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\hyphenation{Birl-stone}

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\title{The Valley of Fear}


\author{Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\\
{\normalsize Illustrations by Frank Wiles}}

\maketitle
\noindent \vspace*{\stretch{1}}\\
This public-domain (U.S.) text was produced by Toby F.\ Charkin (t\_charkin@yahoo.com).
The project Gutenberg edition ({}``vfear11a'') was converted to
\LaTeX{} by means of \textbf{GutenMark} software (version Dec 25 2002),
and subsequently modified (to correct formatting problems) by Ron
Burkey. Original \emph{Strand Magazine} illustrations missing in the
Project Gutenberg edition were also added; these were taken from online
sources at bakerstreet221b.de (possibly scanned by David Soucek).
Report problems to info@sandroid.org. Revision C2 differs from C1
in that {}``---'' was everywhere replaced with {}``---''.

\noindent \begin{center}Revision: C2\\
Date: 01/30/2008\end{center}

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

 \frontmatter


\pagestyle{myheadings} {\small \tableofcontents{}}\newpage


\mainmatter



\part*{PART 1\protect \\
The Tragedy of Birlstone}

\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Part 1.\\
The Tragedy of Birlstone}


\chapter*{\raggedright Chapter 1. The Warning}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 1\\
The Warning}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{The Warning}

{}``I am inclined to think\mdsh{---}''\ 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 \emph{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 \textit{nom}-\textit{de}-\textit{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\mdsh{---}anything
that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not
only formidable, Watson, but sinister\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 \emph{solatium} for
his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of \emph{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\mdsh{---}such would be your respective
roles! 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\mdsh{---}the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain
some little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a
sound link\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.''

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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:\ 

\begin{quote}
\noindent \begin{center}\texttt{534 C2 13 127 36 31 4  17 21 41 \mbox{DOUGLAS}
109 293  5 37 \mbox{BIRLSTONE} 26  \mbox{BIRLSTONE} 9 47 171}\end{center}
\end{quote}
{}

{}``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.

\begin{quotation}
\noindent \noun{{}``}\textit{\noun{Dear}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Mr}}\noun{.\ }\textit{\noun{Holmes}}
{[}he says{]}:\  

{}``I will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous\mdsh{---}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.\ 

\textit{\noun{\hspace{\stretch{1}}Fred}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Porlock}}\noun{.}''
\end{quotation}
{}

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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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!''

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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'\mdsh{---}`There is'''\mdsh{---}Holmes's
eyes were gleaming with excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers
twitched as he counted the words\mdsh{---}{}```danger.' Ha! Ha!
Capital! Put that down, Watson. `There is danger \mdsh{---} may \mdsh{---}
come \mdsh{---} very \mdsh{---} soon \mdsh{---} one.' Then we have
the name `Douglas' \mdsh{---} `rich \mdsh{---} country \mdsh{---}
now \mdsh{---} at \mdsh{---} Birlstone \mdsh{---} House \mdsh{---}
Birlstone \mdsh{---} confidence \mdsh{---} is \mdsh{---} pressing.'
There, Watson! What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If
the greengrocer 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\mdsh{---}`confidence'\ was as near
as he could get to `confident'\mdsh{---}that it is pressing. There
is our result\mdsh{---}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 entrusted 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\mdsh{---}but\mdsh{---}''

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?''

{}``It is a cipher that Dr.\ Watson and I have had occasion to solve.
But why\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 2. Sherlock Holmes Discourses}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 2\\
Sherlock Holmes Discourses}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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 over-stimulation.
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\mdsh{---}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 Cam\-b\-er\-well\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''
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 \emph{La Jeune Fille a l'Agneau} fetched one million two
hundred thousand francs\mdsh{---}more than forty thousand pounds\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}with the most unexpected
results.''

{}``You found something compromising?''

{}``Absolutely nothing. That was what am\-az\-ed 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\mdsh{---}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 in\-t\-e\-r\-es\-t\-ing\mdsh{---}it's just wonderful.
But let us have it a little clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining,
burglary\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}a
chain with this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken
fighting \textit{\emph{men}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{pickpockets}}\emph{,}
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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 Credit
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\mdsh{---}this Douglas whose approaching fate was
known by one of the arch-criminal's subordinates\mdsh{---}had in
some way betrayed the chief. His punishment followed, and would be
known to all\mdsh{---}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.''

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\end{figure}
{}``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 \textit{\emph{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 \textit{\emph{provincials}} need their
assistance. It is a very cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert
is generally asked to run.

\begin{quotation}
\noindent {}``\textit{\noun{Dear}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Inspector}}
\noun{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\mdsh{---}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
thing 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.''
\end{quotation}
{}``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 enclosed 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\mdsh{---}a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex.
It's the chain between that we are going to trace.''


\chapter*{\raggedright Chapter 3. The Tragedy of Birlstone}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 3\\
The Tragedy of Birlstone}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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 \textit{\emph{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 ditch-like 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 Doug\-las\mdsh{---}forty-five
at the most\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.

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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\mdsh{---}it seemed to be muffled. I rushed down\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}if they did\mdsh{---}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.\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 scour 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*{\raggedright Chapter 4. Darkness}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 4\\
Darkness}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``What about him? Is he reliable?''

{}``Ten years with Sir Charles Chandos\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''\ 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\mdsh{---}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 \textit{\emph{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.''

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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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}Douglas
may have gripped the hammer that was found upon the mat\mdsh{---}he
shot Douglas in this horrible way. He dropped his gun and also it
would seem this queer card\mdsh{---}V. V.\ 341, whatever that may
mean\mdsh{---}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.''

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{}``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?\ldots{} Ames, I understand that you have often seen
this very unusual mark\mdsh{---}a branded triangle inside a circle\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.''

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{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''\ 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*{\raggedright Chapter 5. The People Of the Drama}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 5\\
The People Of the Drama}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}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.

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As they reached the bottom of the stair 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}it was easy to see that.''

{}``Were these men Americans\mdsh{---}Cal\-i\-for\-n\-i\-ans?''

{}``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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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''\mdsh{---}his eyes blazed
for an instant, and then with an evident effort he got a grip upon
his own emotions\mdsh{---}{}``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.

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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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}there was the most complete love
and confidence between us\mdsh{---}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.'\mdsh{---}`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\mdsh{---}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.

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.

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{}``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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 6. A Dawning Light}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 6\\
A Dawning Light}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}but
it was just one instant too late\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}I implore that you will, Dr.\ Watson! I assure
you that you will be helping us\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}far from it\mdsh{---}but when we have traced the missing
dumb-bell\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising
lie\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}a thing which
he would surely never have done\mdsh{---}and to put that singular
card beside his victim. I say that this was obviously impossible.

{}``You may argue\mdsh{---}but I have too much respect for your
judgment, Watson, to think that you will do so\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 he 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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}not necessarily a guilty couple\mdsh{---}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 window-sill 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\mdsh{---}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 whole-hearted about Barker. I shall
sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings me inspiration.
I'm a believer in the \emph{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\mdsh{---}but what a wretched weapon! If there is danger\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}and you may be sure that I had his description on
the wires within five minutes of hearing it\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}or at least that they reached
the room before he escaped\mdsh{---}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?''

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{}``No, no! Darkness and Dr.\ Watson's umbrella\linebreak[1]\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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?''

{}``Not in the least,''\ I answered in astonishment.

{}``Ah, that's lucky,''\ he said, and not another word would he
utter that night.


\chapter*{\raggedright Chapter 7. The Solution}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 7\\
The Solution}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}East Ham, Leicester, and Liverpool\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mbox{---}'''

{}``You are making fools of us, Mr.\ Holmes!''

{}``Tut, tut, Mr.\ Mac!\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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?

\begin{quote}
{}``Dear Sir: {}``It has struck me that it is our duty to drain
the moat, in the hope that we may find some\mdsh{---}''
\end{quote}
{}

{}``It's impossible,''\ said the inspector. {}``I've made inquiry.''

{}``Tut, tut! My dear sir, please do what I ask you.''

{}``Well, go on.''

\begin{quote}
{}``\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''
\end{quote}
{}

{}``Impossible!''

\begin{quote}
{}``\mdsh{---}diverting the stream; so I thought it best to explain
matters beforehand.
\end{quote}
{}

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}Well, that's what we
are watching for!''

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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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}`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 \textit{peine} \textit{forte} \textit{et} \textit{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.''

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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\mdsh{---}as
much daylight as I could get in that rat trap\mdsh{---}in putting
the thing into words. You're welcome to them\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}my mind was always more restful when that bridge
was up in the evenings\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}and I've had more than most
in my time\mdsh{---}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.

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{}``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\mdsh{---}he took it all in at a glance\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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*{PART 2\protect \\
The Scowrers}

\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Part 2.\\
The Scowrers}


\chapter*{\raggedright Chapter 1. The Man}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 1\\
The Man}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}and
they were numerous\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}{}``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.''

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{}``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 downtown.
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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 2. The Bodymaster}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 2\\
The Bodymaster}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}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
l 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}not
if you \textit{\emph{vere}} to pay me a hundred dollar a week.''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}the
other one!''

{}``Baldwin\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.''

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{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}d'ye
hear, girl?\mdsh{---}on your knees\mdsh{---}and then I'll tell you
what your punishment may be. You've sowed\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}Jack\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}his noble proportions, his fine features,
and his frank bearing\mdsh{---}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.

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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.

{}``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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}''

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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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 3. Lodge 341, Vermissa}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 3\\
Lodge 341, Vermissa}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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.''

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{}``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\mdsh{---}and perhaps I'm going further than my duty in
saying it\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}and goodnight, 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 f\^{e}ted 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 failures 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\mdsh{---}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.

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{}``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.

{}``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 burn\-ed 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 249. He says:\ 

\begin{quotation}
\noindent \noun{{}``}\textit{\noun{Dear}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Sir}}\noun{:}

{}``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,

\hspace{\stretch{1}}\noun{{}``J. W.\ }\textit{\noun{Windle}}
\noun{D.M.A.O.F.}
\end{quotation}
{}

{}``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 law courts? 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 \emph{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.

\noindent \begin{center}\texttt{``}\texttt{\textit{\noun{\Large Law}}}
\texttt{\noun{\Large }}\texttt{\textit{\noun{\Large and}}} \texttt{\noun{\Large }}\texttt{\textit{\noun{\Large Order}}}\texttt{\noun{\Large !}}\end{center}{\Large \par}

\noindent That's how he heads it.

\begin{quotation}
\noindent \begin{center}{}``\textit{\noun{Reign}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{of}}
\noun{}\textit{\noun{Error}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{in}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{the}}
\noun{}\textit{\noun{Coal}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{and}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Iron}}
\noun{}\textit{\noun{District}}\end{center}

\noindent {}``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\mdsh{---}
\end{quotation}
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\mdsh{---}you all know that\mdsh{---}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 {}``\noun{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.

%
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{}``You'll kill the man,''\ said he. {}``Drop it!''

Baldwin looked at him in amazement. {}``Curse you!''\ he cried.
{}``Who are you to inter\-fere\mdsh{---}you that are new to the
lodge? Stand back!'' He raised his stick; but McMurdo had whipped
his pistol out of his hip 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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 4. The Valley of Fear}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 4\\
The Valley of Fear}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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 \emph{Daily Herald}. In a special column put in at the last moment
he read:

\noindent \begin{center}\textit{\noun{Outrage}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{at}}
\noun{}\textit{\noun{the}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Herald}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Office}}\noun{\mdsh{---}}\textit{\noun{Editor
Seriously}} \noun{}\textit{\noun{Injured}}\noun{.}\end{center}

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:

\begin{quote}
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 \emph{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.
\end{quote}
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:\ 

\begin{quote}
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.
\end{quote}
{}

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\mdsh{---}and it seemed to me last night
that you were shaping to be as bad as the worst\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}curse
the hour that the name first fell upon my ears!\mdsh{---}and I came
to better myself! My God!\ to better myself! My wife and three children
came with me. I started a dry goods 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}if
you only get a dime a dollar for what the business is worth\mdsh{---}
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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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 dry goods 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?''

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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\mdsh{---}''

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
\emph{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\mdsh{---}''\ 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*{\raggedright Chapter 5. The Darkest Hour}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 5\\
The Darkest Hour}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}that
was it\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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.''

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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\mdsh{---}I beg it of you on my bended
knees!\  Kneeling here before you 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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, blood-shot 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 \emph{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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}all
alone at the Iron Dike crossroad, same as you see here on the map\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}''

{}``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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 6. Danger}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 6\\
Danger}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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 \emph{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.''

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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:\ 

\begin{quote}
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.
\end{quote}
{}

{}``Now read the postscript.''

\begin{quote}
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.
\end{quote}
{}

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\mdsh{---}your friend\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 counter-signs 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 sol\-emn 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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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.'\mdsh{---}'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\mdsh{---}and
I'll let you know if I do\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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*{\raggedright Chapter 7. The Trapping of Birdy Edwards}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Chapter 7\\
The Trapping of Birdy Edwards}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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\mdsh{---}he
who had claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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 hidden weapons.

{}``Not a sound, for your lives!''\ McMurdo whispered, as he went
from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}money squeezed
by blackmail out of the whole countryside\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}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\mdsh{---}only just in
time\mdsh{---}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.


\chapter*{\raggedright Epilogue}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Epilogue}

\markboth{The Valley of Fear}{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.

%
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\noindent \begin{center}\includegraphics[%
  width=1\columnwidth]{vfear11a-vall-27a.jpg}\end{center}
\end{figure}
Late last night Mrs.\ Hudson, our landlady, brought up a message
that a gentleman wished to see 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\mdsh{---}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:\mdsh{---}

\begin{quotation}
\noindent {}``Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St Helena.
No one knows how accident occurred.

\hspace{\stretch{1}}\mbox{---}\noun{Ivy Douglas}.''
\end{quotation}
{}

{}``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\mdsh{---}''

{}``No, no, my good sir,''\ said Holmes. {}``There is a master
hand here. It is no case of sawed-off shot-guns 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\mdsh{---}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 hammer\mdsh{---}an
absurd extravagance of energy\mdsh{---}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 you 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\mdsh{---}you must give me time!''

We all sat in silence for some minutes, while those fateful eyes still
strained to pierce the veil.
\end{document}
