen her, it is because you
cannot visit a man without knowing his wife. If you imagine there is
any connection—”
“I imagine nothing, Mr. Barker. I am bound to make every inquiry which
can bear upon the case. But I mean no offense.”
“Some inquiries are offensive,” Barker answered angrily.
“It’s only the facts that we want. It is in your interest and
everyone’s interest that they should be cleared up. Did Mr. Douglas
entirely approve your friendship with his wife?”
Barker grew paler, and his great, strong hands were clasped
convulsively together. “You have no right to ask such questions!” he
cried. “What has this to do with the matter you are investigating?”
“I must repeat the question.”
“Well, I refuse to answer.”
“You can refuse to answer; but you must be aware that your refusal is
in itself an answer, for you would not refuse if you had not something
to conceal.”
Barker stood for a moment with his face set grimly and his strong black
eyebrows drawn low in intense thought. Then he looked up with a smile.
“Well, I guess you gentlemen are only doing your clear duty after all,
and I have no right to stand in the way of it. I’d only ask you not to
worry Mrs. Douglas over this matter; for she has enough upon her just
now. I may tell you that poor Douglas had just one fault in the world,
and that was his jealousy. He was fond of me—no man could be fonder of
a friend. And he was devoted to his wife. He loved me to come here, and
was forever sending for me. And yet if his wife and I talked together
or there seemed any sympathy between us, a kind of wave of jealousy
would pass over him, and he would be off the handle and saying the
wildest things in a moment. More than once I’ve sworn off coming for
that reason, and then he would write me such penitent, imploring
letters that I just had to. But you can take it from me, gentlemen, if
it was my last word, that no man ever had a more loving, faithful
wife—and I can say also no friend could be more loyal than I!”
It was spoken with fervour and feeling, and yet Inspector MacDonald
could not dismiss the subject.
“You are aware,” said he, “that the dead man’s wedding ring has been
taken from his finger?”
“So it appears,” said Barker.
“What do you mean by ‘appears’? You know it as a fact.”
The man seemed confused and undecided. “When I said ‘appears’ I meant
that it was conceivable that he had himself taken off the ring.”
“The mere fact that the ring should be absent, whoever may have removed
it, would suggest to anyone’s mind, would it not, that the marriage and
the tragedy were connected?”
Barker shrugged his broad shoulders. “I can’t profess to say what it
means,” he answered. “But if you mean to hint that it could reflect in
any way upon this lady’s honour”—his eyes blazed for an instant, and
then with an evident effort he got a grip upon his own emotions—“well,
you are on the wrong track, that’s all.”
“I don’t know that I’ve anything else to ask you at present,” said
MacDonald, coldly.
“There was one small point,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. “When you
entered the room there was only a candle lighted on the table, was
there not?”
“Yes, that was so.”
“By its light you saw that some terrible incident had occurred?”
“Exactly.”
“You at once rang for help?”
“Yes.”
“And it arrived very speedily?”
“Within a minute or so.”
“And yet when they arrived they found that the candle was out and that
the lamp had been lighted. That seems very remarkable.”
Again Barker showed some signs of indecision. “I don’t see that it was
remarkable, Mr. Holmes,” he answered after a pause. “The candle threw a
very bad light. My first thought was to get a better one. The lamp was
on the table; so I lit it.”
“And blew out the candle?”
“Exactly.”
Holmes asked no further question, and Barker, with a deliberate look
from one to the other of us, which had, as it seemed to me, something
of defiance in it, turned and left the room.
Inspector MacDonald had sent up a note to the effect that he would wait
upon Mrs. Douglas in her room; but she had replied that she would meet
us in the dining room. She entered now, a tall and beautiful woman of
thirty, reserved and self-possessed to a remarkable degree, very
different from the tragic and distracted figure I had pictured. It is
true that her face was pale and drawn, like that of one who has endured
a great shock; but her manner was composed, and the finely moulded hand
which she rested upon the edge of the table was as steady as my own.
Her sad, appealing eyes travelled from one to the other of us with a
curiously inquisitive expression. That questioning gaze transformed
itself suddenly into abrupt speech.
“Have you found anything out yet?” she asked.
Was it my imagination that there was an undertone of fear rather than
of hope in the question?
“We have taken every possible step, Mrs. Douglas,” said the inspector.
“You may rest assured that nothing will be neglected.”
“Spare no money,” she said in a dead, even tone. “It is my desire that
every possible effort should be made.”
“Perhaps you can tell us something which may throw some light upon the
matter.”
“I fear not; but all I know is at your service.”
“We have heard from Mr. Cecil Barker that you did not actually see—that
you were never in the room where the tragedy occurred?”
“No, he turned me back upon the stairs. He begged me to return to my
room.”
“Quite so. You had heard the shot, and you had at once come down.”
“I put on my dressing gown and then came down.”
“How long was it after hearing the shot that you were stopped on the
stair by Mr. Barker?”
“It may have been a couple of minutes. It is so hard to reckon time at
such a moment. He implored me not to go on. He assured me that I could
do nothing. Then Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, led me upstairs again. It
was all like some dreadful dream.”
“Can you give us any idea how long your husband had been downstairs
before you heard the shot?”
“No, I cannot say. He went from his dressing room, and I did not hear
him go. He did the round of the house every night, for he was nervous
of fire. It is the only thing that I have ever known him nervous of.”
“That is just the point which I want to come to, Mrs. Douglas. You have
known your husband only in England, have you not?”
“Yes, we have been married five years.”
“Have you heard him speak of anything which occurred in America and
might bring some danger upon him?”
Mrs. Douglas thought earnestly before she answered. “Yes,” she said at
last, “I have always felt that there was a danger hanging over him. He
refused to discuss it with me. It was not from want of confidence in
me—there was the most complete love and confidence between us—but it
was out of his desire to keep all alarm away from me. He thought I
should brood over it if I knew all, and so he was silent.”
“How did you know it, then?”
Mrs. Douglas’s face lit with a quick smile. “Can a husband ever carry
about a secret all his life and a woman who loves him have no suspicion
of it? I knew it by his refusal to talk about some episodes in his
American life. I knew it by certain precautions he took. I knew it by
certain words he let fall. I knew it by the way he looked at unexpected
strangers. I was perfectly certain that he had some powerful enemies,
that he believed they were on his track, and that he was always on his
guard against them. I was so sure of it that for years I have been
terrified if ever he came home later than was expected.”
“Might I ask,” asked Holmes, “what the words were which attracted your
attention?”
“The Valley of Fear,” the lady answered. “That was an expression he has
used when I questioned him. ‘I have been in the Valley of Fear. I am
not out of it yet.’—‘Are we never to get out of the Valley of Fear?’ I
have asked him when I have seen him more serious than usual. ‘Sometimes
I think that we never shall,’ he has answered.”
“Surely you asked him what he meant by the Valley of Fear?”
“I did; but his face would become very grave and he would shake his
head. ‘It is bad enough that one of us should have been in its shadow,’
he said. ‘Please God it shall never fall upon you!’ It was some real
valley in which he had lived and in which something terrible had
occurred to him, of that I am certain; but I can tell you no more.”
“And he never mentioned any names?”
“Yes, he was delirious with fever once when he had his hunting accident
three years ago. Then I remember that there was a name that came
continually to his lips. He spoke it with anger and a sort of horror.
McGinty was the name—Bodymaster McGinty. I asked him when he recovered
who Bodymaster McGinty was, and whose body he was master of. ‘Never of
mine, thank God!’ he answered with a laugh, and that was all I could
get from him. But there is a connection between Bodymaster McGinty and
the Valley of Fear.”
“There is one other point,” said Inspector MacDonald. “You met Mr.
Douglas in a boarding house in London, did you not, and became engaged
to him there? Was there any romance, anything secret or mysterious,
about the wedding?”
“There was romance. There is always romance. There was nothing
mysterious.”
“He had no rival?”
“No, I was quite free.”
“You have heard, no doubt, that his wedding ring has been taken. Does
that suggest anything to you? Suppose that some enemy of his old life
had tracked him down and committed this crime, what possible reason
could he have for taking his wedding ring?”
For an instant I could have sworn that the faintest shadow of a smile
flickered over the woman’s lips.
[Illustration: For an instant I could have sworn that the faintest
shadow of a smile flickered over the woman’s lips.]
“I really cannot tell,” she answered. “It is certainly a most
extraordinary thing.”
“Well, we will not detain you any longer, and we are sorry to have put
you to this trouble at such a time,” said the inspector. “There are
some other points, no doubt; but we can refer to you as they arise.”
She rose, and I was again conscious of that quick, questioning glance
with which she had just surveyed us. “What impression has my evidence
made upon you?” The question might as well have been spoken. Then, with
a bow, she swept from the room.
“She’s a beautiful woman—a very beautiful woman,” said MacDonald
thoughtfully, after the door had closed behind her. “This man Barker
has certainly been down here a good deal. He is a man who might be
attractive to a woman. He admits that the dead man was jealous, and
maybe he knew best himself what cause he had for jealousy. Then there’s
that wedding ring. You can’t get past that. The man who tears a wedding
ring off a dead man’s—What do you say to it, Mr. Holmes?”
My friend had sat with his head upon his hands, sunk in the deepest
thought. Now he rose and rang the bell. “Ames,” he said, when the
butler entered, “where is Mr. Cecil Barker now?”
“I’ll see, sir.”
He came back in a moment to say that Barker was in the garden.
“Can you remember, Ames, what Mr. Barker had on his feet last night
when you joined him in the study?”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. He had a pair of bedroom slippers. I brought him his
boots when he went for the police.”
“Where are the slippers now?”
“They are still under the chair in the hall.”
“Very good, Ames. It is, of course, important for us to know which
tracks may be Mr. Barker’s and which from outside.”
“Yes, sir. I may say that I noticed that the slippers were stained with
blood—so indeed were my own.”
“That is natural enough, considering the condition of the room. Very
good, Ames. We will ring if we want you.”
A few minutes later we were in the study. Holmes had brought with him
the carpet slippers from the hall. As Ames had observed, the soles of
both were dark with blood.
“Strange!” murmured Holmes, as he stood in the light of the window and
examined them minutely. “Very strange indeed!”
Stooping with one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the slipper
upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded. He smiled in
silence at his colleagues.
The inspector was transfigured with excitement. His native accent
rattled like a stick upon railings.
“Man,” he cried, “there’s not a doubt of it! Barker has just marked the
window himself. It’s a good deal broader than any bootmark. I mind that
you said it was a splay-foot, and here’s the explanation. But what’s
the game, Mr. Holmes—what’s the game?”
“Ay, what’s the game?” my friend repeated thoughtfully.
White Mason chuckled and rubbed his fat hands together in his
professional satisfaction. “I said it was a snorter!” he cried. “And a
real snorter it is!”
Chapter VI
A Dawning Light
The three detectives had many matters of detail into which to inquire;
so I returned alone to our modest quarters at the village inn. But
before doing so I took a stroll in the curious old-world garden which
flanked the house. Rows of very ancient yew trees cut into strange
designs girded it round. Inside was a beautiful stretch of lawn with an
old sundial in the middle, the whole effect so soothing and restful
that it was welcome to my somewhat jangled nerves.
In that deeply peaceful atmosphere one could forget, or remember only
as some fantastic nightmare, that darkened study with the sprawling,
bloodstained figure on the floor. And yet, as I strolled round it and
tried to steep my soul in its gentle balm, a strange incident occurred,
which brought me back to the tragedy and left a sinister impression in
my mind.
I have said that a decoration of yew trees circled the garden. At the
end farthest from the house they thickened into a continuous hedge. On
the other side of this hedge, concealed from the eyes of anyone
approaching from the direction of the house, there was a stone seat. As
I approached the spot I was aware of voices, some remark in the deep
tones of a man, answered by a little ripple of feminine laughter.
An instant later I had come round the end of the hedge and my eyes lit
upon Mrs. Douglas and the man Barker before they were aware of my
presence. Her appearance gave me a shock. In the dining-room she had
been demure and discreet. Now all pretense of grief had passed away
from her. Her eyes shone with the joy of living, and her face still
quivered with amusement at some remark of her companion. He sat
forward, his hands clasped and his forearms on his knees, with an
answering smile upon his bold, handsome face. In an instant—but it was
just one instant too late—they resumed their solemn masks as my figure
came into view. A hurried word or two passed between them, and then
Barker rose and came towards me.
“Excuse me, sir,” said he, “but am I addressing Dr. Watson?”
I bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very plainly the
impression which had been produced upon my mind.
“We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with Mr.
Sherlock Holmes is so well known. Would you mind coming over and
speaking to Mrs. Douglas for one instant?”
I followed him with a dour face. Very clearly I could see in my mind’s
eye that shattered figure on the floor. Here within a few hours of the
tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend laughing together behind a
bush in the garden which had been his. I greeted the lady with reserve.
I had grieved with her grief in the dining room. Now I met her
appealing gaze with an unresponsive eye.
“I fear that you think me callous and hard-hearted,” said she.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It is no business of mine,” said I.
“Perhaps some day you will do me justice. If you only realized—”
“There is no need why Dr. Watson should realize,” said Barker quickly.
“As he has himself said, it is no possible business of his.”
“Exactly,” said I, “and so I will beg leave to resume my walk.”
“One moment, Dr. Watson,” cried the woman in a pleading voice. “There
is one question which you can answer with more authority than anyone
else in the world, and it may make a very great difference to me. You
know Mr. Holmes and his relations with the police better than anyone
else can. Supposing that a matter were brought confidentially to his
knowledge, is it absolutely necessary that he should pass it on to the
detectives?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Barker eagerly. “Is he on his own or is he
entirely in with them?”
“I really don’t know that I should be justified in discussing such a
point.”
“I beg—I implore that you will, Dr. Watson! I assure you that you will
be helping us—helping me greatly if you will guide us on that point.”
There was such a ring of sincerity in the woman’s voice that for the
instant I forgot all about her levity and was moved only to do her
will.
“Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator,” I said. “He is his own
master, and would act as his own judgment directed. At the same time,
he would naturally feel loyalty towards the officials who were working
on the same case, and he would not conceal from them anything which
would help them in bringing a criminal to justice. Beyond this I can
say nothing, and I would refer you to Mr. Holmes himself if you wanted
fuller information.”
So saying I raised my hat and went upon my way, leaving them still
seated behind that concealing hedge. I looked back as I rounded the far
end of it, and saw that they were still talking very earnestly
together, and, as they were gazing after me, it was clear that it was
our interview that was the subject of their debate.
“I wish none of their confidences,” said Holmes, when I reported to him
what had occurred. He had spent the whole afternoon at the Manor House
in consultation with his two colleagues, and returned about five with a
ravenous appetite for a high tea which I had ordered for him. “No
confidences, Watson; for they are mighty awkward if it comes to an
arrest for conspiracy and murder.”
“You think it will come to that?”
He was in his most cheerful and debonair humour. “My dear Watson, when
I have exterminated that fourth egg I shall be ready to put you in
touch with the whole situation. I don’t say that we have fathomed
it—far from it—but when we have traced the missing dumb-bell—”
“The dumb-bell!”
“Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated the fact
that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well, well, you need
not be downcast; for between ourselves I don’t think that either
Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner has grasped the
overwhelming importance of this incident. One dumb-bell, Watson!
Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell! Picture to yourself the
unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature.
Shocking, Watson, shocking!”
He sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling with
mischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sight of his
excellent appetite was an assurance of success; for I had very clear
recollections of days and nights without a thought of food, when his
baffled mind had chafed before some problem while his thin, eager
features became more attenuated with the asceticism of complete mental
concentration. Finally he lit his pipe, and sitting in the inglenook of
the old village inn he talked slowly and at random about his case,
rather as one who thinks aloud than as one who makes a considered
statement.
“A lie, Watson—a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising
lie—that’s what meets us on the threshold! There is our starting point.
The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker’s story is
corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. They are
both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clear problem. Why
are they lying, and what is the truth which they are trying so hard to
conceal? Let us try, Watson, you and I, if we can get behind the lie
and reconstruct the truth.
“How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy fabrication
which simply could not be true. Consider! According to the story given
to us, the assassin had less than a minute after the murder had been
committed to take that ring, which was under another ring, from the
dead man’s finger, to replace the other ring—a thing which he would
surely never have done—and to put that singular card beside his victim.
I say that this was obviously impossible.
“You may argue—but I have too much respect for your judgment, Watson,
to think that you will do so—that the ring may have been taken before
the man was killed. The fact that the candle had been lit only a short
time shows that there had been no lengthy interview. Was Douglas, from
what we hear of his fearless character, a man who would be likely to
give up his wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of
his giving it up at all? No, no, Watson, the assassin was alone with
the dead man for some time with the lamp lit. Of that I have no doubt
at all.
“But the gunshot was apparently the cause of death. Therefore the shot
must have been fired some time earlier than we are told. But there
could be no mistake about such a matter as that. We are in the
presence, therefore, of a deliberate conspiracy upon the part of the
two people who heard the gunshot—of the man Barker and of the woman
Douglas. When on the top of this I am able to show that the blood mark
on the windowsill was deliberately placed there by Barker, in order to
give a false clue to the police, you will admit that the case grows
dark against him.
“Now we have to ask ourselves at what hour the murder actually did
occur. Up to half-past ten the servants were moving about the house; so
it was certainly not before that time. At a quarter to eleven they had
all gone to their rooms with the exception of Ames, who was in the
pantry. I have been trying some experiments after you left us this
afternoon, and I find that no noise which MacDonald can make in the
study can penetrate to me in the pantry when the doors are all shut.
“It is otherwise, however, from the housekeeper’s room. It is not so
far down the corridor, and from it I could vaguely hear a voice when it
was very loudly raised. The sound from a shotgun is to some extent
muffled when the discharge is at very close range, as it undoubtedly
was in this instance. It would not be very loud, and yet in the silence
of the night it should have easily penetrated to Mrs. Allen’s room. She
is, as she has told us, somewhat deaf; but none the less she mentioned
in her evidence that she did hear something like a door slamming half
an hour before the alarm was given. Half an hour before the alarm was
given would be a quarter to eleven. I have no doubt that what she heard
was the report of the gun, and that this was the real instant of the
murder.
“If this is so, we have now to determine what Barker and Mrs. Douglas,
presuming that they are not the actual murderers, could have been doing
from quarter to eleven, when the sound of the shot brought them down,
until quarter past eleven, when they rang the bell and summoned the
servants. What were they doing, and why did they not instantly give the
alarm? That is the question which faces us, and when it has been
answered we shall surely have gone some way to solve our problem.”
“I am convinced myself,” said I, “that there is an understanding
between those two people. She must be a heartless creature to sit
laughing at some jest within a few hours of her husband’s murder.”
“Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what
occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are
aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are
few wives, having any regard for their husbands, who would let any
man’s spoken word stand between them and that husband’s dead body.
Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some
feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper
when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her. It was badly
stage-managed; for even the rawest investigators must be struck by the
absence of the usual feminine ululation. If there had been nothing
else, this incident alone would have suggested a prearranged conspiracy
to my mind.”
“You think then, definitely, that Barker and Mrs. Douglas are guilty of
the murder?”
“There is an appalling directness about your questions, Watson,” said
Holmes, shaking his pipe at me. “They come at me like bullets. If you
put it that Mrs. Douglas and Barker know the truth about the murder,
and are conspiring to conceal it, then I can give you a whole-souled
answer. I am sure they do. But your more deadly proposition is not so
clear. Let us for a moment consider the difficulties which stand in the
way.
“We will suppose that this couple are united by the bonds of a guilty
love, and that they have determined to get rid of the man who stands
between them. It is a large supposition; for discreet inquiry among
servants and others has failed to corroborate it in any way. On the
contrary, there is a good deal of evidence that the Douglases were very
attached to each other.”
“That, I am sure, cannot be true,” said I, thinking of the beautiful
smiling face in the garden.
“Well, at least they gave that impression. However, we will suppose
that they are an extraordinarily astute couple, who deceive everyone
upon this point, and conspire to murder the husband. He happens to be a
man over whose head some danger hangs—”
“We have only their word for that.”
Holmes looked thoughtful. “I see, Watson. You are sketching out a
theory by which everything they say from the beginning is false.
According to your idea, there was never any hidden menace, or secret
society, or Valley of Fear, or Boss MacSomebody, or anything else.
Well, that is a good sweeping generalization. Let us see what that
brings us to. They invent this theory to account for the crime. They
then play up to the idea by leaving this bicycle in the park as proof
of the existence of some outsider. The stain on the windowsill conveys
the same idea. So does the card on the body, which might have been
prepared in the house. That all fits into your hypothesis, Watson. But
now we come on the nasty, angular, uncompromising bits which won’t slip
into their places. Why a cut-off shotgun of all weapons—and an American
one at that? How could they be so sure that the sound of it would not
bring someone on to them? It’s a mere chance as it is that Mrs. Allen
did not start out to inquire for the slamming door. Why did your guilty
couple do all this, Watson?”
“I confess that I can’t explain it.”
“Then again, if a woman and her lover conspire to murder a husband, are
they going to advertise their guilt by ostentatiously removing his
wedding ring after his death? Does that strike you as very probable,
Watson?”
“No, it does not.”
“And once again, if the thought of leaving a bicycle concealed outside
had occurred to you, would it really have seemed worth doing when the
dullest detective would naturally say this is an obvious blind, as the
bicycle is the first thing which the fugitive needed in order to make
his escape.”
“I can conceive of no explanation.”
“And yet there should be no combination of events for which the wit of
man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a mental exercise,
without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line
of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is
imagination the mother of truth?
“We will suppose that there was a guilty secret, a really shameful
secret in the life of this man Douglas. This leads to his murder by
someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from outside. This
avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still at a loss to
explain, took the dead man’s wedding ring. The vendetta might
conceivably date back to the man’s first marriage, and the ring be
taken for some such reason.
“Before this avenger got away, Barker and the wife had reached the
room. The assassin convinced them that any attempt to arrest him would
lead to the publication of some hideous scandal. They were converted to
this idea, and preferred to let him go. For this purpose they probably
lowered the bridge, which can be done quite noiselessly, and then
raised it again. He made his escape, and for some reason thought that
he could do so more safely on foot than on the bicycle. He therefore
left his machine where it would not be discovered until he had got
safely away. So far we are within the bounds of possibility, are we
not?”
“Well, it is possible, no doubt,” said I, with some reserve.
“We have to remember, Watson, that whatever occurred is certainly
something very extraordinary. Well, now, to continue our supposititious
case, the couple—not necessarily a guilty couple—realize after the
murderer is gone that they have placed themselves in a position in
which it may be difficult for them to prove that they did not
themselves either do the deed or connive at it. They rapidly and rather
clumsily met the situation. The mark was put by Barker’s bloodstained
slipper upon the windowsill to suggest how the fugitive got away. They
obviously were the two who must have heard the sound of the gun; so
they gave the alarm exactly as they would have done, but a good half
hour after the event.”
“And how do you propose to prove all this?”
“Well, if there were an outsider, he may be traced and taken. That
would be the most effective of all proofs. But if not—well, the
resources of science are far from being exhausted. I think that an
evening alone in that study would help me much.”
“An evening alone!”
“I propose to go up there presently. I have arranged it with the
estimable Ames, who is by no means wholehearted about Barker. I shall
sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings me inspiration. I’m a
believer in the genius loci. You smile, Friend Watson. Well, we shall
see. By the way, you have that big umbrella of yours, have you not?”
“It is here.”
“Well, I’ll borrow that if I may.”
“Certainly—but what a wretched weapon! If there is danger—”
“Nothing serious, my dear Watson, or I should certainly ask for your
assistance. But I’ll take the umbrella. At present I am only awaiting
the return of our colleagues from Tunbridge Wells, where they are at
present engaged in trying for a likely owner to the bicycle.”
It was nightfall before Inspector MacDonald and White Mason came back
from their expedition, and they arrived exultant, reporting a great
advance in our investigation.
“Man, I’ll admeet that I had my doubts if there was ever an outsider,”
said MacDonald, “but that’s all past now. We’ve had the bicycle
identified, and we have a description of our man; so that’s a long step
on our journey.”
“It sounds to me like the beginning of the end,” said Holmes. “I’m sure
I congratulate you both with all my heart.”
“Well, I started from the fact that Mr. Douglas had seemed disturbed
since the day before, when he had been at Tunbridge Wells. It was at
Tunbridge Wells then that he had become conscious of some danger. It
was clear, therefore, that if a man had come over with a bicycle it was
from Tunbridge Wells that he might be expected to have come. We took
the bicycle over with us and showed it at the hotels. It was identified
at once by the manager of the Eagle Commercial as belonging to a man
named Hargrave, who had taken a room there two days before. This
bicycle and a small valise were his whole belongings. He had registered
his name as coming from London, but had given no address. The valise
was London made, and the contents were British; but the man himself was
undoubtedly an American.”
“Well, well,” said Holmes gleefully, “you have indeed done some solid
work while I have been sitting spinning theories with my friend! It’s a
lesson in being practical, Mr. Mac.”
“Ay, it’s just that, Mr. Holmes,” said the inspector with satisfaction.
“But this may all fit in with your theories,” I remarked.
“That may or may not be. But let us hear the end, Mr. Mac. Was there
nothing to identify this man?”
“So little that it was evident that he had carefully guarded himself
against identification. There were no papers or letters, and no marking
upon the clothes. A cycle map of the county lay on his bedroom table.
He had left the hotel after breakfast yesterday morning on his bicycle,
and no more was heard of him until our inquiries.”
“That’s what puzzles me, Mr. Holmes,” said White Mason. “If the fellow
did not want the hue and cry raised over him, one would imagine that he
would have returned and remained at the hotel as an inoffensive
tourist. As it is, he must know that he will be reported to the police
by the hotel manager and that his disappearance will be connected with
the murder.”
“So one would imagine. Still, he has been justified of his wisdom up to
date, at any rate, since he has not been taken. But his
description—what of that?”
MacDonald referred to his notebook. “Here we have it so far as they
could give it. They don’t seem to have taken any very particular stock
of him; but still the porter, the clerk, and the chambermaid are all
agreed that this about covers the points. He was a man about five foot
nine in height, fifty or so years of age, his hair slightly grizzled, a
grayish moustache, a curved nose, and a face which all of them
described as fierce and forbidding.”
“Well, bar the expression, that might almost be a description of
Douglas himself,” said Holmes. “He is just over fifty, with grizzled
hair and moustache, and about the same height. Did you get anything
else?”
“He was dressed in a heavy gray suit with a reefer jacket, and he wore
a short yellow overcoat and a soft cap.”
“What about the shotgun?”
“It is less than two feet long. It could very well have fitted into his
valise. He could have carried it inside his overcoat without
difficulty.”
“And how do you consider that all this bears upon the general case?”
“Well, Mr. Holmes,” said MacDonald, “when we have got our man—and you
may be sure that I had his description on the wires within five minutes
of hearing it—we shall be better able to judge. But, even as it stands,
we have surely gone a long way. We know that an American calling
himself Hargrave came to Tunbridge Wells two days ago with bicycle and
valise. In the latter was a sawed-off shotgun; so he came with the
deliberate purpose of crime. Yesterday morning he set off for this
place on his bicycle, with his gun concealed in his overcoat. No one
saw him arrive, so far as we can learn; but he need not pass through
the village to reach the park gates, and there are many cyclists upon
the road. Presumably he at once concealed his cycle among the laurels
where it was found, and possibly lurked there himself, with his eye on
the house, waiting for Mr. Douglas to come out. The shotgun is a
strange weapon to use inside a house; but he had intended to use it
outside, and there it has very obvious advantages, as it would be
impossible to miss with it, and the sound of shots is so common in an
English sporting neighbourhood that no particular notice would be
taken.”
“That is all very clear,” said Holmes.
“Well, Mr. Douglas did not appear. What was he to do next? He left his
bicycle and approached the house in the twilight. He found the bridge
down and no one about. He took his chance, intending, no doubt, to make
some excuse if he met anyone. He met no one. He slipped into the first
room that he saw, and concealed himself behind the curtain. Thence he
could see the drawbridge go up, and he knew that his only escape was
through the moat. He waited until quarter-past eleven, when Mr. Douglas
upon his usual nightly round came into the room. He shot him and
escaped, as arranged. He was aware that the bicycle would be described
by the hotel people and be a clue against him; so he left it there and
made his way by some other means to London or to some safe hiding place
which he had already arranged. How is that, Mr. Holmes?”
“Well, Mr. Mac, it is very good and very clear so far as it goes. That
is your end of the story. My end is that the crime was committed half
an hour earlier than reported; that Mrs. Douglas and Barker are both in
a conspiracy to conceal something; that they aided the murderer’s
escape—or at least that they reached the room before he escaped—and
that they fabricated evidence of his escape through the window, whereas
in all probability they had themselves let him go by lowering the
bridge. That’s my reading of the first half.”
The two detectives shook their heads.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, if this is true, we only tumble out of one mystery
into another,” said the London inspector.
“And in some ways a worse one,” added White Mason. “The lady has never
been in America in all her life. What possible connection could she
have with an American assassin which would cause her to shelter him?”
“I freely admit the difficulties,” said Holmes. “I propose to make a
little investigation of my own to-night, and it is just possible that
it may contribute something to the common cause.”
“Can we help you, Mr. Holmes?”
“No, no! Darkness and Dr. Watson’s umbrella—my wants are simple. And
Ames, the faithful Ames, no doubt he will stretch a point for me. All
my lines of thought lead me back invariably to the one basic
question—why should an athletic man develop his frame upon so unnatural
an instrument as a single dumb-bell?”
It was late that night when Holmes returned from his solitary
excursion. We slept in a double-bedded room, which was the best that
the little country inn could do for us. I was already asleep when I was
partly awakened by his entrance.
“Well, Holmes,” I murmured, “have you found anything out?”
He stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall,
lean figure inclined towards me. “I say, Watson,” he whispered, “would
you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with
softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?”
[Illustration: “Watson, would you be afraid to sleep in the same room
with a lunatic.”]
“Not in the least,” I answered in astonishment.
“Ah, that’s lucky,” he said, and not another word would he utter that
night.
Chapter VII
The Solution
Next morning, after breakfast, we found Inspector MacDonald and White
Mason seated in close consultation in the small parlour of the local
police sergeant. On the table in front of them were piled a number of
letters and telegrams, which they were carefully sorting and docketing.
Three had been placed on one side.
“Still on the track of the elusive bicyclist?” Holmes asked cheerfully.
“What is the latest news of the ruffian?”
MacDonald pointed ruefully to his heap of correspondence.
“He is at present reported from Leicester, Nottingham, Southampton,
Derby, East Ham, Richmond, and fourteen other places. In three of
them—East Ham, Leicester, and Liverpool—there is a clear case against
him, and he has actually been arrested. The country seems to be full of
the fugitives with yellow coats.”
“Dear me!” said Holmes sympathetically. “Now, Mr. Mac and you, Mr.
White Mason, I wish to give you a very earnest piece of advice. When I
went into this case with you I bargained, as you will no doubt
remember, that I should not present you with half-proved theories, but
that I should retain and work out my own ideas until I had satisfied
myself that they were correct. For this reason I am not at the present
moment telling you all that is in my mind. On the other hand, I said
that I would play the game fairly by you, and I do not think it is a
fair game to allow you for one unnecessary moment to waste your
energies upon a profitless task. Therefore I am here to advise you this
morning, and my advice to you is summed up in three words—abandon the
case.”
MacDonald and White Mason stared in amazement at their celebrated
colleague.
“You consider it hopeless!” cried the inspector.
“I consider your case to be hopeless. I do not consider that it is
hopeless to arrive at the truth.”
“But this cyclist. He is not an invention. We have his description, his
valise, his bicycle. The fellow must be somewhere. Why should we not
get him?”
“Yes, yes, no doubt he is somewhere, and no doubt we shall get him; but
I would not have you waste your energies in East Ham or Liverpool. I am
sure that we can find some shorter cut to a result.”
“You are holding something back. It’s hardly fair of you, Mr. Holmes.”
The inspector was annoyed.
“You know my methods of work, Mr. Mac. But I will hold it back for the
shortest time possible. I only wish to verify my details in one way,
which can very readily be done, and then I make my bow and return to
London, leaving my results entirely at your service. I owe you too much
to act otherwise; for in all my experience I cannot recall any more
singular and interesting study.”
“This is clean beyond me, Mr. Holmes. We saw you when we returned from
Tunbridge Wells last night, and you were in general agreement with our
results. What has happened since then to give you a completely new idea
of the case?”
“Well, since you ask me, I spent, as I told you that I would, some
hours last night at the Manor House.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Ah, I can only give you a very general answer to that for the moment.
By the way, I have been reading a short but clear and interesting
account of the old building, purchasable at the modest sum of one penny
from the local tobacconist.”
Here Holmes drew a small tract, embellished with a rude engraving of
the ancient Manor House, from his waistcoat pocket.
“It immensely adds to the zest of an investigation, my dear Mr. Mac,
when one is in conscious sympathy with the historical atmosphere of
one’s surroundings. Don’t look so impatient; for I assure you that even
so bald an account as this raises some sort of picture of the past in
one’s mind. Permit me to give you a sample. ‘Erected in the fifth year
of the reign of James I, and standing upon the site of a much older
building, the Manor House of Birlstone presents one of the finest
surviving examples of the moated Jacobean residence—’”
“You are making fools of us, Mr. Holmes!”
“Tut, tut, Mr. Mac!—the first sign of temper I have detected in you.
Well, I won’t read it verbatim, since you feel so strongly upon the
subject. But when I tell you that there is some account of the taking
of the place by a parliamentary colonel in 1644, of the concealment of
Charles for several days in the course of the Civil War, and finally of
a visit there by the second George, you will admit that there are
various associations of interest connected with this ancient house.”
“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Holmes; but that is no business of ours.”
“Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the
essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique
uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest. You will excuse
these remarks from one who, though a mere connoisseur of crime, is
still rather older and perhaps more experienced than yourself.”
“I’m the first to admit that,” said the detective heartily. “You get to
your point, I admit; but you have such a deuced round-the-corner way of
doing it.”
“Well, well, I’ll drop past history and get down to present-day facts.
I called last night, as I have already said, at the Manor House. I did
not see either Barker or Mrs. Douglas. I saw no necessity to disturb
them; but I was pleased to hear that the lady was not visibly pining
and that she had partaken of an excellent dinner. My visit was
specially made to the good Mr. Ames, with whom I exchanged some
amiabilities, which culminated in his allowing me, without reference to
anyone else, to sit alone for a time in the study.”
“What! With that?” I ejaculated.
“No, no, everything is now in order. You gave permission for that, Mr.
Mac, as I am informed. The room was in its normal state, and in it I
passed an instructive quarter of an hour.”
“What were you doing?”
“Well, not to make a mystery of so simple a matter, I was looking for
the missing dumb-bell. It has always bulked rather large in my estimate
of the case. I ended by finding it.”
“Where?”
“Ah, there we come to the edge of the unexplored. Let me go a little
further, a very little further, and I will promise that you shall share
everything that I know.”
“Well, we’re bound to take you on your own terms,” said the inspector;
“but when it comes to telling us to abandon the case—why in the name of
goodness should we abandon the case?”
“For the simple reason, my dear Mr. Mac, that you have not got the
first idea what it is that you are investigating.”
“We are investigating the murder of Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone
Manor.”
“Yes, yes, so you are. But don’t trouble to trace the mysterious
gentleman upon the bicycle. I assure you that it won’t help you.”
“Then what do you suggest that we do?”
“I will tell you exactly what to do, if you will do it.”
“Well, I’m bound to say I’ve always found you had reason behind all
your queer ways. I’ll do what you advise.”
“And you, Mr. White Mason?”
The country detective looked helplessly from one to the other. Holmes
and his methods were new to him. “Well, if it is good enough for the
inspector, it is good enough for me,” he said at last.
“Capital!” said Holmes. “Well, then, I should recommend a nice, cheery
country walk for both of you. They tell me that the views from
Birlstone Ridge over the Weald are very remarkable. No doubt lunch
could be got at some suitable hostelry; though my ignorance of the
country prevents me from recommending one. In the evening, tired but
happy—”
“Man, this is getting past a joke!” cried MacDonald, rising angrily
from his chair.
“Well, well, spend the day as you like,” said Holmes, patting him
cheerfully upon the shoulder. “Do what you like and go where you will,
but meet me here before dusk without fail—without fail, Mr. Mac.”
“That sounds more like sanity.”
“All of it was excellent advice; but I don’t insist, so long as you are
here when I need you. But now, before we part, I want you to write a
note to Mr. Barker.”
“Well?”
“I’ll dictate it, if you like. Ready?
“DEAR SIR.—It has struck me that it is our duty to drain the moat, in
the hope that we may find some—”
“It’s impossible,” said the inspector. “I’ve made inquiry.”
“Tut, tut! My dear sir, please do what I ask you.”
“Well, go on.”
“—in the hope that we may find something which may bear upon our
investigation. I have made arrangements, and the workmen will be at
work early to-morrow morning diverting the stream—”
“Impossible!”
“—diverting the stream; so I thought it best to explain matters
beforehand.
“Now sign that, and send it by hand about four o’clock. At that hour we
shall meet again in this room. Until then we may each do what we like;
for I can assure you that this inquiry has come to a definite pause.”
Evening was drawing in when we reassembled. Holmes was very serious in
his manner, myself curious, and the detectives obviously critical and
annoyed.
“Well, gentlemen,” said my friend gravely, “I am asking you now to put
everything to the test with me, and you will judge for yourselves
whether the observations I have made justify the conclusions to which I
have come. It is a chill evening, and I do not know how long our
expedition may last; so I beg that you will wear your warmest coats. It
is of the first importance that we should be in our places before it
grows dark; so with your permission we shall get started at once.”
We passed along the outer bounds of the Manor House park until we came
to a place where there was a gap in the rails which fenced it. Through
this we slipped, and then in the gathering gloom we followed Holmes
until we had reached a shrubbery which lies nearly opposite to the main
door and the drawbridge. The latter had not been raised. Holmes
crouched down behind the screen of laurels, and we all three followed
his example.
“Well, what are we to do now?” asked MacDonald with some gruffness.
“Possess our souls in patience and make as little noise as possible,”
Holmes answered.
“What are we here for at all? I really think that you might treat us
with more frankness.”
Holmes laughed. “Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life,”
said he. “Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls
insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr.
Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the
scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal
tap upon the shoulder—what can one make of such a denouement? But the
quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events,
the triumphant vindication of bold theories—are these not the pride and
the justification of our life’s work? At the present moment you thrill
with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt.
Where would be that thrill if I had been as definite as a timetable? I
only ask a little patience, Mr. Mac, and all will be clear to you.”
“Well, I hope the pride and justification and the rest of it will come
before we all get our death of cold,” said the London detective with
comic resignation.
We all had good reason to join in the aspiration; for our vigil was a
long and bitter one. Slowly the shadows darkened over the long, sombre
face of the old house. A cold, damp reek from the moat chilled us to
the bones and set our teeth chattering. There was a single lamp over
the gateway and a steady globe of light in the fatal study. Everything
else was dark and still.
“How long is this to last?” asked the inspector finally. “And what is
it we are watching for?”
“I have no more notion than you how long it is to last,” Holmes
answered with some asperity. “If criminals would always schedule their
movements like railway trains, it would certainly be more convenient
for all of us. As to what it is we— Well, _that’s_ what we are watching
for!”
As he spoke the bright, yellow light in the study was obscured by
somebody passing to and fro before it. The laurels among which we lay
were immediately opposite the window and not more than a hundred feet
from it. Presently it was thrown open with a whining of hinges, and we
could dimly see the dark outline of a man’s head and shoulders looking
out into the gloom. For some minutes he peered forth in furtive,
stealthy fashion, as one who wishes to be assured that he is
unobserved. Then he leaned forward, and in the intense silence we were
aware of the soft lapping of agitated water. He seemed to be stirring
up the moat with something which he held in his hand. Then suddenly he
hauled something in as a fisherman lands a fish—some large, round
object which obscured the light as it was dragged through the open
casement.
“Now!” cried Holmes. “Now!”
We were all upon our feet, staggering after him with our stiffened
limbs, while he ran swiftly across the bridge and rang violently at the
bell. There was the rasping of bolts from the other side, and the
amazed Ames stood in the entrance. Holmes brushed him aside without a
word and, followed by all of us, rushed into the room which had been
occupied by the man whom we had been watching.
The oil lamp on the table represented the glow which we had seen from
outside. It was now in the hand of Cecil Barker, who held it towards us
as we entered. Its light shone upon his strong, resolute, clean-shaved
face and his menacing eyes.
“What the devil is the meaning of all this?” he cried. “What are you
after, anyhow?”
Holmes took a swift glance round, and then pounced upon a sodden bundle
tied together with cord which lay where it had been thrust under the
writing table.
“This is what we are after, Mr. Barker—this bundle, weighted with a
dumb-bell, which you have just raised from the bottom of the moat.”
Barker stared at Holmes with amazement in his face. “How in thunder
came you to know anything about it?” he asked.
“Simply that I put it there.”
“You put it there! You!”
“Perhaps I should have said ‘replaced it there,’” said Holmes. “You
will remember, Inspector MacDonald, that I was somewhat struck by the
absence of a dumb-bell. I drew your attention to it; but with the
pressure of other events you had hardly the time to give it the
consideration which would have enabled you to draw deductions from it.
When water is near and a weight is missing it is not a very far-fetched
supposition that something has been sunk in the water. The idea was at
least worth testing; so with the help of Ames, who admitted me to the
room, and the crook of Dr. Watson’s umbrella, I was able last night to
fish up and inspect this bundle.
“It was of the first importance, however, that we should be able to
prove who placed it there. This we accomplished by the very obvious
device of announcing that the moat would be dried to-morrow, which had,
of course, the effect that whoever had hidden the bundle would most
certainly withdraw it the moment that darkness enabled him to do so. We
have no less than four witnesses as to who it was who took advantage of
the opportunity, and so, Mr. Barker, I think the word lies now with
you.”
Sherlock Holmes put the sopping bundle upon the table beside the lamp
and undid the cord which bound it. From within he extracted a
dumb-bell, which he tossed down to its fellow in the corner. Next he
drew forth a pair of boots. “American, as you perceive,” he remarked,
pointing to the toes. Then he laid upon the table a long, deadly,
sheathed knife. Finally he unravelled a bundle of clothing, comprising
a complete set of underclothes, socks, a gray tweed suit, and a short
yellow overcoat.
“The clothes are commonplace,” remarked Holmes, “save only the
overcoat, which is full of suggestive touches.” He held it tenderly
towards the light. “Here, as you perceive, is the inner pocket
prolonged into the lining in such fashion as to give ample space for
the truncated fowling piece. The tailor’s tab is on the neck—‘Neal,
Outfitter, Vermissa, U.S.A.’ I have spent an instructive afternoon in
the rector’s library, and have enlarged my knowledge by adding the fact
that Vermissa is a flourishing little town at the head of one of the
best known coal and iron valleys in the United States. I have some
recollection, Mr. Barker, that you associated the coal districts with
Mr. Douglas’s first wife, and it would surely not be too far-fetched an
inference that the V.V. upon the card by the dead body might stand for
Vermissa Valley, or that this very valley which sends forth emissaries
of murder may be that Valley of Fear of which we have heard. So much is
fairly clear. And now, Mr. Barker, I seem to be standing rather in the
way of your explanation.”
It was a sight to see Cecil Barker’s expressive face during this
exposition of the great detective. Anger, amazement, consternation, and
indecision swept over it in turn. Finally he took refuge in a somewhat
acrid irony.
“You know such a lot, Mr. Holmes, perhaps you had better tell us some
more,” he sneered.
“I have no doubt that I could tell you a great deal more, Mr. Barker;
but it would come with a better grace from you.”
“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, all I can say is that if there’s any
secret here it is not my secret, and I am not the man to give it away.”
“Well, if you take that line, Mr. Barker,” said the inspector quietly,
“we must just keep you in sight until we have the warrant and can hold
you.”
“You can do what you damn please about that,” said Barker defiantly.
The proceedings seemed to have come to a definite end so far as he was
concerned; for one had only to look at that granite face to realize
that no ‘_peine forte et dure_’ would ever force him to plead against
his will. The deadlock was broken, however, by a woman’s voice. Mrs.
Douglas had been standing listening at the half opened door, and now
she entered the room.
“You have done enough for now, Cecil,” said she. “Whatever comes of it
in the future, you have done enough.”
“Enough and more than enough,” remarked Sherlock Holmes gravely. “I
have every sympathy with you, madam, and should strongly urge you to
have some confidence in the common sense of our jurisdiction and to
take the police voluntarily into your complete confidence. It may be
that I am myself at fault for not following up the hint which you
conveyed to me through my friend, Dr. Watson; but, at that time I had
every reason to believe that you were directly concerned in the crime.
Now I am assured that this is not so. At the same time, there is much
that is unexplained, and I should strongly recommend that you ask Mr.
Douglas to tell us his own story.”
Mrs. Douglas gave a cry of astonishment at Holmes’s words. The
detectives and I must have echoed it, when we were aware of a man who
seemed to have emerged from the wall, who advanced now from the gloom
of the corner in which he had appeared. Mrs. Douglas turned, and in an
instant her arms were round him. Barker had seized his outstretched
hand.
“It’s best this way, Jack,” his wife repeated; “I am sure that it is
best.”
“Indeed, yes, Mr. Douglas,” said Sherlock Holmes, “I am sure that you
will find it best.”
The man stood blinking at us with the dazed look of one who comes from
the dark into the light. It was a remarkable face, bold gray eyes, a
strong, short-clipped, grizzled moustache, a square, projecting chin,
and a humorous mouth. He took a good look at us all, and then to my
amazement he advanced to me and handed me a bundle of paper.
“I’ve heard of you,” said he in a voice which was not quite English and
not quite American, but was altogether mellow and pleasing. “You are
the historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you’ve never had such a
story as that pass through your hands before, and I’ll lay my last
dollar on that. Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you
can’t miss the public so long as you have those. I’ve been cooped up
two days, and I’ve spent the daylight hours—as much daylight as I could
get in that rat trap—in putting the thing into words. You’re welcome to
them—you and your public. There’s the story of the Valley of Fear.”
“That’s the past, Mr. Douglas,” said Sherlock Holmes quietly. “What we
desire now is to hear your story of the present.”
“You’ll have it, sir,” said Douglas. “May I smoke as I talk? Well,
thank you, Mr. Holmes. You’re a smoker yourself, if I remember right,
and you’ll guess what it is to be sitting for two days with tobacco in
your pocket and afraid that the smell will give you away.” He leaned
against the mantelpiece and sucked at the cigar which Holmes had handed
him. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I never guessed that I should meet
you. But before you are through with that,” he nodded at my papers,
“you will say I’ve brought you something fresh.”
Inspector MacDonald had been staring at the newcomer with the greatest
amazement. “Well, this fairly beats me!” he cried at last. “If you are
Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, then whose death have we been
investigating for these two days, and where in the world have you
sprung from now? You seemed to me to come out of the floor like a
jack-in-a-box.”
“Ah, Mr. Mac,” said Holmes, shaking a reproving forefinger, “you would
not read that excellent local compilation which described the
concealment of King Charles. People did not hide in those days without
excellent hiding places, and the hiding place that has once been used
may be again. I had persuaded myself that we should find Mr. Douglas
under this roof.”
“And how long have you been playing this trick upon us, Mr. Holmes?”
said the inspector angrily. “How long have you allowed us to waste
ourselves upon a search that you knew to be an absurd one?”
“Not one instant, my dear Mr. Mac. Only last night did I form my views
of the case. As they could not be put to the proof until this evening,
I invited you and your colleague to take a holiday for the day. Pray
what more could I do? When I found the suit of clothes in the moat, it
at once became apparent to me that the body we had found could not have
been the body of Mr. John Douglas at all, but must be that of the
bicyclist from Tunbridge Wells. No other conclusion was possible.
Therefore I had to determine where Mr. John Douglas himself could be,
and the balance of probability was that with the connivance of his wife
and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such conveniences
for a fugitive, and awaiting quieter times when he could make his final
escape.”
“Well, you figured it out about right,” said Douglas approvingly. “I
thought I’d dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I stood
under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds once for all
off my track. Mind you, from first to last I have done nothing to be
ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do again; but you’ll judge
that for yourselves when I tell you my story. Never mind warning me,
Inspector: I’m ready to stand pat upon the truth.
“I’m not going to begin at the beginning. That’s all there,” he
indicated my bundle of papers, “and a mighty queer yarn you’ll find it.
It all comes down to this: That there are some men that have good cause
to hate me and would give their last dollar to know that they had got
me. So long as I am alive and they are alive, there is no safety in
this world for me. They hunted me from Chicago to California, then they
chased me out of America; but when I married and settled down in this
quiet spot I thought my last years were going to be peaceable.
“I never explained to my wife how things were. Why should I pull her
into it? She would never have a quiet moment again; but would always be
imagining trouble. I fancy she knew something, for I may have dropped a
word here or a word there; but until yesterday, after you gentlemen had
seen her, she never knew the rights of the matter. She told you all she
knew, and so did Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened
there was mighty little time for explanations. She knows everything
now, and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner. But it
was a hard question, dear,” he took her hand for an instant in his own,
“and I acted for the best.
“Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over in
Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street. It was
only a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I never
doubted who it was. It was the worst enemy I had among them all—one who
has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I
knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I
guessed I’d fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb
in the States about ’76. I never doubted that it would be with me
still.
“I was on my guard all that next day, and never went out into the park.
It’s as well, or he’d have had the drop on me with that buckshot gun of
his before ever I could draw on him. After the bridge was up—my mind
was always more restful when that bridge was up in the evenings—I put
the thing clear out of my head. I never dreamed of his getting into the
house and waiting for me. But when I made my round in my dressing gown,
as was my habit, I had no sooner entered the study than I scented
danger. I guess when a man has had dangers in his life—and I’ve had
more than most in my time—there is a kind of sixth sense that waves the
red flag. I saw the signal clear enough, and yet I couldn’t tell you
why. Next instant I spotted a boot under the window curtain, and then I
saw why plain enough.
“I’d just the one candle that was in my hand; but there was a good
light from the hall lamp through the open door. I put down the candle
and jumped for a hammer that I’d left on the mantel. At the same moment
he sprang at me. I saw the glint of a knife, and I lashed at him with
the hammer. I got him somewhere; for the knife tinkled down on the
floor. He dodged round the table as quick as an eel, and a moment later
he’d got his gun from under his coat. I heard him cock it; but I had
got hold of it before he could fire. I had it by the barrel, and we
wrestled for it all ends up for a minute or more. It was death to the
man that lost his grip.
“He never lost his grip; but he got it butt downward for a moment too
long. Maybe it was I that pulled the trigger. Maybe we just jolted it
off between us. Anyhow, he got both barrels in the face, and there I
was, staring down at all that was left of Ted Baldwin. I’d recognized
him in the township, and again when he sprang for me; but his own
mother wouldn’t recognize him as I saw him then. I’m used to rough
work; but I fairly turned sick at the sight of him.
“I was hanging on the side of the table when Barker came hurrying down.
I heard my wife coming, and I ran to the door and stopped her. It was
no sight for a woman. I promised I’d come to her soon. I said a word or
two to Barker—he took it all in at a glance—and we waited for the rest
to come along. But there was no sign of them. Then we understood that
they could hear nothing, and that all that had happened was known only
to ourselves.
“It was at that instant that the idea came to me. I was fairly dazzled
by the brilliance of it. The man’s sleeve had slipped up and there was
the branded mark of the lodge upon his forearm. See here!”
The man whom we had known as Douglas turned up his own coat and cuff to
show a brown triangle within a circle exactly like that which we had
seen upon the dead man.
“It was the sight of that which started me on it. I seemed to see it
all clear at a glance. There were his height and hair and figure, about
the same as my own. No one could swear to his face, poor devil! I
brought down this suit of clothes, and in a quarter of an hour Barker
and I had put my dressing gown on him and he lay as you found him. We
tied all his things into a bundle, and I weighted them with the only
weight I could find and put them through the window. The card he had
meant to lay upon my body was lying beside his own.
“My rings were put on his finger; but when it came to the wedding
ring,” he held out his muscular hand, “you can see for yourselves that
I had struck the limit. I have not moved it since the day I was
married, and it would have taken a file to get it off. I don’t know,
anyhow, that I should have cared to part with it; but if I had wanted
to I couldn’t. So we just had to leave that detail to take care of
itself. On the other hand, I brought a bit of plaster down and put it
where I am wearing one myself at this instant. You slipped up there,
Mr. Holmes, clever as you are; for if you had chanced to take off that
plaster you would have found no cut underneath it.
“Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while and then
get away where I could be joined by my ‘widow’ we should have a chance
at last of living in peace for the rest of our lives. These devils
would give me no rest so long as I was above ground; but if they saw in
the papers that Baldwin had got his man, there would be an end of all
my troubles. I hadn’t much time to make it all clear to Barker and to
my wife; but they understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all
about this hiding place, so did Ames; but it never entered his head to
connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to Barker
to do the rest.
“I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened the
window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how the
murderer escaped. It was a tall order, that; but as the bridge was up
there was no other way. Then, when everything was fixed, he rang the
bell for all he was worth. What happened afterward you know. And so,
gentlemen, you can do what you please; but I’ve told you the truth and
the whole truth, so help me God! What I ask you now is how do I stand
by the English law?”
There was a silence which was broken by Sherlock Holmes.
“The English law is in the main a just law. You will get no worse than
your deserts from that, Mr. Douglas. But I would ask you how did this
man know that you lived here, or how to get into your house, or where
to hide to get you?”
“I know nothing of this.”
Holmes’s face was very white and grave. “The story is not over yet, I
fear,” said he. “You may find worse dangers than the English law, or
even than your enemies from America. I see trouble before you, Mr.
Douglas. You’ll take my advice and still be on your guard.”
And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me
for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also
from the year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which
ended with the strange story of the man who had been known as John
Douglas. I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time, and
westward some thousands of miles in space, that I may lay before you a
singular and terrible narrative—so singular and so terrible that you
may find it hard to believe that even as I tell it, even so did it
occur.
Do not think that I intrude one story before another is finished. As
you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have detailed
those distant events and you have solved this mystery of the past, we
shall meet once more in those rooms on Baker Street, where this, like
so many other wonderful happenings, will find its end.
PART II
The Scowrers
Chapter I
The Man
It was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a severe
winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains.
The steam ploughs had, however, kept the railroad open, and the evening
train which connects the long line of coal-mining and iron-working
settlements was slowly groaning its way up the steep gradients which
lead from Stagville on the plain to Vermissa, the central township
which lies at the head of Vermissa Valley. From this point the track
sweeps downward to Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely
agricultural county of Merton. It was a single track railroad; but at
every siding—and they were numerous—long lines of trucks piled with
coal and iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude
population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the
United States of America.
For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed
it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water
pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and
tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon
their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and
jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous
valley in the centre. Up this the little train was slowly crawling.
The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger car, a long,
bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were seated. The
greater number of these were workmen returning from their day’s toil in
the lower part of the valley. At least a dozen, by their grimed faces
and the safety lanterns which they carried, proclaimed themselves
miners. These sat smoking in a group and conversed in low voices,
glancing occasionally at two men on the opposite side of the car, whose
uniforms and badges showed them to be policemen.
Several women of the labouring class and one or two travellers who
might have been small local storekeepers made up the rest of the
company, with the exception of one young man in a corner by himself. It
is with this man that we are concerned. Take a good look at him; for he
is worth it.
He is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man, not far, one would
guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humorous gray
eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round
through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that
he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be
friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his
habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready
smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a
certain firmness of jaw and grim tightness about the lips which would
warn him that there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant,
brown-haired young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good
or evil upon any society to which he was introduced.
Having made one or two tentative remarks to the nearest miner, and
receiving only short, gruff replies, the traveller resigned himself to
uncongenial silence, staring moodily out of the window at the fading
landscape.
It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom there pulsed
the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills. Great heaps of
slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each side, with the high shafts
of the collieries towering above them. Huddled groups of mean, wooden
houses, the windows of which were beginning to outline themselves in
light, were scattered here and there along the line, and the frequent
halting places were crowded with their swarthy inhabitants.
The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no resorts for
the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were stern signs of the
crudest battle of life, the rude work to be done, and the rude, strong
workers who did it.
The young traveller gazed out into this dismal country with a face of
mingled repulsion and interest, which showed that the scene was new to
him. At intervals he drew from his pocket a bulky letter to which he
referred, and on the margins of which he scribbled some notes. Once
from the back of his waist he produced something which one would hardly
have expected to find in the possession of so mild-mannered a man. It
was a navy revolver of the largest size. As he turned it slantwise to
the light, the glint upon the rims of the copper shells within the drum
showed that it was fully loaded. He quickly restored it to his secret
pocket, but not before it had been observed by a working man who had
seated himself upon the adjoining bench.
“Hullo, mate!” said he. “You seem heeled and ready.”
The young man smiled with an air of embarrassment.
“Yes,” said he, “we need them sometimes in the place I come from.”
“And where may that be?”
“I’m last from Chicago.”
“A stranger in these parts?”
“Yes.”
“You may find you need it here,” said the workman.
“Ah! is that so?” The young man seemed interested.
“Have you heard nothing of doings hereabouts?”
“Nothing out of the way.”
“Why, I thought the country was full of it. You’ll hear quick enough.
What made you come here?”
“I heard there was always work for a willing man.”
“Are you a member of the union?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’ll get your job, I guess. Have you any friends?”
“Not yet; but I have the means of making them.”
“How’s that, then?”
“I am one of the Eminent Order of Freemen. There’s no town without a
lodge, and where there is a lodge I’ll find my friends.”
The remark had a singular effect upon his companion. He glanced round
suspiciously at the others in the car. The miners were still whispering
among themselves. The two police officers were dozing. He came across,
seated himself close to the young traveller, and held out his hand.
“Put it there,” he said.
A hand-grip passed between the two.
“I see you speak the truth,” said the workman. “But it’s well to make
certain.” He raised his right hand to his right eyebrow. The traveller
at once raised his left hand to his left eyebrow.
“Dark nights are unpleasant,” said the workman.
“Yes, for strangers to travel,” the other answered.
“That’s good enough. I’m Brother Scanlan, Lodge 341, Vermissa Valley.
Glad to see you in these parts.”
“Thank you. I’m Brother John McMurdo, Lodge 29, Chicago. Bodymaster
J.H. Scott. But I am in luck to meet a brother so early.”
“Well, there are plenty of us about. You won’t find the order more
flourishing anywhere in the States than right here in Vermissa Valley.
But we could do with some lads like you. I can’t understand a spry man
of the union finding no work to do in Chicago.”
“I found plenty of work to do,” said McMurdo.
“Then why did you leave?”
McMurdo nodded towards the policemen and smiled. “I guess those chaps
would be glad to know,” he said.
Scanlan groaned sympathetically. “In trouble?” he asked in a whisper.
“Deep.”
“A penitentiary job?”
“And the rest.”
“Not a killing!”
“It’s early days to talk of such things,” said McMurdo with the air of
a man who had been surprised into saying more than he intended. “I’ve
my own good reasons for leaving Chicago, and let that be enough for
you. Who are you that you should take it on yourself to ask such
things?” His gray eyes gleamed with sudden and dangerous anger from
behind his glasses.
“All right, mate, no offense meant. The boys will think none the worse
of you, whatever you may have done. Where are you bound for now?”
“Vermissa.”
“That’s the third halt down the line. Where are you staying?”
McMurdo took out an envelope and held it close to the murky oil lamp.
“Here is the address—Jacob Shafter, Sheridan Street. It’s a boarding
house that was recommended by a man I knew in Chicago.”
“Well, I don’t know it; but Vermissa is out of my beat. I live at
Hobson’s Patch, and that’s here where we are drawing up. But, say,
there’s one bit of advice I’ll give you before we part: If you’re in
trouble in Vermissa, go straight to the Union House and see Boss
McGinty. He is the Bodymaster of Vermissa Lodge, and nothing can happen
in these parts unless Black Jack McGinty wants it. So long, mate! Maybe
we’ll meet in lodge one of these evenings. But mind my words: If you
are in trouble, go to Boss McGinty.”
Scanlan descended, and McMurdo was left once again to his thoughts.
Night had now fallen, and the flames of the frequent furnaces were
roaring and leaping in the darkness. Against their lurid background
dark figures were bending and straining, twisting and turning, with the
motion of winch or of windlass, to the rhythm of an eternal clank and
roar.
“I guess hell must look something like that,” said a voice.
McMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen had shifted in his
seat and was staring out into the fiery waste.
“For that matter,” said the other policeman, “I allow that hell must
_be_ something like that. If there are worse devils down yonder than
some we could name, it’s more than I’d expect. I guess you are new to
this part, young man?”
“Well, what if I am?” McMurdo answered in a surly voice.
“Just this, mister, that I should advise you to be careful in choosing
your friends. I don’t think I’d begin with Mike Scanlan or his gang if
I were you.”
“What the hell is it to you who are my friends?” roared McMurdo in a
voice which brought every head in the carriage round to witness the
altercation. “Did I ask you for your advice, or did you think me such a
sucker that I couldn’t move without it? You speak when you are spoken
to, and by the Lord you’d have to wait a long time if it was me!” He
thrust out his face and grinned at the patrolmen like a snarling dog.
The two policemen, heavy, good-natured men, were taken aback by the
extraordinary vehemence with which their friendly advances had been
rejected.
“No offense, stranger,” said one. “It was a warning for your own good,
seeing that you are, by your own showing, new to the place.”
“I’m new to the place; but I’m not new to you and your kind!” cried
McMurdo in cold fury. “I guess you’re the same in all places, shoving
your advice in when nobody asks for it.”
“Maybe we’ll see more of you before very long,” said one of the
patrolmen with a grin. “You’re a real hand-picked one, if I am a
judge.”
“I was thinking the same,” remarked the other. “I guess we may meet
again.”
“I’m not afraid of you, and don’t you think it!” cried McMurdo. “My
name’s Jack McMurdo—see? If you want me, you’ll find me at Jacob
Shafter’s on Sheridan Street, Vermissa; so I’m not hiding from you, am
I? Day or night I dare to look the like of you in the face—don’t make
any mistake about that!”
There was a murmur of sympathy and admiration from the miners at the
dauntless demeanour of the newcomer, while the two policemen shrugged
their shoulders and renewed a conversation between themselves.
A few minutes later the train ran into the ill-lit station, and there
was a general clearing; for Vermissa was by far the largest town on the
line. McMurdo picked up his leather gripsack and was about to start off
into the darkness, when one of the miners accosted him.
“By Gar, mate! you know how to speak to the cops,” he said in a voice
of awe. “It was grand to hear you. Let me carry your grip and show you
the road. I’m passing Shafter’s on the way to my own shack.”
There was a chorus of friendly “Good-nights” from the other miners as
they passed from the platform. Before ever he had set foot in it,
McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in Vermissa.
The country had been a place of terror; but the town was in its way
even more depressing. Down that long valley there was at least a
certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and the clouds of drifting
smoke, while the strength and industry of man found fitting monuments
in the hills which he had spilled by the side of his monstrous
excavations. But the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and
squalor. The broad street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible
rutted paste of muddy snow. The sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The
numerous gas-lamps served only to show more clearly a long line of
wooden houses, each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and
dirty.
As they approached the centre of the town the scene was brightened by a
row of well-lit stores, and even more by a cluster of saloons and
gaming houses, in which the miners spent their hard-earned but generous
wages.
“That’s the Union House,” said the guide, pointing to one saloon which
rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel. “Jack McGinty is the boss
there.”
“What sort of a man is he?” McMurdo asked.
“What! have you never heard of the boss?”
“How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a stranger in
these parts?”
“Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country. It’s been
in the papers often enough.”
“What for?”
“Well,” the miner lowered his voice—“over the affairs.”
“What affairs?”
“Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without offense.
There’s only one set of affairs that you’ll hear of in these parts, and
that’s the affairs of the Scowrers.”
“Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of
murderers, are they not?”
“Hush, on your life!” cried the miner, standing still in alarm, and
gazing in amazement at his companion. “Man, you won’t live long in
these parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man has
had the life beaten out of him for less.”
“Well, I know nothing about them. It’s only what I have read.”
“And I’m not saying that you have not read the truth.” The man looked
nervously round him as he spoke, peering into the shadows as if he
feared to see some lurking danger. “If killing is murder, then God
knows there is murder and to spare. But don’t you dare to breathe the
name of Jack McGinty in connection with it, stranger; for every whisper
goes back to him, and he is not one that is likely to let it pass. Now,
that’s the house you’re after, that one standing back from the street.
You’ll find old Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in
this township.”
“I thank you,” said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his new
acquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path which led to the
dwelling house, at the door of which he gave a resounding knock.
It was opened at once by someone very different from what he had
expected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was of
the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a
pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger with
surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour
over her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it
seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the
more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy
surroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those black
slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. So
entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she
who broke the silence.
“I thought it was father,” said she with a pleasing little touch of a
German accent. “Did you come to see him? He is down town. I expect him
back every minute.”
McMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration until her eyes
dropped in confusion before this masterful visitor.
“No, miss,” he said at last, “I’m in no hurry to see him. But your
house was recommended to me for board. I thought it might suit me—and
now I know it will.”
“You are quick to make up your mind,” said she with a smile.
“Anyone but a blind man could do as much,” the other answered.
She laughed at the compliment. “Come right in, sir,” she said. “I’m
Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter’s daughter. My mother’s dead, and I run
the house. You can sit down by the stove in the front room until father
comes along—Ah, here he is! So you can fix things with him right away.”
A heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In a few words McMurdo
explained his business. A man of the name of Murphy had given him the
address in Chicago. He in turn had had it from someone else. Old
Shafter was quite ready. The stranger made no bones about terms, agreed
at once to every condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money.
For seven dollars a week paid in advance he was to have board and
lodging.
So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from justice, took
up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the first step which was
to lead to so long and dark a train of events, ending in a far distant
land.
Chapter II
The Bodymaster
McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the folk
around soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely the most
important person at Shafter’s. There were ten or a dozen boarders
there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the
stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an
evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest,
his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born
boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all around
him.
And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railway
carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled the
respect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law, too, and
all who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter contempt which
delighted some and alarmed others of his fellow boarders.
From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that the
daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he had
set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward suitor. On
the second day he told her that he loved her, and from then onward he
repeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she might
say to discourage him.
“Someone else?” he would cry. “Well, the worse luck for someone else!
Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life’s chance and all my
heart’s desire for someone else? You can keep on saying no, Ettie: the
day will come when you will say yes, and I’m young enough to wait.”
He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his pretty,
coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of experience and
of mystery which attracts a woman’s interest, and finally her love. He
could talk of the sweet valleys of County Monaghan from which he came,
of the lovely, distant island, the low hills and green meadows of which
seemed the more beautiful when imagination viewed them from this place
of grime and snow.
Then he was versed in the life of the cities of the North, of Detroit,
and the lumber camps of Michigan, and finally of Chicago, where he had
worked in a planing mill. And afterwards came the hint of romance, the
feeling that strange things had happened to him in that great city, so
strange and so intimate that they might not be spoken of. He spoke
wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a
strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her
dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy—those two qualities
which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.
McMurdo had obtained a temporary job as bookkeeper for he was a
well-educated man. This kept him out most of the day, and he had not
found occasion yet to report himself to the head of the lodge of the
Eminent Order of Freemen. He was reminded of his omission, however, by
a visit one evening from Mike Scanlan, the fellow member whom he had
met in the train. Scanlan, the small, sharp-faced, nervous, black-eyed
man, seemed glad to see him once more. After a glass or two of whisky
he broached the object of his visit.
“Say, McMurdo,” said he, “I remembered your address, so I made bold to
call. I’m surprised that you’ve not reported to the Bodymaster. Why
haven’t you seen Boss McGinty yet?”
“Well, I had to find a job. I have been busy.”
“You must find time for him if you have none for anything else. Good
Lord, man! you’re a fool not to have been down to the Union House and
registered your name the first morning after you came here! If you run
against him—well, you mustn’t, that’s all!”
McMurdo showed mild surprise. “I’ve been a member of the lodge for over
two years, Scanlan, but I never heard that duties were so pressing as
all that.”
“Maybe not in Chicago.”
“Well, it’s the same society here.”
“Is it?”
Scanlan looked at him long and fixedly. There was something sinister in
his eyes.
“Isn’t it?”
“You’ll tell me that in a month’s time. I hear you had a talk with the
patrolmen after I left the train.”
“How did you know that?”
“Oh, it got about—things do get about for good and for bad in this
district.”
“Well, yes. I told the hounds what I thought of them.”
“By the Lord, you’ll be a man after McGinty’s heart!”
“What, does he hate the police too?”
Scanlan burst out laughing. “You go and see him, my lad,” said he as he
took his leave. “It’s not the police but you that he’ll hate if you
don’t! Now, take a friend’s advice and go at once!”
It chanced that on the same evening McMurdo had another more pressing
interview which urged him in the same direction. It may have been that
his attentions to Ettie had been more evident than before, or that they
had gradually obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his good German
host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the
young man into his private room and started on the subject without any
circumlocution.
“It seems to me, mister,” said he, “that you are gettin’ set on my
Ettie. Ain’t that so, or am I wrong?”
“Yes, that is so,” the young man answered.
“Vell, I vant to tell you right now that it ain’t no manner of use.
There’s someone slipped in afore you.”
“She told me so.”
“Vell, you can lay that she told you truth. But did she tell you who it
vas?”
“No, I asked her; but she wouldn’t tell.”
“I dare say not, the leetle baggage! Perhaps she did not vish to
frighten you avay.”
“Frighten!” McMurdo was on fire in a moment.
“Ah, yes, my friend! You need not be ashamed to be frightened of him.
It is Teddy Baldwin.”
“And who the devil is he?”
“He is a boss of Scowrers.”
“Scowrers! I’ve heard of them before. It’s Scowrers here and Scowrers
there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid of? Who are the
Scowrers?”
The boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as everyone did
who talked about that terrible society. “The Scowrers,” said he, “are
the Eminent Order of Freemen!”
The young man stared. “Why, I am a member of that order myself.”
“You! I vould never have had you in my house if I had known it—not if
you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a veek.”
“What’s wrong with the order? It’s for charity and good fellowship. The
rules say so.”
“Maybe in some places. Not here!”
“What is it here?”
“It’s a murder society, that’s vat it is.”
McMurdo laughed incredulously. “How can you prove that?” he asked.
“Prove it! Are there not fifty murders to prove it? Vat about Milman
and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson family, and old Mr. Hyam, and little
Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is there a man or a voman in
this valley vat does not know it?”
“See here!” said McMurdo earnestly. “I want you to take back what
you’ve said, or else make it good. One or the other you must do before
I quit this room. Put yourself in my place. Here am I, a stranger in
the town. I belong to a society that I know only as an innocent one.
You’ll find it through the length and breadth of the States, but always
as an innocent one. Now, when I am counting upon joining it here, you
tell me that it is the same as a murder society called the Scowrers. I
guess you owe me either an apology or else an explanation, Mr.
Shafter.”
“I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The bosses of
the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the one, it is the
other vat vill strike you. We have proved it too often.”
“That’s just gossip—I want proof!” said McMurdo.
“If you live here long you vill get your proof. But I forget that you
are yourself one of them. You vill soon be as bad as the rest. But you
vill find other lodgings, mister. I cannot have you here. Is it not bad
enough that one of these people come courting my Ettie, and that I dare
not turn him down, but that I should have another for my boarder? Yes,
indeed, you shall not sleep here after to-night!”
McMurdo found himself under sentence of banishment both from his
comfortable quarters and from the girl whom he loved. He found her
alone in the sitting-room that same evening, and he poured his troubles
into her ear.
“Sure, your father is after giving me notice,” he said. “It’s little I
would care if it was just my room, but indeed, Ettie, though it’s only
a week that I’ve known you, you are the very breath of life to me, and
I can’t live without you!”
“Oh, hush, Mr. McMurdo, don’t speak so!” said the girl. “I have told
you, have I not, that you are too late? There is another, and if I have
not promised to marry him at once, at least I can promise no one else.”
“Suppose I had been first, Ettie, would I have had a chance?”
The girl sank her face into her hands. “I wish to heaven that you had
been first!” she sobbed.
McMurdo was down on his knees before her in an instant. “For God’s
sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!” he cried. “Will you ruin your life
and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow your heart, acushla!
’Tis a safer guide than any promise before you knew what it was that
you were saying.”
He had seized Ettie’s white hand between his own strong brown ones.
“Say that you will be mine, and we will face it out together!”
“Not here?”
“Yes, here.”
“No, no, Jack!” His arms were round her now. “It could not be here.
Could you take me away?”
A struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo’s face; but it ended by
setting like granite. “No, here,” he said. “I’ll hold you against the
world, Ettie, right here where we are!”
“Why should we not leave together?”
“No, Ettie, I can’t leave here.”
“But why?”
“I’d never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been driven out.
Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not free folks in a free
country? If you love me, and I you, who will dare to come between?”
“You don’t know, Jack. You’ve been here too short a time. You don’t
know this Baldwin. You don’t know McGinty and his Scowrers.”
“No, I don’t know them, and I don’t fear them, and I don’t believe in
them!” said McMurdo. “I’ve lived among rough men, my darling, and
instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared
me—always, Ettie. It’s mad on the face of it! If these men, as your
father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if everyone
knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to justice? You
answer me that, Ettie!”
“Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a
month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear
that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely,
Jack, you must have read all this. I had understood that every paper in
the United States was writing about it.”
“Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it was a
story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they are
wronged and have no other way to help themselves.”
“Oh, Jack, don’t let me hear you speak so! That is how he speaks—the
other one!”
“Baldwin—he speaks like that, does he?”
“And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell you the
truth. I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also. I fear him
for myself; but above all I fear him for father. I know that some great
sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say what I really felt. That is
why I have put him off with half-promises. It was in real truth our
only hope. But if you would fly with me, Jack, we could take father
with us and live forever far from the power of these wicked men.”
Again there was the struggle upon McMurdo’s face, and again it set like
granite. “No harm shall come to you, Ettie—nor to your father either.
As to wicked men, I expect you may find that I am as bad as the worst
of them before we’re through.”
“No, no, Jack! I would trust you anywhere.”
McMurdo laughed bitterly. “Good Lord! how little you know of me! Your
innocent soul, my darling, could not even guess what is passing in
mine. But, hullo, who’s the visitor?”
The door had opened suddenly, and a young fellow came swaggering in
with the air of one who is the master. He was a handsome, dashing young
man of about the same age and build as McMurdo himself. Under his
broad-brimmed black felt hat, which he had not troubled to remove, a
handsome face with fierce, domineering eyes and a curved hawk-bill of a
nose looked savagely at the pair who sat by the stove.
Ettie had jumped to her feet full of confusion and alarm. “I’m glad to
see you, Mr. Baldwin,” said she. “You’re earlier than I had thought.
Come and sit down.”
Baldwin stood with his hands on his hips looking at McMurdo. “Who is
this?” he asked curtly.
“It’s a friend of mine, Mr. Baldwin, a new boarder here. Mr. McMurdo,
may I introduce you to Mr. Baldwin?”
The young men nodded in surly fashion to each other.
“Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?” said Baldwin.
“I didn’t understand that there was any relation between you.”
“Didn’t you? Well, you can understand it now. You can take it from me
that this young lady is mine, and you’ll find it a very fine evening
for a walk.”
“Thank you, I am in no humour for a walk.”
“Aren’t you?” The man’s savage eyes were blazing with anger. “Maybe you
are in a humour for a fight, Mr. Boarder!”
“That I am!” cried McMurdo, springing to his feet. “You never said a
more welcome word.”
“For God’s sake, Jack! Oh, for God’s sake!” cried poor, distracted
Ettie. “Oh, Jack, Jack, he will hurt you!”
“Oh, it’s Jack, is it?” said Baldwin with an oath. “You’ve come to that
already, have you?”
“Oh, Ted, be reasonable—be kind! For my sake, Ted, if ever you loved
me, be big-hearted and forgiving!”
“I think, Ettie, that if you were to leave us alone we could get this
thing settled,” said McMurdo quietly. “Or maybe, Mr. Baldwin, you will
take a turn down the street with me. It’s a fine evening, and there’s
some open ground beyond the next block.”
“I’ll get even with you without needing to dirty my hands,” said his
enemy. “You’ll wish you had never set foot in this house before I am
through with you!”
“No time like the present,” cried McMurdo.
“I’ll choose my own time, mister. You can leave the time to me. See
here!” He suddenly rolled up his sleeve and showed upon his forearm a
peculiar sign which appeared to have been branded there. It was a
circle with a triangle within it. “D’you know what that means?”
“I neither know nor care!”
“Well, you will know, I’ll promise you that. You won’t be much older,
either. Perhaps Miss Ettie can tell you something about it. As to you,
Ettie, you’ll come back to me on your knees—d’ye hear, girl?—on your
knees—and then I’ll tell you what your punishment may be. You’ve
sowed—and by the Lord, I’ll see that you reap!” He glanced at them both
in fury. Then he turned upon his heel, and an instant later the outer
door had banged behind him.
For a few moments McMurdo and the girl stood in silence. Then she threw
her arms around him.
“Oh, Jack, how brave you were! But it is no use, you must fly!
To-night—Jack—to-night! It’s your only hope. He will have your life. I
read it in his horrible eyes. What chance have you against a dozen of
them, with Boss McGinty and all the power of the lodge behind them?”
McMurdo disengaged her hands, kissed her, and gently pushed her back
into a chair. “There, acushla, there! Don’t be disturbed or fear for
me. I’m a Freeman myself. I’m after telling your father about it. Maybe
I am no better than the others; so don’t make a saint of me. Perhaps
you hate me too, now that I’ve told you as much?”
“Hate you, Jack? While life lasts I could never do that! I’ve heard
that there is no harm in being a Freeman anywhere but here; so why
should I think the worse of you for that? But if you are a Freeman,
Jack, why should you not go down and make a friend of Boss McGinty? Oh,
hurry, Jack, hurry! Get your word in first, or the hounds will be on
your trail.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” said McMurdo. “I’ll go right now and
fix it. You can tell your father that I’ll sleep here to-night and find
some other quarters in the morning.”
The bar of McGinty’s saloon was crowded as usual; for it was the
favourite loafing place of all the rougher elements of the town. The
man was popular; for he had a rough, jovial disposition which formed a
mask, covering a great deal which lay behind it. But apart from this
popularity, the fear in which he was held throughout the township, and
indeed down the whole thirty miles of the valley and past the mountains
on each side of it, was enough in itself to fill his bar; for none
could afford to neglect his good will.
Besides those secret powers which it was universally believed that he
exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public official, a
municipal councillor, and a commissioner of roads, elected to the
office through the votes of the ruffians who in turn expected to
receive favours at his hands. Assessments and taxes were enormous; the
public works were notoriously neglected, the accounts were slurred over
by bribed auditors, and the decent citizen was terrorized into paying
public blackmail, and holding his tongue lest some worse thing befall
him.
Thus it was that, year by year, Boss McGinty’s diamond pins became more
obtrusive, his gold chains more weighty across a more gorgeous vest,
and his saloon stretched farther and farther, until it threatened to
absorb one whole side of the Market Square.
McMurdo pushed open the swinging door of the saloon and made his way
amid the crowd of men within, through an atmosphere blurred with
tobacco smoke and heavy with the smell of spirits. The place was
brilliantly lighted, and the huge, heavily gilt mirrors upon every wall
reflected and multiplied the garish illumination. There were several
bartenders in their shirt sleeves, hard at work mixing drinks for the
loungers who fringed the broad, brass-trimmed counter.
At the far end, with his body resting upon the bar and a cigar stuck at
an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, stood a tall, strong,
heavily built man who could be none other than the famous McGinty
himself. He was a black-maned giant, bearded to the cheek-bones, and
with a shock of raven hair which fell to his collar. His complexion was
as swarthy as that of an Italian, and his eyes were of a strange dead
black, which, combined with a slight squint, gave them a particularly
sinister appearance.
All else in the man—his noble proportions, his fine features, and his
frank bearing—fitted in with that jovial, man-to-man manner which he
affected. Here, one would say, is a bluff, honest fellow, whose heart
would be sound however rude his outspoken words might seem. It was only
when those dead, dark eyes, deep and remorseless, were turned upon a
man that he shrank within himself, feeling that he was face to face
with an infinite possibility of latent evil, with a strength and
courage and cunning behind it which made it a thousand times more
deadly.
Having had a good look at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward with
his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the little
group of courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful boss, laughing
uproariously at the smallest of his jokes. The young stranger’s bold
gray eyes looked back fearlessly through their glasses at the deadly
black ones which turned sharply upon him.
“Well, young man, I can’t call your face to mind.”
“I’m new here, Mr. McGinty.”
“You are not so new that you can’t give a gentleman his proper title.”
“He’s Councillor McGinty, young man,” said a voice from the group.
“I’m sorry, Councillor. I’m strange to the ways of the place. But I was
advised to see you.”
“Well, you see me. This is all there is. What d’you think of me?”
“Well, it’s early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and your
soul as fine as your face, then I’d ask for nothing better,” said
McMurdo.
[Illustration: “If your heart is as big as your body, and your soul
as fine as your face, then I’d ask for nothing better,” said McMurdo.]
“By Gar! you’ve got an Irish tongue in your head anyhow,” cried the
saloon-keeper, not quite certain whether to humour this audacious
visitor or to stand upon his dignity.
“So you are good enough to pass my appearance?”
“Sure,” said McMurdo.
“And you were told to see me?”
“I was.”
“And who told you?”
“Brother Scanlan of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health
Councillor, and to our better acquaintance.” He raised a glass with
which he had been served to his lips and elevated his little finger as
he drank it.
McGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his thick black
eyebrows. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” said he. “I’ll have to look a
bit closer into this, Mister—”
“McMurdo.”
“A bit closer, Mr. McMurdo; for we don’t take folk on trust in these
parts, nor believe all we’re told neither. Come in here for a moment,
behind the bar.”
There was a small room there, lined with barrels. McGinty carefully
closed the door, and then seated himself on one of them, biting
thoughtfully on his cigar and surveying his companion with those
disquieting eyes. For a couple of minutes he sat in complete silence.
McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one hand in his coat pocket,
the other twisting his brown moustache. Suddenly McGinty stooped and
produced a wicked-looking revolver.
“See here, my joker,” said he, “if I thought you were playing any game
on us, it would be short work for you.”
“This is a strange welcome,” McMurdo answered with some dignity, “for
the Bodymaster of a lodge of Freemen to give to a stranger brother.”
“Ay, but it’s just that same that you have to prove,” said McGinty,
“and God help you if you fail! Where were you made?”
“Lodge 29, Chicago.”
“When?”
“June 24, 1872.”
“What Bodymaster?”
“James H. Scott.”
“Who is your district ruler?”
“Bartholomew Wilson.”
“Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?”
“Working, the same as you—but a poorer job.”
“You have your back answer quick enough.”
“Yes, I was always quick of speech.”
“Are you quick of action?”
“I have had that name among those that knew me best.”
“Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you heard anything of
the lodge in these parts?”
“I’ve heard that it takes a man to be a brother.”
“True for you, Mr. McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?”
“I’m damned if I tell you that!”
McGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered in such
fashion, and it amused him. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because no brother may tell another a lie.”
“Then the truth is too bad to tell?”
“You can put it that way if you like.”
“See here, mister, you can’t expect me, as Bodymaster, to pass into the
lodge a man for whose past he can’t answer.”
McMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper cutting from an
inner pocket.
“You wouldn’t squeal on a fellow?” said he.
“I’ll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to me!” cried
McGinty hotly.
“You are right, Councillor,” said McMurdo meekly. “I should apologize.
I spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe in your hands.
Look at that clipping.”
McGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of one Jonas
Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in the New Year week
of 1874.
“Your work?” he asked, as he handed back the paper.
McMurdo nodded.
“Why did you shoot him?”
“I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good
gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make. This man
Pinto helped me to shove the queer—”
“To do what?”
“Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then he said
he would split. Maybe he did split. I didn’t wait to see. I just killed
him and lighted out for the coal country.”
“Why the coal country?”
“’Cause I’d read in the papers that they weren’t too particular in
those parts.”
McGinty laughed. “You were first a coiner and then a murderer, and you
came to these parts because you thought you’d be welcome.”
“That’s about the size of it,” McMurdo answered.
“Well, I guess you’ll go far. Say, can you make those dollars yet?”
McMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. “Those never passed the
Philadelphia mint,” said he.
“You don’t say!” McGinty held them to the light in his enormous hand,
which was hairy as a gorilla’s. “I can see no difference. Gar! you’ll
be a mighty useful brother, I’m thinking! We can do with a bad man or
two among us, Friend McMurdo: for there are times when we have to take
our own part. We’d soon be against the wall if we didn’t shove back at
those that were pushing us.”
“Well, I guess I’ll do my share of shoving with the rest of the boys.”
“You seem to have a good nerve. You didn’t squirm when I shoved this
gun at you.”
“It was not me that was in danger.”
“Who then?”
“It was you, Councillor.” McMurdo drew a cocked pistol from the side
pocket of his peajacket. “I was covering you all the time. I guess my
shot would have been as quick as yours.”
“By Gar!” McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of
laughter. “Say, we’ve had no such holy terror come to hand this many a
year. I reckon the lodge will learn to be proud of you.... Well, what
the hell do you want? And can’t I speak alone with a gentleman for five
minutes but you must butt in on us?”
The bartender stood abashed. “I’m sorry, Councillor, but it’s Ted
Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute.”
The message was unnecessary; for the set, cruel face of the man himself
was looking over the servant’s shoulder. He pushed the bartender out
and closed the door on him.
“So,” said he with a furious glance at McMurdo, “you got here first,
did you? I’ve a word to say to you, Councillor, about this man.”
“Then say it here and now before my face,” cried McMurdo.
“I’ll say it at my own time, in my own way.”
“Tut! Tut!” said McGinty, getting off his barrel. “This will never do.
We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it’s not for us to greet him
in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up!”
“Never!” cried Baldwin in a fury.
“I’ve offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,” said
McMurdo. “I’ll fight him with fists, or, if that won’t satisfy him,
I’ll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I’ll leave it to you,
Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should.”
“What is it, then?”
“A young lady. She’s free to choose for herself.”
“Is she?” cried Baldwin.
“As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she was,” said
the Boss.
“Oh, that’s your ruling, is it?”
“Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin,” said McGinty, with a wicked stare. “Is it
you that would dispute it?”
“You would throw over one that has stood by you this five years in
favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You’re not
Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God! when next it comes to a
vote—”
The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the
other’s neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his
mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not
interfered.
“Easy, Councillor! For heaven’s sake, go easy!” he cried, as he dragged
him back.
McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken gasping for
breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the
very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.
“You’ve been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin—now you’ve got
it!” cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. “Maybe you think
if I was voted down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my
shoes. It’s for the lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief
I’ll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings.”
“I have nothing against you,” mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.
“Well, then,” cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff
joviality, “we are all good friends again and there’s an end of the
matter.”
He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the
cork.
“See now,” he continued, as he filled three high glasses. “Let us drink
the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can
be no bad blood between us. Now, then the left hand on the apple of my
throat. I say to you, Ted Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?”
“The clouds are heavy,” answered Baldwin
“But they will forever brighten.”
“And this I swear!”
The men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was performed
between Baldwin and McMurdo
“There!” cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. “That’s the end of the black
blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that’s a
heavy hand in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows—and as you will
damn soon find out, Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!”
“Faith, I’d be slow to do that,” said McMurdo. He held out his hand to
Baldwin. “I’m quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It’s my hot Irish
blood, they tell me. But it’s over for me, and I bear no grudge.”
Baldwin had to take the proffered hand; for the baleful eye of the
terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the
words of the other had moved him.
McGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. “Tut! These girls! These
girls!” he cried. “To think that the same petticoats should come
between two of my boys! It’s the devil’s own luck! Well, it’s the
colleen inside of them that must settle the question; for it’s outside
the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster—and the Lord be praised for that! We
have enough on us, without the women as well. You’ll have to be
affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother McMurdo. We have our own ways and
methods, different from Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if
you come then, we’ll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley.”
Chapter III
Lodge 341, Vermissa
On the day following the evening which had contained so many exciting
events, McMurdo moved his lodgings from old Jacob Shafter’s and took up
his quarters at the Widow MacNamara’s on the extreme outskirts of the
town. Scanlan, his original acquaintance aboard the train, had occasion
shortly afterwards to move into Vermissa, and the two lodged together.
There was no other boarder, and the hostess was an easy-going old
Irishwoman who left them to themselves; so that they had a freedom for
speech and action welcome to men who had secrets in common.
Shafter had relented to the extent of letting McMurdo come to his meals
there when he liked; so that his intercourse with Ettie was by no means
broken. On the contrary, it drew closer and more intimate as the weeks
went by.
In his bedroom at his new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take out the
coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a number of brothers
from the lodge were allowed to come in and see them, each carrying away
in his pocket some examples of the false money, so cunningly struck
that there was never the slightest difficulty or danger in passing it.
Why, with such a wonderful art at his command, McMurdo should
condescend to work at all was a perpetual mystery to his companions;
though he made it clear to anyone who asked him that if he lived
without any visible means it would very quickly bring the police upon
his track.
One policeman was indeed after him already; but the incident, as luck
would have it, did the adventurer a great deal more good than harm.
After the first introduction there were few evenings when he did not
find his way to McGinty’s saloon, there to make closer acquaintance
with “the boys,” which was the jovial title by which the dangerous gang
who infested the place were known to one another. His dashing manner
and fearlessness of speech made him a favourite with them all; while
the rapid and scientific way in which he polished off his antagonist in
an “all in” bar-room scrap earned the respect of that rough community.
Another incident, however, raised him even higher in their estimation.
Just at the crowded hour one night, the door opened and a man entered
with the quiet blue uniform and peaked cap of the mine police. This was
a special body raised by the railways and colliery owners to supplement
the efforts of the ordinary civil police, who were perfectly helpless
in the face of the organized ruffianism which terrorized the district.
There was a hush as he entered, and many a curious glance was cast at
him; but the relations between policemen and criminals are peculiar in
some parts of the States, and McGinty himself, standing behind his
counter, showed no surprise when the policeman enrolled himself among
his customers.
“A straight whisky; for the night is bitter,” said the police officer.
“I don’t think we have met before, Councillor?”
“You’ll be the new captain?” said McGinty.
“That’s so. We’re looking to you, Councillor, and to the other leading
citizens, to help us in upholding law and order in this township.
Captain Marvin is my name.”
“We’d do better without you, Captain Marvin,” said McGinty coldly; “for
we have our own police of the township, and no need for any imported
goods. What are you but the paid tool of the capitalists, hired by them
to club or shoot your poorer fellow citizen?”
“Well, well, we won’t argue about that,” said the police officer
good-humouredly. “I expect we all do our duty same as we see it; but we
can’t all see it the same.” He had drunk off his glass and had turned
to go, when his eyes fell upon the face of Jack McMurdo, who was
scowling at his elbow. “Hullo! Hullo!” he cried, looking him up and
down. “Here’s an old acquaintance!”
McMurdo shrank away from him. “I was never a friend to you nor any
other cursed copper in my life,” said he.
“An acquaintance isn’t always a friend,” said the police captain,
grinning. “You’re Jack McMurdo of Chicago, right enough, and don’t you
deny it!”
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not denying it,” said he. “D’ye
think I’m ashamed of my own name?”
“You’ve got good cause to be, anyhow.”
“What the devil d’you mean by that?” he roared with his fists clenched.
“No, no, Jack, bluster won’t do with me. I was an officer in Chicago
before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago
crook when I see one.”
McMurdo’s face fell. “Don’t tell me that you’re Marvin of the Chicago
Central!” he cried.
“Just the same old Teddy Marvin, at your service. We haven’t forgotten
the shooting of Jonas Pinto up there.”
“I never shot him.”
“Did you not? That’s good impartial evidence, ain’t it? Well, his death
came in uncommon handy for you, or they would have had you for shoving
the queer. Well, we can let that be bygones; for, between you and
me—and perhaps I’m going further than my duty in saying it—they could
get no clear case against you, and Chicago’s open to you to-morrow.”
“I’m very well where I am.”
“Well, I’ve given you the pointer, and you’re a sulky dog not to thank
me for it.”
“Well, I suppose you mean well, and I do thank you,” said McMurdo in no
very gracious manner.
“It’s mum with me so long as I see you living on the straight,” said
the captain. “But, by the Lord! if you get off after this, it’s another
story! So good-night to you—and good-night, Councillor.”
He left the bar-room; but not before he had created a local hero.
McMurdo’s deeds in far Chicago had been whispered before. He had put
off all questions with a smile, as one who did not wish to have
greatness thrust upon him. But now the thing was officially confirmed.
The bar loafers crowded round him and shook him heartily by the hand.
He was free of the community from that time on. He could drink hard and
show little trace of it; but that evening, had his mate Scanlan not
been at hand to lead him home, the feted hero would surely have spent
his night under the bar.
On a Saturday night McMurdo was introduced to the lodge. He had thought
to pass in without ceremony as being an initiate of Chicago; but there
were particular rites in Vermissa of which they were proud, and these
had to be undergone by every postulant. The assembly met in a large
room reserved for such purposes at the Union House. Some sixty members
assembled at Vermissa; but that by no means represented the full
strength of the organization, for there were several other lodges in
the valley, and others across the mountains on each side, who exchanged
members when any serious business was afoot, so that a crime might be
done by men who were strangers to the locality. Altogether there were
not less than five hundred scattered over the coal district.
In the bare assembly room the men were gathered round a long table. At
the side was a second one laden with bottles and glasses, on which some
members of the company were already turning their eyes. McGinty sat at
the head with a flat black velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black
hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to
be a priest presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left of
him were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted
Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion as
emblem of his office.
They were, for the most part, men of mature age; but the rest of the
company consisted of young fellows from eighteen to twenty-five, the
ready and capable agents who carried out the commands of their seniors.
Among the older men were many whose features showed the tigerish,
lawless souls within; but looking at the rank and file it was difficult
to believe that these eager and open-faced young fellows were in very
truth a dangerous gang of murderers, whose minds had suffered such
complete moral perversion that they took a horrible pride in their
proficiency at the business, and looked with deepest respect at the man
who had the reputation of making what they called “a clean job.”
To their contorted natures it had become a spirited and chivalrous
thing to volunteer for service against some man who had never injured
them, and whom in many cases they had never seen in their lives. The
crime committed, they quarrelled as to who had actually struck the
fatal blow, and amused one another and the company by describing the
cries and contortions of the murdered man.
At first they had shown some secrecy in their arrangements; but at the
time which this narrative describes their proceedings were
extraordinarily open, for the repeated failure of the law had proved to
them that, on the one hand, no one would dare to witness against them,
and on the other they had an unlimited number of stanch witnesses upon
whom they could call, and a well-filled treasure chest from which they
could draw the funds to engage the best legal talent in the state. In
ten long years of outrage there had been no single conviction, and the
only danger that ever threatened the Scowrers lay in the victim
himself—who, however outnumbered and taken by surprise, might and
occasionally did leave his mark upon his assailants.
McMurdo had been warned that some ordeal lay before him; but no one
would tell him in what it consisted. He was led now into an outer room
by two solemn brothers. Through the plank partition he could hear the
murmur of many voices from the assembly within. Once or twice he caught
the sound of his own name, and he knew that they were discussing his
candidacy. Then there entered an inner guard with a green and gold sash
across his chest.
“The Bodymaster orders that he shall be trussed, blinded, and entered,”
said he.
The three of them removed his coat, turned up the sleeve of his right
arm, and finally passed a rope round above the elbows and made it fast.
They next placed a thick black cap right over his head and the upper
part of his face, so that he could see nothing. He was then led into
the assembly hall.
It was pitch dark and very oppressive under his hood. He heard the
rustle and murmur of the people round him, and then the voice of
McGinty sounded dull and distant through the covering of his ears.
“John McMurdo,” said the voice, “are you already a member of the
Ancient Order of Freemen?”
He bowed in assent.
“Is your lodge No. 29, Chicago?”
He bowed again.
“Dark nights are unpleasant,” said the voice.
“Yes, for strangers to travel,” he answered.
“The clouds are heavy.”
“Yes, a storm is approaching.”
“Are the brethren satisfied?” asked the Bodymaster.
There was a general murmur of assent.
“We know, Brother, by your sign and by your countersign that you are
indeed one of us,” said McGinty. “We would have you know, however, that
in this county and in other counties of these parts we have certain
rites, and also certain duties of our own which call for good men. Are
you ready to be tested?”
“I am.”
“Are you of stout heart?”
“I am.”
“Take a stride forward to prove it.”
As the words were said he felt two hard points in front of his eyes,
pressing upon them so that it appeared as if he could not move forward
without a danger of losing them. None the less, he nerved himself to
step resolutely out, and as he did so the pressure melted away. There
was a low murmur of applause.
“He is of stout heart,” said the voice. “Can you bear pain?”
“As well as another,” he answered.
“Test him!”
It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming out, for an
agonizing pain shot through his forearm. He nearly fainted at the
sudden shock of it; but he bit his lip and clenched his hands to hide
his agony.
[Illustration: It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming
out.]
“I can take more than that,” said he.
This time there was loud applause. A finer first appearance had never
been made in the lodge. Hands clapped him on the back, and the hood was
plucked from his head. He stood blinking and smiling amid the
congratulations of the brothers.
“One last word, Brother McMurdo,” said McGinty. “You have already sworn
the oath of secrecy and fidelity, and you are aware that the punishment
for any breach of it is instant and inevitable death?”
“I am,” said McMurdo.
“And you accept the rule of the Bodymaster for the time being under all
circumstances?”
“I do.”
“Then in the name of Lodge 341, Vermissa, I welcome you to its
privileges and debates. You will put the liquor on the table, Brother
Scanlan, and we will drink to our worthy brother.”
McMurdo’s coat had been brought to him; but before putting it on he
examined his right arm, which still smarted heavily. There on the flesh
of the forearm was a circle with a triangle within it, deep and red, as
the branding iron had left it. One or two of his neighbours pulled up
their sleeves and showed their own lodge marks.
“We’ve all had it,” said one; “but not all as brave as you over it.”
“Tut! It was nothing,” said he; but it burned and ached all the same.
When the drinks which followed the ceremony of initiation had all been
disposed of, the business of the lodge proceeded. McMurdo, accustomed
only to the prosaic performances of Chicago, listened with open ears
and more surprise than he ventured to show to what followed.
“The first business on the agenda paper,” said McGinty, “is to read the
following letter from Division Master Windle of Merton County Lodge
“‘DEAR SIR.—“There is a job to be done on Andrew Rae of Rae & Sturmash,
coal owners near this place. You will remember that your lodge owes us
a return, having had the service of two brethren in the matter of the
patrolman last fall. You will send two good men, they will be taken
charge of by Treasurer Higgins of this lodge, whose address you know.
He will show them when to act and where. Yours in freedom,
“‘J.W. WINDLE D.M.A.O.F.’”
“Windle has never refused us when we have had occasion to ask for the
loan of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse him.” McGinty
paused and looked round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. “Who
will volunteer for the job?”
Several young fellows held up their hands. The Bodymaster looked at
them with an approving smile.
“You’ll do, Tiger Cormac. If you handle it as well as you did the last,
you won’t be wrong. And you, Wilson.”
“I’ve no pistol,” said the volunteer, a mere boy in his teens.
“It’s your first, is it not? Well, you have to be blooded some time. It
will be a great start for you. As to the pistol, you’ll find it waiting
for you, or I’m mistaken. If you report yourselves on Monday, it will
be time enough. You’ll get a great welcome when you return.”
“Any reward this time?” asked Cormac, a thick-set, dark-faced,
brutal-looking young man, whose ferocity had earned him the nickname of
“Tiger.”
“Never mind the reward. You just do it for the honour of the thing.
Maybe when it is done there will be a few odd dollars at the bottom of
the box.”
“What has the man done?” asked young Wilson.
“Sure, it’s not for the likes of you to ask what the man has done. He
has been judged over there. That’s no business of ours. All we have to
do is to carry it out for them, same as they would for us. Speaking of
that, two brothers from the Merton lodge are coming over to us next
week to do some business in this quarter.”
“Who are they?” asked someone.
“Faith, it is wiser not to ask. If you know nothing, you can testify
nothing, and no trouble can come of it. But they are men who will make
a clean job when they are about it.”
“And time, too!” cried Ted Baldwin. “Folk are gettin’ out of hand in
these parts. It was only last week that three of our men were turned
off by Foreman Blaker. It’s been owing him a long time, and he’ll get
it full and proper.”
“Get what?” McMurdo whispered to his neighbour.
“The business end of a buckshot cartridge!” cried the man with a loud
laugh. “What think you of our ways, Brother?”
McMurdo’s criminal soul seemed to have already absorbed the spirit of
the vile association of which he was now a member. “I like it well,”
said he. “’Tis a proper place for a lad of mettle.”
Several of those who sat around heard his words and applauded them.
“What’s that?” cried the black-maned Bodymaster from the end of the
table.
“’Tis our new brother, sir, who finds our ways to his taste.”
McMurdo rose to his feet for an instant. “I would say, Eminent
Bodymaster, that if a man should be wanted I should take it as an
honour to be chosen to help the lodge.”
There was great applause at this. It was felt that a new sun was
pushing its rim above the horizon. To some of the elders it seemed that
the progress was a little too rapid.
“I would move,” said the secretary, Harraway, a vulture-faced old
graybeard who sat near the chairman, “that Brother McMurdo should wait
until it is the good pleasure of the lodge to employ him.”
“Sure, that was what I meant; I’m in your hands,” said McMurdo.
“Your time will come, Brother,” said the chairman. “We have marked you
down as a willing man, and we believe that you will do good work in
these parts. There is a small matter to-night in which you may take a
hand if it so please you.”
“I will wait for something that is worth while.”
“You can come to-night, anyhow, and it will help you to know what we
stand for in this community. I will make the announcement later.
Meanwhile,” he glanced at his agenda paper, “I have one or two more
points to bring before the meeting. First of all, I will ask the
treasurer as to our bank balance. There is the pension to Jim
Carnaway’s widow. He was struck down doing the work of the lodge, and
it is for us to see that she is not the loser.”
“Jim was shot last month when they tried to kill Chester Wilcox of
Marley Creek,” McMurdo’s neighbour informed him.
“The funds are good at the moment,” said the treasurer, with the
bankbook in front of him. “The firms have been generous of late. Max
Linder & Co. paid five hundred to be left alone. Walker Brothers sent
in a hundred; but I took it on myself to return it and ask for five. If
I do not hear by Wednesday, their winding gear may get out of order. We
had to burn their breaker last year before they became reasonable. Then
the West Section Coaling Company has paid its annual contribution. We
have enough on hand to meet any obligations.”
“What about Archie Swindon?” asked a brother.
“He has sold out and left the district. The old devil left a note for
us to say that he had rather be a free crossing sweeper in New York
than a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers. By
Gar! it was as well that he made a break for it before the note reached
us! I guess he won’t show his face in this valley again.”
An elderly, clean-shaved man with a kindly face and a good brow rose
from the end of the table which faced the chairman. “Mr. Treasurer,” he
asked, “may I ask who has bought the property of this man that we have
driven out of the district?”
“Yes, Brother Morris. It has been bought by the State & Merton County
Railroad Company.”
“And who bought the mines of Todman and of Lee that came into the
market in the same way last year?”
“The same company, Brother Morris.”
“And who bought the ironworks of Manson and of Shuman and of Van Deher
and of Atwood, which have all been given up of late?”
“They were all bought by the West Gilmerton General Mining Company.”
“I don’t see, Brother Morris,” said the chairman, “that it matters to
us who buys them, since they can’t carry them out of the district.”
“With all respect to you, Eminent Bodymaster, I think it may matter
very much to us. This process has been going on now for ten long years.
We are gradually driving all the small men out of trade. What is the
result? We find in their places great companies like the Railroad or
the General Iron, who have their directors in New York or Philadelphia,
and care nothing for our threats. We can take it out of their local
bosses; but it only means that others will be sent in their stead. And
we are making it dangerous for ourselves. The small men could not harm
us. They had not the money nor the power. So long as we did not squeeze
them too dry, they would stay on under our power. But if these big
companies find that we stand between them and their profits, they will
spare no pains and no expense to hunt us down and bring us to court.”
There was a hush at these ominous words, and every face darkened as
gloomy looks were exchanged. So omnipotent and unchallenged had they
been that the very thought that there was possible retribution in the
background had been banished from their minds. And yet the idea struck
a chill to the most reckless of them.
“It is my advice,” the speaker continued, “that we go easier upon the
small men. On the day that they have all been driven out the power of
this society will have been broken.”
Unwelcome truths are not popular. There were angry cries as the speaker
resumed his seat. McGinty rose with gloom upon his brow.
“Brother Morris,” said he, “you were always a croaker. So long as the
members of this lodge stand together there is no power in the United
States that can touch them. Sure, have we not tried it often enough in
the lawcourts? I expect the big companies will find it easier to pay
than to fight, same as the little companies do. And now, Brethren,”
McGinty took off his black velvet cap and his stole as he spoke, “this
lodge has finished its business for the evening, save for one small
matter which may be mentioned when we are parting. The time has now
come for fraternal refreshment and for harmony.”
Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was
familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family,
some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought
of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless
children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to
tears. McMurdo had a fine tenor voice, and if he had failed to gain the
good will of the lodge before, it could no longer have been withheld
after he had thrilled them with “I’m Sitting on the Stile, Mary,” and
“On the Banks of Allan Water.”
In his very first night the new recruit had made himself one of the
most popular of the brethren, marked already for advancement and high
office. There were other qualities needed, however, besides those of
good fellowship, to make a worthy Freeman, and of these he was given an
example before the evening was over. The whisky bottle had passed round
many times, and the men were flushed and ripe for mischief when their
Bodymaster rose once more to address them.
“Boys,” said he, “there’s one man in this town that wants trimming up,
and it’s for you to see that he gets it. I’m speaking of James Stanger
of the Herald. You’ve seen how he’s been opening his mouth against us
again?”
There was a murmur of assent, with many a muttered oath. McGinty took a
slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket.
“‘Law and Order!’ That’s how he heads it. ‘Reign of Terror in the Coal
and Iron District. Twelve years have now elapsed since the first
assassinations which proved the existence of a criminal organization in
our midst. From that day these outrages have never ceased, until now
they have reached a pitch which makes us the opprobrium of the
civilized world. Is it for such results as this that our great country
welcomes to its bosom the alien who flies from the despotisms of
Europe? Is it that they shall themselves become tyrants over the very
men who have given them shelter, and that a state of terrorism and
lawlessness should be established under the very shadow of the sacred
folds of the starry Flag of Freedom which would raise horror in our
minds if we read of it as existing under the most effete monarchy of
the East? The men are known. The organization is patent and public. How
long are we to endure it? Can we forever live—’ Sure, I’ve read enough
of the slush!” cried the chairman, tossing the paper down upon the
table. “That’s what he says of us. The question I’m asking you is what
shall we say to him?”
“Kill him!” cried a dozen fierce voices.
“I protest against that,” said Brother Morris, the man of the good brow
and shaved face. “I tell you, Brethren, that our hand is too heavy in
this valley, and that there will come a point where in self-defense
every man will unite to crush us out. James Stanger is an old man. He
is respected in the township and the district. His paper stands for all
that is solid in the valley. If that man is struck down, there will be
a stir through this state that will only end with our destruction.”
“And how would they bring about our destruction, Mr. Standback?” cried
McGinty. “Is it by the police? Sure, half of them are in our pay and
half of them afraid of us. Or is it by the law courts and the judge?
Haven’t we tried that before now, and what ever came of it?”
“There is a Judge Lynch that might try the case,” said Brother Morris.
A general shout of anger greeted the suggestion.
“I have but to raise my finger,” cried McGinty, “and I could put two
hundred men into this town that would clear it out from end to end.”
Then suddenly raising his voice and bending his huge black brows into a
terrible frown, “See here, Brother Morris, I have my eye on you, and
have had for some time! You’ve no heart yourself, and you try to take
the heart out of others. It will be an ill day for you, Brother Morris,
when your own name comes on our agenda paper, and I’m thinking that
it’s just there that I ought to place it.”
Morris had turned deadly pale, and his knees seemed to give way under
him as he fell back into his chair. He raised his glass in his
trembling hand and drank before he could answer. “I apologize, Eminent
Bodymaster, to you and to every brother in this lodge if I have said
more than I should. I am a faithful member—you all know that—and it is
my fear lest evil come to the lodge which makes me speak in anxious
words. But I have greater trust in your judgment than in my own,
Eminent Bodymaster, and I promise you that I will not offend again.”
The Bodymaster’s scowl relaxed as he listened to the humble words.
“Very good, Brother Morris. It’s myself that would be sorry if it were
needful to give you a lesson. But so long as I am in this chair we
shall be a united lodge in word and in deed. And now, boys,” he
continued, looking round at the company, “I’ll say this much, that if
Stanger got his full deserts there would be more trouble than we need
ask for. These editors hang together, and every journal in the state
would be crying out for police and troops. But I guess you can give him
a pretty severe warning. Will you fix it, Brother Baldwin?”
“Sure!” said the young man eagerly.
“How many will you take?”
“Half a dozen, and two to guard the door. You’ll come, Gower, and you,
Mansel, and you, Scanlan, and the two Willabys.”
“I promised the new brother he should go,” said the chairman.
Ted Baldwin looked at McMurdo with eyes which showed that he had not
forgotten nor forgiven. “Well, he can come if he wants,” he said in a
surly voice. “That’s enough. The sooner we get to work the better.”
The company broke up with shouts and yells and snatches of drunken
song. The bar was still crowded with revellers, and many of the
brethren remained there. The little band who had been told off for duty
passed out into the street, proceeding in twos and threes along the
sidewalk so as not to provoke attention. It was a bitterly cold night,
with a half-moon shining brilliantly in a frosty, star-spangled sky.
The men stopped and gathered in a yard which faced a high building. The
words, “Vermissa Herald” were printed in gold lettering between the
brightly lit windows. From within came the clanking of the printing
press.
“Here, you,” said Baldwin to McMurdo, “you can stand below at the door
and see that the road is kept open for us. Arthur Willaby can stay with
you. You others come with me. Have no fears, boys; for we have a dozen
witnesses that we are in the Union Bar at this very moment.”
It was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for one or two
revellers upon their way home. The party crossed the road, and, pushing
open the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin and his men rushed in
and up the stair which faced them. McMurdo and another remained below.
From the room above came a shout, a cry for help, and then the sound of
trampling feet and of falling chairs. An instant later a gray-haired
man rushed out on the landing.
He was seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles came
tinkling down to McMurdo’s feet. There was a thud and a groan. He was
on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clattering together as they
fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thin limbs quivered under the
blows. The others ceased at last; but Baldwin, his cruel face set in an
infernal smile, was hacking at the man’s head, which he vainly
endeavoured to defend with his arms. His white hair was dabbled with
patches of blood. Baldwin was still stooping over his victim, putting
in a short, vicious blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when
McMurdo dashed up the stair and pushed him back.
“You’ll kill the man,” said he. “Drop it!”
Baldwin looked at him in amazement. “Curse you!” he cried. “Who are you
to interfere—you that are new to the lodge? Stand back!” He raised his
stick; but McMurdo had whipped his pistol out of his pocket.
“Stand back yourself!” he cried. “I’ll blow your face in if you lay a
hand on me. As to the lodge, wasn’t it the order of the Bodymaster that
the man was not to be killed—and what are you doing but killing him?”
“It’s truth he says,” remarked one of the men.
“By Gar! you’d best hurry yourselves!” cried the man below. “The
windows are all lighting up, and you’ll have the whole town here inside
of five minutes.”
There was indeed the sound of shouting in the street, and a little
group of compositors and pressmen was forming in the hall below and
nerving itself to action. Leaving the limp and motionless body of the
editor at the head of the stair, the criminals rushed down and made
their way swiftly along the street. Having reached the Union House,
some of them mixed with the crowd in McGinty’s saloon, whispering
across the bar to the Boss that the job had been well carried through.
Others, and among them McMurdo, broke away into side streets, and so by
devious paths to their own homes.
Chapter IV
The Valley of Fear
When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to remember his
initiation into the lodge. His head ached with the effect of the drink,
and his arm, where he had been branded, was hot and swollen. Having his
own peculiar source of income, he was irregular in his attendance at
his work; so he had a late breakfast, and remained at home for the
morning writing a long letter to a friend. Afterwards he read the Daily
Herald. In a special column put in at the last moment he read, “Outrage
at the Herald Office—Editor Seriously Injured.” It was a short account
of the facts with which he was himself more familiar than the writer
could have been. It ended with the statement:
The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can hardly be
hoped that their exertions will be attended by any better results than
in the past. Some of the men were recognized, and there is hope that a
conviction may be obtained. The source of the outrage was, it need
hardly be said, that infamous society which has held this community in
bondage for so long a period, and against which the Herald has taken so
uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger’s many friends will rejoice to hear
that, though he has been cruelly and brutally beaten, and though he has
sustained severe injuries about the head, there is no immediate danger
to his life.
Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester rifles,
had been requisitioned for the defense of the office.
McMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipe with a hand
which was shaky from the excesses of the previous evening, when there
was a knock outside, and his landlady brought to him a note which had
just been handed in by a lad. It was unsigned, and ran thus:
I should wish to speak to you, but would rather not do so in your
house. You will find me beside the flagstaff upon Miller Hill. If you
will come there now, I have something which it is important for you to
hear and for me to say.
McMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; for he could not
imagine what it meant or who was the author of it. Had it been in a
feminine hand, he might have imagined that it was the beginning of one
of those adventures which had been familiar enough in his past life.
But it was the writing of a man, and of a well educated one, too.
Finally, after some hesitation, he determined to see the matter
through.
Miller Hill is an ill-kept public park in the very centre of the town.
In summer it is a favourite resort of the people, but in winter it is
desolate enough. From the top of it one has a view not only of the
whole straggling, grimy town, but of the winding valley beneath, with
its scattered mines and factories blackening the snow on each side of
it, and of the wooded and white-capped ranges flanking it.
McMurdo strolled up the winding path hedged in with evergreens until he
reached the deserted restaurant which forms the centre of summer
gaiety. Beside it was a bare flagstaff, and underneath it a man, his
hat drawn down and the collar of his overcoat turned up. When he turned
his face McMurdo saw that it was Brother Morris, he who had incurred
the anger of the Bodymaster the night before. The lodge sign was given
and exchanged as they met.
“I wanted to have a word with you, Mr. McMurdo,” said the older man,
speaking with a hesitation which showed that he was on delicate ground.
“It was kind of you to come.”
“Why did you not put your name to the note?”
“One has to be cautious, mister. One never knows in times like these
how a thing may come back to one. One never knows either who to trust
or who not to trust.”
“Surely one may trust brothers of the lodge.”
“No, no, not always,” cried Morris with vehemence. “Whatever we say,
even what we think, seems to go back to that man McGinty.”
“Look here!” said McMurdo sternly. “It was only last night, as you know
well, that I swore good faith to our Bodymaster. Would you be asking me
to break my oath?”
“If that is the view you take,” said Morris sadly, “I can only say that
I am sorry I gave you the trouble to come and meet me. Things have come
to a bad pass when two free citizens cannot speak their thoughts to
each other.”
McMurdo, who had been watching his companion very narrowly, relaxed
somewhat in his bearing. “Sure I spoke for myself only,” said he. “I am
a newcomer, as you know, and I am strange to it all. It is not for me
to open my mouth, Mr. Morris, and if you think well to say anything to
me I am here to hear it.”
“And to take it back to Boss McGinty!” said Morris bitterly.
“Indeed, then, you do me injustice there,” cried McMurdo. “For myself I
am loyal to the lodge, and so I tell you straight; but I would be a
poor creature if I were to repeat to any other what you might say to me
in confidence. It will go no further than me; though I warn you that
you may get neither help nor sympathy.”
“I have given up looking for either the one or the other,” said Morris.
“I may be putting my very life in your hands by what I say; but, bad as
you are—and it seemed to me last night that you were shaping to be as
bad as the worst—still you are new to it, and your conscience cannot
yet be as hardened as theirs. That was why I thought to speak with
you.”
“Well, what have you to say?”
“If you give me away, may a curse be on you!”
“Sure, I said I would not.”
“I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman’s society in
Chicago and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it cross your
mind that you might find it would lead you to crime?”
“If you call it crime,” McMurdo answered.
“Call it crime!” cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion. “You
have seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was it crime
last night when a man old enough to be your father was beaten till the
blood dripped from his white hairs? Was that crime—or what else would
you call it?”
“There are some would say it was war,” said McMurdo, “a war of two
classes with all in, so that each struck as best it could.”
“Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined the Freeman’s
society at Chicago?”
“No, I’m bound to say I did not.”
“Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a benefit club
and a meeting place for one’s fellows. Then I heard of this place—curse
the hour that the name first fell upon my ears!—and I came to better
myself! My God! to better myself! My wife and three children came with
me. I started a drygoods store on Market Square, and I prospered well.
The word had gone round that I was a Freeman, and I was forced to join
the local lodge, same as you did last night. I’ve the badge of shame on
my forearm and something worse branded on my heart. I found that I was
under the orders of a black villain and caught in a meshwork of crime.
What could I do? Every word I said to make things better was taken as
treason, same as it was last night. I can’t get away; for all I have in
the world is in my store. If I leave the society, I know well that it
means murder to me, and God knows what to my wife and children. Oh,
man, it is awful—awful!” He put his hands to his face, and his body
shook with convulsive sobs.
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. “You were too soft for the job,” said
he. “You are the wrong sort for such work.”
“I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminal among
them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down I knew well what would
come to me. Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe it’s the thought of my poor
little woman and the children that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess
it will haunt me forever.
“It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the range yonder.
I was told off for the door, same as you were last night. They could
not trust me with the job. The others went in. When they came out their
hands were crimson to the wrists. As we turned away a child was
screaming out of the house behind us. It was a boy of five who had seen
his father murdered. I nearly fainted with the horror of it, and yet I
had to keep a bold and smiling face; for well I knew that if I did not
it would be out of my house that they would come next with their bloody
hands and it would be my little Fred that would be screaming for his
father.
“But I was a criminal then, part sharer in a murder, lost forever in
this world, and lost also in the next. I am a good Catholic; but the
priest would have no word with me when he heard I was a Scowrer, and I
am excommunicated from my faith. That’s how it stands with me. And I
see you going down the same road, and I ask you what the end is to be.
Are you ready to be a cold-blooded murderer also, or can we do anything
to stop it?”
“What would you do?” asked McMurdo abruptly. “You would not inform?”
“God forbid!” cried Morris. “Sure, the very thought would cost me my
life.”
“That’s well,” said McMurdo. “I’m thinking that you are a weak man and
that you make too much of the matter.”
“Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley!
See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you
that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the
heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The
terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait,
young man, and you will learn for yourself.”
“Well, I’ll let you know what I think when I have seen more,” said
McMurdo carelessly. “What is very clear is that you are not the man for
the place, and that the sooner you sell out—if you only get a dime a
dollar for what the business is worth—the better it will be for you.
What you have said is safe with me; but, by Gar! if I thought you were
an informer—”
“No, no!” cried Morris piteously.
“Well, let it rest at that. I’ll bear what you have said in mind, and
maybe some day I’ll come back to it. I expect you meant kindly by
speaking to me like this. Now I’ll be getting home.”
“One word before you go,” said Morris. “We may have been seen together.
They may want to know what we have spoken about.”
“Ah! that’s well thought of.”
“I offer you a clerkship in my store.”
“And I refuse it. That’s our business. Well, so long, Brother Morris,
and may you find things go better with you in the future.”
That same afternoon, as McMurdo sat smoking, lost in thought beside the
stove of his sitting-room, the door swung open and its framework was
filled with the huge figure of Boss McGinty. He passed the sign, and
then seating himself opposite to the young man he looked at him
steadily for some time, a look which was as steadily returned.
“I’m not much of a visitor, Brother McMurdo,” he said at last. “I guess
I am too busy over the folk that visit me. But I thought I’d stretch a
point and drop down to see you in your own house.”
“I’m proud to see you here, Councillor,” McMurdo answered heartily,
bringing his whisky bottle out of the cupboard. “It’s an honour that I
had not expected.”
“How’s the arm?” asked the Boss.
McMurdo made a wry face. “Well, I’m not forgetting it,” he said; “but
it’s worth it.”
“Yes, it’s worth it,” the other answered, “to those that are loyal and
go through with it and are a help to the lodge. What were you speaking
to Brother Morris about on Miller Hill this morning?”
The question came so suddenly that it was well that he had his answer
prepared. He burst into a hearty laugh. “Morris didn’t know I could
earn a living here at home. He shan’t know either; for he has got too
much conscience for the likes of me. But he’s a good-hearted old chap.
It was his idea that I was at a loose end, and that he would do me a
good turn by offering me a clerkship in a drygoods store.”
“Oh, that was it?”
“Yes, that was it.”
“And you refused it?”
“Sure. Couldn’t I earn ten times as much in my own bedroom with four
hours’ work?”
“That’s so. But I wouldn’t get about too much with Morris.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I guess because I tell you not. That’s enough for most folk in
these parts.”
“It may be enough for most folk; but it ain’t enough for me,
Councillor,” said McMurdo boldly. “If you are a judge of men, you’ll
know that.”
The swarthy giant glared at him, and his hairy paw closed for an
instant round the glass as though he would hurl it at the head of his
companion. Then he laughed in his loud, boisterous, insincere fashion.
“You’re a queer card, for sure,” said he. “Well, if you want reasons,
I’ll give them. Did Morris say nothing to you against the lodge?”
“No.”
“Nor against me?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s because he daren’t trust you. But in his heart he is not
a loyal brother. We know that well. So we watch him and we wait for the
time to admonish him. I’m thinking that the time is drawing near.
There’s no room for scabby sheep in our pen. But if you keep company
with a disloyal man, we might think that you were disloyal, too. See?”
“There’s no chance of my keeping company with him; for I dislike the
man,” McMurdo answered. “As to being disloyal, if it was any man but
you he would not use the word to me twice.”
“Well, that’s enough,” said McGinty, draining off his glass. “I came
down to give you a word in season, and you’ve had it.”
“I’d like to know,” said McMurdo, “how you ever came to learn that I
had spoken with Morris at all?”
McGinty laughed. “It’s my business to know what goes on in this
township,” said he. “I guess you’d best reckon on my hearing all that
passes. Well, time’s up, and I’ll just say—”
But his leavetaking was cut short in a very unexpected fashion. With a
sudden crash the door flew open, and three frowning, intent faces
glared in at them from under the peaks of police caps. McMurdo sprang
to his feet and half drew his revolver; but his arm stopped midway as
he became conscious that two Winchester rifles were levelled at his
head. A man in uniform advanced into the room, a six-shooter in his
hand. It was Captain Marvin, once of Chicago, and now of the Mine
Constabulary. He shook his head with a half-smile at McMurdo.
“I thought you’d be getting into trouble, Mr. Crooked McMurdo of
Chicago,” said he. “Can’t keep out of it, can you? Take your hat and
come along with us.”
“I guess you’ll pay for this, Captain Marvin,” said McGinty. “Who are
you, I’d like to know, to break into a house in this fashion and molest
honest, law-abiding men?”
“You’re standing out in this deal, Councillor McGinty,” said the police
captain. “We are not out after you, but after this man McMurdo. It is
for you to help, not to hinder us in our duty.”
“He is a friend of mine, and I’ll answer for his conduct,” said the
Boss.
“By all accounts, Mr. McGinty, you may have to answer for your own
conduct some of these days,” the captain answered. “This man McMurdo
was a crook before ever he came here, and he’s a crook still. Cover
him, Patrolman, while I disarm him.”
“There’s my pistol,” said McMurdo coolly. “Maybe, Captain Marvin, if
you and I were alone and face to face you would not take me so easily.”
“Where’s your warrant?” asked McGinty. “By Gar! a man might as well
live in Russia as in Vermissa while folk like you are running the
police. It’s a capitalist outrage, and you’ll hear more of it, I
reckon.”
“You do what you think is your duty the best way you can, Councillor.
We’ll look after ours.”
“What am I accused of?” asked McMurdo.
“Of being concerned in the beating of old Editor Stanger at the Herald
office. It wasn’t your fault that it isn’t a murder charge.”
“Well, if that’s all you have against him,” cried McGinty with a laugh,
“you can save yourself a deal of trouble by dropping it right now. This
man was with me in my saloon playing poker up to midnight, and I can
bring a dozen to prove it.”
“That’s your affair, and I guess you can settle it in court to-morrow.
Meanwhile, come on, McMurdo, and come quietly if you don’t want a gun
across your head. You stand wide, Mr. McGinty; for I warn you I will
stand no resistance when I am on duty!”
So determined was the appearance of the captain that both McMurdo and
his boss were forced to accept the situation. The latter managed to
have a few whispered words with the prisoner before they parted.
“What about—” he jerked his thumb upward to signify the coining plant.
“All right,” whispered McMurdo, who had devised a safe hiding place
under the floor.
“I’ll bid you good-bye,” said the Boss, shaking hands. “I’ll see Reilly
the lawyer and take the defense upon myself. Take my word for it that
they won’t be able to hold you.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. Guard the prisoner, you two, and shoot him if
he tries any games. I’ll search the house before I leave.”
He did so; but apparently found no trace of the concealed plant. When
he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters.
Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the
streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group,
and emboldened by invisibility shouted imprecations at the prisoner.
“Lynch the cursed Scowrer!” they cried. “Lynch him!” They laughed and
jeered as he was pushed into the police station. After a short, formal
examination from the inspector in charge he was put into the common
cell. Here he found Baldwin and three other criminals of the night
before, all arrested that afternoon and waiting their trial next
morning.
But even within this inner fortress of the law the long arm of the
Freemen was able to extend. Late at night there came a jailer with a
straw bundle for their bedding, out of which he extracted two bottles
of whisky, some glasses, and a pack of cards. They spent a hilarious
night, without an anxious thought as to the ordeal of the morning.
Nor had they cause, as the result was to show. The magistrate could not
possibly, on the evidence, have held them for a higher court. On the
one hand the compositors and pressmen were forced to admit that the
light was uncertain, that they were themselves much perturbed, and that
it was difficult for them to swear to the identity of the assailants;
although they believed that the accused were among them. Cross examined
by the clever attorney who had been engaged by McGinty, they were even
more nebulous in their evidence.
The injured man had already deposed that he was so taken by surprise by
the suddenness of the attack that he could state nothing beyond the
fact that the first man who struck him wore a moustache. He added that
he knew them to be Scowrers, since no one else in the community could
possibly have any enmity to him, and he had long been threatened on
account of his outspoken editorials. On the other hand, it was clearly
shown by the united and unfaltering evidence of six citizens, including
that high municipal official, Councillor McGinty, that the men had been
at a card party at the Union House until an hour very much later than
the commission of the outrage.
Needless to say that they were discharged with something very near to
an apology from the bench for the inconvenience to which they had been
put, together with an implied censure of Captain Marvin and the police
for their officious zeal.
The verdict was greeted with loud applause by a court in which McMurdo
saw many familiar faces. Brothers of the lodge smiled and waved. But
there were others who sat with compressed lips and brooding eyes as the
men filed out of the dock. One of them, a little, dark-bearded,
resolute fellow, put the thoughts of himself and comrades into words as
the ex-prisoners passed him.
“You damned murderers!” he said. “We’ll fix you yet!”
Chapter V
The Darkest Hour
If anything had been needed to give an impetus to Jack McMurdo’s
popularity among his fellows it would have been his arrest and
acquittal. That a man on the very night of joining the lodge should
have done something which brought him before the magistrate was a new
record in the annals of the society. Already he had earned the
reputation of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and withal a
man of high temper, who would not take an insult even from the
all-powerful Boss himself. But in addition to this he impressed his
comrades with the idea that among them all there was not one whose
brain was so ready to devise a bloodthirsty scheme, or whose hand would
be more capable of carrying it out. “He’ll be the boy for the clean
job,” said the oldsters to one another, and waited their time until
they could set him to his work.
McGinty had instruments enough already; but he recognized that this was
a supremely able one. He felt like a man holding a fierce bloodhound in
leash. There were curs to do the smaller work; but some day he would
slip this creature upon its prey. A few members of the lodge, Ted
Baldwin among them, resented the rapid rise of the stranger and hated
him for it; but they kept clear of him, for he was as ready to fight as
to laugh.
But if he gained favour with his fellows, there was another quarter,
one which had become even more vital to him, in which he lost it. Ettie
Shafter’s father would have nothing more to do with him, nor would he
allow him to enter the house. Ettie herself was too deeply in love to
give him up altogether, and yet her own good sense warned her of what
would come from a marriage with a man who was regarded as a criminal.
One morning after a sleepless night she determined to see him, possibly
for the last time, and make one strong endeavour to draw him from those
evil influences which were sucking him down. She went to his house, as
he had often begged her to do, and made her way into the room which he
used as his sitting-room. He was seated at a table, with his back
turned and a letter in front of him. A sudden spirit of girlish
mischief came over her—she was still only nineteen. He had not heard
her when she pushed open the door. Now she tiptoed forward and laid her
hand lightly upon his bended shoulders.
If she had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only
in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her,
and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with
the other hand he crumpled up the paper that lay before him. For an
instant he stood glaring. Then astonishment and joy took the place of
the ferocity which had convulsed his features—a ferocity which had sent
her shrinking back in horror as from something which had never before
intruded into her gentle life.
“It’s you!” said he, mopping his brow. “And to think that you should
come to me, heart of my heart, and I should find nothing better to do
than to want to strangle you! Come then, darling,” and he held out his
arms, “let me make it up to you.”
But she had not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty fear which
she had read in the man’s face. All her woman’s instinct told her that
it was not the mere fright of a man who is startled. Guilt—that was
it—guilt and fear!
“What’s come over you, Jack?” she cried. “Why were you so scared of me?
Oh, Jack, if your conscience was at ease, you would not have looked at
me like that!”
“Sure, I was thinking of other things, and when you came tripping so
lightly on those fairy feet of yours—”
“No, no, it was more than that, Jack.” Then a sudden suspicion seized
her. “Let me see that letter you were writing.”
“Ah, Ettie, I couldn’t do that.”
Her suspicions became certainties. “It’s to another woman,” she cried.
“I know it! Why else should you hold it from me? Was it to your wife
that you were writing? How am I to know that you are not a married
man—you, a stranger, that nobody knows?”
“I am not married, Ettie. See now, I swear it! You’re the only one
woman on earth to me. By the cross of Christ I swear it!”
He was so white with passionate earnestness that she could not but
believe him.
“Well, then,” she cried, “why will you not show me the letter?”
“I’ll tell you, acushla,” said he. “I’m under oath not to show it, and
just as I wouldn’t break my word to you so I would keep it to those who
hold my promise. It’s the business of the lodge, and even to you it’s
secret. And if I was scared when a hand fell on me, can’t you
understand it when it might have been the hand of a detective?”
She felt that he was telling the truth. He gathered her into his arms
and kissed away her fears and doubts.
“Sit here by me, then. It’s a queer throne for such a queen; but it’s
the best your poor lover can find. He’ll do better for you some of
these days, I’m thinking. Now your mind is easy once again, is it not?”
“How can it ever be at ease, Jack, when I know that you are a criminal
among criminals, when I never know the day that I may hear you are in
court for murder? ‘McMurdo the Scowrer,’ that’s what one of our
boarders called you yesterday. It went through my heart like a knife.”
“Sure, hard words break no bones.”
“But they were true.”
“Well, dear, it’s not so bad as you think. We are but poor men that are
trying in our own way to get our rights.”
Ettie threw her arms round her lover’s neck. “Give it up, Jack! For my
sake, for God’s sake, give it up! It was to ask you that I came here
to-day. Oh, Jack, see—I beg it of you on my bended knees! Kneeling here
before you I implore you to give it up!”
[Illustration: “Oh, Jack, I implore you to give it up!”]
He raised her and soothed her with her head against his breast.
“Sure, my darlin’, you don’t know what it is you are asking. How could
I give it up when it would be to break my oath and to desert my
comrades? If you could see how things stand with me you could never ask
it of me. Besides, if I wanted to, how could I do it? You don’t suppose
that the lodge would let a man go free with all its secrets?”
“I’ve thought of that, Jack. I’ve planned it all. Father has saved some
money. He is weary of this place where the fear of these people darkens
our lives. He is ready to go. We would fly together to Philadelphia or
New York, where we would be safe from them.”
McMurdo laughed. “The lodge has a long arm. Do you think it could not
stretch from here to Philadelphia or New York?”
“Well, then, to the West, or to England, or to Germany, where father
came from—anywhere to get away from this Valley of Fear!”
McMurdo thought of old Brother Morris. “Sure, it is the second time I
have heard the valley so named,” said he. “The shadow does indeed seem
to lie heavy on some of you.”
“It darkens every moment of our lives. Do you suppose that Ted Baldwin
has ever forgiven us? If it were not that he fears you, what do you
suppose our chances would be? If you saw the look in those dark, hungry
eyes of his when they fall on me!”
“By Gar! I’d teach him better manners if I caught him at it! But see
here, little girl. I can’t leave here. I can’t—take that from me once
and for all. But if you will leave me to find my own way, I will try to
prepare a way of getting honourably out of it.”
“There is no honour in such a matter.”
“Well, well, it’s just how you look at it. But if you’ll give me six
months, I’ll work it so that I can leave without being ashamed to look
others in the face.”
The girl laughed with joy. “Six months!” she cried. “Is it a promise?”
“Well, it may be seven or eight. But within a year at the furthest we
will leave the valley behind us.”
It was the most that Ettie could obtain, and yet it was something.
There was this distant light to illuminate the gloom of the immediate
future. She returned to her father’s house more light-hearted than she
had ever been since Jack McMurdo had come into her life.
It might be thought that as a member, all the doings of the society
would be told to him; but he was soon to discover that the organization
was wider and more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was
ignorant as to many things; for there was an official named the County
Delegate, living at Hobson’s Patch farther down the line, who had power
over several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and
arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired
rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was
charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss
of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which
the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre.
One day Scanlan, who was McMurdo’s fellow boarder, received a note from
McGinty inclosing one from Evans Pott, which informed him that he was
sending over two good men, Lawler and Andrews, who had instructions to
act in the neighbourhood; though it was best for the cause that no
particulars as to their objects should be given. Would the Bodymaster
see to it that suitable arrangements be made for their lodgings and
comfort until the time for action should arrive? McGinty added that it
was impossible for anyone to remain secret at the Union House, and
that, therefore, he would be obliged if McMurdo and Scanlan would put
the strangers up for a few days in their boarding house.
The same evening the two men arrived, each carrying his gripsack.
Lawler was an elderly man, shrewd, silent, and self-contained, clad in
an old black frock coat, which with his soft felt hat and ragged,
grizzled beard gave him a general resemblance to an itinerant preacher.
His companion Andrews was little more than a boy, frank-faced and
cheerful, with the breezy manner of one who is out for a holiday and
means to enjoy every minute of it. Both men were total abstainers, and
behaved in all ways as exemplary members of the society, with the one
simple exception that they were assassins who had often proved
themselves to be most capable instruments for this association of
murder. Lawler had already carried out fourteen commissions of the
kind, and Andrews three.
They were, as McMurdo found, quite ready to converse about their deeds
in the past, which they recounted with the half-bashful pride of men
who had done good and unselfish service for the community. They were
reticent, however, as to the immediate job in hand.
“They chose us because neither I nor the boy here drink,” Lawler
explained. “They can count on us saying no more than we should. You
must not take it amiss, but it is the orders of the County Delegate
that we obey.”
“Sure, we are all in it together,” said Scanlan, McMurdo’s mate, as the
four sat together at supper.
“That’s true enough, and we’ll talk till the cows come home of the
killing of Charlie Williams or of Simon Bird, or any other job in the
past. But till the work is done we say nothing.”
“There are half a dozen about here that I have a word to say to,” said
McMurdo, with an oath. “I suppose it isn’t Jack Knox of Ironhill that
you are after. I’d go some way to see him get his deserts.”
“No, it’s not him yet.”
“Or Herman Strauss?”
“No, nor him either.”
“Well, if you won’t tell us we can’t make you; but I’d be glad to
know.”
Lawler smiled and shook his head. He was not to be drawn.
In spite of the reticence of their guests, Scanlan and McMurdo were
quite determined to be present at what they called “the fun.” When,
therefore, at an early hour one morning McMurdo heard them creeping
down the stairs he awakened Scanlan, and the two hurried on their
clothes. When they were dressed they found that the others had stolen
out, leaving the door open behind them. It was not yet dawn, and by the
light of the lamps they could see the two men some distance down the
street. They followed them warily, treading noiselessly in the deep
snow.
The boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soon they were at
the crossroads which is beyond its boundary. Here three men were
waiting, with whom Lawler and Andrews held a short, eager conversation.
Then they all moved on together. It was clearly some notable job which
needed numbers. At this point there are several trails which lead to
various mines. The strangers took that which led to the Crow Hill, a
huge business which was in strong hands which had been able, thanks to
their energetic and fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn, to
keep some order and discipline during the long reign of terror.
Day was breaking now, and a line of workmen were slowly making their
way, singly and in groups, along the blackened path.
McMurdo and Scanlan strolled on with the others, keeping in sight of
the men whom they followed. A thick mist lay over them, and from the
heart of it there came the sudden scream of a steam whistle. It was the
ten-minute signal before the cages descended and the day’s labour
began.
When they reached the open space round the mine shaft there were a
hundred miners waiting, stamping their feet and blowing on their
fingers; for it was bitterly cold. The strangers stood in a little
group under the shadow of the engine house. Scanlan and McMurdo climbed
a heap of slag from which the whole scene lay before them. They saw the
mine engineer, a great bearded Scotchman named Menzies, come out of the
engine house and blow his whistle for the cages to be lowered.
At the same instant a tall, loose-framed young man with a clean-shaved,
earnest face advanced eagerly towards the pit head. As he came forward
his eyes fell upon the group, silent and motionless, under the engine
house. The men had drawn down their hats and turned up their collars to
screen their faces. For a moment the presentiment of Death laid its
cold hand upon the manager’s heart. At the next he had shaken it off
and saw only his duty towards intrusive strangers.
“Who are you?” he asked as he advanced. “What are you loitering there
for?”
There was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward and shot him
in the stomach. The hundred waiting miners stood as motionless and
helpless as if they were paralyzed. The manager clapped his two hands
to the wound and doubled himself up. Then he staggered away; but
another of the assassins fired, and he went down sidewise, kicking and
clawing among a heap of clinkers. Menzies, the Scotchman, gave a roar
of rage at the sight and rushed with an iron spanner at the murderers;
but was met by two balls in the face which dropped him dead at their
very feet.
There was a surge forward of some of the miners, and an inarticulate
cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangers emptied their
six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and they broke and scattered,
some of them rushing wildly back to their homes in Vermissa.
When a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a return to the
mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists of morning, without
a single witness being able to swear to the identity of these men who
in front of a hundred spectators had wrought this double crime.
Scanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhat subdued, for
it was the first murder job that he had seen with his own eyes, and it
appeared less funny than he had been led to believe. The horrible
screams of the dead manager’s wife pursued them as they hurried to the
town. McMurdo was absorbed and silent; but he showed no sympathy for
the weakening of his companion.
“Sure, it is like a war,” he repeated. “What is it but a war between us
and them, and we hit back where we best can.”
There was high revel in the lodge room at the Union House that night,
not only over the killing of the manager and engineer of the Crow Hill
mine, which would bring this organization into line with the other
blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of the district, but also
over a distant triumph which had been wrought by the hands of the lodge
itself.
It would appear that when the County Delegate had sent over five good
men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demanded that in return three
Vermissa men should be secretly selected and sent across to kill
William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the best known and most popular
mine owners in the Gilmerton district, a man who was believed not to
have an enemy in the world; for he was in all ways a model employer. He
had insisted, however, upon efficiency in the work, and had, therefore,
paid off certain drunken and idle employees who were members of the
all-powerful society. Coffin notices hung outside his door had not
weakened his resolution, and so in a free, civilized country he found
himself condemned to death.
The execution had now been duly carried out. Ted Baldwin, who sprawled
now in the seat of honour beside the Bodymaster, had been chief of the
party. His flushed face and glazed, bloodshot eyes told of
sleeplessness and drink. He and his two comrades had spent the night
before among the mountains. They were unkempt and weather-stained. But
no heroes, returning from a forlorn hope, could have had a warmer
welcome from their comrades.
The story was told and retold amid cries of delight and shouts of
laughter. They had waited for their man as he drove home at nightfall,
taking their station at the top of a steep hill, where his horse must
be at a walk. He was so furred to keep out the cold that he could not
lay his hand on his pistol. They had pulled him out and shot him again
and again. He had screamed for mercy. The screams were repeated for the
amusement of the lodge.
“Let’s hear again how he squealed,” they cried.
None of them knew the man; but there is eternal drama in a killing, and
they had shown the Scowrers of Gilmerton that the Vermissa men were to
be relied upon.
There had been one contretemps; for a man and his wife had driven up
while they were still emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It
had been suggested that they should shoot them both; but they were
harmless folk who were not connected with the mines, so they were
sternly bidden to drive on and keep silent, lest a worse thing befall
them. And so the blood-mottled figure had been left as a warning to all
such hard-hearted employers, and the three noble avengers had hurried
off into the mountains where unbroken nature comes down to the very
edge of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they were, safe and
sound, their work well done, and the plaudits of their companions in
their ears.
It had been a great day for the Scowrers. The shadow had fallen even
darker over the valley. But as the wise general chooses the moment of
victory in which to redouble his efforts, so that his foes may have no
time to steady themselves after disaster, so Boss McGinty, looking out
upon the scene of his operations with his brooding and malicious eyes,
had devised a new attack upon those who opposed him. That very night,
as the half-drunken company broke up, he touched McMurdo on the arm and
led him aside into that inner room where they had their first
interview.
“See here, my lad,” said he, “I’ve got a job that’s worthy of you at
last. You’ll have the doing of it in your own hands.”
“Proud I am to hear it,” McMurdo answered.
“You can take two men with you—Manders and Reilly. They have been
warned for service. We’ll never be right in this district until Chester
Wilcox has been settled, and you’ll have the thanks of every lodge in
the coal fields if you can down him.”
“I’ll do my best, anyhow. Who is he, and where shall I find him?”
McGinty took his eternal half-chewed, half-smoked cigar from the corner
of his mouth, and proceeded to draw a rough diagram on a page torn from
his notebook.
“He’s the chief foreman of the Iron Dike Company. He’s a hard citizen,
an old colour sergeant of the war, all scars and grizzle. We’ve had two
tries at him; but had no luck, and Jim Carnaway lost his life over it.
Now it’s for you to take it over. That’s the house—all alone at the
Iron Dike crossroad, same as you see here on the map—without another
within earshot. It’s no good by day. He’s armed and shoots quick and
straight, with no questions asked. But at night—well, there he is with
his wife, three children, and a hired help. You can’t pick or choose.
It’s all or none. If you could get a bag of blasting powder at the
front door with a slow match to it—”
“What’s the man done?”
“Didn’t I tell you he shot Jim Carnaway?”
“Why did he shoot him?”
“What in thunder has that to do with you? Carnaway was about his house
at night, and he shot him. That’s enough for me and you. You’ve got to
settle the thing right.”
“There’s these two women and the children. Do they go up too?”
“They have to—else how can we get him?”
“It seems hard on them; for they’ve done nothing.”
“What sort of fool’s talk is this? Do you back out?”
“Easy, Councillor, easy! What have I ever said or done that you should
think I would be after standing back from an order of the Bodymaster of
my own lodge? If it’s right or if it’s wrong, it’s for you to decide.”
“You’ll do it, then?”
“Of course I will do it.”
“When?”
“Well, you had best give me a night or two that I may see the house and
make my plans. Then—”
“Very good,” said McGinty, shaking him by the hand. “I leave it with
you. It will be a great day when you bring us the news. It’s just the
last stroke that will bring them all to their knees.”
McMurdo thought long and deeply over the commission which had been so
suddenly placed in his hands. The isolated house in which Chester
Wilcox lived was about five miles off in an adjacent valley. That very
night he started off all alone to prepare for the attempt. It was
daylight before he returned from his reconnaissance. Next day he
interviewed his two subordinates, Manders and Reilly, reckless
youngsters who were as elated as if it were a deer-hunt.
Two nights later they met outside the town, all three armed, and one of
them carrying a sack stuffed with the powder which was used in the
quarries. It was two in the morning before they came to the lonely
house. The night was a windy one, with broken clouds drifting swiftly
across the face of a three-quarter moon. They had been warned to be on
their guard against bloodhounds; so they moved forward cautiously, with
their pistols cocked in their hands. But there was no sound save the
howling of the wind, and no movement but the swaying branches above
them.
McMurdo listened at the door of the lonely house; but all was still
within. Then he leaned the powder bag against it, ripped a hole in it
with his knife, and attached the fuse. When it was well alight he and
his two companions took to their heels, and were some distance off,
safe and snug in a sheltering ditch, before the shattering roar of the
explosion, with the low, deep rumble of the collapsing building, told
them that their work was done. No cleaner job had ever been carried out
in the bloodstained annals of the society.
But alas that work so well organized and boldly carried out should all
have gone for nothing! Warned by the fate of the various victims, and
knowing that he was marked down for destruction, Chester Wilcox had
moved himself and his family only the day before to some safer and less
known quarters, where a guard of police should watch over them. It was
an empty house which had been torn down by the gunpowder, and the grim
old colour sergeant of the war was still teaching discipline to the
miners of Iron Dike.
“Leave him to me,” said McMurdo. “He’s my man, and I’ll get him sure if
I have to wait a year for him.”
A vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for
the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in
the papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an
open secret that McMurdo was still at work upon his unfinished job.
Such were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such were the
deeds of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule of fear over the
great and rich district which was for so long a period haunted by their
terrible presence. Why should these pages be stained by further crimes?
Have I not said enough to show the men and their methods?
These deeds are written in history, and there are records wherein one
may read the details of them. There one may learn of the shooting of
Policemen Hunt and Evans because they had ventured to arrest two
members of the society—a double outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge
and carried out in cold blood upon two helpless and disarmed men. There
also one may read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing
her husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of Boss
McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by that of
his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the
Staphouse family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon
one another in the same terrible winter.
Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with
running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature
bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the
men and women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the
cloud above them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of
the year 1875.
Chapter VI
Danger
It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already been
appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of some day succeeding
McGinty as Bodymaster, was now so necessary to the councils of his
comrades that nothing was done without his help and advice. The more
popular he became, however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the
scowls which greeted him as he passed along the streets of Vermissa. In
spite of their terror the citizens were taking heart to band themselves
together against their oppressors. Rumours had reached the lodge of
secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of firearms
among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his men were undisturbed
by such reports. They were numerous, resolute, and well armed. Their
opponents were scattered and powerless. It would all end, as it had
done in the past, in aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So
said McGinty, McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits.
It was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the lodge night,
and McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it when Morris, the weaker
brother of the order, came to see him. His brow was creased with care,
and his kindly face was drawn and haggard.
“Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?”
“Sure.”
“I can’t forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you kept it
to yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask you about it.”
“What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn’t that I agreed with
what you said.”
“I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and be safe.
I’ve a secret here,” he put his hand to his breast, “and it is just
burning the life out of me. I wish it had come to any one of you but
me. If I tell it, it will mean murder, for sure. If I don’t, it may
bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near out of my wits over
it!”
McMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in every limb. He
poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to him. “That’s the
physic for the likes of you,” said he. “Now let me hear of it.”
Morris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. “I can tell it
to you all in one sentence,” said he. “There’s a detective on our
trail.”
McMurdo stared at him in astonishment. “Why, man, you’re crazy,” he
said. “Isn’t the place full of police and detectives and what harm did
they ever do us?”
“No, no, it’s no man of the district. As you say, we know them, and it
is little that they can do. But you’ve heard of Pinkerton’s?”
“I’ve read of some folk of that name.”
“Well, you can take it from me you’ve no show when they are on your
trail. It’s not a take-it-or-miss-it government concern. It’s a dead
earnest business proposition that’s out for results and keeps out till
by hook or crook it gets them. If a Pinkerton man is deep in this
business, we are all destroyed.”
“We must kill him.”
“Ah, it’s the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at the
lodge. Didn’t I say to you that it would end in murder?”
“Sure, what is murder? Isn’t it common enough in these parts?”
“It is, indeed; but it’s not for me to point out the man that is to be
murdered. I’d never rest easy again. And yet it’s our own necks that
may be at stake. In God’s name what shall I do?” He rocked to and fro
in his agony of indecision.
But his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he
shared the other’s opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting
it. He gripped Morris’s shoulder and shook him in his earnestness.
“See here, man,” he cried, and he almost screeched the words in his
excitement, “you won’t gain anything by sitting keening like an old
wife at a wake. Let’s have the facts. Who is the fellow? Where is he?
How did you hear of him? Why did you come to me?”
“I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me. I told
you that I had a store in the East before I came here. I left good
friends behind me, and one of them is in the telegraph service. Here’s
a letter that I had from him yesterday. It’s this part from the top of
the page. You can read it yourself.”
This was what McMurdo read:
How are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read plenty of them
in the papers. Between you and me I expect to hear news from you before
long. Five big corporations and the two railroads have taken the thing
up in dead earnest. They mean it, and you can bet they’ll get there!
They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has taken hold under their
orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is operating. The thing has
got to be stopped right now.
“Now read the postscript.”
Of course, what I give you is what I learned in business; so it goes no
further. It’s a queer cipher that you handle by the yard every day and
can get no meaning from.
McMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his listless
hands. The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was the abyss before
him.
“Does anyone else know of this?” he asked.
“I have told no one else.”
“But this man—your friend—has he any other person that he would be
likely to write to?”
“Well, I dare say he knows one or two more.”
“Of the lodge?”
“It’s likely enough.”
“I was asking because it is likely that he may have given some
description of this fellow Birdy Edwards—then we could get on his
trail.”
“Well, it’s possible. But I should not think he knew him. He is just
telling me the news that came to him by way of business. How would he
know this Pinkerton man?”
McMurdo gave a violent start.
“By Gar!” he cried, “I’ve got him. What a fool I was not to know it.
Lord! but we’re in luck! We will fix him before he can do any harm. See
here, Morris, will you leave this thing in my hands?”
“Sure, if you will only take it off mine.”
“I’ll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even your
name need not be mentioned. I’ll take it all on myself, as if it were
to me that this letter has come. Will that content you?”
“It’s just what I would ask.”
“Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I’ll get down to
the lodge, and we’ll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry for himself.”
“You wouldn’t kill this man?”
“The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience will be,
and the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and let these things
settle themselves. I have hold of it now.”
Morris shook his head sadly as he left. “I feel that his blood is on my
hands,” he groaned.
“Self-protection is no murder, anyhow,” said McMurdo, smiling grimly.
“It’s him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all if we left him
long in the valley. Why, Brother Morris, we’ll have to elect you
Bodymaster yet; for you’ve surely saved the lodge.”
And yet it was clear from his actions that he thought more seriously of
this new intrusion than his words would show. It may have been his
guilty conscience, it may have been the reputation of the Pinkerton
organization, it may have been the knowledge that great, rich
corporations had set themselves the task of clearing out the Scowrers;
but, whatever his reason, his actions were those of a man who is
preparing for the worst. Every paper which would incriminate him was
destroyed before he left the house. After that he gave a long sigh of
satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger
must still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the lodge
he stopped at old man Shafter’s. The house was forbidden him; but when
he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him. The dancing Irish
deviltry had gone from her lover’s eyes. She read his danger in his
earnest face.
“Something has happened!” she cried. “Oh, Jack, you are in danger!”
“Sure, it is not very bad, my sweetheart. And yet it may be wise that
we make a move before it is worse.”
“Make a move?”
“I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the time is
coming. I had news to-night, bad news, and I see trouble coming.”
“The police?”
“Well, a Pinkerton. But, sure, you wouldn’t know what that is, acushla,
nor what it may mean to the likes of me. I’m too deep in this thing,
and I may have to get out of it quick. You said you would come with me
if I went.”
“Oh, Jack, it would be the saving of you!”
“I’m an honest man in some things, Ettie. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of
your bonny head for all that the world can give, nor ever pull you down
one inch from the golden throne above the clouds where I always see
you. Would you trust me?”
She put her hand in his without a word. “Well, then, listen to what I
say, and do as I order you, for indeed it’s the only way for us. Things
are going to happen in this valley. I feel it in my bones. There may be
many of us that will have to look out for ourselves. I’m one, anyhow.
If I go, by day or night, it’s you that must come with me!”
“I’d come after you, Jack.”
“No, no, you shall come _with_ me. If this valley is closed to me and I
can never come back, how can I leave you behind, and me perhaps in
hiding from the police with never a chance of a message? It’s with me
you must come. I know a good woman in the place I come from, and it’s
there I’d leave you till we can get married. Will you come?”
“Yes, Jack, I will come.”
“God bless you for your trust in me! It’s a fiend out of hell that I
should be if I abused it. Now, mark you, Ettie, it will be just a word
to you, and when it reaches you, you will drop everything and come
right down to the waiting room at the depot and stay there till I come
for you.”
“Day or night, I’ll come at the word, Jack.”
Somewhat eased in mind, now that his own preparations for escape had
been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had already assembled, and
only by complicated signs and countersigns could he pass through the
outer guard and inner guard who close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and
welcome greeted him as he entered. The long room was crowded, and
through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the
Bodymaster, the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face
of Harraway, the secretary, and a dozen more who were among the leaders
of the lodge. He rejoiced that they should all be there to take counsel
over his news.
“Indeed, it’s glad we are to see you, Brother!” cried the chairman.
“There’s business here that wants a Solomon in judgment to set it
right.”
“It’s Lander and Egan,” explained his neighbour as he took his seat.
“They both claim the head money given by the lodge for the shooting of
old man Crabbe over at Stylestown, and who’s to say which fired the
bullet?”
McMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression of his
face froze the attention of the audience. There was a dead hush of
expectation.
“Eminent Bodymaster,” he said, in a solemn voice, “I claim urgency!”
“Brother McMurdo claims urgency,” said McGinty. “It’s a claim that by
the rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now Brother, we attend you.”
McMurdo took the letter from his pocket.
“Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren,” he said, “I am the bearer of ill
news this day; but it is better that it should be known and discussed,
than that a blow should fall upon us without warning which would
destroy us all. I have information that the most powerful and richest
organizations in this state have bound themselves together for our
destruction, and that at this very moment there is a Pinkerton
detective, one Birdy Edwards, at work in the valley collecting the
evidence which may put a rope round the necks of many of us, and send
every man in this room into a felon’s cell. That is the situation for
the discussion of which I have made a claim of urgency.”
There was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the chairman.
“What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?” he asked.
“It is in this letter which has come into my hands,” said McMurdo. He
read the passage aloud. “It is a matter of honour with me that I can
give no further particulars about the letter, nor put it into your
hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else in it which can
affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case before you as it has
reached me.”
“Let me say, Mr. Chairman,” said one of the older brethren, “that I
have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best
man in the Pinkerton service.”
“Does anyone know him by sight?” asked McGinty.
“Yes,” said McMurdo, “I do.”
There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.
“I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands,” he continued with
an exulting smile upon his face. “If we act quickly and wisely, we can
cut this thing short. If I have your confidence and your help, it is
little that we have to fear.”
“What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our affairs?”
“You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor. But this
man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do you think
there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that could not be
bought? He will get at our secrets—maybe has got them already. There’s
only one sure cure.”
“That he never leaves the valley,” said Baldwin.
McMurdo nodded. “Good for you, Brother Baldwin,” he said. “You and I
have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night.”
“Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?”
“Eminent Bodymaster,” said McMurdo, earnestly, “I would put it to you
that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge. God
forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a
word of gossip got to the ears of this man, there would be an end of
any chance of our getting him. I would ask the lodge to choose a trusty
committee, Mr. Chairman—yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother
Baldwin here, and five more. Then I can talk freely of what I know and
of what I advise should be done.”
The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides
the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary,
Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the
treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who
would stick at nothing.
The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a
cloud upon the men’s spirits, and many there for the first time began
to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under
which they had dwelt so long. The horrors they had dealt out to others
had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of
retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling
now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and left
their leaders to their council.
“Now, McMurdo!” said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat
frozen in their seats.
“I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards,” McMurdo explained. “I need
not tell you that he is not here under that name. He’s a brave man, but
not a crazy one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is
lodging at Hobson’s Patch.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time,
nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now
I’m sure it’s the man. I met him on the cars when I went down the line
on Wednesday—a hard case if ever there was one. He said he was a
reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted to know all he could
about the Scowrers and what he called ‘the outrages’ for a New York
paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get something. You bet
I was giving nothing away. ‘I’d pay for it and pay well,’ said he, ‘if
I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.’ I said what I
thought would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill
for my information. ‘There’s ten times that for you,’ said he, ‘if you
can find me all that I want.’”
“What did you tell him, then?”
“Any stuff I could make up.”
“How do you know he wasn’t a newspaper man?”
“I’ll tell you. He got out at Hobson’s Patch, and so did I. I chanced
into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.
“‘See here,’ said the operator after he’d gone out, ‘I guess we should
charge double rates for this.’—‘I guess you should,’ said I. He had
filled the form with stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we
could make of it. ‘He fires a sheet of this off every day,’ said the
clerk. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘it’s special news for his paper, and he’s scared
that the others should tap it.’ That was what the operator thought and
what I thought at the time; but I think differently now.”
“By Gar! I believe you are right,” said McGinty. “But what do you allow
that we should do about it?”
“Why not go right down now and fix him?” someone suggested.
“Ay, the sooner the better.”
“I’d start this next minute if I knew where we could find him,” said
McMurdo. “He’s in Hobson’s Patch; but I don’t know the house. I’ve got
a plan, though, if you’ll only take my advice.”
“Well, what is it?”
“I’ll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I’ll find him through the
operator. He can locate him, I guess. Well, then I’ll tell him that I’m
a Freeman myself. I’ll offer him all the secrets of the lodge for a
price. You bet he’ll tumble to it. I’ll tell him the papers are at my
house, and that it’s as much as my life would be worth to let him come
while folk were about. He’ll see that that’s horse sense. Let him come
at ten o’clock at night, and he shall see everything. That will fetch
him sure.”
“Well?”
“You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara’s is a lonely
house. She’s as true as steel and as deaf as a post. There’s only
Scanlan and me in the house. If I get his promise—and I’ll let you know
if I do—I’d have the whole seven of you come to me by nine o’clock.
We’ll get him in. If ever he gets out alive—well, he can talk of Birdy
Edwards’s luck for the rest of his days!”
“There’s going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton’s or I’m mistaken. Leave it
at that, McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we’ll be with you. You once get the
door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest with us.”
Chapter VII
The Trapping of Birdy Edwards
As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a lonely one and
very well suited for such a crime as they had planned. It was on the
extreme fringe of the town and stood well back from the road. In any
other case the conspirators would have simply called out their man, as
they had many a time before, and emptied their pistols into his body;
but in this instance it was very necessary to find out how much he
knew, how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.
It was possible that they were already too late and that the work had
been done. If that was indeed so, they could at least have their
revenge upon the man who had done it. But they were hopeful that
nothing of great importance had yet come to the detective’s knowledge,
as otherwise, they argued, he would not have troubled to write down and
forward such trivial information as McMurdo claimed to have given him.
However, all this they would learn from his own lips. Once in their
power, they would find a way to make him speak. It was not the first
time that they had handled an unwilling witness.
McMurdo went to Hobson’s Patch as agreed. The police seemed to take
particular interest in him that morning, and Captain Marvin—he who had
claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago—actually addressed him
as he waited at the station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak
with him. He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw
McGinty at the Union House.
“He is coming,” he said.
“Good!” said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves, with chains
and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling
through the fringe of his bristling beard. Drink and politics had made
the Boss a very rich as well as powerful man. The more terrible,
therefore, seemed that glimpse of the prison or the gallows which had
risen before him the night before.
“Do you reckon he knows much?” he asked anxiously.
McMurdo shook his head gloomily. “He’s been here some time—six weeks at
the least. I guess he didn’t come into these parts to look at the
prospect. If he has been working among us all that time with the
railroad money at his back, I should expect that he has got results,
and that he has passed them on.”
“There’s not a weak man in the lodge,” cried McGinty. “True as steel,
every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris.
What about him? If any man gives us away, it would be he. I’ve a mind
to send a couple of the boys round before evening to give him a beating
up and see what they can get from him.”
“Well, there would be no harm in that,” McMurdo answered. “I won’t deny
that I have a liking for Morris and would be sorry to see him come to
harm. He has spoken to me once or twice over lodge matters, and though
he may not see them the same as you or I, he never seemed the sort that
squeals. But still it is not for me to stand between him and you.”
“I’ll fix the old devil!” said McGinty with an oath. “I’ve had my eye
on him this year past.”
“Well, you know best about that,” McMurdo answered. “But whatever you
do must be to-morrow; for we must lie low until the Pinkerton affair is
settled up. We can’t afford to set the police buzzing, to-day of all
days.”
“True for you,” said McGinty. “And we’ll learn from Birdy Edwards
himself where he got his news if we have to cut his heart out first.
Did he seem to scent a trap?”
McMurdo laughed. “I guess I took him on his weak point,” he said. “If
he could get on a good trail of the Scowrers, he’s ready to follow it
into hell. I took his money,” McMurdo grinned as he produced a wad of
dollar notes, “and as much more when he has seen all my papers.”
“What papers?”
“Well, there are no papers. But I filled him up about constitutions and
books of rules and forms of membership. He expects to get right down to
the end of everything before he leaves.”
“Faith, he’s right there,” said McGinty grimly. “Didn’t he ask you why
you didn’t bring him the papers?”
“As if I would carry such things, and me a suspected man, and Captain
Marvin after speaking to me this very day at the depot!”
“Ay, I heard of that,” said McGinty. “I guess the heavy end of this
business is coming on to you. We could put him down an old shaft when
we’ve done with him; but however we work it we can’t get past the man
living at Hobson’s Patch and you being there to-day.”
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. “If we handle it right, they can never
prove the killing,” said he. “No one can see him come to the house
after dark, and I’ll lay to it that no one will see him go. Now see
here, Councillor, I’ll show you my plan and I’ll ask you to fit the
others into it. You will all come in good time. Very well. He comes at
ten. He is to tap three times, and me to open the door for him. Then
I’ll get behind him and shut it. He’s our man then.”
“That’s all easy and plain.”
“Yes; but the next step wants considering. He’s a hard proposition.
He’s heavily armed. I’ve fooled him proper, and yet he is likely to be
on his guard. Suppose I show him right into a room with seven men in it
where he expected to find me alone. There is going to be shooting, and
somebody is going to be hurt.”
“That’s so.”
“And the noise is going to bring every damned copper in the township on
top of it.”
“I guess you are right.”
“This is how I should work it. You will all be in the big room—same as
you saw when you had a chat with me. I’ll open the door for him, show
him into the parlour beside the door, and leave him there while I get
the papers. That will give me the chance of telling you how things are
shaping. Then I will go back to him with some faked papers. As he is
reading them I will jump for him and get my grip on his pistol arm.
You’ll hear me call and in you will rush. The quicker the better; for
he is as strong a man as I, and I may have more than I can manage. But
I allow that I can hold him till you come.”
“It’s a good plan,” said McGinty. “The lodge will owe you a debt for
this. I guess when I move out of the chair I can put a name to the man
that’s coming after me.”
“Sure, Councillor, I am little more than a recruit,” said McMurdo; but
his face showed what he thought of the great man’s compliment.
When he had returned home he made his own preparations for the grim
evening in front of him. First he cleaned, oiled, and loaded his Smith
& Wesson revolver. Then he surveyed the room in which the detective was
to be trapped. It was a large apartment, with a long deal table in the
centre, and the big stove at one side. At each of the other sides were
windows. There were no shutters on these: only light curtains which
drew across. McMurdo examined these attentively. No doubt it must have
struck him that the apartment was very exposed for so secret a meeting.
Yet its distance from the road made it of less consequence. Finally he
discussed the matter with his fellow lodger. Scanlan, though a Scowrer,
was an inoffensive little man who was too weak to stand against the
opinion of his comrades, but was secretly horrified by the deeds of
blood at which he had sometimes been forced to assist. McMurdo told him
shortly what was intended.
“And if I were you, Mike Scanlan, I would take a night off and keep
clear of it. There will be bloody work here before morning.”
“Well, indeed then, Mac,” Scanlan answered. “It’s not the will but the
nerve that is wanting in me. When I saw Manager Dunn go down at the
colliery yonder it was just more than I could stand. I’m not made for
it, same as you or McGinty. If the lodge will think none the worse of
me, I’ll just do as you advise and leave you to yourselves for the
evening.”
The men came in good time as arranged. They were outwardly respectable
citizens, well clad and cleanly; but a judge of faces would have read
little hope for Birdy Edwards in those hard mouths and remorseless
eyes. There was not a man in the room whose hands had not been reddened
a dozen times before. They were as hardened to human murder as a
butcher to sheep.
Foremost, of course, both in appearance and in guilt, was the
formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a
long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible
fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no
notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter,
was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and
a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual
details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The
two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with
determined faces, while their companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy, dark
youth, was feared even by his own comrades for the ferocity of his
disposition. These were the men who assembled that night under the roof
of McMurdo for the killing of the Pinkerton detective.
Their host had placed whisky upon the table, and they had hastened to
prime themselves for the work before them. Baldwin and Cormac were
already half-drunk, and the liquor had brought out all their ferocity.
Cormac placed his hands on the stove for an instant—it had been
lighted, for the nights were still cold.
“That will do,” said he, with an oath.
“Ay,” said Baldwin, catching his meaning. “If he is strapped to that,
we will have the truth out of him.”
“We’ll have the truth out of him, never fear,” said McMurdo. He had
nerves of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of the affair
was on him his manner was as cool and unconcerned as ever. The others
marked it and applauded.
“You are the one to handle him,” said the Boss approvingly. “Not a
warning will he get till your hand is on his throat. It’s a pity there
are no shutters to your windows.”
McMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains tighter. “Sure
no one can spy upon us now. It’s close upon the hour.”
“Maybe he won’t come. Maybe he’ll get a sniff of danger,” said the
secretary.
“He’ll come, never fear,” McMurdo answered. “He is as eager to come as
you can be to see him. Hark to that!”
They all sat like wax figures, some with their glasses arrested halfway
to their lips. Three loud knocks had sounded at the door.
“Hush!” McMurdo raised his hand in caution. An exulting glance went
round the circle, and hands were laid upon their weapons.
“Not a sound, for your lives!” McMurdo whispered, as he went from the
room, closing the door carefully behind him.
[Illustration: “Not a sound, for your lives!” McMurdo whispered.]
With strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the steps of
their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him open the outer
door. There were a few words as of greeting. Then they were aware of a
strange step inside and of an unfamiliar voice. An instant later came
the slam of the door and the turning of the key in the lock. Their prey
was safe within the trap. Tiger Cormac laughed horribly, and Boss
McGinty clapped his great hand across his mouth.
“Be quiet, you fool!” he whispered. “You’ll be the undoing of us yet!”
There was a mutter of conversation from the next room. It seemed
interminable. Then the door opened, and McMurdo appeared, his finger
upon his lip.
He came to the end of the table and looked round at them. A subtle
change had come over him. His manner was as of one who has great work
to do. His face had set into granite firmness. His eyes shone with a
fierce excitement behind his spectacles. He had become a visible leader
of men. They stared at him with eager interest; but he said nothing.
Still with the same singular gaze he looked from man to man.
“Well!” cried Boss McGinty at last. “Is he here? Is Birdy Edwards
here?”
“Yes,” McMurdo answered slowly. “Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy
Edwards!”
There were ten seconds after that brief speech during which the room
might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a
kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white
faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set
motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a
bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while
the curtains were torn from their hangings.
At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear and plunged
for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met him there with the
stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine Police gleaming behind
the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell back into his chair.
“You’re safer there, Councillor,” said the man whom they had known as
McMurdo. “And you, Baldwin, if you don’t take your hand off your
pistol, you’ll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or by the Lord that
made me—There, that will do. There are forty armed men round this
house, and you can figure it out for yourself what chance you have.
Take their pistols, Marvin!”
There was no possible resistance under the menace of those rifles. The
men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed, they still sat round
the table.
“I’d like to say a word to you before we separate,” said the man who
had trapped them. “I guess we may not meet again until you see me on
the stand in the courthouse. I’ll give you something to think over
between now and then. You know me now for what I am. At last I can put
my cards on the table. I am Birdy Edwards of Pinkerton’s. I was chosen
to break up your gang. I had a hard and dangerous game to play. Not a
soul, not one soul, not my nearest and dearest, knew that I was playing
it. Only Captain Marvin here and my employers knew that. But it’s over
to-night, thank God, and I am the winner!”
The seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was unappeasable
hatred in their eyes. He read the relentless threat.
“Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take my chance
of that. Anyhow, some of you will take no further hand, and there are
sixty more besides yourselves that will see a jail this night. I’ll
tell you this, that when I was put upon this job I never believed there
was such a society as yours. I thought it was paper talk, and that I
would prove it so. They told me it was to do with the Freemen; so I
went to Chicago and was made one. Then I was surer than ever that it
was just paper talk; for I found no harm in the society, but a deal of
good.
“Still, I had to carry out my job, and I came to the coal valleys. When
I reached this place I learned that I was wrong and that it wasn’t a
dime novel after all. So I stayed to look after it. I never killed a
man in Chicago. I never minted a dollar in my life. Those I gave you
were as good as any others; but I never spent money better. But I knew
the way into your good wishes and so I pretended to you that the law
was after me. It all worked just as I thought.
“So I joined your infernal lodge, and I took my share in your councils.
Maybe they will say that I was as bad as you. They can say what they
like, so long as I get you. But what is the truth? The night I joined
you beat up old man Stanger. I could not warn him, for there was no
time; but I held your hand, Baldwin, when you would have killed him. If
ever I have suggested things, so as to keep my place among you, they
were things which I knew I could prevent. I could not save Dunn and
Menzies, for I did not know enough; but I will see that their murderers
are hanged. I gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that when I blew his
house in he and his folk were in hiding. There was many a crime that I
could not stop; but if you look back and think how often your man came
home the other road, or was down in town when you went for him, or
stayed indoors when you thought he would come out, you’ll see my work.”
“You blasted traitor!” hissed McGinty through his closed teeth.
“Ay, John McGinty, you may call me that if it eases your smart. You and
your like have been the enemy of God and man in these parts. It took a
man to get between you and the poor devils of men and women that you
held under your grip. There was just one way of doing it, and I did it.
You call me a traitor; but I guess there’s many a thousand will call me
a deliverer that went down into hell to save them. I’ve had three
months of it. I wouldn’t have three such months again if they let me
loose in the treasury at Washington for it. I had to stay till I had it
all, every man and every secret right here in this hand. I’d have
waited a little longer if it hadn’t come to my knowledge that my secret
was coming out. A letter had come into the town that would have set you
wise to it all. Then I had to act and act quickly.
“I’ve nothing more to say to you, except that when my time comes I’ll
die the easier when I think of the work I have done in this valley.
Now, Marvin, I’ll keep you no more. Take them in and get it over.”
There is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed note to
be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission which he had
accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the early hours of the
morning a beautiful woman and a much muffled man boarded a special
train which had been sent by the railroad company, and made a swift,
unbroken journey out of the land of danger. It was the last time that
ever either Ettie or her lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days
later they were married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness
of the wedding.
The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where their
adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law. In vain they
struggled. In vain the money of the lodge—money squeezed by blackmail
out of the whole countryside—was spent like water in the attempt to
save them. That cold, clear, unimpassioned statement from one who knew
every detail of their lives, their organization, and their crimes was
unshaken by all the wiles of their defenders. At last after so many
years they were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from
the valley.
McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining when the
last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his fate. Fifty-odd
had various degrees of imprisonment. The work of Birdy Edwards was
complete.
And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was
another hand to be played, and yet another and another. Ted Baldwin,
for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys; so had several
others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For ten years they were out
of the world, and then came a day when they were free once more—a day
which Edwards, who knew his men, was very sure would be an end of his
life of peace. They had sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to
have his blood as a vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove
to keep their vow!
From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success that it
was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he went under a
changed name to California, and it was there that the light went for a
time out of his life when Ettie Edwards died. Once again he was nearly
killed, and once again under the name of Douglas he worked in a lonely
canyon, where with an English partner named Barker he amassed a
fortune. At last there came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were
on his track once more, and he cleared—only just in time—for England.
And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy
mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life
which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.
Epilogue
The police trial had passed, in which the case of John Douglas was
referred to a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions, at which he
was acquitted as having acted in self-defense.
“Get him out of England at any cost,” wrote Holmes to the wife. “There
are forces here which may be more dangerous than those he has escaped.
There is no safety for your husband in England.”
Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our
minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic note slipped into our
letter box. “Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!” said this singular epistle.
There was neither superscription nor signature. I laughed at the quaint
message; but Holmes showed unwonted seriousness.
“Deviltry, Watson!” he remarked, and sat long with a clouded brow.
Late last night Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, brought up a message that a
gentleman wished to see Mr. Holmes, and that the matter was of the
utmost importance. Close at the heels of his messenger came Cecil
Barker, our friend of the moated Manor House. His face was drawn and
haggard.
“I’ve had bad news—terrible news, Mr. Holmes,” said he.
“I feared as much,” said Holmes.
“You have not had a cable, have you?”
“I have had a note from someone who has.”
“It’s poor Douglas. They tell me his name is Edwards; but he will
always be Jack Douglas of Benito Canyon to me. I told you that they
started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three weeks ago.”
“Exactly.”
“The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable from Mrs.
Douglas this morning:
“Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St. Helena. No one knows how
accident occurred.
“IVY DOUGLAS.”
“Ha! It came like that, did it?” said Holmes thoughtfully. “Well, I’ve
no doubt it was well stage-managed.”
“You mean that you think there was no accident?”
“None in the world.”
“He was murdered?”
“Surely!”
“So I think also. These infernal Scowrers, this cursed vindictive nest
of criminals—”
“No, no, my good sir,” said Holmes. “There is a master hand here. It is
no case of sawed-off shotguns and clumsy six-shooters. You can tell an
old master by the sweep of his brush. I can tell a Moriarty when I see
one. This crime is from London, not from America.”
“But for what motive?”
“Because it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail, one whose whole
unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must succeed. A
great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction
of one man. It is crushing the nut with the triphammer—an absurd
extravagance of energy—but the nut is very effectually crushed all the
same.”
“How came this man to have anything to do with it?”
“I can only say that the first word that ever came to us of the
business was from one of his lieutenants. These Americans were well
advised. Having an English job to do, they took into partnership, as
any foreign criminal could do, this great consultant in crime. From
that moment their man was doomed. At first he would content himself by
using his machinery in order to find their victim. Then he would
indicate how the matter might be treated. Finally, when he read in the
reports of the failure of this agent, he would step in himself with a
master touch. You heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that
the coming danger was greater than the past. Was I right?”
Barker beat his head with his clenched fist in his impotent anger. “Do
not tell me that we have to sit down under this? Do you say that no one
can ever get level with this king devil?”
“No, I don’t say that,” said Holmes, and his eyes seemed to be looking
far into the future. “I don’t say that he can’t be beat. But you must
give me time—you must give me time!”
We all sat in silence for some minutes while those fateful eyes still
strained to pierce the veil.