Sherlock Holmes (53 page)

‘Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while and then get away where I would be joined by my wife, we would have a chance at last of living at peace for the rest of our lives. These devils would give me no rest so long as I was above-ground but if they saw in the papers that Baldwin had got his man there would be an end of all my troubles. I hadn't much time to make it clear to Barker and to my wife, but they understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all about this hiding-place, so did Ames, but it never entered his head to connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to Barker to do the rest.

‘I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened the window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how the murderer escaped. It was a tall order, that, but as the bridge was up there was no other way. Then, when everything was fixed, he rang the bell for all he was worth. What happened afterwards you know – and so, gentlemen, you can do what you please, but I've told you the truth and the whole truth, so help me, God! What I ask you now is, how do I stand by the English law?'

There was a silence, which was broken by Sherlock Holmes.

‘The English law is, in the main, a just law. You will get no worse than your deserts from it. But I would ask you how did this man know that you lived here, or how to get into your house, or where to hide to get you?'

‘I know nothing of this.'

Holmes's face was very white and grave.

‘The story is not over yet, I fear,' said he. ‘You may find worse dangers than the English law, or even than your enemies from America. I see trouble before you, Mr Douglas. You'll take my advice and still be on your guard.'

And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also from the year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which ended with the strange story of the man who had been known as John Douglas. I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time, and westward some thousands of miles in
space, that I may lay before you a singular and a terrible narrative – so singular and so terrible that you may find it hard to believe that, even as I tell it, even so did it occur. Do not think that I intrude one story before another is finished. As you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have detailed those distant events and you have solved this mystery of the past we shall meet once more in those rooms in Baker Street where this, like so many other wonderful happenings, will find its
end.

The
Scowrers

It was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a severe winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains. The steam plow had, however, kept the railtrack open, and the evening train which connects the long line of coal-mining and iron-working settlements was slowly groaning its way up the steep gradients which lead from Stagville on the plain to Vermissa, the central township which lies at the head of the Vermissa Valley. From this point the track sweeps downwards to Barton's Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely agricultural county of Merton. It was a single-track railroad, but at every siding, and they were numerous, long lines of trucks piled with coal and with iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the United States of America.

For desolate it was. Little could the first pioneer who had traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water-pastures were valueless compared with this gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their sides, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow and jagged rock, towered upon either flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre. Up this the little train was slowly crawling.

The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger-car, a long, bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were seated. The greater number of these were workmen returning from their day's toil in the lower portion of the valley. At least a dozen, by their grimed faces and the safety lanterns which they carried, proclaimed themselves as miners. These sat smoking in a group, and conversed in low voices, glancing occasionally at two men on the
opposite side of the car, whose uniform and badges showed them to be policemen. Several women of the labouring class, and one or two travellers who might have been small local storekeepers, made up the rest of the company, with the exception of one young man in a corner by himself. It is with this man that we are concerned. Take a good look at him, for he is worth it.

He is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man, not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humourous grey eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness of jaw and grim tightness about the lips which would warn him that there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant, brown-haired young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good or evil upon any society to which he was introduced.

Having made one or two tentative remarks to the nearest miner, and received only short gruff replies, the traveller resigned himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily out of the window at the fading landscape. It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom there pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills. Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each side, with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them. Huddled groups of mean wooden houses, the windows of which were beginning to outline themselves in light, were scattered here and there along the line, and the frequent halting-places were crowded with their swarthy inhabitants. The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were stern signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be done, and the rude, strong workers who did it.

The young traveller gazed out into this dismal country with a face of mingled repulsion and interest, which showed that the scene was new to him. At intervals he drew from his pocket a bulky letter to which he referred, and on the margins of which he scribbled some notes. Once from the back of his waist he produced something
which one would hardly have expected to find in the possession of so mild-mannered a man. It was a navy revolver of the largest size. As he turned it slantwise to the light, the glint upon the rims of the copper shells within the drum showed that it was fully loaded. He quickly restored it to his secret pocket, but not before it had been observed by a working man who had seated himself upon the adjoining bench.

‘Halloa, mate!' said he. ‘You seem heeled and ready.'

The young man smiled with an air of embarrassment.

‘Yes,' said he; ‘we need them sometimes in the place I come from.'

‘And where may that be?'

‘I'm last from Chicago.'

‘A stranger in these parts?'

‘Yes.'

‘You may find you need it here,' said the workman.

‘Ah! Is that so?' The young man seemed interested.

‘Have you heard nothing of doings hereabouts?'

‘Nothing out of the way.'

‘Why, I thought the country was full of it. You'll hear quick enough. What made you come here?'

‘I heard there was always work for a willing man.'

‘Are you one of the Labour Union?'

‘Sure.'

‘Then you'll get your job, I guess. Have you any friends?'

‘Not yet, but I have the means of making them.'

‘How's that, then?'

‘I am one of the Ancient Order of Freemen. There's no town without a lodge, and where there is a lodge I'll find my friends.'

The remark had a singular effect upon his companion. He glanced round suspiciously at the others in the car. The miners were still whispering among themselves. The two police officers were dozing. He came across, seated himself close to the young traveller, and held out his hand.

‘Put it there,' he said.

A hand-grip passed between the two.

‘I see you speak the truth. But it's well to make certain.'

He raised his right hand to his right eyebrow. The traveller at once raised his left hand to his left eyebrow.

‘Dark nights are unpleasant,' said the workman.

‘Yes, for strangers to travel,' the other answered.

‘That's good enough. I'm Brother Scanlan, Lodge 341, Vermissa Valley. Glad to see you in these parts.'

‘Thank you. I'm Brother John McMurdo, Lodge 29, Chicago. Bodymaster, J. H. Scott. But I am in luck to meet a brother so early.'

‘Well, there are plenty of us about. You won't find the Order more flourishing anywhere in the States than right here in Vermissa Valley. But we could do with some lads like you. I can't understand a spry man of the Labour Union finding no work to do in Chicago.'

‘I found plenty of work to do,' said McMurdo.

‘Then why did you leave?'

McMurdo nodded towards the policemen and smiled.

‘I guess those chaps would be glad to know,' he said.

Scanlan groaned sympathetically.

‘In trouble?' he asked in a whisper.

‘Deep.'

‘A penitentiary job?'

‘And the rest.'

‘Not a killing?'

‘It's early days to talk of such things,' said McMurdo, with the air of a man who had been surprised into saying more than he intended. ‘I've my own good reason for leaving Chicago, and let that be enough for you. Who are you that you should take it on yourself to ask such things?'

His grey eyes gleamed with sudden and dangerous anger from behind his glasses.

‘All right, mate. No offence meant. The boys will think none the worse of you whatever you may have done. Where are you bound for now?'

‘To Vermissa.'

‘That's the third halt down the line. Where are you staying?'

McMurdo took out an envelope and held it close to the murky oil lamp.

‘Here is the address – Jacob Shafter, Sheridan Street. It's a boarding-house that was recommended by a man I knew in Chicago.'

‘Well, I don't know it, but Vermissa is out of my beat. I live at
Hobson's Patch, and that's here where we are drawing up. But, say, there's one bit of advice I'll give you before we part. If you're in trouble in Vermissa, go straight to the Union House and see Boss McGinty. He is the bodymaster of Vermissa Lodge, and nothing can happen in these parts unless Black Jack McGinty wants it. So long, mate. Maybe we'll meet in Lodge one of these evenings. But mind my words; if you are in trouble go to Boss McGinty.'

Scanlan descended, and McMurdo was left once again to his thoughts. Night had now fallen, and the flames of the frequent furnaces were roaring and leaping in the darkness. Against their lurid background dark figures were bending and straining, twisting, and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass, to the rhythm of an eternal clank and roar.

‘I guess hell must look something like that,' said a voice.

McMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen had shifted in his seat and was staring out into the fiery waste.

‘For that matter,' said the other policeman, ‘I allow that hell must
be
something like that. If there are worse devils down yonder than some we could name, it's more than I'd expect. I guess you are new to this part, young man?'

‘Well, what if I am?' McMurdo answered, in a surly voice.

‘Just this, mister; that I should advise you to be careful in choosing your friends. I don't think I'd begin with Mike Scanlan or his gang if I were you.'

‘What in thunder is it to you who are my friends?' roared McMurdo, in a voice which brought every head in the carriage round to witness the altercation. ‘Did I ask you for your advice, or did you think me such a sucker that I couldn't move without it? You speak when you are spoken to, and by the Lord you'd have to wait a long time if it was me!'

He thrust out his face, and grinned at the patrolmen like a snarling dog.

The two policemen, heavy, good-natured men, were taken aback by the extraordinary vehemence with which their friendly advances had been rejected.

‘No offence, stranger,' said one. ‘It was a warning for your own good, seeing that you are, by your own showing, new to the place.'

‘I'm new to the place, but I'm not new to you and your kind,'
cried McMurdo, in a cold fury. ‘I guess you're the same in all places, shoving your advice in when nobody asks for it.'

‘Maybe we'll see more of you before very long,' said one of the patrolmen, with a grin. ‘You're a real hand-picked one, if I am a judge.'

‘I was thinking the same,' remarked the other. ‘I guess we may meet again.'

‘I'm not afraid of you, and don't you think it,' cried McMurdo. ‘My name's Jack McMurdo – see? If you want me you'll find me at Jacob Shafter's, at Sheridan Street, Vermissa, so I'm not hiding from you, am I? Day or night I dare to look the like of you in the face. Don't make any mistake about that.'

There was a murmur of sympathy and admiration from the miners at the dauntless demeanour of the newcomer, while the two policemen shrugged their shoulders and renewed a conversation between themselves. A few minutes later the train ran into the ill-lit depot and there was a general clearing, for Vermissa was by far the largest township on the line. McMurdo picked up his leather grip-sack, and was about to start off into the darkness when one of the miners accosted him.

‘By gosh, mate, you know how to speak to the cops,' he said, in a voice of awe. ‘It was grand to hear you. Let me carry your grip-sack and show you the road. I'm passing Shafter's on the way to my own shack.'

There was a chorus of friendly ‘Good nights' from the other miners as they passed from the platform. Before ever he had set foot in it, McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in Vermissa.

The country had been a place of terror, but the township was in its way even more depressing. Down that long valley there was at least a certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and the clouds of drifting smoke, while the strength and industry of man found fitting monuments in the hills which he had spilled by the side of his monstrous excavations. But the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor. The broad street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow. The side-walks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty. As they approached the centre of the town, the scene was brightened by a row of well-lit stores,
and even more by a cluster of liquor saloons and gaming-houses, in which the miners spent their hard-earned but generous wages.

‘That's the Union House,' said the guide, pointing to one saloon which rose almost to the dignity of being an hotel. ‘Jack McGinty is the Boss there.'

‘What sort of a man is he?' asked McMurdo.

‘What! Have you never heard of the Boss?'

‘How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a stranger in these parts?'

‘Well, I thought his name was known right across the Union. It's been in the papers often enough.'

‘What for?'

‘Well' – the miner lowered his voice – ‘over the affairs.'

‘What affairs?'

‘Good Lord, mister, you are queer goods, if I may say it without offence. There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in these parts, and that's the affairs of the Scowrers.'

‘Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of murderers, are they not?'

‘Hush, on your life!' cried the miner, standing still in his alarm, and gazing in amazement at his companion. ‘Man, you won't live long in these parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man has had the life beaten out of him for less.'

‘Well, I know nothing about them. It's only what I have read.'

‘And I'm not saying that you have not read the truth.' The man looked nervously round him as he spoke, peering into the shadows as if he feared to see some lurking danger. ‘If killing is murder, then God knows there is murder and to spare. But don't you dare breathe the name of Jack McGinty in connection with it, stranger, for every whisper goes back to him, and he is not one that is likely to let it pass. Now, that's the house you're after – that one standing back from the street. You'll find old Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in this township.'