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The Valley of Fear

S >> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle >> The Valley of Fear




"Well!" cried Boss McGinty at last. "Is he here? Is Birdy
Edwards here?"

"Yes," McMurdo answered slowly. "Birdy Edwards is here. I am
Birdy Edwards!"

There were ten seconds after that brief speech during which the
room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The
hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the
ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who
dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then,
with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle
barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn
from their hangings.

At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear and
plunged for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met him
there with the stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine
Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell
back into his chair.

"You're safer there, Councillor," said the man whom they had
known as McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take your hand
off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or
by the Lord that made me--There, that will do. There are forty
armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for
yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!"

There was no possible resistance under the menace of those
rifles. The men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed,
they still sat round the table.

"I'd like to say a word to you before we separate," said the man
who had trapped them. "I guess we may not meet again until you
see me on the stand in the courthouse. I'll give you something
to think over between now and then. You know me now for what I
am. At last I can put my cards on the table. I am Birdy Edwards
of Pinkerton's. I was chosen to break up your gang. I had a
hard and dangerous game to play. Not a soul, not one soul,not my
nearest and dearest, knew that I was playing it. Only Captain
Marvin here and my employers knew that. But it's over to-night,
thank God, and I am the winner!"

The seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was
unappeasable hatred in their eyes. He read the relentless
threat.

"Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take my
chance of that. Anyhow, some of you will take no further hand,
and there are sixty more besides yourselves that will see a jail
this night. I'll tell you this, that when I was put upon this
job I never believed there was such a society as yours. I
thought it was paper talk, and that I would prove it so. They
told me it was to do with the Freemen; so I went to Chicago and
was made one. Then I was surer than ever that it was just paper
talk; for I found no harm in the society, but a deal of good.

"Still, I had to carry out my job, and I came to the coal
valleys. When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong
and that it wasn't a dime novel after all. So I stayed to look
after it. I never killed a man in Chicago. I never minted a
dollar in my life. Those I gave you were as good as any others;
but I never spent money better. But I knew the way into your
good wishes and so I pretended to you that the law was after me.
It all worked just as I thought.

"So I joined your infernal lodge, and I took my share in your
councils. Maybe they will say that I was as bad as you. They
can say what they like, so long as I get you. But what is the
truth? The night I joined you beat up old man Stanger. I could
not warn him, for there was no time; but I held your hand,
Baldwin, when you would have killed him. If ever I have
suggested things, so as to keep my place among you, they were
things which I knew I could prevent. I could not save Dunn and
Menzies, for I did not know enough; but I will see that their
murderers are hanged. I gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that
when I blew his house in he and his folk were in hiding. There
was many a crime that I could not stop; but if you look back and
think how often your man came home the other road, or was down in
town when you went for him, or stayed indoors when you thought he
would come out, you'll see my work."

"You blasted traitor!" hissed McGinty through his closed teeth.

"Ay, John McGinty, you may call me that if it eases your smart.
You and your like have been the enemy of God and man in these
parts. It took a man to get between you and the poor devils of
men and women that you held under your grip. There was just one
way of doing it, and I did it. You call me a traitor; but I
guess there's many a thousand will call me a deliverer that went
down into hell to save them. I've had three months of it. I
wouldn't have three such months again if they let me loose in the
treasury at Washington for it. I had to stay till I had it all,
every man and every secret right here in this hand. I'd have
waited a little longer if it hadn't come to my knowledge that my
secret was coming out. A letter had come into the town that
would have set you wise to it all. Then I had to act and act
quickly.

"I've nothing more to say to you, except that when my time comes
I'll die the easier when I think of the work I have done in this
valley. Now, Marvin, I'll keep you no more. Take them in and
get it over."

There is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed
note to be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission
which he had accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the
early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much muffled
man boarded a special train which had been sent by the railroad
company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the land of
danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her lover
set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were married
in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the wedding.

The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where their
adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law. In vain
they struggled. In vain the money of the lodge--money squeezed
by blackmail out of the whole countryside--was spent like water
in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear, unimpassioned
statement from one who knew every detail of their lives, their
organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all the wiles of
their defenders. At last after so many years they were broken
and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from the valley.

McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining when
the last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his
fate. Fifty-odd had various degrees of imprisonment. The work
of Birdy Edwards was complete.

And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was
another hand to be played, and yet another and another. Ted
Baldwin, for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys;
so had several others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For
ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day when
they were free once more--a day which Edwards, who knew his men,
was very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had
sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as
a vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep
their vow!

>From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success
that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he
went under a changed name to California, and it was there that
the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards
died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the
name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canon, where with an
English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there
came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track once
more, and he cleared--only just in time--for England. And thence
came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy
mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a
life which ended with the strange happenings of which we have
heard.




Epilogue



The police trial had passed, in which the case of John Douglas
was referred to a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions, at
which he was acquitted as having acted in self-defense.

"Get him out of England at any cost," wrote Holmes to the wife.
"There are forces here which may be more dangerous than those he
has escaped. There is no safety for your husband in England."

Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed
from our minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic note
slipped into our letter box. "Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!"
said this singular epistle. There was neither superscription nor
signature. I laughed at the quaint message; but Holmes showed
unwonted seriousness.

"Deviltry, Watson!" he remarked, and sat long with a clouded
brow.

Late last night Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, brought up a message
that a gentleman wished to see Mr. Holmes, and that the matter
was of the utmost importance. Close at the heels of his
messenger came Cecil Barker, our friend of the moated Manor
House. His face was drawn and haggard.

"I've had bad news--terrible news, Mr. Holmes," said he.

"I feared as much," said Holmes.

"You have not had a cable, have you?"

"I have had a note from someone who has."

"It's poor Douglas. They tell me his name is Edwards; but he
will always be Jack Douglas of Benito Canon to me. I told you
that they started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three
weeks ago."

"Exactly."

"The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable
from Mrs. Douglas this morning:

Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St. Helena. No one
knows how accident occurred.

IVY DOUGLAS.

"Ha! It came like that, did it?" said Holmes thoughtfully.
"Well, I've no doubt it was well stage-managed."

"You mean that you think there was no accident?"

"None in the world."

"He was murdered?"

"Surely!"

"So I think also. These infernal Scowrers, this cursed
vindictive nest of criminals--"

"No, no, my good sir," said Holmes. "There is a master hand
here. It is no case of sawed-off shotguns and clumsy
six-shooters. You can tell an old master by the sweep of his
brush. I can tell a Moriarty when I see one. This crime is from
London, not from America."

"But for what motive?"

"Because it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail, one whose
whole unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must
succeed. A great brain and a huge organization have been turned
to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the
triphammer--an absurd extravagance of energy--but the nut is very
effectually crushed all the same."

"How came this man to have anything to do with it?"

"I can only say that the first word that ever came to us of the
business was from one of his lieutenants. These Americans were
well advised. Having an English job to do, they took into
partnership, as any foreign criminal could do, this great
consultant in crime. From that moment their man was doomed. At
first he would content himself by using his machinery in order to
find their victim. Then he would indicate how the matter might
be treated. Finally, when he read in the reports of the failure
of this agent, he would step in himself with a master touch. You
heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that the coming
danger was greater than the past. Was I right?"

Barker beat his head with his clenched fist in his impotent
anger. "Do not tell me that we have to sit down under this? Do
you say that no one can ever get level with this king devil?"

"No, I don't say that," said Holmes, and his eyes seemed to be
looking far into the future. "I don't say that he can't be beat.
But you must give me time--you must give me time!"

We all sat in silence for some minutes while those fateful eyes
still strained to pierce the veil.

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