The Valley of Fear Playbook 4 — Web of Fear
A Playbook Series Adaptation · Verified public domain in the United States · Adapted by Kateule Sydney · E-cyclopedia Resources Hub
The valley earns its name. The Scowrers extend their grip on the coal country, and McMurdo rises in the lodge — while a quieter game is being played behind the scenes. A warning from a weak brother, a letter from Chicago, and the arrival of a man from Pinkerton's will bring the reign of terror to its end.
Series Plan
Source: The Valley of Fear
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
First published: 1915 (United States)
Public domain: Verified for the United States; other jurisdictions should be checked independently
Source length: Approximately 60,000 words (14 chapters + epilogue)
This Playbook: Playbook 4 of 5, covering Part II, Chapters IV–VI
Target length: 7,000–8,500 words
Source reference: Project Gutenberg, The Valley of Fear (public-domain edition)
Method declaration: This post is an original adaptation of a verified public-domain source. Narrative events, characters, settings, and historical elements are derived from the source where applicable. The prose, dialogue, organization, pacing, framing, commentary, and presentation are newly written for this adaptation. No copyrighted modern translation or later adaptation has been reproduced.
Previous Playbook — Playbook 3 | Playbook 4 of 5 | Next Playbook — Playbook 5
Previously in the Series: John McMurdo arrived in Vermissa Valley and was drawn into the Scowrers. He was initiated into Lodge 341, took part in the beating of the editor James Stanger, and was arrested and acquitted when the evidence against him collapsed. He refused Brother Morris's offer of a clerkship, was warned by Boss McGinty to keep away from the man of conscience, and began to understand that the valley was ruled by fear. On the eve of a lodge meeting, Morris came to him with a secret that would change everything — a warning that a Pinkerton detective was in the valley, and that the end of the Scowrers was at hand.
Table of Contents — Web of Fear
Chapter I — The Valley of Fear
Chapter III — A Warning at the Window
Chapter IV — The Danger Deepens
Chapter V — The Man from Pinkerton's
Chapter VI — The Committee of Seven
Chapter I — The Valley of Fear
It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already been appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of some day succeeding McGinty as Bodymaster, was now so necessary to the councils of his comrades that nothing was done without his help and advice. The more popular he became, however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the scowls which greeted him as he passed along the streets of Vermissa. In spite of their terror the citizens were taking heart to band themselves together against their oppressors. Rumours had reached the lodge of secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of firearms among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his men were undisturbed by such reports. They were numerous, resolute, and well armed. Their opponents were scattered and powerless. It would all end, as it had done in the past, in aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So said McGinty, McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits.
It was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the lodge night, and McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it when Morris, the weaker brother of the order, came to see him. His brow was creased with care, and his kindly face was drawn and haggard.
"Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?"
"Sure."
"I can't forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you kept it to yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask you about it."
"What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn't that I agreed with what you said."
"I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and be safe. I've a secret here," he put his hand to his breast, "and it is just burning the life out of me. I wish it had come to any one of you but me. If I tell it, it will mean murder, for sure. If I don't, it may bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near out of my wits over it!"
McMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in every limb. He poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to him. "That's the physic for the likes of you," said he. "Now let me hear of it."
Morris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. "I can tell it to you all in one sentence," said he. "There's a detective on our trail."
McMurdo stared at him in astonishment. "Why, man, you're crazy," he said. "Isn't the place full of police and detectives and what harm did they ever do us?"
"No, no, it's no man of the district. As you say, we know them, and it is little that they can do. But you've heard of Pinkerton's?"
"I've read of some folk of that name."
"Well, you can take it from me you've no show when they are on your trail. It's not a take-it-or-miss-it government concern. It's a dead earnest business proposition that's out for results and keeps out till by hook or crook it gets them. If a Pinkerton man is deep in this business, we are all destroyed."
"We must kill him."
"Ah, it's the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at the lodge. Didn't I say to you that it would end in murder?"
"Sure, what is murder? Isn't it common enough in these parts?"
"It is, indeed; but it's not for me to point out the man that is to be murdered. I'd never rest easy again. And yet it's our own necks that may be at stake. In God's name what shall I do?" He rocked to and fro in his agony of indecision.
But his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he shared the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting it. He gripped Morris's shoulder and shook him in his earnestness.
"See here, man," he cried, and he almost screeched the words in his excitement, "you won't gain anything by sitting keening like an old wife at a wake. Let's have the facts. Who is the fellow? Where is he? How did you hear of him? Why did you come to me?"
"I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me. I told you that I had a store in the East before I came here. I left good friends behind me, and one of them is in the telegraph service. Here's a letter that I had from him yesterday. It's this part from the top of the page. You can read it yourself."
This was what McMurdo read:
"How are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read plenty of them in the papers. Between you and me I expect to hear news from you before long. Five big corporations and the two railroads have taken the thing up in dead earnest. They mean it, and you can bet they'll get there! They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has taken hold under their orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is operating. The thing has got to be stopped right now."
"Now read the postscript."
"Of course, what I give you is what I learned in business; so it goes no further. It's a queer cipher that you handle by the yard every day and can get no meaning from."
McMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his listless hands. The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was the abyss before him.
"Does anyone else know of this?" he asked.
"I have told no one else."
"But this man — your friend — has he any other person that he would be likely to write to?"
"Well, I dare say he knows one or two more."
"Of the lodge?"
"It's likely enough."
"I was asking because it is likely that he may have given some description of this fellow Birdy Edwards — then we could get on his trail."
"Well, it's possible. But I should not think he knew him. He is just telling me the news that came to him by way of business. How would he know this Pinkerton man?"
McMurdo gave a violent start.
"By Gar!" he cried, "I've got him. What a fool I was not to know it. Lord! but we're in luck! We will fix him before he can do any harm. See here, Morris, will you leave this thing in my hands?"
"Sure, if you will only take it off mine."
"I'll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even your name need not be mentioned. I'll take it all on myself, as if it were to me that this letter has come. Will that content you?"
"It's just what I would ask."
"Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I'll get down to the lodge, and we'll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry for himself."
"You wouldn't kill this man?"
"The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience will be, and the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and let these things settle themselves. I have hold of it now."
Morris shook his head sadly as he left. "I feel that his blood is on my hands," he groaned.
"Self-protection is no murder, anyhow," said McMurdo, smiling grimly. "It's him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all if we left him long in the valley. Why, Brother Morris, we'll have to elect you Bodymaster yet; for you've surely saved the lodge."
And yet it was clear from his actions that he thought more seriously of this new intrusion than his words would show. It may have been his guilty conscience, it may have been the reputation of the Pinkerton organization, it may have been the knowledge that great, rich corporations had set themselves the task of clearing out the Scowrers; but, whatever his reason, his actions were those of a man who is preparing for the worst. Every paper which would incriminate him was destroyed before he left the house. After that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger must still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the lodge he stopped at old man Shafter's. The house was forbidden him; but when he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him. The dancing Irish deviltry had gone from her lover's eyes. She read his danger in his earnest face.
"Something has happened!" she cried. "Oh, Jack, you are in danger!"
"Sure, it is not very bad, my sweetheart. And yet it may be wise that we make a move before it is worse."
"Make a move?"
"I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the time is coming. I had news to-night, bad news, and I see trouble coming."
"The police?"
"Well, a Pinkerton. But, sure, you wouldn't know what that is, acushla, nor what it may mean to the likes of me. I'm too deep in this thing, and I may have to get out of it quick. You said you would come with me if I went."
"Oh, Jack, it would be the saving of you!"
"I'm an honest man in some things, Ettie. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your bonny head for all that the world can give, nor ever pull you down one inch from the golden throne above the clouds where I always see you. Would you trust me?"
She put her hand in his without a word. "Well, then, listen to what I say, and do as I order you, for indeed it's the only way for us. Things are going to happen in this valley. I feel it in my bones. There may be many of us that will have to look out for ourselves. I'm one, anyhow. If I go, by day or night, it's you that must come with me!"
"I'd come after you, Jack."
"No, no, you shall come with me. If this valley is closed to me and I can never come back, how can I leave you behind, and me perhaps in hiding from the police with never a chance of a message? It's with me you must come. I know a good woman in the place I come from, and it's there I'd leave you till we can get married. Will you come?"
"Yes, Jack, I will come."
"God bless you for your trust in me! It's a fiend out of hell that I should be if I abused it. Now, mark you, Ettie, it will be just a word to you, and when it reaches you, you will drop everything and come right down to the waiting room at the depot and stay there till I come for you."
"Day or night, I'll come at the word, Jack."
Chapter II — The Darkest Hour
Somewhat eased in mind, now that his own preparations for escape had been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had already assembled, and only by complicated signs and countersigns could he pass through the outer guard and inner guard who close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and welcome greeted him as he entered. The long room was crowded, and through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the Bodymaster, the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face of Harraway, the secretary, and a dozen more who were among the leaders of the lodge. He rejoiced that they should all be there to take counsel over his news.
"Indeed, it's glad we are to see you, Brother!" cried the chairman. "There's business here that wants a Solomon in judgment to set it right."
"It's Lander and Egan," explained his neighbour as he took his seat. "They both claim the head money given by the lodge for the shooting of old man Crabbe over at Stylestown, and who's to say which fired the bullet?"
McMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression of his face froze the attention of the audience. There was a dead hush of expectation.
"Eminent Bodymaster," he said, in a solemn voice, "I claim urgency!"
"Brother McMurdo claims urgency," said McGinty. "It's a claim that by the rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now Brother, we attend you."
McMurdo took the letter from his pocket.
"Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren," he said, "I am the bearer of ill news this day; but it is better that it should be known and discussed, than that a blow should fall upon us without warning which would destroy us all. I have information that the most powerful and richest organizations in this state have bound themselves together for our destruction, and that at this very moment there is a Pinkerton detective, one Birdy Edwards, at work in the valley collecting the evidence which may put a rope round the necks of many of us, and send every man in this room into a felon's cell. That is the situation for the discussion of which I have made a claim of urgency."
There was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the chairman.
"What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?" he asked.
"It is in this letter which has come into my hands," said McMurdo. He read the passage aloud. "It is a matter of honour with me that I can give no further particulars about the letter, nor put it into your hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else in it which can affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case before you as it has reached me."
"Let me say, Mr. Chairman," said one of the older brethren, "that I have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best man in the Pinkerton service."
"Does anyone know him by sight?" asked McGinty.
"Yes," said McMurdo, "I do."
There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.
"I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands," he continued with an exulting smile upon his face. "If we act quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing short. If I have your confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear."
"What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our affairs?"
"You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor. But this man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do you think there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that could not be bought? He will get at our secrets — maybe has got them already. There's only one sure cure."
"That he never leaves the valley," said Baldwin.
McMurdo nodded. "Good for you, Brother Baldwin," he said. "You and I have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night."
"Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?"
"Eminent Bodymaster," said McMurdo, earnestly, "I would put it to you that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge. God forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears of this man, there would be an end of any chance of our getting him. I would ask the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman — yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and five more. Then I can talk freely of what I know and of what I advise should be done."
The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing.
The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a cloud upon the men's spirits, and many there for the first time began to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long. The horrors they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and left their leaders to their council.
The seven men sat late into the night, and their faces, as they listened to the plan McMurdo laid before them, were not the faces of men who had any doubt of what they were doing. The trap was to be laid at the Widow MacNamara's, and it was to be laid carefully, because the man they were dealing with was not the sort of man who could be taken by surprise.
"You have seen him yourself, McMurdo," said McGinty. "You know his looks. If he should prove to be a different man from the one you think, we can do nothing. But if it is Birdy Edwards, we will make an example of him that will be remembered in this valley for a hundred years."
"There is one thing I would ask, Councillor," said McMurdo quietly. "When the time comes, I want to be the one who speaks to him first. I want him to know who it is that has brought him down. He has hunted us long enough, and it is only fair that he should know the man who has trapped him."
McGinty looked at him for a long moment. "That is a reasonable request," he said at last. "You shall have it. And now, brethren, let us part. To-morrow night at nine o'clock we meet at the Widow MacNamara's — and God help the man who walks into that room!"
Chapter III — A Warning at the Window
The day that followed was a long one for McMurdo. He went about his business as usual, attending to the affairs of the store in which he had taken a nominal interest, and speaking to the men he met in the street with the same careless good humour that had made him popular in the town. But underneath the surface he was thinking hard. He had set a trap for Birdy Edwards, and the trap had been carefully designed. The question now was whether Birdy Edwards would walk into it — and whether, when he did, the man who had set the trap would be able to do what he had promised.
In the afternoon he went down to Hobson's Patch, as he had told the lodge he would do. The little town lay a few miles down the valley, and the telegraph office there was the one through which he had learned that the man calling himself Steve Wilson had been sending daily messages in cipher. He found the operator, a thin, nervous young man with a pale face and a perpetual cold, and asked him the question that he had come to ask.
"That man Wilson," he said, "the one that's been sending the cipher messages — do you know where he lodges?"
The operator nodded. "He's been here again this morning," he said. "He came in about ten o'clock and sent off a long message. He seemed in a great hurry. I don't know where he lodges, but he generally goes toward the direction of the boarding house at the end of the street — Mrs. Cuthbertson's, I think they call it."
McMurdo thanked him and strolled down the street toward the boarding house. He did not go in. He stood for a moment across the road, looking at the windows, and then he turned and walked slowly back to Vermissa. He had seen all he needed to see. The man he had been told to look for was at the boarding house, and he would be there again that night.
When he reached his own house, he found a note waiting for him. It was from McGinty, and it said simply that the committee would be with him at nine o'clock. There was no signature, but the handwriting was the Bodymaster's, and the message was clear. The trap was set, and the men were coming.
McMurdo ate a light supper and then went up to his room to make his final preparations. He took out his revolver and examined it, and then replaced it in the drawer of the little table beside his bed. He did not intend to use it. He had made a promise to Ettie, and he meant to keep it — but he had also made a promise to himself, and the promise to himself was the one that mattered more.
At half-past eight there was a tap at his window. He looked out, and in the gathering dusk he saw the face of Brother Morris, pale and anxious, staring up at him from the garden.
"What are you doing here?" McMurdo asked, in a low voice. "You should not be seen near my house tonight."
"I had to come," Morris answered. "I could not rest. I have been thinking all day of what you told me — that the Pinkerton man is in the valley, and that you mean to trap him. I have come to ask you to spare him. He is only doing his duty, McMurdo. He is not a murderer. He is a man like the rest of us, trying to do what he thinks is right."
McMurdo looked down at the anxious, kindly face in the twilight, and for a moment he felt something that he had not felt for a long time — a pang of something that might have been shame.
"You had better go home, Morris," he said quietly. "This is no business of yours. What I am going to do tonight I am going to do because it must be done. If you are wise, you will stay out of the way and say nothing to anyone. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Morris answered. "But I tell you, McMurdo, that this thing will come back on you. It always does. The blood that is shed in this valley is shed on the heads of the men who shed it. I have seen it before, and I will see it again. God help you — and God help the man you are going to destroy."
He turned and slipped away into the darkness of the garden, and McMurdo was left alone with his thoughts. He stood for a long time at the window, looking out at the darkening valley and the lights of the town, and then he turned and went downstairs to wait for the men who were coming.
Chapter IV — The Danger Deepens
The men came in good time as arranged. They were outwardly respectable citizens, well clad and cleanly; but a judge of faces would have read little hope for Birdy Edwards in those hard mouths and remorseless eyes. There was not a man in the room whose hands had not been reddened a dozen times before. They were as hardened to human murder as a butcher to sheep.
Foremost, of course, both in appearance and in guilt, was the formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy, dark youth, was feared even by his own comrades for the ferocity of his disposition. These were the men who assembled that night under the roof of McMurdo for the killing of the Pinkerton detective.
Their host had placed whisky upon the table, and they had hastened to prime themselves for the work before them. Baldwin and Cormac were already half-drunk, and the liquor had brought out all their ferocity. Cormac placed his hands on the stove for an instant — it had been lighted, for the nights were still cold.
"That will do," said he, with an oath.
"Ay," said Baldwin, catching his meaning. "If he is strapped to that, we will have the truth out of him."
"We'll have the truth out of him, never fear," said McMurdo. He had nerves of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of the affair was on him his manner was as cool and unconcerned as ever. The others marked it and applauded.
"You are the one to handle him," said the Boss approvingly. "Not a warning will he get till your hand is on his throat. It's a pity there are no shutters to your windows."
McMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains tighter. "Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the hour."
"Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger," said the secretary.
"He'll come, never fear," McMurdo answered. "He is as eager to come as you can be to see him. Hark to that!"
They all sat like wax figures, some with their glasses arrested halfway to their lips. Three loud knocks had sounded at the door.
"Hush!" McMurdo raised his hand in caution. An exulting glance went round the circle, and hands were laid upon their weapons.
"Not a sound, for your lives!" McMurdo whispered, as he went from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.
With strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the steps of their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him open the outer door. There were a few words as of greeting. Then they were aware of a strange step inside and of an unfamiliar voice. An instant later came the slam of the door and the turning of the key in the lock. Their prey was safe within the trap. Tiger Cormac laughed horribly, and Boss McGinty clapped his great hand across his mouth.
"Be quiet, you fool!" he whispered. "You'll be the undoing of us yet!"
There was a mutter of conversation from the next room. It seemed interminable. Then the door opened, and McMurdo appeared, his finger upon his lip.
He came to the end of the table and looked round at them. A subtle change had come over him. His manner was as of one who has great work to do. His face had set into granite firmness. His eyes shone with a fierce excitement behind his spectacles. He had become a visible leader of men. They stared at him with eager interest; but he said nothing. Still with the same singular gaze he looked from man to man.
"Well!" cried Boss McGinty at last. "Is he here? Is Birdy Edwards here?"
"Yes," McMurdo answered slowly. "Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!"
There were ten seconds after that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn from their hangings.
At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear and plunged for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met him there with the stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell back into his chair.
"You're safer there, Councillor," said the man whom they had known as McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take your hand off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or by the Lord that made me — There, that will do. There are forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!"
There was no possible resistance under the menace of those rifles. The men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed, they still sat round the table.
Chapter V — The Man from Pinkerton's
"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."
The seven men were led away, and the house was left in the hands of the police. McMurdo — for so we shall continue to call him, although he had now revealed himself as Birdy Edwards — stood for a moment in the doorway of the little parlour, looking out at the darkness of the valley. The night was cold, and the stars were shining, and somewhere in the distance a dog was barking. It was over. The work that he had come to do was done.
He walked slowly down the path to the gate, and there he found Captain Marvin waiting for him.
"You did well, Edwards," said the captain quietly. "I have seen some pretty things in my time, but I never saw a neater job than this. What are you going to do now?"
"I am going to Chicago," Edwards answered. "There is a woman there who has been waiting for me a long time, and I think she has waited long enough. After that, I do not know. Perhaps I shall go back to the East. Perhaps I shall stay in the West. But wherever I go, I shall remember the Valley of Fear."
"You will not be safe," said Marvin. "There are men in the lodge who escaped to-night, and they will not forget. Ted Baldwin, for one, will not forget."
"I know it," said Edwards. "But that is a risk I have taken before, and I will take it again. A man cannot do this sort of work and expect to live quietly. But I have done what I set out to do, and that is enough."
He turned and walked away into the darkness, and Captain Marvin stood for a long moment watching him go, and then he turned and went back into the house.
Chapter VI — The Committee of Seven
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.
It had been a long trial, and a terrible one. The evidence that Edwards gave was the evidence of a man who had lived among the prisoners for months, who had shared their counsels, who had been trusted by them as one of themselves. He told the court everything: the names, the dates, the methods of every crime that had been committed in the valley over the previous ten years. He did not spare himself. He admitted that he had taken part in the beating of Stanger, and that he had been present, in a subordinate capacity, at other outrages. He explained, however, that in every case he had done what he could to limit the violence, and that in several cases he had given warning in time to prevent a murder. The court accepted his explanation. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty against all the principal prisoners, and the judge, in passing sentence, said that the work of Birdy Edwards had been one of the most remarkable pieces of detective service in the history of the United States.
But Edwards did not stay to hear the verdict. He had left the valley on the night of the arrests, and had made his way in secret to Chicago, where Ettie Shafter was waiting for him. They were married a few days later, with old Jacob Shafter as witness, and for a brief time they lived quietly together, far from the valley and the men who had ruled it.
It was not to last. As Edwards had always known, the surviving members of the gang did not forget. They had sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as a vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep their vow. From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he went, under a changed name, to California, and it was there that the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again, under the name of Douglas, he worked in a lonely canyon, where with an English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track once more, and he cleared — only just in time — for England. And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.
Chapter VII — The Trap at the Widow's House
The house in which the arrest took place was the house of the Widow MacNamara — a lonely building on the extreme fringe of the town, standing back from the road and surrounded by a small garden that had long since gone to seed. It was here that Edwards had taken up his lodging after leaving Jacob Shafter's, and it was here that he had arranged for the trap to be set.
He had chosen the house with care. It had only one entrance that could be reached without crossing the garden, and that entrance could be covered from the windows of the upper rooms, where Captain Marvin and his men had been stationed. The parlour in which the arrest was made was a large room with a long table in the centre, and at each side there were windows looking out into the darkness. When Edwards had first taken the house, he had examined these windows with the utmost care, and had made sure that they could be opened silently from the outside — a fact which he had communicated to Marvin and which had made the plan possible.
The plan itself had been simple. Edwards had told the lodge that he would bring Birdy Edwards to the house at ten o'clock, and that he would leave him in the parlour while he fetched the papers that had been promised. Once the man was in the room, the seven members of the committee would be summoned and the trap would be closed. But Edwards had arranged with Marvin that at the moment when the men were seated around the table, waiting for the signal, the windows would be thrown open and the police would pour in. There would be no resistance. The men would be caught off their guard, and the whole lodge would be broken up before any of its members could escape.
The arrest had been carried out exactly as Edwards had planned. At ten o'clock the man who called himself Steve Wilson had knocked at the door, and Edwards had opened it and led him into the parlour. A few minutes later Edwards had come back to the room where the committee was waiting, and had announced — in the words that have already been set down — that the man they were looking for was himself.
The capture of the seven leaders was the signal for a general descent upon the lodge. While Marvin's men were securing the prisoners, other police parties, who had been waiting in the outskirts of the town, moved in upon the Union House and upon the houses of the other leading members of the lodge. By dawn, more than sixty men had been arrested, and the records of the society — records that had been kept with the most punctilious care, and that contained the names of every member and the details of every crime — had been seized.
The arrests had been made without bloodshed. There had been no shooting, no violence, no resistance. The men had been taken as quietly as if they had been ordinary criminals caught in the act. And in the morning the town woke to find that the reign of terror was over, and that the Valley of Fear was free.
Chapter VIII — Birdy Edwards Speaks
There is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed note to be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission which he had accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much muffled man boarded a special train which had been sent by the railroad company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the land of danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the wedding.
The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where their adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law. In vain they struggled. In vain the money of the lodge — money squeezed by blackmail out of the whole countryside — was spent like water in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear, unimpassioned statement from one who knew every detail of their lives, their organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all the wiles of their defenders. At last after so many years they were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from the valley.
McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining when the last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his fate. Fifty-odd had various degrees of imprisonment. The work of Birdy Edwards was complete.
And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was another hand to be played, and yet another and another. Ted Baldwin, for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys; so had several others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they were free once more — a day which Edwards, who knew his men, was very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as a vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep their vow!
From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he went under a changed name to California, and it was there that the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canyon, where with an English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track once more, and he cleared — only just in time — for England. And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.
When Holmes finished reading, he closed the manuscript and laid it on the table between us.
"So there it is, Watson," he said quietly. "The whole story. The man who came to Birlstone as John Douglas was Birdy Edwards, the Pinkerton agent who broke up the Scowrers. The men he hunted down have hunted him ever since. And the hand that guided them to him in England — the hand that told them where to find him and how to strike — was the hand of the master criminal we have never yet been able to touch."
"Moriarty."
"Moriarty. The Scowrers, when they came out of prison, needed help to trace their man across the Atlantic. They found it in London. And the price of it was — what? We do not know. But we know the result. Douglas is dead, and the man who arranged his death is still at large."
He rose from his chair and walked to the window. The fog had thickened in Baker Street, and the gas lamps outside cast only a dim and yellow glow through the murk.
"There is one thing I have not told you, Watson," he said, without turning round. "The note we received from Barker this morning — the cable from Mrs. Douglas announcing her husband's death — was sent from Cape Town. But I have reason to believe that it was not written by her. I have reason to believe that she was not on board the Palmyra at all. I have reason to believe that she is, at this moment, in London, and that she is being held by the same organization that killed her husband."
I stared at him.
"But why? What possible purpose could they have in holding her?"
"Because, Watson, they want the manuscript. They want the story of the Valley of Fear — the only complete record of the Scowrers, of their crimes, and of the men who helped to break them up. There are names in this manuscript that would send half a dozen men to the scaffold if they were ever made public. And there are names in it that would connect the Scowrers to Professor Moriarty himself. If that manuscript falls into the wrong hands, the men who are named in it will be safe forever. And if it remains in my hands — well, our day will come, but it has not come yet."
"Then what do we do?"
"We wait, Watson. We wait, and we watch. Mrs. Douglas will be brought to me — of that I am certain. The men who killed her husband want something, and the only thing they want is the manuscript, and the only way to get it is through her. They will send her to me. And when they do — well, we shall see."
He turned from the window and looked at me with steady eyes.
"In the meantime," he said, "there is one more thing I want you to do. I want you to read the story once more, and to pay particular attention to one thing. The men who broke up the Scowrers — the men who hunted Birdy Edwards — are not all dead. Some of them are in prison, but some of them are free. Ted Baldwin is dead. But the Willabys are alive. And there is one man — the most dangerous man in the whole story, the man who, with Baldwin, was responsible for the worst of the crimes in the Valley of Fear — who was never brought to trial at all, and who has been looking for Birdy Edwards for twenty years. His name is not mentioned in this manuscript. But I have heard it before, and I have never forgotten it. And I am very much afraid, Watson, that he is in London now."
"Who is he?"
"I will tell you when the time comes. Not yet. There is still too much at stake. But I want you to remember what Douglas wrote about the night of the murder at Birlstone. He said that the man who attacked him wore the brand of the lodge on his forearm — the triangle inside the circle. That mark was borne by every member of the Scowrers. And the man who is in London now — the man who is hunting Mrs. Douglas — bears that mark too. When we find him, Watson — when we find him — we shall have the last piece of this puzzle in our hands."
He sat down again and picked up the manuscript.
"Read it once more," he said. "And then we will begin."
Historical Context — The Pinkerton Agency and Undercover Work in the 1870s
The Valley of Fear is built around one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of American detective work: the infiltration of the Molly Maguires by a Pinkerton agent. James McParlan, an Irish-born operative, was sent by Allan Pinkerton to the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania in 1873, posing as a fugitive from justice in Buffalo. He lived among the miners for over two years, joined the secret society, and gathered the evidence that led to the trials and executions of 1877 and 1878. The parallels with Conan Doyle's narrative are exact and deliberate. Birdy Edwards is modelled on McParlan; the Scowrers on the Mollies; and the plan by which Edwards traps the lodge leaders in his own house is a fictionalised version of the operation by which McParlan and his Pinkerton colleagues brought down the organisation. The novel also reflects a wider truth about the period: by the 1870s, private detective agencies had become the most effective instrument of law enforcement in parts of the United States where local police were either corrupt or powerless. The Pinkertons worked for corporations, not for the state, and their methods — including undercover infiltration and the payment of informers — were controversial then and remain controversial now. Conan Doyle does not ignore the ambiguities of this history, but he presents Edwards's work as a form of necessary justice, carried out at enormous personal cost.
Literary Note — The Transformation of McMurdo
One of the most interesting features of the second part of The Valley of Fear is the way Conan Doyle handles the transformation of John McMurdo from a suspected criminal into a heroic detective. The reader is never explicitly told, in the early chapters, that McMurdo is an undercover agent. We are shown his arrival in Vermissa, his initiation into the lodge, his participation in the beating of Stanger, his acceptance of the brand on his arm — all of the things that a genuine member of the Scowrers would have done. And yet, from the beginning, there are hints. He defends the newspaper editor when Baldwin would have killed him. He refuses to take part in the worst of the violence. He treats Brother Morris with sympathy, even as he rebuffs his offer of help. And he speaks, from time to time, of a "place I come from" and a "good woman" who lives there — a place that is not Chicago, and a woman who is not Ettie Shafter. These hints are carefully placed. They do not give the game away; they prepare the reader for the revelation that will come at the end of the chapter, when McMurdo turns to the seven men assembled in his parlour and says: "I am Birdy Edwards." It is one of the most effective scenes in Conan Doyle's work, and it depends entirely on the novelist's skill in withholding just enough information while giving just enough to keep the reader guessing.
Original Value — The Cost of Undercover Work
One of the most striking things about The Valley of Fear, and one of the things that has made it endure, is its honesty about the psychological cost of undercover work. Birdy Edwards — McMurdo — spends two years living among men he knows to be murderers. He takes part, in a limited way, in their violence. He accepts their friendship. He earns their trust. He wears the brand of their society on his arm for the rest of his life. And when he finally breaks them, he does so knowing that the men he has betrayed are not merely criminals but human beings, with families and hopes and fears of their own. The novel does not pretend that this is easy. Edwards himself admits, in the final scene, that he would not live through those months again for any amount of money. And yet he does what he does, because he believes it is the only way to save the ordinary men and women of the valley from the terror under which they live. It is a complex moral position, and it is presented without sentimentality. Conan Doyle understood that the work of a detective — especially an undercover detective — is not merely a matter of intelligence and courage, but of endurance, and of the willingness to sacrifice something of oneself for the sake of a larger good.
Continue the Series
In Playbook 5 — Fall of the Scowrers — the story reaches its conclusion. Birdy Edwards returns to England, marries, and settles at Birlstone — only to be tracked down once more by the surviving members of the gang. Holmes confronts the mystery of the master criminal in London, and the tragic death of John Douglas is at last explained. The final chapter reveals the meaning of the Valley of Fear, and the price that is paid by the man who once went down into the valley to save it.
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References
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Valley of Fear. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1915. Public-domain edition available via Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg. The Valley of Fear. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3289
Library of Congress. Catalogue record for The Valley of Fear. https://catalog.loc.gov
Adapted from the original work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Public-domain status verified for the United States; other jurisdictions should be checked independently.