INITIALIZATION
Knowledgebase: ki-dev-large
Base Query: schreib mir eine business email im kontext der gewerkschaft igm
Model: gpt-4o
Use Curl?: 
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**Elapsed Time: 0.00 seconds**
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ROUTING
Query type: creative_writing
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**Elapsed Time: 2.76 seconds**
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PRIMER 
Primer: 
            You are Simon, a highly intelligent personal assistant in a system called KIOS. You are a chatbot that
            can read knowledgebases through the "CONTEXT" that is included in the user's chat message.

        
            Your role is to act as an expert writer.

            In your responses to enterprise users, prioritize clarity, trustworthiness, and appropriate formality.

            Be honest by admitting when a topic falls outside your scope of knowledge, and suggest
            alternative avenues for obtaining information when necessary.

            Make effective use of chat history to avoid redundancy and enhance response relevance, continuously
            adapting to integrate all necessary details in your interactions.

            If the user provides a specific structure for the article or output, please follow it intently.

            Use as much tokens as possible to provide a detailed response.
        
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**Elapsed Time: 0.34 seconds**
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FINAL QUERY 
Final Query: CONTEXT: ##########
File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folks were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days, and they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham, overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it is from the remnant of a road, this house none the less impressed me unfavorably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which biased me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, yet as I approached it I was not so sure, for though the walks were indeed overgrown with weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little tco well to argue complete desertion. Therefore instead of trying the dcor I knocked, feeling as I did so a trepidation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which served as a dcor-step, I glanced at the neighboring windows and the panes of the transom above me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque with dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be inhabited, despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked no response, so after repeating the summons I tried the rusty latch and found the door unfastened. Inside was a little vestibule with walls from which the plaster was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odor. I entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me. Ahead rose a narrow staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar, while to the left and right were closed doors leading to rooms on the ground floor.

Leaning my cycle against the wall I opened the door at the left, and crossed into a small low-ceiled chamber but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and furnished in the barest and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting-room, for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense fireplace above which ticked an antique clock on a mantel. Books and papers were very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. What interested me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely post-revolutionary date. Had the furnishings been less humble, the place would have been a collector's paradise.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or loathed, I could by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various articles which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title page my wonder grew even greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta's account of the Congo region, written in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopex and printed at Frankfurt in 1598. I had often heard of this work, with its curious illustrations by the brothers De Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented negroes with white skins and Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the persistent way in which the volume tended to fall open of itself at Plate XII, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher's shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless disturbed me, especially in connection with some adjacent passages descriptive of Anzique gastronomy.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: I had turned to a neighboring shelf and was examining its meagre literary contents - an eighteenth century Bible, a "Pilgrim's Progress" of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana," and a few other books of evidently equal age - when my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled, considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound sleep, and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain a curious quality of cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the more because the tread was heavy. When I had entered the room I had shut the door behind me. Now, after a moment of silence during which the walker may have been inspecting my bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the paneled portal swing open again.

In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should have exclaimed aloud but for the restraints of good breeding. Old, white-bearded, and ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique which inspired equal wonder and respect. His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a general air of age and poverty he was stout and powerful in proportion. His face, almost hidden by a long beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high forehead fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes, though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking as he was impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive despite his face and figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could hardly tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots; and his lack of cleanliness surpassed description.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: The appearance of this man, and the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me for something like enmity; so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity when he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice full of fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long extinct; and I studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation.

"Ketched in the rain, be ye?" he greeted. "Glad ye was nigh the haouse en' hed the sense ta come right in. I calc'late I was alseep, else I'd a heerd ye-I ain't as young as I uster be, an' I need a paowerful sight o' naps naowadays. Trav'lin fur? I hain't seed many folks 'long this rud sence they tuk off the Arkham stage."

I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologized for my rude entry into his domicile, whereupon he continued.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: "Glad ta see ye, young Sir - new faces is scurce arount here, an' I hain't got much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don't ye? I never ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see 'im - we hed one fer deestrick schoolmaster in 'eighty-four, but he quit suddent an' no one never heerd on 'im sence - " here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made no explanation when I questioned him. He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humor, yet to possess those eccentricities which one might guess from his grooming. For some time he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta's "Regnum Congo." The effect of this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain hesitancy in speaking of it, but curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my relief, the question did not seem an awkward one, for the old man answered freely and volubly.

"Oh, that Afriky book? Cap'n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in 'sixty-eight - him as was kilt in the war." Something about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused me to look up sharply. I had encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any record since the Revolution. I wondered if my host could help me in the task at which I was laboring, and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: "Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an' picked up a sight o' queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess - he uster like ter buy things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin' hosses, when I see this book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a swap. 'Tis a queer book - here, leave me git on my spectacles-" The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table and turned the pages lovingly.

"Ebenezer cud read a leetle o' this-'tis Latin - but I can't. I had two er three schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded in the pond - kin yew make anything outen it?" I told him that I could, and translated for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar enough to correct me; for he seemed childishly pleased at my English version. His proximity was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill-defined apprehension I had felt, and I smiled as my host rambled on:

"Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin'. Take this un here near the front. Hey yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a floppin' over an' daown? And them men - them can't be niggers - they dew beat all. Kinder like Injuns, I guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o' these here critters looks like monkeys, or half monkeys an' half men, but I never heerd o' nothin' like this un." Here he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: "But naow I'll show ye the best un - over here nigh the middle - "The old man's speech grew a trifle thicker and his eyes assumed a brighter glow; but his fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to their mission. The book fell open, almost of its own accord and as if from frequent consultation at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate showing a butcher's shop amongst the Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist had made his Africans look like white men - the limbs and quarters hanging about the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as I disliked it.

"What d'ye think o' this - ain't never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, 'That's suthin' ta stir ye up an' make yer blood tickle.' When I read in Scripter about slayin' - like them Midianites was slew - I kinder think things, but I ain't got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is to it - I s'pose 'tis sinful, but ain't we all born an' livin' in sin? - Thet feller bein' chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at 'im - I hey ta keep lookin' at 'im - see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar's his head on thet bench, with one arm side of it, an' t'other arm's on the other side o' the meat block."
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now, with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.

"As I says, 'tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin'. D'ye know, young Sir, I'm right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, especial when I'd heerd Passon Clark rant o' Sundays in his big wig. Onct I tried suthin' funny - here, young Sir, don't git skeert - all I done was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market - killin' sheep was kinder more fun arter lookin' at it - " The tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer seemed not to notice it.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: "Killin' sheep was kinder more fun - but d'ye know, 'twan't quite satisfyin'. Queer haow a cravin' gits a holt on ye - As ye love the Almighty, young man, don't tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun to make me hungry fer victuals I couldn't raise nor buy - here, set still, what's ailin' ye? - I didn't do nothin', only I wondered haow 'twud be ef I did - They say meat makes blood an' flesh, an' gives ye new life, so I wondered ef 'twudn't make a man live longer an' longer ef 'twas more the same - " But the whisperer never continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple though somewhat unusual happening.

The open book lay flat between us, with the picture staring repulsively upward. As the old man whispered the words "more the same" a tiny splattering impact was heard, and something showed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume. I thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red. On the butcher's shop of the Anzique cannibals a small red spattering glistened picturesquely, lending vividness to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it, and stopped whispering even before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it and glanced quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before. I followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed to spread even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merely shut my eyes. A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind.
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File: The%20Picture%20in%20the%20House.txt

Page: 1

Context: The Picture in the House
by H. P. Lovecraft
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.

Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things.
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File: The%20Valley%20of%20Fear.txt

Page: 1

Context: you what your punishment may be. You've sowed—and by the Lord, I'll see that
you reap!" He glanced at them both in fury. Then he turned upon his heel, and an
instant later the outer door had banged behind him.
For a few moments McMurdo and the girl stood in silence. Then she threw
her arms around him.
"Oh, Jack, how brave you were! But it is no use, you must fly! To-night—
Jack—to-night! It's your only hope. He will have your life. I read it in his
horrible eyes. What chance have you against a dozen of them, with Boss
McGinty and all the power of the lodge behind them?"
McMurdo disengaged her hands, kissed her, and gently pushed her back into
a chair. "There, acushla, there! Don't be disturbed or fear for me. I'm a Freeman
myself. I'm after telling your father about it. Maybe I am no better than the
others; so don't make a saint of me. Perhaps you hate me too, now that I've told
you as much?"
"Hate you, Jack? While life lasts I could never do that! I've heard that there is
no harm in being a Freeman anywhere but here; so why should I think the worse
of you for that? But if you are a Freeman, Jack, why should you not go down
and make a friend of Boss McGinty? Oh, hurry, Jack, hurry! Get your word in
first, or the hounds will be on your trail."
"I was thinking the same thing," said McMurdo. "I'll go right now and fix it.
You can tell your father that I'll sleep here to-night and find some other quarters
in the morning."
The bar of McGinty's saloon was crowded as usual, for it was the favourite
loafing place of all the rougher elements of the town. The man was popular; for
he had a rough, jovial disposition which formed a mask, covering a great deal
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File: The%20Valley%20of%20Fear.txt

Page: 1

Context: 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 blackmaned
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
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File: The%20Valley%20of%20Fear.txt

Page: 1

Context: eyes were of a strange dead black, which, combined with a slight squint, gave
them a particularly sinister appearance.
All else in the man—his noble proportions, his fine features, and his frank
bearing—fitted in with that jovial, man-to-man manner which he affected. Here,
one would say, is a bluff, honest fellow, whose heart would be sound however
rude his outspoken words might seem. It was only when those dead, dark eyes,
deep and remorseless, were turned upon a man that he shrank within himself,
feeling that he was face to face with an infinite possibility of latent evil, with a
strength and courage and cunning behind it which made it a thousand times more
deadly.
Having had a good look at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward with
his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the little group of
courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful boss, laughing uproariously at
the smallest of his jokes. The young stranger's bold gray eyes looked back
fearlessly through their glasses at the deadly black ones which turned sharply
upon him.
"Well, young man, I can't call your face to mind."
"I'm new here, Mr. McGinty."
"You are not so new that you can't give a gentleman his proper title."
"He's Councillor McGinty, young man," said a voice from the group.
"I'm sorry, Councillor. I'm strange to the ways of the place. But I was advised
to see you."
"Well, you see me. This is all there is. What d'you think of me?"
"Well, it's early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and your soul as
fine as your face, then I'd ask for nothing better," said McMurdo.
"By Gar! you've got an Irish tongue in your head anyhow," cried the saloonkeeper,
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.
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File: The%20Valley%20of%20Fear.txt

Page: 1

Context: "Sure," said McMurdo.
"And you were told to see me?"
"I was."
"And who told you?"
"Brother Scanlan of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health Councillor, and
to our better acquaintance." He raised a glass with which he had been served to
his lips and elevated his little finger as he drank it.
McGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his thick black
eyebrows. "Oh, it's like that, is it?" said he. "I'll have to look a bit closer into
this, Mister—"
"McMurdo."
"A bit closer, Mr. McMurdo; for we don't take folk on trust in these parts, nor
believe all we're told neither. Come in here for a moment, behind the bar."
There was a small room there, lined with barrels. McGinty carefully closed
the door, and then seated himself on one of them, biting thoughtfully on his cigar
and surveying his companion with those disquieting eyes. For a couple of
minutes he sat in complete silence. McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one
hand in his coat pocket, the other twisting his brown moustache. Suddenly
McGinty stooped and produced a wicked-looking revolver.
"See here, my joker," said he, "if I thought you were playing any game on us,
it would be short work for you."
"This is a strange welcome," McMurdo answered with some dignity, "for the
Bodymaster of a lodge of Freemen to give to a stranger brother."
"Ay, but it's just that same that you have to prove," said McGinty, "and God
help you if you fail! Where were you made?"
"Lodge 29, Chicago."
"When?"
"June 24, 1872."
"What Bodymaster?"
"James H. Scott."
"Who is your district ruler?"
"Bartholomew Wilson."
"Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?"
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Context: "Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?"
"Working, the same as you—but a poorer job."
"You have your back answer quick enough."
"Yes, I was always quick of speech."
"Are you quick of action?"
"I have had that name among those that knew me best."
"Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you heard anything of the
lodge in these parts?"
"I've heard that it takes a man to be a brother."
"True for you, Mr. McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?"
"I'm damned if I tell you that!"
McGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered in such
fashion, and it amused him. "Why won't you tell me?"
"Because no brother may tell another a lie."
"Then the truth is too bad to tell?"
"You can put it that way if you like."
"See here, mister, you can't expect me, as Bodymaster, to pass into the lodge
a man for whose past he can't answer."
McMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper cutting from an
inner pocket.
"You wouldn't squeal on a fellow?" said he.
"I'll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to me!" cried
McGinty hotly.
"You are right, Councillor," said McMurdo meekly. "I should apologize. I
spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe in your hands. Look at that
clipping."
McGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of one Jonas
Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in the New Year week of
1874.
"Your work?" he asked, as he handed back the paper.
McMurdo nodded.
"Why did you shoot him?"
"I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good
gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make. This man Pinto
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Context: helped me to shove the queer—"
"To do what?"
"Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then he said he would
split. Maybe he did split. I didn't wait to see. I just killed him and lighted out for
the coal country."
"Why the coal country?"
"'Cause I'd read in the papers that they weren't too particular in those parts."
McGinty laughed. "You were first a coiner and then a murderer, and you
came to these parts because you thought you'd be welcome."
"That's about the size of it," McMurdo answered.
"Well, I guess you'll go far. Say, can you make those dollars yet?"
McMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. "Those never passed the
Philadelphia mint," said he.
"You don't say!" McGinty held them to the light in his enormous hand, which
was hairy as a gorilla's. "I can see no difference. Gar! you'll be a mighty useful
brother, I'm thinking! We can do with a bad man or two among us, Friend
McMurdo: for there are times when we have to take our own part. We'd soon be
against the wall if we didn't shove back at those that were pushing us."
"Well, I guess I'll do my share of shoving with the rest of the boys."
"You seem to have a good nerve. You didn't squirm when I shoved this gun at
you."
"It was not me that was in danger."
"Who then?"
"It was you, Councillor." McMurdo drew a cocked pistol from the side pocket
of his peajacket. "I was covering you all the time. I guess my shot would have
been as quick as yours."
"By Gar!" McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of
laughter. "Say, we've had no such holy terror come to hand this many a year. I
reckon the lodge will learn to be proud of you.... Well, what the hell do you
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Context: 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—"
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Context: The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the other's
neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his mad fury he would
have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not interfered.
"Easy, Councillor! For heaven's sake, go easy!" he cried, as he dragged him
back.
McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken gasping for
breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the very edge of
death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.
"You've been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin—now you've got it!"
cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. "Maybe you think if I was voted
down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my shoes. It's for the lodge to
say that. But so long as I am the chief I'll have no man lift his voice against me
or my rulings."
"I have nothing against you," mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.
"Well, then," cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff joviality, "we
are all good friends again and there's an end of the matter."
He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the cork.
"See now," he continued, as he filled three high glasses. "Let us drink the
quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can be no bad blood
between us. Now, then the left hand on the apple of my throat. I say to you, Ted
Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?"
"The clouds are heavy," answered Baldwin
"But they will forever brighten."
"And this I swear!"
The men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was performed between
Baldwin and McMurdo.
"There!" cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. "That's the end of the black
blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that's a heavy hand
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Context: blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that's a heavy hand
in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows—and as you will damn soon find out,
Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!"
"Faith, I'd be slow to do that," said McMurdo. He held out his hand to
Baldwin. "I'm quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It's my hot Irish blood, they
tell me. But it's over for me, and I bear no grudge."
Baldwin had to take the proffered hand, for the baleful eye of the terrible
Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the words of the other
had moved him.
McGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. "Tut! These girls! These girls!"
he cried. "To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my
boys! It's the devil's own luck! Well, it's the colleen inside of them that must
settle the question for it's outside the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster—and the Lord
be praised for that! We have enough on us, without the women as well. You'll
have to be affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother McMurdo. We have our own ways
and methods, different from Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if you
come then, we'll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley."
Chapter 3
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.
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Context: 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
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Context: 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 goodhumouredly.
"I expect we all do our duty same as we see it; but we can't all see it
the same." He had drunk off his glass and had turned to go, when his eyes fell
upon the face of Jack McMurdo, who was scowling at his elbow. "Hullo! Hullo!"
he cried, looking him up and down. "Here's an old acquaintance!"
McMurdo shrank away from him. "I was never a friend to you nor any other
cursed copper in my life," said he.
"An acquaintance isn't always a friend," said the police captain, grinning.
"You're Jack McMurdo of Chicago, right enough, and don't you deny it!"
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not denying it," said he. "D'ye think
I'm ashamed of my own name?"
"You've got good cause to be, anyhow."
"What the devil d'you mean by that?" he roared with his fists clenched.
"No, no, Jack, bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in Chicago before
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Context: ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago crook when I see
one."
McMurdo's face fell. "Don't tell me that you're Marvin of the Chicago
Central!" he cried.
"Just the same old Teddy Marvin, at your service. We haven't forgotten the
shooting of Jonas Pinto up there."
"I never shot him."
"Did you not? That's good impartial evidence, ain't it? Well, his death came in
uncommon handy for you, or they would have had you for shoving the queer.
Well, we can let that be bygones; for, between you and me—and perhaps I'm
going further than my duty in saying it—they could get no clear case against
you, and Chicago's open to you to-morrow."
"I'm very well where I am."
"Well, I've given you the pointer, and you're a sulky dog not to thank me for
it."
"Well, I suppose you mean well, and I do thank you," said McMurdo in no
very gracious manner.
"It's mum with me so long as I see you living on the straight," said the
captain. "But, by the Lord! if you get off after this, it's another story! So goodnight
to you—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 feted hero would surely have
spent his night under the bar.
On a Saturday night McMurdo was introduced to the lodge. He had thought
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Context: 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
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Context: 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—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
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Context: It was pitch dark and very oppressive under his hood. He heard the rustle and
murmur of the people round him, and then the voice of McGinty sounded dull
and distant through the covering of his ears.
"John McMurdo," said the voice, "are you already a member of the Ancient
Order of Freemen?"
He bowed in assent.
"Is your lodge No. 29, Chicago?"
He bowed again.
"Dark nights are unpleasant," said the voice.
"Yes, for strangers to travel," he answered.
"The clouds are heavy."
"Yes, a storm is approaching."
"Are the brethren satisfied?" asked the Bodymaster.
There was a general murmur of assent.
"We know, Brother, by your sign and by your countersign that you are indeed
one of us," said McGinty. "We would have you know, however, that in this
county and in other counties of these parts we have certain rites, and also certain
duties of our own which call for good men. Are you ready to be tested?"
"I am."
"Are you of stout heart?"
"I am."
"Take a stride forward to prove it."
As the words were said he felt two hard points in front of his eyes, pressing
upon them so that it appeared as if he could not move forward without a danger
of losing them. None the less, he nerved himself to step resolutely out, and as he
did so the pressure melted away. There was a low murmur of applause.
"He is of stout heart," said the voice. "Can you bear pain?"
"As well as another," he answered.
"Test him!"
It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming out, for an agonizing
pain shot through his forearm. He nearly fainted at the sudden shock of it; but he
bit his lip and clenched his hands to hide his agony.
"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
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Context: from his head. He stood blinking and smiling amid the congratulations of the
brothers.
"One last word, Brother McMurdo," said McGinty. "You have already sworn
the oath of secrecy and fidelity, and you are aware that the punishment for any
breach of it is instant and inevitable death?"
"I am," said McMurdo.
"And you accept the rule of the Bodymaster for the time being under all
circumstances?"
"I do."
"Then in the name of Lodge 341, Vermissa, I welcome you to its privileges
and debates. You will put the liquor on the table, Brother Scanlan, and we will
drink to our worthy brother."
McMurdo's coat had been brought to him; but before putting it on he
examined his right arm, which still smarted heavily. There on the flesh of the
forearm was a circle with a triangle within it, deep and red, as the branding iron
had left it. One or two of his neighbours pulled up their sleeves and showed their
own lodge marks.
"We've all had it," said one; "but not all as brave as you over it."
"Tut! It was nothing," said he; but it burned and ached all the same.
When the drinks which followed the ceremony of initiation had all been
disposed of, the business of the lodge proceeded. McMurdo, accustomed only to
the prosaic performances of Chicago, listened with open ears and more surprise
than he ventured to show to what followed.
"The first business on the agenda paper," said McGinty, "is to read the
following letter from Division Master Windle of Merton County Lodge 249. He
says:
"DEAR SIR:
"There is a job to be done on Andrew Rae of Rae & Sturmash, coal owners near this
place. You will remember that your lodge owes us a return, having had the service of
two brethren in the matter of the patrolman last fall. You will send two good men, they
will be taken charge of by Treasurer Higgins of this lodge, whose address you know.
He will show them when to act and where. Yours in freedom,
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Context: He will show them when to act and where. Yours in freedom,
"J. W. WINDLE D. M. A. O. F.
"Windle has never refused us when we have had occasion to ask for the loan
of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse him." McGinty paused and looked
round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. "Who will volunteer for the job?"
Several young fellows held up their hands. The Bodymaster looked at them
with an approving smile.
"You'll do, Tiger Cormac. If you handle it as well as you did the last, you
won't be wrong. And you, Wilson."
"I've no pistol," said the volunteer, a mere boy in his teens.
"It's your first, is it not? Well, you have to be blooded some time. It will be a
great start for you. As to the pistol, you'll find it waiting for you, or I'm
mistaken. If you report yourselves on Monday, it will be time enough. You'll get
a great welcome when you return."
"Any reward this time?" asked Cormac, a thick-set, dark-faced, brutallooking
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."
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Context: 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
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Context: "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
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Context: "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.
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Context: 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 Herald.
You've seen how he's been opening his mouth against us again?"
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Context: You've seen how he's been opening his mouth against us again?"
There was a murmur of assent, with many a muttered oath. McGinty took a
slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket.
"LAW AND ORDER!
That's how he heads it.
"REIGN OF TERROR IN THE COAL AND IRON DISTRICT
"Twelve years have now elapsed since the first assassinations which proved the
existence of a criminal organization in our midst. From that day these outrages have
never ceased, until now they have reached a pitch which makes us the opprobrium of
the civilized world. Is it for such results as this that our great country welcomes to its
bosom the alien who flies from the despotisms of Europe? Is it that they shall
themselves become tyrants over the very men who have given them shelter, and that a
state of terrorism and lawlessness should be established under the very shadow of the
sacred folds of the starry Flag of Freedom which would raise horror in our minds if
we read of it as existing under the most effete monarchy of the East? The men are
known. The organization is patent and public. How long are we to endure it? Can we
forever live—"
"Sure, I've read enough of the slush!" cried the chairman, tossing the paper
down upon the table. "That's what he says of us. The question I'm asking you is
what shall we say to him?"
"Kill him!" cried a dozen fierce voices.
"I protest against that," said Brother Morris, the man of the good brow and
shaved face. "I tell you, Brethren, that our hand is too heavy in this valley, and
that there will come a point where in self-defense every man will unite to crush
us out. James Stanger is an old man. He is respected in the township and the
district. His paper stands for all that is solid in the valley. If that man is struck
down, there will be a stir through this state that will only end with our
destruction."
"And how would they bring about our destruction, Mr. Standback?" cried
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Context: "And how would they bring about our destruction, Mr. Standback?" cried
McGinty. "Is it by the police? Sure, half of them are in our pay and half of them
afraid of us. Or is it by the law courts and the judge? Haven't we tried that before
now, and what ever came of it?"
"There is a Judge Lynch that might try the case," said Brother Morris.
A general shout of anger greeted the suggestion.
"I have but to raise my finger," cried McGinty, "and I could put two hundred
men into this town that would clear it out from end to end." Then suddenly
raising his voice and bending his huge black brows into a terrible frown, "See
here, Brother Morris, I have my eye on you, and have had for some time! You've
no heart yourself, and you try to take the heart out of others. It will be an ill day
for you, Brother Morris, when your own name comes on our agenda paper, and
I'm thinking that it's just there that I ought to place it."
Morris had turned deadly pale, and his knees seemed to give way under him
as he fell back into his chair. He raised his glass in his trembling hand and drank
before he could answer. "I apologize, Eminent Bodymaster, to you and to every
brother in this lodge if I have said more than I should. I am a faithful member—
you all know that—and it is my fear lest evil come to the lodge which makes me
speak in anxious words. But I have greater trust in your judgment than in my
own, Eminent Bodymaster, and I promise you that I will not offend again."
The Bodymaster's scowl relaxed as he listened to the humble words. "Very
good, Brother Morris. It's myself that would be sorry if it were needful to give
you a lesson. But so long as I am in this chair we shall be a united lodge in word
and in deed. And now, boys," he continued, looking round at the company, "I'll
say this much, that if Stanger got his full deserts there would be more trouble
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Context: 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, starspangled
sky. The men stopped and gathered in a yard which faced a high
building. The words "Vermissa Herald" were printed in gold lettering between
the brightly lit windows. From within came the clanking of the printing press.
"Here, you," said Baldwin to McMurdo, "you can stand below at the door and
see that the road is kept open for us. Arthur Willaby can stay with you. You
others come with me. Have no fears, boys; for we have a dozen witnesses that
we are in the Union Bar at this very moment."
It was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for one or two
revellers upon their way home. The party crossed the road, and, pushing open
the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin and his men rushed in and up the stair
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Context: the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin and his men rushed in and up the stair
which faced them. McMurdo and another remained below. From the room above
came a shout, a cry for help, and then the sound of trampling feet and of falling
chairs. An instant later a gray-haired man rushed out on the landing.
He was seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles came tinkling
down to McMurdo's feet. There was a thud and a groan. He was on his face, and
half a dozen sticks were clattering together as they fell upon him. He writhed,
and his long, thin limbs quivered under the blows. The others ceased at last; but
Baldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking at the man's head,
which he vainly endeavoured to defend with his arms. His white hair was
dabbled with patches of blood. Baldwin was still stooping over his victim,
putting in a short, vicious blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when
McMurdo dashed up the stair and pushed him back.
"You'll kill the man," said he. "Drop it!"
Baldwin looked at him in amazement. "Curse you!" he cried. "Who are you
to interfere—you that are new to the lodge? Stand back!" He raised his stick; but
McMurdo had whipped his pistol out of his 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—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
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Context: 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 4
The Valley of Fear
When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to remember his
initiation into the lodge. His head ached with the effect of the drink, and his arm,
where he had been branded, was hot and swollen. Having his own peculiar
source of income, he was irregular in his attendance at his work; so he had a late
breakfast, and remained at home for the morning writing a long letter to a friend.
Afterwards he read the Daily Herald. In a special column put in at the last
moment he read:
OUTRAGE AT THE HERALD OFFICE—EDITOR
SERIOUSLY INJURED.
It was a short account of the facts with which he was himself more familiar than
the writer could have been. It ended with the statement:
The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can hardly be hoped that their
exertions will be attended by any better results than in the past. Some of the men were
recognized, and there is hope that a conviction may be obtained. The source of the
outrage was, it need hardly be said, that infamous society which has held this
community in bondage for so long a period, and against which the Herald has taken so
uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger's many friends will rejoice to hear that, though
he has been cruelly and brutally beaten, and though he has sustained severe injuries
about the head, there is no immediate danger to his life.
Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester rifles, had been
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Context: Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester rifles, had been
requisitioned for the defense of the office.
McMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipe with a hand
which was shaky from the excesses of the previous evening, when there was a
knock outside, and his landlady brought to him a note which had just been
handed in by a lad. It was unsigned, and ran thus:
I should wish to speak to you, but would rather not do so in your house. You will find
me beside the flagstaff upon Miller Hill. If you will come there now, I have something
which it is important for you to hear and for me to say.
McMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; for he could not
imagine what it meant or who was the author of it. Had it been in a feminine
hand, he might have imagined that it was the beginning of one of those
adventures which had been familiar enough in his past life. But it was the
writing of a man, and of a well educated one, too. Finally, after some hesitation,
he determined to see the matter through.
Miller Hill is an ill-kept public park in the very centre of the town. In summer
it is a favourite resort of the people; but in winter it is desolate enough. From the
top of it one has a view not only of the whole straggling, grimy town, but of the
winding valley beneath, with its scattered mines and factories blackening the
snow on each side of it, and of the wooded and white-capped ranges flanking it.
McMurdo strolled up the winding path hedged in with evergreens until he
reached the deserted restaurant which forms the centre of summer gaiety. Beside
it was a bare flagstaff, and underneath it a man, his hat drawn down and the
collar of his overcoat turned up. When he turned his face McMurdo saw that it
was Brother Morris, he who had incurred the anger of the Bodymaster the night
before. The lodge sign was given and exchanged as they met.
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Context: 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
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Context: be putting my very life in your hands by what I say; but, bad as you are—and it
seemed to me last night that you were shaping to be as bad as the worst—still
you are new to it, and your conscience cannot yet be as hardened as theirs. That
was why I thought to speak with you."
"Well, what have you to say?"
"If you give me away, may a curse be on you!"
"Sure, I said I would not."
"I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman's society in Chicago
and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it cross your mind that you
might find it would lead you to crime?"
"If you call it crime," McMurdo answered.
"Call it crime!" cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion. "You have
seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was it crime last night when a
man old enough to be your father was beaten till the blood dripped from his
white hairs? Was that crime—or what else would you call it?"
"There are some would say it was war," said McMurdo, "a war of two classes
with all in, so that each struck as best it could."
"Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined the Freeman's society at
Chicago?"
"No, I'm bound to say I did not."
"Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a benefit club and a
meeting place for one's fellows. Then I heard of this place—curse the hour that
the name first fell upon my ears!—and I came to better myself! My God! to
better myself! My wife and three children came with me. I started a 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
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Context: meshwork of crime. What could I do? Every word I said to make things better
was taken as treason, same as it was last night. I can't get away; for all I have in
the world is in my store. If I leave the society, I know well that it means murder
to me, and God knows what to my wife and children. Oh, man, it is awful—
awful!" He put his hands to his face, and his body shook with convulsive sobs.
McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "You were too soft for the job," said he.
"You are the wrong sort for such work."
"I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminal among them.
I was chosen for a job. If I backed down I knew well what would come to me.
Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe it's the thought of my poor little woman and the
children that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess it will haunt me forever.
"It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the range yonder. I was
told off for the door, same as you were last night. They could not trust me with
the job. The others went in. When they came out their hands were crimson to the
wrists. As we turned away a child was screaming out of the house behind us. It
was a boy of five who had seen his father murdered. I nearly fainted with the
horror of it, and yet I had to keep a bold and smiling face; for well I knew that if
I did not it would be out of my house that they would come next with their
bloody hands and it would be my little Fred that would be screaming for his
father.
"But I was a criminal then, part sharer in a murder, lost forever in this world,
and lost also in the next. I am a good Catholic; but the priest would have no
word with me when he heard I was a Scowrer, and I am excommunicated from
my faith. That's how it stands with me. And I see you going down the same road,
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Context: and I ask you what the end is to be. Are you ready to be a cold-blooded murderer
also, or can we do anything to stop it?"
"What would you do?" asked McMurdo abruptly. "You would not inform?"
"God forbid!" cried Morris. "Sure, the very thought would cost me my life."
"That's well," said McMurdo. "I'm thinking that you are a weak man and that
you make too much of the matter."
"Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley! See
the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you that the cloud of
murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the heads of the people. It is the
Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from
the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself."
"Well, I'll let you know what I think when I have seen more," said McMurdo
carelessly. "What is very clear is that you are not the man for the place, and that
the sooner you sell out—if you only get a dime a dollar for what the business is
worth—the better it will be for you. What you have said is safe with me; but, by
Gar! if I thought you were an informer—"
"No, no!" cried Morris piteously.
"Well, let it rest at that. I'll bear what you have said in mind, and maybe some
day I'll come back to it. I expect you meant kindly by speaking to me like this.
Now I'll be getting home."
"One word before you go," said Morris. "We may have been seen together.
They may want to know what we have spoken about."
"Ah! that's well thought of."
"I offer you a clerkship in my store."
"And I refuse it. That's our business. Well, so long, Brother Morris, and may
you find things go better with you in the future."
That same afternoon, as McMurdo sat smoking, lost in thought beside the
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Context: 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."
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Context: parts."
"It may be enough for most folk; but it ain't enough for me, Councillor," said
McMurdo boldly. "If you are a judge of men, you'll know that."
The swarthy giant glared at him, and his hairy paw closed for an instant
round the glass as though he would hurl it at the head of his companion. Then he
laughed in his loud, boisterous, insincere fashion.
"You're a queer card, for sure," said he. "Well, if you want reasons, I'll give
them. Did Morris say nothing to you against the lodge?"
"No."
"Nor against me?"
"No."
"Well, that's because he daren't trust you. But in his heart he is not a loyal
brother. We know that well. So we watch him and we wait for the time to
admonish him. I'm thinking that the time is drawing near. There's no room for
scabby sheep in our pen. But if you keep company with a disloyal man, we
might think that you were disloyal, too. See?"
"There's no chance of my keeping company with him; for I dislike the man,"
McMurdo answered. "As to being disloyal, if it was any man but you he would
not use the word to me twice."
"Well, that's enough," said McGinty, draining off his glass. "I came down to
give you a word in season, and you've had it."
"I'd like to know," said McMurdo, "how you ever came to learn that I had
spoken with Morris at all?"
McGinty laughed. "It's my business to know what goes on in this township,"
said he. "I guess you'd best reckon on my hearing all that passes. Well, time's up,
and I'll just say—"
But his leavetaking was cut short in a very unexpected fashion. With a
sudden crash the door flew open, and three frowning, intent faces glared in at
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Context: 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.
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Context: look after ours."
"What am I accused of?" asked McMurdo.
"Of being concerned in the beating of old Editor Stanger at the Herald office.
It wasn't your fault that it isn't a murder charge."
"Well, if that's all you have against him," cried McGinty with a laugh, "you
can save yourself a deal of trouble by dropping it right now. This man was with
me in my saloon playing poker up to midnight, and I can bring a dozen to prove
it."
"That's your affair, and I guess you can settle it in court to-morrow.
Meanwhile, come on, McMurdo, and come quietly if you don't want a gun
across your head. You stand wide, Mr. McGinty; for I warn you I will stand no
resistance when I am on duty!"
So determined was the appearance of the captain that both McMurdo and his
boss were forced to accept the situation. The latter managed to have a few
whispered words with the prisoner before they parted.
"What about—" he jerked his thumb upward to signify the coining plant.
"All right," whispered McMurdo, who had devised a safe hiding place under
the floor.
"I'll bid you good-bye," said the Boss, shaking hands. "I'll see Reilly the
lawyer and take the defense upon myself. Take my word for it that they won't be
able to hold you."
"I wouldn't bet on that. Guard the prisoner, you two, and shoot him if he tries
any games. I'll search the house before I leave."
He did so; but apparently found no trace of the concealed plant. When he had
descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had
fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted;
but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility shouted
imprecations at the prisoner.
"Lynch the cursed Scowrer!" they cried. "Lynch him!" They laughed and
jeered as he was pushed into the police station. After a short, formal examination
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Context: 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.
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Context: 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 5
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
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Context: 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 sittingroom.
He was seated at a table, with his back turned and a letter in front of him.
A sudden spirit of girlish mischief came over her—she was still only nineteen.
He had not heard her when she pushed open the door. Now she tiptoed forward
and laid her hand lightly upon his bended shoulders.
If she had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only in turn to
be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her, and his right hand was
feeling for her throat. At the same instant with the other hand he crumpled up the
paper that lay before him. For an instant he stood glaring. Then astonishment
and joy took the place of the ferocity which had convulsed his features—a
ferocity which had sent her shrinking back in horror as from something which
had never before intruded into her gentle life.
"It's you!" said he, mopping his brow. "And to think that you should come to
me, heart of my heart, and I should find nothing better to do than to want to
strangle you! Come then, darling," and he held out his arms, "let me make it up
to you."
But she had not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty fear which she
had read in the man's face. All her woman's instinct told her that it was not the
mere fright of a man who is startled. Guilt—that was it—guilt and fear!
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Context: "What's come over you, Jack?" she cried. "Why were you so scared of me?
Oh, Jack, if your conscience was at ease, you would not have looked at me like
that!"
"Sure, I was thinking of other things, and when you came tripping so lightly
on those fairy feet of yours—"
"No, no, it was more than that, Jack." Then a sudden suspicion seized her.
"Let me see that letter you were writing."
"Ah, Ettie, I couldn't do that."
Her suspicions became certainties. "It's to another woman," she cried. "I
know it! Why else should you hold it from me? Was it to your wife that you
were writing? How am I to know that you are not a married man—you, a
stranger, that nobody knows?"
"I am not married, Ettie. See now, I swear it! You're the only one woman on
earth to me. By the cross of Christ I swear it!"
He was so white with passionate earnestness that she could not but believe
him.
"Well, then," she cried, "why will you not show me the letter?"
"I'll tell you, acushla," said he. "I'm under oath not to show it, and just as I
wouldn't break my word to you so I would keep it to those who hold my
promise. It's the business of the lodge, and even to you it's secret. And if I was
scared when a hand fell on me, can't you understand it when it might have been
the hand of a detective?"
She felt that he was telling the truth. He gathered her into his arms and kissed
away her fears and doubts.
"Sit here by me, then. It's a queer throne for such a queen; but it's the best
your poor lover can find. He'll do better for you some of these days, I'm
thinking. Now your mind is easy once again, is it not?"
"How can it ever be at ease, Jack, when I know that you are a criminal among
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Context: criminals, when I never know the day that I may hear you are in court for
murder? 'McMurdo the Scowrer,' that's what one of our boarders called you
yesterday. It went through my heart like a knife."
"Sure, hard words break no bones."
"But they were true."
"Well, dear, it's not so bad as you think. We are but poor men that are trying
in our own way to get our rights."
Ettie threw her arms round her lover's neck. "Give it up, Jack! For my sake,
for God's sake, give it up! It was to ask you that I came here to-day. Oh, Jack,
see—I beg it of you on my bended knees! Kneeling here before you I implore
you to give it up!"
He raised her and soothed her with her head against his breast.
"Sure, my darlin', you don't know what it is you are asking. How could I give
it up when it would be to break my oath and to desert my comrades? If you
could see how things stand with me you could never ask it of me. Besides, if I
wanted to, how could I do it? You don't suppose that the lodge would let a man
go free with all its secrets?"
"I've thought of that, Jack. I've planned it all. Father has saved some money.
He is weary of this place where the fear of these people darkens our lives. He is
ready to go. We would fly together to Philadelphia or New York, where we
would be safe from them."
McMurdo laughed. "The lodge has a long arm. Do you think it could not
stretch from here to Philadelphia or New York?"
"Well, then, to the West, or to England, or to Germany, where father came
from—anywhere to get away from this Valley of Fear!"
McMurdo thought of old Brother Morris. "Sure, it is the second time I have
heard the valley so named," said he. "The shadow does indeed seem to lie heavy
on some of you."
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Context: on some of you."
"It darkens every moment of our lives. Do you suppose that Ted Baldwin has
ever forgiven us? If it were not that he fears you, what do you suppose our
chances would be? If you saw the look in those dark, hungry eyes of his when
they fall on me!"
"By Gar! I'd teach him better manners if I caught him at it! But see here, little
girl. I can't leave here. I can't—take that from me once and for all. But if you
will leave me to find my own way, I will try to prepare a way of getting
honourably out of it."
"There is no honour in such a matter."
"Well, well, it's just how you look at it. But if you'll give me six months, I'll
work it so that I can leave without being ashamed to look others in the face."
The girl laughed with joy. "Six months!" she cried. "Is it a promise?"
"Well, it may be seven or eight. But within a year at the furthest we will leave
the valley behind us."
It was the most that Ettie could obtain, and yet it was something. There was
this distant light to illuminate the gloom of the immediate future. She returned to
her father's house more light-hearted than she had ever been since Jack
McMurdo had come into her life.
It might be thought that as a member, all the doings of the society would be
told to him; but he was soon to discover that the organization was wider and
more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was ignorant as to
many things; for there was an official named the County Delegate, living at
Hobson's Patch farther down the line, who had power over several different
lodges which he wielded in a sudden and arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo
see him, a sly, little gray-haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong
glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the
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Context: 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.
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Context: "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
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Context: 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
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Context: 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 terrorstricken
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
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Context: 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 contretemps; for a man and his wife had driven up while
they were still emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It had been
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Context: they were still emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It had been
suggested that they should shoot them both; but they were harmless folk who
were not connected with the mines, so they were sternly bidden to drive on and
keep silent, lest a worse thing befall them. And so the blood-mottled figure had
been left as a warning to all such hard-hearted employers, and the three noble
avengers had hurried off into the mountains where unbroken nature comes down
to the very edge of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they were, safe and
sound, their work well done, and the plaudits of their companions in their ears.
It had been a great day for the Scowrers. The shadow had fallen even darker
over the valley. But as the wise general chooses the moment of victory in which
to redouble his efforts, so that his foes may have no time to steady themselves
after disaster, so Boss McGinty, looking out upon the scene of his operations
with his brooding and malicious eyes, had devised a new attack upon those who
opposed him. That very night, as the half-drunken company broke up, he
touched McMurdo on the arm and led him aside into that inner room where they
had their first interview.
"See here, my lad," said he, "I've got a job that's worthy of you at last. You'll
have the doing of it in your own hands."
"Proud I am to hear it," McMurdo answered.
"You can take two men with you—Manders and Reilly. They have been
warned for service. We'll never be right in this district until Chester Wilcox has
been settled, and you'll have the thanks of every lodge in the coal fields if you
can down him."
"I'll do my best, anyhow. Who is he, and where shall I find him?"
McGinty took his eternal half-chewed, half-smoked cigar from the corner of
his mouth, and proceeded to draw a rough diagram on a page torn from his
notebook.
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Context: notebook.
"He's the chief foreman of the Iron Dike Company. He's a hard citizen, an old
colour sergeant of the war, all scars and grizzle. We've had two tries at him; but
had no luck, and Jim Carnaway lost his life over it. Now it's for you to take it
over. That's the house—all alone at the Iron Dike crossroad, same as you see
here on the map—without another within earshot. It's no good by day. He's
armed and shoots quick and straight, with no questions asked. But at night—
well, there he is with his wife, three children, and a hired help. You can't pick or
choose. It's all or none. If you could get a bag of blasting powder at the front
door with a slow match to it—"
"What's the man done?"
"Didn't I tell you he shot Jim Carnaway?"
"Why did he shoot him?"
"What in thunder has that to do with you? Carnaway was about his house at
night, and he shot him. That's enough for me and you. You've got to settle the
thing right."
"There's these two women and the children. Do they go up too?"
"They have to—else how can we get him?"
"It seems hard on them; for they've done nothing."
"What sort of fool's talk is this? Do you back out?"
"Easy, Councillor, easy! What have I ever said or done that you should think I
would be after standing back from an order of the Bodymaster of my own lodge?
If it's right or if it's wrong, it's for you to decide."
"You'll do it, then?"
"Of course I will do it."
"When?"
"Well, you had best give me a night or two that I may see the house and make
my plans. Then—"
"Very good," said McGinty, shaking him by the hand. "I leave it with you. It
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Context: 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
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Context: family only the day before to some safer and less known quarters, where a guard
of police should watch over them. It was an empty house which had been torn
down by the gunpowder, and the grim old colour sergeant of the war was still
teaching discipline to the miners of Iron Dike.
"Leave him to me," said McMurdo. "He's my man, and I'll get him sure if I
have to wait a year for him."
A vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for the time
the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in the papers that
Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an open secret that
McMurdo was still at work upon his unfinished job.
Such were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such were the deeds
of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule of fear over the great and rich
district which was for so long a period haunted by their terrible presence. Why
should these pages be stained by further crimes? Have I not said enough to show
the men and their methods?
These deeds are written in history, and there are records wherein one may
read the details of them. There one may learn of the shooting of Policemen Hunt
and Evans because they had ventured to arrest two members of the society—a
double outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge and carried out in cold blood upon
two helpless and disarmed men. There also one may read of the shooting of Mrs.
Larbey when she was nursing her husband, who had been beaten almost to death
by orders of Boss McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by
that of his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the
Staphouse family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon one
another in the same terrible winter.
Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with
running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature bound so
long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the men and women
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Context: 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 6
Danger
It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already been
appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of some day succeeding McGinty
as Bodymaster, was now so necessary to the councils of his comrades that
nothing was done without his help and advice. The more popular he became,
however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the scowls which greeted him as he
passed along the streets of Vermissa. In spite of their terror the citizens were
taking heart to band themselves together against their oppressors. Rumours had
reached the lodge of secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of
firearms among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his men were
undisturbed by such reports. They were numerous, resolute, and well armed.
Their opponents were scattered and powerless. It would all end, as it had done in
the past, in aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So said McGinty,
McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits.
It was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the lodge night, and
McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it when Morris, the weaker brother of
the order, came to see him. His brow was creased with care, and his kindly face
was drawn and haggard.
"Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?"
"Sure."
"I can't forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you kept it to
yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask you about it."
"What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn't that I agreed with what you
said."
"I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and be safe. I've a
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Context: secret here," he put his hand to his breast, "and it is just burning the life out of
me. I wish it had come to any one of you but me. If I tell it, it will mean murder,
for sure. If I don't, it may bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near out
of my wits over it!"
McMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in every limb. He
poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to him. "That's the physic for the
likes of you," said he. "Now let me hear of it."
Morris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. "I can tell it to you all
in one sentence," said he. "There's a detective on our trail."
McMurdo stared at him in astonishment. "Why, man, you're crazy," he said.
"Isn't the place full of police and detectives and what harm did they ever do us?"
"No, no, it's no man of the district. As you say, we know them, and it is little
that they can do. But you've heard of Pinkerton's?"
"I've read of some folk of that name."
"Well, you can take it from me you've no show when they are on your trail.
It's not a take-it-or-miss-it government concern. It's a dead earnest business
proposition that's out for results and keeps out till by hook or crook it gets them.
If a Pinkerton man is deep in this business, we are all destroyed."
"We must kill him."
"Ah, it's the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at the lodge.
Didn't I say to you that it would end in murder?"
"Sure, what is murder? Isn't it common enough in these parts?"
"It is, indeed; but it's not for me to point out the man that is to be murdered.
I'd never rest easy again. And yet it's our own necks that may be at stake. In
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Context: God's name what shall I do?" He rocked to and fro in his agony of indecision.
But his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he shared
the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting it. He gripped
Morris's shoulder and shook him in his earnestness.
"See here, man," he cried, and he almost screeched the words in his
excitement, "you won't gain anything by sitting keening like an old wife at a
wake. Let's have the facts. Who is the fellow? Where is he? How did you hear of
him? Why did you come to me?"
"I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me. I told you that
I had a store in the East before I came here. I left good friends behind me, and
one of them is in the telegraph service. Here's a letter that I had from him
yesterday. It's this part from the top of the page. You can read it yourself."
This was what McMurdo read:
How are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read plenty of them in the papers.
Between you and me I expect to hear news from you before long. Five big
corporations and the two railroads have taken the thing up in dead earnest. They mean
it, and you can bet they'll get there! They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has
taken hold under their orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is operating. The
thing has got to be stopped right now.
"Now read the postscript."
Of course, what I give you is what I learned in business; so it goes no further. It's a
queer cipher that you handle by the yard every day and can get no meaning from.
McMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his listless hands.
The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was the abyss before him.
"Does anyone else know of this?" he asked.
"I have told no one else."
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Context: "I have told no one else."
"But this man—your friend—has he any other person that he would be likely
to write to?"
"Well, I dare say he knows one or two more."
"Of the lodge?"
"It's likely enough."
"I was asking because it is likely that he may have given some description of
this fellow Birdy Edwards—then we could get on his trail."
"Well, it's possible. But I should not think he knew him. He is just telling me
the news that came to him by way of business. How would he know this
Pinkerton man?"
McMurdo gave a violent start.
"By Gar!" he cried, "I've got him. What a fool I was not to know it. Lord! but
we're in luck! We will fix him before he can do any harm. See here, Morris, will
you leave this thing in my hands?"
"Sure, if you will only take it off mine."
"I'll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even your name need
not be mentioned. I'll take it all on myself, as if it were to me that this letter has
come. Will that content you?"
"It's just what I would ask."
"Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I'll get down to the
lodge, and we'll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry for himself."
"You wouldn't kill this man?"
"The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience will be, and
the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and let these things settle themselves.
I have hold of it now."
Morris shook his head sadly as he left. "I feel that his blood is on my hands,"
he groaned.
"Self-protection is no murder, anyhow," said McMurdo, smiling grimly. "It's
him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all if we left him long in the valley.
Why, Brother Morris, we'll have to elect you Bodymaster yet; for you've surely
saved the lodge."
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Context: 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
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Context: 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."
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Context: business here that wants a Solomon in judgment to set it right."
"It's Lander and Egan," explained his neighbour as he took his seat. "They
both claim the head money given by the lodge for the shooting of old man
Crabbe over at Stylestown, and who's to say which fired the bullet?"
McMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression of his face
froze the attention of the audience. There was a dead hush of expectation.
"Eminent Bodymaster," he said, in a solemn voice, "I claim urgency!"
"Brother McMurdo claims urgency," said McGinty. "It's a claim that by the
rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now Brother, we attend you."
McMurdo took the letter from his pocket.
"Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren," he said, "I am the bearer of ill news this
day; but it is better that it should be known and discussed, than that a blow
should fall upon us without warning which would destroy us all. I have
information that the most powerful and richest organizations in this state have
bound themselves together for our destruction, and that at this very moment
there is a Pinkerton detective, one Birdy Edwards, at work in the valley
collecting the evidence which may put a rope round the necks of many of us, and
send every man in this room into a felon's cell. That is the situation for the
discussion of which I have made a claim of urgency."
There was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the chairman.
"What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?" he asked.
"It is in this letter which has come into my hands," said McMurdo. He read
the passage aloud. "It is a matter of honour with me that I can give no further
particulars about the letter, nor put it into your hands; but I assure you that there
is nothing else in it which can affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case
before you as it has reached me."
"Let me say, Mr. Chairman," said one of the older brethren, "that I have heard
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Context: of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best man in the
Pinkerton service."
"Does anyone know him by sight?" asked McGinty.
"Yes," said McMurdo, "I do."
There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.
"I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands," he continued with an
exulting smile upon his face. "If we act quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing
short. If I have your confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear."
"What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our affairs?"
"You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor. But this man has
all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do you think there is no weaker
brother among all our lodges that could not be bought? He will get at our secrets
—maybe has got them already. There's only one sure cure."
"That he never leaves the valley," said Baldwin.
McMurdo nodded. "Good for you, Brother Baldwin," he said. "You and I
have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night."
"Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?"
"Eminent Bodymaster," said McMurdo, earnestly, "I would put it to you that
this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge. God forbid that I should
throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears
of this man, there would be an end of any chance of our getting him. I would ask
the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman—yourself, if I might
suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and five more. Then I can talk freely of
what I know and of what I advise should be done."
The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides the
chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger
Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers
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Context: Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers
Willaby, fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing.
The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a cloud
upon the men's spirits, and many there for the first time began to see the cloud of
avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long.
The horrors they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their settled
lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the
more startling now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and
left their leaders to their council.
"Now, McMurdo!" said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat
frozen in their seats.
"I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards," McMurdo explained. "I need
not tell you that he is not here under that name. He's a brave man, but not a crazy
one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is lodging at Hobson's
Patch."
"How do you know this?"
"Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time, nor would
have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now I'm sure it's the man. I
met him on the cars when I went down the line on Wednesday—a hard case if
ever there was one. He said he was a reporter. I believed it for the moment.
Wanted to know all he could about the Scowrers and what he called 'the
outrages' for a New York paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get
something. You bet I was giving nothing away. 'I'd pay for it and pay well,' said
he, 'if I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.' I said what I thought
would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill for my
information. 'There's ten times that for you,' said he, 'if you can find me all that I
want.'"
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Context: want.'"
"What did you tell him, then?"
"Any stuff I could make up."
"How do you know he wasn't a newspaper man?"
"I'll tell you. He got out at Hobson's Patch, and so did I. I chanced into the
telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.
"'See here,' said the operator after he'd gone out, 'I guess we should charge
double rates for this.'—'I guess you should,' said I. He had filled the form with
stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we could make of it. 'He fires a sheet
of this off every day,' said the clerk. 'Yes,' said I; 'it's special news for his paper,
and he's scared that the others should tap it.' That was what the operator thought
and what I thought at the time; but I think differently now."
"By Gar! I believe you are right," said McGinty. "But what do you allow that
we should do about it?"
"Why not go right down now and fix him?" someone suggested.
"Ay, the sooner the better."
"I'd start this next minute if I knew where we could find him," said
McMurdo. "He's in Hobson's Patch; but I don't know the house. I've got a plan,
though, if you'll only take my advice."
"Well, what is it?"
"I'll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I'll find him through the operator. He
can locate him, I guess. Well, then I'll tell him that I'm a Freeman myself. I'll
offer him all the secrets of the lodge for a price. You bet he'll tumble to it. I'll tell
him the papers are at my house, and that it's as much as my life would be worth
to let him come while folk were about. He'll see that that's horse sense. Let him
come at ten o'clock at night, and he shall see everything. That will fetch him
sure."
"Well?"
"You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara's is a lonely house.
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Context: "You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara's is a lonely house.
She's as true as steel and as deaf as a post. There's only Scanlan and me in the
house. If I get his promise—and I'll let you know if I do—I'd have the whole
seven of you come to me by nine o'clock. We'll get him in. If ever he gets out
alive—well, he can talk of Birdy Edwards's luck for the rest of his days!"
"There's going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton's or I'm mistaken. Leave it at that,
McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we'll be with you. You once get the door shut
behind him, and you can leave the rest with us."
Chapter 7
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
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Context: McMurdo went to Hobson's Patch as agreed. The police seemed to take
particular interest in him that morning, and Captain Marvin—he who had
claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago—actually addressed him as he
waited at the station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak with him. He
was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw McGinty at the Union
House.
"He is coming," he said.
"Good!" said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves, with chains and
seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling through the
fringe of his bristling beard. Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as
well as powerful man. The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse of the
prison or the gallows which had risen before him the night before.
"Do you reckon he knows much?" he asked anxiously.
McMurdo shook his head gloomily. "He's been here some time—six weeks at
the least. I guess he didn't come into these parts to look at the prospect. If he has
been working among us all that time with the railroad money at his back, I
should expect that he has got results, and that he has passed them on."
"There's not a weak man in the lodge," cried McGinty. "True as steel, every
man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris. What about him?
If any man gives us away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the
boys round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they can get
from him."
"Well, there would be no harm in that," McMurdo answered. "I won't deny
that I have a liking for Morris and would be sorry to see him come to harm. He
has spoken to me once or twice over lodge matters, and though he may not see
them the same as you or I, he never seemed the sort that squeals. But still it is
not for me to stand between him and you."
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Context: 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
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Context: plan and I'll ask you to fit the others into it. You will all come in good time. Very
well. He comes at ten. He is to tap three times, and me to open the door for him.
Then I'll get behind him and shut it. He's our man then."
"That's all easy and plain."
"Yes; but the next step wants considering. He's a hard proposition. He's
heavily armed. I've fooled him proper, and yet he is likely to be on his guard.
Suppose I show him right into a room with seven men in it where he expected to
find me alone. There is going to be shooting, and somebody is going to be hurt."
"That's so."
"And the noise is going to bring every damned copper in the township on top
of it."
"I guess you are right."
"This is how I should work it. You will all be in the big room—same as you
saw when you had a chat with me. I'll open the door for him, show him into the
parlour beside the door, and leave him there while I get the papers. That will
give me the chance of telling you how things are shaping. Then I will go back to
him with some faked papers. As he is reading them I will jump for him and get
my grip on his pistol arm. You'll hear me call and in you will rush. The quicker
the better; for he is as strong a man as I, and I may have more than I can manage.
But I allow that I can hold him till you come."
"It's a good plan," said McGinty. "The lodge will owe you a debt for this. I
guess when I move out of the chair I can put a name to the man that's coming
after me."
"Sure, Councillor, I am little more than a recruit," said McMurdo; but his face
showed what he thought of the great man's compliment.
When he had returned home he made his own preparations for the grim
evening in front of him. First he cleaned, oiled, and loaded his Smith & Wesson
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Context: 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
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Context: 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 halfdrunk,
and the liquor had brought out all their ferocity. Cormac placed his hands
on the stove for an instant—it had been lighted, for the nights were still cold.
"That will do," said he, with an oath.
"Ay," said Baldwin, catching his meaning. "If he is strapped to that, we will
have the truth out of him."
"We'll have the truth out of him, never fear," said McMurdo. He had nerves
of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of the affair was on him his
manner was as cool and unconcerned as ever. The others marked it and
applauded.
"You are the one to handle him," said the Boss approvingly. "Not a warning
will he get till your hand is on his throat. It's a pity there are no shutters to your
windows."
McMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains tighter. "Sure no
one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the hour."
"Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger," said the secretary.
"He'll come, never fear," McMurdo answered. "He is as eager to come as you
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Context: 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
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Context: this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with
a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through
each window, while the curtains were torn from their hangings.
At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear and plunged for
the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met him there with the stern blue eyes
of Captain Marvin of the Mine Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss
recoiled and fell back into his chair.
"You're safer there, Councillor," said the man whom they had known as
McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take your hand off your pistol, you'll
cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or by the Lord that made me—There, that will
do. There are forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for
yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!"
There was no possible resistance under the menace of those rifles. The men
were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed, they still sat round the table.
"I'd like to say a word to you before we separate," said the man who had
trapped them. "I guess we may not meet again until you see me on the stand in
the courthouse. I'll give you something to think over between now and then. You
know me now for what I am. At last I can put my cards on the table. I am Birdy
Edwards of Pinkerton's. I was chosen to break up your gang. I had a hard and
dangerous game to play. Not a soul, not one soul, not my nearest and dearest,
knew that I was playing it. Only Captain Marvin here and my employers knew
that. But it's over to-night, thank God, and I am the winner!"
The seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was unappeasable hatred
in their eyes. He read the relentless threat.
"Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take my chance of
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Context: 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
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Context: 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.
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Context: wedding.
The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where their adherents
might have terrified the guardians of the law. In vain they struggled. In vain the
money of the lodge—money squeezed by blackmail out of the whole
countryside—was spent like water in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear,
unimpassioned statement from one who knew every detail of their lives, their
organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all the wiles of their defenders.
At last after so many years they were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted
forever from the valley.
McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining when the last
hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his fate. Fifty-odd had various
degrees of imprisonment. The work of Birdy Edwards was complete.
And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was another
hand to be played, and yet another and another. Ted Baldwin, for one, had
escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys; so had several others of the fiercest
spirits of the gang. For ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day
when they were free once more—a day which Edwards, who knew his men, was
very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had sworn an oath on all
that they thought holy to have his blood as a vengeance for their comrades. And
well they strove to keep their vow!
From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success that it was
sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he went under a changed name
to California, and it was there that the light went for a time out of his life when
Ettie Edwards died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the
name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canyon, where with an English partner
named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there came a warning to him that the
bloodhounds were on his track once more, and he cleared—only just in time—
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Context: for England. And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married
a worthy mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life
which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.
Epilogue
The police trial had passed, in which the case of John Douglas was referred to
a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions, at which he was acquitted as having
acted in self-defense.
"Get him out of England at any cost," wrote Holmes to the wife. "There are
forces here which may be more dangerous than those he has escaped. There is no
safety for your husband in England."
Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our
minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic note slipped into our letter
box. "Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!" said this singular epistle. There was
neither superscription nor signature. I laughed at the quaint message; but Holmes
showed unwonted seriousness.
"Deviltry, Watson!" he remarked, and sat long with a clouded brow.
Late last night Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, brought up a message that a
gentleman wished to see Holmes, and that the matter was of the utmost
importance. Close at the heels of his messenger came Cecil Barker, our friend of
the moated Manor House. His face was drawn and haggard.
"I've had bad news—terrible news, Mr. Holmes," said he.
"I feared as much," said Holmes.
"You have not had a cable, have you?"
"I have had a note from someone who has."
"It's poor Douglas. They tell me his name is Edwards; but he will always be
Jack Douglas of Benito Canyon to me. I told you that they started together for
South Africa in the Palmyra three weeks ago."
"Exactly."
"The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable from Mrs
Douglas this morning:—
"Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St Helena. No one knows how
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Context: "Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St Helena. No one knows how
accident occurred.—Ivy Douglas."
"Ha! It came like that, did it?" said Holmes, thoughtfully. "Well, I've no doubt
it was well stage-managed."
"You mean that you think there was no accident?"
"None in the world."
"He was murdered?"
"Surely!"
"So I think also. These infernal Scowrers, this cursed vindictive nest of
criminals—"
"No, no, my good sir," said Holmes. "There is a master hand here. It is no
case of sawed-off 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—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—an absurd extravagance of energy—but the
nut is very effectually crushed all the same."
"How came this man to have anything to do with it?"
"I can only say that the first word that ever came to us of the business was
from one of his lieutenants. These Americans were well advised. Having an
English job to do, they took into partnership, as any foreign criminal could do,
this great consultant in crime. From that moment their man was doomed. At first
he would content himself by using his machinery in order to find their victim.
Then he would indicate how the matter might be treated. Finally, when he read
in the reports of the failure of this agent, he would step in himself with a master
touch. You heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that the coming
danger was greater than the past. Was I right?"
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Context: 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—
you must give me time!"
We all sat in silence for some minutes, while those fateful eyes still strained
to pierce the veil.
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Title: The Valley of Fear
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Posting Date: May 15, 2009 [EBook #3776]
Release Date: February, 2003
First Posted: September 3, 2001
Last Updated: February 10, 2005
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VALLEY OF FEAR ***
Produced by Toby F. Charkin. HTML version by Al Haines.
The Valley Of Fear
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
CONTENTS
PART 1—The Tragedy of Birlstone
Chapter
1 The Warning
2 Sherlock Holmes Discourses
3 The Tragedy of Birlstone
4 Darkness
5 The People Of the Drama
6 A Dawning Light
7 The Solution
PART 2—The Scowrers
1 The Man
2 The Bodymaster
3 Lodge 341, Vermissa
4 The Valley of Fear
5 The Darkest Hour
6 Danger
7 The Trapping of Birdy Edwards
Epilogue
PART 1
The Tragedy of Birlstone
Chapter 1
The Warning
"I am inclined to think—" said I.
"I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I'll admit
that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption.
"Really, Holmes," said I severely, "you are a little trying at times."
He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate
answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his hand, with his untasted
breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had just drawn
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Context: breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had just drawn
from its envelope. Then he took the envelope itself, held it up to the light, and
very carefully studied both the exterior and the flap.
"It is Porlock's writing," said he thoughtfully. "I can hardly doubt that it is
Porlock's writing, though I have seen it only twice before. The Greek e with the
peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is Porlock, then it must be something
of the very first importance."
He was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation disappeared in
the interest which the words awakened.
"Who then is Porlock?" I asked.
"Porlock, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification mark; but behind
it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he frankly informed me
that the name was not his own, and defied me ever to trace him among the
teeming millions of this great city. Porlock is important, not for himself, but for
the great man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself the pilot fish with
the shark, the jackal with the lion—anything that is insignificant in
companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but
sinister—in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my
purview. You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as—"
"My blushes, Watson!" Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
"I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public."
"A touch! A distinct touch!" cried Holmes. "You are developing a certain
unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard
myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the
law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all
time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a
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Context: time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a
brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man!
But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so
admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that
you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's
pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author
of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights
of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press
capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foul-mouthed doctor and
slandered professor—such would be your respective 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—the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain some little way from its
great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link—between ourselves. He is the
only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able to test it."
"But no chain is stronger than its weakest link."
"Exactly, my dear Watson! Hence the extreme importance of Porlock. Led on
by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious
stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he
has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that
highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot
doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of the
nature that I indicate."
Again Holmes flattened out the paper upon his unused plate. I rose and,
leaning over him, stared down at the curious inscription, which ran as follows:
534 C2 13 127 36 31 4 17 21 41
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Context: DOUGLAS 109 293 5 37 BIRLSTONE
26 BIRLSTONE 9 47 171
"What do you make of it, Holmes?"
"It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information."
"But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?"
"In this instance, none at all."
"Why do you say 'in this instance'?"
"Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily as I do the
apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence
without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in
a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am
powerless."
"But why 'Douglas' and 'Birlstone'?"
"Clearly because those are words which were not contained in the page in
question."
"Then why has he not indicated the book?"
"Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning which is the
delight of your friends, would surely prevent you from inclosing cipher and
message in the same envelope. Should it miscarry, you are undone. As it is, both
have to go wrong before any harm comes from it. Our second post is now
overdue, and I shall be surprised if it does not bring us either a further letter of
explanation, or, as is more probable, the very volume to which these figures
refer."
Holmes's calculation was fulfilled within a very few minutes by the
appearance of Billy, the page, with the very letter which we were expecting.
"The same writing," remarked Holmes, as he opened the envelope, "and
actually signed," he added in an exultant voice as he unfolded the epistle.
"Come, we are getting on, Watson." His brow clouded, however, as he glanced
over the contents.
"Dear me, this is very disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all our expectations
come to nothing. I trust that the man Porlock will come to no harm.
"DEAR MR. HOLMES [he says]:
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Context: "DEAR MR. HOLMES [he says]:
"I will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous—he suspects me. I can see that
he suspects me. He came to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this
envelope with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher. I was able to cover it
up. If he had seen it, it would have gone hard with me. But I read suspicion in his
eyes. Please burn the cipher message, which can now be of no use to you.
FRED PORLOCK."
Holmes sat for some little time twisting this letter between his fingers, and
frowning, as he stared into the fire.
"After all," he said at last, "there may be nothing in it. It may be only his
guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may have read the
accusation in the other's eyes."
"The other being, I presume, Professor Moriarty."
"No less! When any of that party talk about 'He' you know whom they mean.
There is one predominant 'He' for all of them."
"But what can he do?"
"Hum! That's a large question. When you have one of the first brains of
Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are
infinite possibilities. Anyhow, Friend Porlock is evidently scared out of his
senses—kindly compare the writing in the note to that upon its envelope; which
was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened visit. The one is clear and firm. The
other hardly legible."
"Why did he write at all? Why did he not simply drop it?"
"Because he feared I would make some inquiry after him in that case, and
possibly bring trouble on him."
"No doubt," said I. "Of course." I had picked up the original cipher message
and was bending my brows over it. "It's pretty maddening to think that an
important secret may lie here on this slip of paper, and that it is beyond human
power to penetrate it."
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Context: power to penetrate it."
Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the
unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. "I
wonder!" said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. "Perhaps there are
points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the
problem in the light of pure reason. This man's reference is to a book. That is our
point of departure."
"A somewhat vague one."
"Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my mind upon it, it
seems rather less impenetrable. What indications have we as to this book?"
"None."
"Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher message begins
with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as a working hypothesis that 534 is
the particular page to which the cipher refers. So our book has already become a
large book which is surely something gained. What other indications have we as
to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2. What do you make of that,
Watson?"
"Chapter the second, no doubt."
"Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be
given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us
only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really
intolerable."
"Column!" I cried.
"Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is not column, then
I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we begin to visualize a large book
printed in double columns which are each of a considerable length, since one of
the words is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-third.
Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?"
"I fear that we have."
"Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation, my dear Watson
—yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been an unusual one, he would have
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Context: sent it to me. Instead of that, he had intended, before his plans were nipped, to
send me the clue in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to
indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no difficulty in
finding for myself. He had it—and he imagined that I would have it, too. In
short, Watson, it is a very common book."
"What you say certainly sounds plausible."
"So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in double
columns and in common use."
"The Bible!" I cried triumphantly.
"Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough! Even if I
accepted the compliment for myself I could hardly name any volume which
would be less likely to lie at the elbow of one of Moriarty's associates. Besides,
the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two
copies would have the same pagination. This is clearly a book which is
standardized. He knows for certain that his page 534 will exactly agree with my
page 534."
"But very few books would correspond with that."
"Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down to
standardized books which anyone may be supposed to possess."
"Bradshaw!"
"There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and
terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending
of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear,
inadmissible for the same reason. What then is left?"
"An almanac!"
"Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not touched the
spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of Whitaker's Almanac. It is in
common use. It has the requisite number of pages. It is in double column.
Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite
garrulous towards the end." He picked the volume from his desk. "Here is page
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Context: 534, column two, a substantial block of print dealing, I perceive, with the trade
and resources of British India. Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is
'Mahratta.' Not, I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one hundred and
twenty-seven is 'Government'; which at least makes sense, though somewhat
irrelevant to ourselves and Professor Moriarty. Now let us try again. What does
the Mahratta government do? Alas! the next word is 'pig's-bristles.' We are
undone, my good Watson! It is finished!"
He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows
bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy, staring
into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes,
who dashed at a cupboard, from which he emerged with a second yellowcovered
volume in his hand.
"We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!" he cried. "We are
before our time, and suffer the usual penalties. Being the seventh of January, we
have very properly laid in the new almanac. It is more than likely that Porlock
took his message from the old one. No doubt he would have told us so had his
letter of explanation been written. Now let us see what page 534 has in store for
us. Number thirteen is 'There,' which is much more promising. Number one
hundred and twenty-seven is 'is'—'There is'"—Holmes's eyes were gleaming
with excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the words
—"'danger.' Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson. 'There is danger—may—
come—very—soon—one.' Then we have the name 'Douglas'— 'rich—country—
now—at—Birlstone—House—Birlstone—confidence—is— pressing.' There,
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Context: 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—'confidence' was as near as he could get to
'confident'—that it is pressing. There is our result—and a very workmanlike
little bit of analysis it was!"
Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work, even as he
mourned darkly when it fell below the high level to which he aspired. He was
still chuckling over his success when Billy swung open the door and Inspector
MacDonald of Scotland Yard was ushered into the room.
Those were the early days at the end of the '80's, when Alec MacDonald was
far from having attained the national fame which he has now achieved. He was a
young but trusted member of the detective force, who had distinguished himself
in several cases which had been 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
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Context: sole reward being the intellectual joy of the problem. For this reason the
affection and respect of the Scotchman for his amateur colleague were profound,
and he showed them by the frankness with which he consulted Holmes in every
difficulty. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly
recognizes genius, and MacDonald had talent enough for his profession to
enable him to perceive that there was no humiliation in seeking the assistance of
one who already stood alone in Europe, both in his gifts and in his experience.
Holmes was not prone to friendship, but he was tolerant of the big Scotchman,
and smiled at the sight of him.
"You are an early bird, Mr. Mac," said he. "I wish you luck with your worm. I
fear this means that there is some mischief afoot."
"If you said 'hope' instead of 'fear,' it would be nearer the truth, I'm thinking,
Mr. Holmes," the inspector answered, with a knowing grin. "Well, maybe a wee
nip would keep out the raw morning chill. No, I won't smoke, I thank you. I'll
have to be pushing on my way; for the early hours of a case are the precious
ones, as no man knows better than your own self. But—but—"
The inspector had stopped suddenly, and was staring with a look of absolute
amazement at a paper upon the table. It was the sheet upon which I had scrawled
the enigmatic message.
"Douglas!" he stammered. "Birlstone! What's this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's
witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?"
"It is a cipher that Dr. Watson and I have had occasion to solve. But why—
what's amiss with the names?"
The inspector looked from one to the other of us in dazed astonishment. "Just
this," said he, "that Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was horribly
murdered last night!"
Chapter 2
Sherlock Holmes Discourses
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Context: murdered last night!"
Chapter 2
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—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 socalled
Porlock?"
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Context: Porlock?"
MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed him. "Posted in
Camberwell—that doesn't help us much. Name, you say, is assumed. Not much
to go on, certainly. Didn't you say that you have sent him money?"
"Twice."
"And how?"
"In notes to Camberwell post-office."
"Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?"
"No."
The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. "Why not?"
"Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first wrote that I would
not try to trace him."
"You think there is someone behind him?"
"I know there is."
"This professor that I've heard you mention?"
"Exactly!"
Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he glanced towards
me. "I won't conceal from you, Mr. Holmes, that we think in the C. I. D. that you
have a wee bit of a bee in your bonnet over this professor. I made some inquiries
myself about the matter. He seems to be a very respectable, learned, and talented
sort of man."
"I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent."
"Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I made it my
business to see him. I had a chat with him on eclipses. How the talk got that way
I canna think; but he had out a reflector lantern and a globe, and made it all clear
in a minute. He lent me a book; but I don't mind saying that it was a bit above
my head, though I had a good Aberdeen upbringing. He'd have made a grand
meenister with his thin face and gray hair and solemn-like way of talking. When
he put his hand on my shoulder as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing
before you go out into the cold, cruel world."
Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. "Great!" he said. "Great! Tell me,
Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview was, I suppose, in the
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Context: Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview was, I suppose, in the
professor's study?"
"That's so."
"A fine room, is it not?"
"Very fine—very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes."
"You sat in front of his writing desk?"
"Just so."
"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"
"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my face."
"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the professor's head?"
"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you. Yes, I saw
the picture—a young woman with her head on her hands, peeping at you
sideways."
"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."
The inspector endeavoured to look interested.
"Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger tips and leaning
well back in his chair, "was a French artist who flourished between the years
1750 and 1800. I allude, of course to his working career. Modern criticism has
more than indorsed the high opinion formed of him by his contemporaries."
The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better—" he said.
"We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am saying has a very direct
and vital bearing upon what you have called the Birlstone Mystery. In fact, it
may in a sense be called the very centre of it."
MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. "Your thoughts
move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out a link or two, and I can't
get over the gap. What in the whole wide world can be the connection between
this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?"
"All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked Holmes. "Even the
trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled La Jeune Fille a
l'Agneau fetched one million two hundred thousand francs—more than forty
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Context: l'Agneau fetched one million two hundred thousand francs—more than forty
thousand pounds—at the Portalis sale may start a train of reflection in your
mind."
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
"I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's salary can be
ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven hundred a year."
"Then how could he buy—"
"Quite so! How could he?"
"Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk away, Mr.
Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!"
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration—the
characteristic of the real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he asked.
"We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch. "I've a cab at the
door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But about this picture: I
thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that you had never met Professor
Moriarty."
"No, I never have."
"Then how do you know about his rooms?"
"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice waiting
for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came. Once—well, I can
hardly tell about the once to an official detective. It was on the last occasion that
I took the liberty of running over his papers—with the most unexpected results."
"You found something compromising?"
"Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have now
seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man. How did he
acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the
west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred a year. And he owns a
Greuze."
"Well?"
"Surely the inference is plain."
"You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an illegal
fashion?"
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Context: fashion?"
"Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so—dozens of exiguous
threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web where the
poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it
brings the matter within the range of your own observation."
"Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it's more than
interesting—it's just wonderful. But let us have it a little clearer if you can. Is it
forgery, coining, burglary—where does the money come from?"
"Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?"
"Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? I don't
take much stock of detectives in novels—chaps that do things and never let you
see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business."
"Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel. He was a master
criminal, and he lived last century—1750 or thereabouts."
"Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man."
"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to
shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of
crime. Everything comes in circles—even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild
was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and
his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old wheel turns, and the
same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again. I'll tell you
one or two things about Moriarty which may interest you."
"You'll interest me, right enough."
"I happen to know who is the first link in his chain—a chain with this
Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men,
pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every sort of
crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and
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Context: crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and
guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself. What do you think he pays him?"
"I'd like to hear."
"Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see—the American
business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It's more than the Prime
Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty's gains and of the scale on
which he works. Another point: I made it my business to hunt down some of
Moriarty's checks lately—just common innocent checks that he pays his
household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks. Does that make
any impression on your mind?"
"Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?"
"That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should know
what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; the bulk of
his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the 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.
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Context: Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is tremendous.
There is only one punishment in his code. It is death. Now we might suppose
that this murdered man—this Douglas whose approaching fate was known by
one of the arch-criminal's subordinates—had in some way betrayed the chief.
His punishment followed, and would be known to all—if only to put the fear of
death into them."
"Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes."
"The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinary course
of business. Was there any robbery?"
"I have not heard."
"If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in favour of the
second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on a promise of part
spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to manage it. Either is possible.
But whichever it may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at
Birlstone that we must seek the solution. I know our man too well to suppose
that he has left anything up here which may lead us to him."
"Then to Birlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping from his chair.
"My word! it's later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen, five minutes for
preparation, and that is all."
"And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to
change from his dressing gown to his coat. "While we are on our way, Mr. Mac,
I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it."
"All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was enough to
assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of the expert's closest
attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands together as he listened to the
meagre but remarkable details. A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and
here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all
special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That razor
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Context: brain blunted and rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue, and his
whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for work reached him.
Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to MacDonald's short sketch of
the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The inspector was himself dependent,
as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk
train in the early hours of the morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a
personal friend, and hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly
than is usual at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very
cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run.
"DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:
"Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope. This is for your private
eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can get for Birlstone, and I will meet it—
or have it met if I am too occupied. This case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in
getting started. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something
after his own heart. We would think the whole 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."
"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
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Context: case was undoubtedly one of murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that
the case was one which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary
features. That's absolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes."
"Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The
temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our
profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in
London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are going to
trace."
Chapter 3
The Tragedy of Birlstone
Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant
personality and to describe events which occurred before we arrived upon the
scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards. Only in this way
can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned and the strange setting in
which their fate was cast.
The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of half-timbered
cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex. For centuries it had
remained unchanged; but within the last few years its picturesque appearance
and situation have attracted a number of well-to-do residents, whose villas peep
out from the woods around. These woods are locally supposed to be the extreme
fringe of the great Weald forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern
chalk downs. A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants
of the increased population; so there seems some prospect that Birlstone may
soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It is the centre for a
considerable area of country, since Tunbridge Wells, the nearest place of
importance, is ten or twelve miles to the eastward, over the borders of Kent.
About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its huge
beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone. Part of this venerable
building dates back to the time of the first crusade, when Hugo de Capus built a
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Context: 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—a
fact which had a very direct bearing upon the mystery which was soon to engage
the attention of all England.
The house had been untenanted for some years and was threatening to
moulder into a picturesque decay when the Douglases took possession of it. This
family consisted of only two individuals—John Douglas and his wife. Douglas
was a remarkable man, both in character and in person. In age he may have been
about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a grizzling moustache, peculiarly
keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous figure which had lost nothing of the
strength and activity of youth. He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat
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Context: 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
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Context: It was remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew them best, that the
confidence between the two did not appear to be complete, since the wife was
either very reticent about her husband's past life, or else, as seemed more likely,
was imperfectly informed about it. It had also been noted and commented upon
by a few observant people that there were signs sometimes of some nerve-strain
upon the part of Mrs. Douglas, and that she would display acute uneasiness if her
absent husband should ever be particularly late in his return. On a quiet
countryside, where all gossip is welcome, this weakness of the lady of the Manor
House did not pass without remark, and it bulked larger upon people's memory
when the events arose which gave it a very special significance.
There was yet another individual whose residence under that roof was, it is
true, only an intermittent one, but whose presence at the time of the strange
happenings which will now be narrated brought his name prominently before the
public. This was Cecil James Barker, of Hales Lodge, Hampstead.
Cecil Barker's tall, loose-jointed figure was a familiar one in the main street
of Birlstone village; for he was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Manor
House. He was the more noticed as being the only friend of the past unknown
life of Mr. Douglas who was ever seen in his new English surroundings. Barker
was himself an undoubted Englishman; but by his remarks it was clear that he
had first known Douglas in America and had there lived on intimate terms with
him. He appeared to be a man of considerable wealth, and was reputed to be a
bachelor.
In age he was rather younger than Douglas—forty-five at the most—a tall,
straight, broad-chested fellow with a clean-shaved, prize-fighter face, thick,
strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of masterful black eyes which might, even
without the aid of his very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile
crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round the old
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Context: crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round the old
village with his pipe in his mouth, or in driving with his host, or in his absence
with his hostess, over the beautiful countryside. "An easy-going, free-handed
gentleman," said Ames, the butler. "But, my word! I had rather not be the man
that crossed him!" He was cordial and intimate with Douglas, and he was no less
friendly with his wife—a friendship which more than once seemed to cause
some irritation to the husband, so that even the servants were able to perceive his
annoyance. Such was the third person who was one of the family when the
catastrophe occurred.
As to the other denizens of the old building, it will suffice out of a large
household to mention the prim, respectable, and capable Ames, and Mrs. Allen,
a buxom and cheerful person, who relieved the lady of some of her household
cares. The other six servants in the house bear no relation to the events of the
night of January 6th.
It was at eleven forty-five that the first alarm reached the small local police
station, in charge of Sergeant Wilson of the Sussex Constabulary. Cecil Barker,
much excited, had rushed up to the door and pealed furiously upon the bell. A
terrible tragedy had occurred at the Manor House, and John Douglas had been
murdered. That was the breathless burden of his message. He had hurried back
to the house, followed within a few minutes by the police sergeant, who arrived
at the scene of the crime a little after twelve o'clock, after taking prompt steps to
warn the county authorities that something serious was afoot.
On reaching the Manor House, the sergeant had found the drawbridge down,
the windows lighted up, and the whole household in a state of wild confusion
and alarm. The white-faced servants were huddling together in the hall, with the
frightened butler wringing his hands in the doorway. Only Cecil Barker seemed
to be master of himself and his emotions; he had opened the door which was
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Context: 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 horrorstricken
butler followed at their heels, closing the door behind him to shut out
the terrible scene from the maid servants.
The dead man lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the
centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink dressing gown, which covered his
night clothes. There were carpet slippers on his bare feet. The doctor knelt
beside him and held down the hand lamp which had stood on the table. One
glance at the victim was enough to show the healer that his presence could be
dispensed with. The man had been horribly injured. Lying across his chest was a
curious weapon, a shotgun with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the
triggers. It was clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had
received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The
triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more
destructive.
The country policeman was unnerved and troubled by the tremendous
responsibility which had come so suddenly upon him. "We will touch nothing
until my superiors arrive," he said in a hushed voice, staring in horror at the
dreadful head.
"Nothing has been touched up to now," said Cecil Barker. "I'll answer for
that. You see it all exactly as I found it."
"When was that?" The sergeant had drawn out his notebook.
"It was just half-past eleven. I had not begun to undress, and I was sitting by
the fire in my bedroom when I heard the report. It was not very loud—it seemed
to be muffled. I rushed down—I don't suppose it was thirty seconds before I was
in the room."
"Was the door open?"
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Context: 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
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FINAL ANSWER 
Answer: Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

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