The Valley of Fear Playbook 2 — Sherlock Holmes Discourses
A Playbook Series Adaptation · Verified public domain in the United States · Adapted by Kateule Sydney · E-cyclopedia Resources Hub
The Birlstone mystery reaches its apparent solution. Holmes examines the moat, the missing dumb-bell, and the bicycle; the household is questioned; and the truth about the man who called himself John Douglas is revealed at last. But behind the solution lies a greater danger — one that reaches back across the Atlantic and forward to a meeting on Baker Street that has not yet taken place.
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 2 of 5, covering Part I, Chapters IV–VII
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 1 | Playbook 2 of 5 | Next Playbook — Playbook 3
Previously in the Series: A cipher from the man Porlock warned Holmes of danger to a Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor. Within the hour, Inspector MacDonald brought news that Douglas had been murdered. Holmes and Watson travelled to Sussex, where they found a country house surrounded by a moat, a dead man with a wedding ring missing from his finger, a card marked V.V. 341, and a household of suspects — including Cecil Barker, the dead man's closest friend, and Mrs. Douglas, his beautiful young wife. Holmes began to suspect that the story of an intruder who escaped across the moat was a fabrication, and that the truth lay elsewhere.
Table of Contents — Sherlock Holmes Discourses
Chapter I — The Draining of the Moat
Chapter II — The Bundle at the Bottom
Chapter III — The Man Who Came Out of the Wall
Chapter IV — Douglas Tells His Story
Chapter V — The Mark of the Lodge
Chapter VI — The Valley of Fear
Chapter I — The Draining of the Moat
By the morning after our conversation in the village inn, Holmes had reached the conclusion that there was only one way to settle the question of the intruder. The story, as Barker had told it, was that a man had entered the Manor House between four and six on the afternoon of the murder, concealed himself behind the curtain in the study, waited until Douglas came down at eleven, shot him, and escaped through the window and across the moat. If that were true, the moat would hold the proof.
"The moat, Watson," he said, over breakfast. "The moat has been the central fact of this case from the beginning. It is the moat that makes the murder possible — and the moat that makes it impossible. If the murderer crossed it, the water will tell us. If he did not, the water will tell us that too."
He proposed to drain it. The suggestion, when he made it to Inspector MacDonald and White Mason, was received at first with a certain scepticism. The moat was fed by a small stream, and the stream had been running for centuries, and the work would take the better part of a day. But Holmes was quietly insistent. He had, he said, been thinking about the case, and the moat was the point on which everything depended. He would be glad of the assistance of the local police, but if they preferred to take a holiday for the day, he would not press them. He would, with the help of Ames and one or two of the servants, see to the thing himself.
The suggestion was received with less resistance than he had expected. The two detectives had been up most of the previous night, and were themselves not entirely satisfied with the progress of their case. They agreed to take the day off — White Mason promised to show MacDonald the views from Birlstone Ridge — and to meet Holmes again at the Manor House in the evening.
I spent the morning with Holmes at the moat. The stream that fed it was diverted at the upper end, and the water ran off slowly through a channel that had been dug at the lower end. By early afternoon the bottom was visible — a broad flat of mud and silt, with the two-foot ledge of stone that ran all round the base of the house, and here and there the dark shapes of submerged branches and the brighter glint of the occasional object that had been dropped or thrown into the water over the centuries.
Holmes walked slowly round the entire circuit of the moat, stooping now and then to examine something, and twice going down on his knees to look more closely at a mark on the ledge. He did not speak to me, and I did not interrupt him. It was one of those occasions on which I have learned that he is best left alone — when his mind is working at its highest speed, and every external thing is an interruption that he bears only with the patience of a man who knows that it will soon be over.
At length he came to a halt at the corner of the house nearest the study window.
"Watson," he said quietly, "come here."
I went to him. He pointed to the ledge at the point below the study window. There, in the soft mud that had not yet dried, was a clear impression — the print of a man's boot, and beside it the print of a second boot, side by side, as if someone had stood there for a moment before going on. And beyond, in the open mud of the moat floor, there was a long smear, as if something heavy had been dragged through the water.
"Somebody stood on that ledge," said Holmes. "Somebody, moreover, who was not a fugitive. A fugitive does not stand still in the water at the moment of his escape. He runs, Watson. He scrambles out on the far side and he runs. But this man stood still, and he stood still long enough to leave two clear prints — and then he did something else, something that has left this long smear across the bottom of the moat. Come. We have not finished with the moat yet."
Chapter II — The Bundle at the Bottom
We walked back to the point on the ledge where the prints had been found, and Holmes went down on his hands and knees and peered into the remaining water. The mud at this corner of the moat was unusually deep, and the last of the water had not yet drained away, so that a small pool still lay at the base of the wall, black and opaque.
"There is something under there," said Holmes. "I can see the shape of it. Get me a pole, Watson — a long one."
I fetched a pole from the gardener's shed, and Holmes, with the skill of a man who has done this sort of thing many times before, began to feel about in the water. He touched something, and drew back, and then went in again more carefully, and brought to the surface a small bundle — a bundle of cloth tied with cord, and weighted so that it had sunk at once.
"Look at this, Watson," he said, cutting the cord with his penknife and spreading the cloth out upon the dry stone of the ledge. "A suit of clothes. A pair of boots, American as you perceive. A knife — a long, deadly, sheathed knife. And this." He held up a small bundle of underclothes. "And finally — this."
He lifted from the wet cloth a short, heavy object that had been wrapped inside the clothes. It was a dumb-bell.
"The missing dumb-bell," said Holmes. "I thought we might find it in the moat, Watson. And now that we have, we can begin to reconstruct what actually happened here on the night of the sixth of January."
I looked at the bundle, and then at the moat, and then at Holmes.
"But what does it mean?" I asked. "A suit of clothes, and a knife, and a dumb-bell — what do they prove?"
"They prove that the story Barker has told us is false," said Holmes, "and that the truth is something altogether different. Consider what we have. We have a complete set of clothes, weighted and sunk in the moat. We have a knife — an American knife, of a type used in the Western states. We have a dumb-bell, of the sort that is used for exercise, but also — as we have seen — for the purpose of weighting a bundle before it is thrown into the water. And we have, on the ledge below the study window, the prints of a man's boots, standing still, side by side, as if the man had paused there before going on. What does that suggest to you, Watson?"
"It suggests that the man who left those prints was not running. He was standing still."
"Exactly. And why would a man who had just committed a murder stand still in the water at the base of the wall of the house he had just escaped from? He would not, unless he had a reason. And what reason could he have? Only one. He had come back — not to escape, but to deposit something in the moat. Something he had been carrying. Something he had brought with him to the house, and which he now needed to dispose of."
"The clothes."
"The clothes. And the knife. And the dumb-bell. All of them things which, if they were found upon him, would be damning. And so he wrapped them up, weighted them down, and dropped them into the water — where they would have remained undiscovered, if I had not insisted on draining the moat."
I was silent for a moment.
"Then you think," I said, "that the man who escaped across the moat was the murderer after all?"
"I think," said Holmes, "that the man who escaped across the moat was not the murderer. I think he was a very different person altogether — a person who came to the house that night with a purpose of his own, and who found, when he arrived, that the murder had already been committed. He stayed long enough to change his clothes — we shall find, I fancy, that the clothes he was wearing when he arrived are not the clothes in which he left — and then he went out through the window and into the moat, and made his escape. And the clothes in this bundle are the clothes he came in."
"But who was he? And why did he come?"
"That, Watson, is what we are going to find out. Come. The evening is drawing in, and I have promised our friends the detectives that we will meet them at the house. I think that when they arrive, we shall have a surprise for them."
Chapter III — The Man Who Came Out of the Wall
The two detectives returned from their day on the ridge in the late afternoon, and found us waiting for them in the study at the Manor House. They were in good spirits — the bicycle had been identified beyond doubt as belonging to a man named Hargrave, who had stayed at the Eagle Commercial in Tunbridge Wells for two days before the murder and had disappeared on the morning of the crime — and MacDonald was inclined to believe that the case was nearly closed.
Holmes did not contradict him. He asked them, instead, whether they would care to join him in a small experiment. He led them through the house — through the hall, past the foot of the stairs, through the passage that led to the servants' quarters — and stopped at last at a small, low door that opened from the passage into a windowless space behind the study.
"What is this?" asked MacDonald.
"It is," said Holmes, "one of the hiding places of the old Manor House. There are several of them — the house is Jacobean, and the family who built it had reason to fear a visit from the parliamentary troops. This one is behind the study, and it communicates with the study through a concealed panel that Ames, the butler, was good enough to show me yesterday. He had not thought to mention it to the police, because he did not think it could have any bearing on the case. He was, of course, quite wrong."
He opened the door. The little room beyond was dark and cold, but it was clear that it had been occupied recently. There was a chair, and a small table, and on the table a candle-end, a copy of an American newspaper, and a bundle of provisions. And on the floor, in a corner, there was a small heap of clothing.
"Someone has been living here," said Holmes quietly, "for the past two days. Someone who came to the Manor House on the night of the murder, and who has been in hiding ever since. Someone who is — I think — very tired of the confinement. Mr. Douglas, will you come out?"
There was a long silence. Then, from the darkness of the little room, there emerged a figure that I had not seen before and that I shall not soon forget. It was a man of about fifty, tall and strong, with a grizzled moustache and a face that was at once bold and humorous, and he came out into the light with the air of a man who has decided that the game, as he would put it, is up.
"I've heard of you, Mr. Holmes," he said, in a voice that was not quite English and not quite American. "I never guessed that I should meet you. But I'm glad it's you and not some other. I've been cooped up in there two days, and I've spent the daylight hours — as much daylight as I could get in that rat trap — in putting the thing into words. You're welcome to them — you and your public. There's the story of the Valley of Fear."
MacDonald had been staring at the newcomer with the greatest amazement. "Well, this fairly beats me!" he cried at last. "If you are Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, then whose death have we been investigating for these two days, and where in the world have you sprung from now? You seemed to me to come out of the floor like a jack-in-a-box."
"Ah, Mr. Mac," said Holmes, shaking a reproving forefinger, "you would not read that excellent local compilation which described the concealment of King Charles. People did not hide in those days without excellent hiding places, and the hiding place that has once been used may be again. I had persuaded myself that we should find Mr. Douglas under this roof."
"And how long have you been playing this trick upon us, Mr. Holmes?" said the inspector angrily. "How long have you allowed us to waste ourselves upon a search that you knew to be an absurd one?"
"Not one instant, my dear Mr. Mac. Only last night did I form my views of the case. As they could not be put to the proof until this evening, I invited you and your colleague to take a holiday for the day. Pray what more could I do? When I found the suit of clothes in the moat, it at once became apparent to me that the body we had found could not have been the body of Mr. John Douglas at all, but must be that of the bicyclist from Tunbridge Wells. No other conclusion was possible. Therefore I had to determine where Mr. John Douglas himself could be, and the balance of probability was that with the connivance of his wife and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such conveniences for a fugitive, and awaiting quieter times when he could make his final escape."
"Well, you figured it out about right," said Douglas approvingly. "I thought I'd dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I stood under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds once for all off my track. Mind you, from first to last I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do again; but you'll judge that for yourselves when I tell you my story. Never mind warning me, Inspector: I'm ready to stand pat upon the truth."
Chapter IV — Douglas Tells His Story
We gathered in the study, and Douglas told us what had happened on the night of the sixth of January.
"I'm not going to begin at the beginning," he said. "That's all there," he indicated a bundle of papers on the table, "and a mighty queer yarn you'll find it. It all comes down to this: that there are some men that have good cause to hate me and would give their last dollar to know that they had got me. So long as I am alive and they are alive, there is no safety in this world for me. They hunted me from Chicago to California, then they chased me out of America; but when I married and settled down in this quiet spot I thought my last years were going to be peaceable.
"I never explained to my wife how things were. Why should I pull her into it? She would never have a quiet moment again; but would always be imagining trouble. I fancy she knew something, for I may have dropped a word here or a word there; but until yesterday, after you gentlemen had seen her, she never knew the rights of the matter. She told you all she knew, and so did Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened there was mighty little time for explanations. She knows everything now, and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner. But it was a hard question, dear," he took her hand for an instant in his own, "and I acted for the best.
"Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over in Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street. It was only a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I never doubted who it was. It was the worst enemy I had among them all — one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own; my luck was a proverb in the States about '76. I never doubted that it would be with me still.
"I was on my guard all that next day, and never went out into the park. It's as well, or he'd have had the drop on me with that buckshot gun of his before ever I could draw on him. After the bridge was up — my mind was always more restful when that bridge was up in the evenings — I put the thing clear out of my head. I never dreamed of his getting into the house and waiting for me. But when I made my round in my dressing gown, as was my habit, I had no sooner entered the study than I scented danger. I guess when a man has had dangers in his life — and I've had more than most in my time — there is a kind of sixth sense that waves the red flag. I saw the signal clear enough, and yet I couldn't tell you why. Next instant I spotted a boot under the window curtain, and then I saw why plain enough.
"I'd just the one candle that was in my hand; but there was a good light from the hall lamp through the open door. I put down the candle and jumped for a hammer that I'd left on the mantel. At the same moment he sprang at me. I saw the glint of a knife, and I lashed at him with the hammer. I got him somewhere; for the knife tinkled down on the floor. He dodged round the table as quick as an eel, and a moment later he'd got his gun from under his coat. I heard him cock it; but I had got hold of it before he could fire. I had it by the barrel, and we wrestled for it all ends up for a minute or more. It was death to the man that lost his grip.
"He never lost his grip; but he got it butt downward for a moment too long. Maybe it was I that pulled the trigger. Maybe we just jolted it off between us. Anyhow, he got both barrels in the face, and there I was, staring down at all that was left of Ted Baldwin. I'd recognized him in the township, and again when he sprang for me; but his own mother wouldn't recognize him as I saw him then. I'm used to rough work; but I fairly turned sick at the sight of him.
"I was hanging on the side of the table when Barker came hurrying down. I heard my wife coming, and I ran to the door and stopped her. It was no sight for a woman. I promised I'd come to her soon. I said a word or two to Barker — he took it all in at a glance — and we waited for the rest to come along. But there was no sign of them. Then we understood that they could hear nothing, and that all that had happened was known only to ourselves.
"It was at that instant that the idea came to me. I was fairly dazzled by the brilliance of it. The man's sleeve had slipped up and there was the branded mark of the lodge upon his forearm. See here!"
Douglas turned up his own coat and cuff to show a brown triangle within a circle exactly like that which we had seen upon the dead man.
"It was the sight of that which started me on it. I seemed to see it all clear at a glance. There were his height and hair and figure, about the same as my own. No one could swear to his face, poor devil! I brought down this suit of clothes, and in a quarter of an hour Barker and I had put my dressing gown on him and he lay as you found him. We tied all his things into a bundle, and I weighted them with the only weight I could find and put them through the window. The card he had meant to lay upon my body was lying beside his own.
"My rings were put on his finger; but when it came to the wedding ring," he held out his muscular hand, "you can see for yourselves that I had struck the limit. I have not moved it since the day I was married, and it would have taken a file to get it off. I don't know, anyhow, that I should have cared to part with it; but if I had wanted to I couldn't. So we just had to leave that detail to take care of itself. On the other hand, I brought a bit of plaster down and put it where I am wearing one myself at this instant. You slipped up there, Mr. Holmes, clever as you are; for if you had chanced to take off that plaster you would have found no cut underneath it.
"Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while and then get away where I could be joined by my 'widow' we should have a chance at last of living in peace for the rest of our lives. These devils would give me no rest so long as I was above ground; but if they saw in the papers that Baldwin had got his man, there would be an end of all my troubles. I hadn't much time to make it all clear to Barker and to my wife; but they understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all about this hiding place, so did Ames; but it never entered his head to connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to Barker to do the rest.
"I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened the window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how the murderer escaped. It was a tall order, that; but as the bridge was up there was no other way. Then, when everything was fixed, he rang the bell for all he was worth. What happened afterward you know. And so, gentlemen, you can do what you please; but I've told you the truth and the whole truth, so help me God! What I ask you now is how do I stand by the English law?"
There was a silence which was broken by Sherlock Holmes.
"The English law is in the main a just law. You will get no worse than your deserts from that, Mr. Douglas. But I would ask you how did this man know that you lived here, or how to get into your house, or where to hide to get you?"
"I know nothing of this."
Holmes's face was very white and grave. "The story is not over yet, I fear," said he. "You may find worse dangers than the English law, or even than your enemies from America. I see trouble before you, Mr. Douglas. You'll take my advice and still be on your guard."
Chapter V — The Mark of the Lodge
The story Douglas had told us was, so far as it went, complete. But it left one question unanswered, and it was the question Holmes had put to him at the end — how had the man called Ted Baldwin known where to find him?
"I have been thinking about this, Watson," said Holmes, as we walked back to the village inn, "and I am not satisfied. The presence of Baldwin in the neighbourhood of Birlstone is explained by Douglas's story — he was tracked down by the enemies of his American life. But the manner of it is not explained. He came to Tunbridge Wells two days before the murder, and he registered at the Eagle Commercial. He brought with him a sawed-off shotgun, a knife, a suit of American clothes, and a bicycle. And he knew — he must have known, or he could not have arranged the ambush as he did — exactly where Douglas was to be found. How did he know?"
"Perhaps he had been watching the house," I suggested.
"Possibly. But the house at Birlstone was a carefully chosen hiding place. Douglas had told no one his address, except a handful of trusted friends. The enemies of his American life had not, as far as we know, ever traced him to England. And yet this man Baldwin arrived in Tunbridge Wells within two days of Douglas's own visit to the town — which suggests that he had known, for some time, where Douglas was to be found, and had come to England prepared to act on that knowledge."
"Then someone must have told him."
"Yes," said Holmes. "Someone must have told him. And I think, Watson, that I know who."
He stopped in the middle of the village street and looked at me with that curious, almost absent expression that came over his face when he was fitting a piece of the puzzle into place.
"It is a matter of the mark of the lodge," he said. "The mark on Douglas's forearm — the triangle inside the circle — is not merely a badge of membership. It is a sign that has been used by a particular society, in a particular part of the United States, for a particular purpose. And I have seen it before. Not on Douglas, and not on Baldwin. On a man who came to me in Baker Street, three years ago, with a case that I could not at the time understand, and which I have never forgotten. He was an Irish-American, and he had the same mark on his forearm, and he told me a story about a valley in Pennsylvania in which a secret society ruled with a rod of iron, and in which he had been forced, against his will, to serve. I remember the name he gave the place. It was Vermissa Valley. And the name of the society was the Scowrers."
"The Scowrers!" I cried. "But that is the name on the card — V.V. 341."
"V.V., Watson, is Vermissa Valley. 341 is the number of the lodge. And the mark on Douglas's arm is the mark of a Bodymaster of the Scowrers — one of the most feared and hated societies in the history of the United States, which for nearly twenty years terrorised the coal and iron districts of Pennsylvania, and which was finally broken up by a Pinkerton agent named Birdy Edwards. Douglas is not merely a man who has enemies. He is a man who was once a member of that society, and who, I strongly suspect, was one of the men who helped to break it up. That is why he was hunted across America. That is why the Scowrers would give their last dollar to know that he was dead. And that is why — I am very much afraid — his life is not yet safe, even in England."
I looked at Holmes with a sudden, sharp understanding of what he was saying.
"Then who told Baldwin where to find him?"
"Someone who knew, Watson. Someone who had access to the information. Someone who was in the confidence of the Scowrers. The hand of the master criminal — the master criminal whose cipher we solved at Baker Street — is in this case, and it is in it more deeply than I at first supposed. It was he who told Baldwin where to find Douglas. It was he who set the whole thing in motion. And it is he, I am very much afraid, who will strike again — not at Douglas, for Douglas is now known to be alive, but at someone whose death will hurt Douglas more than any blow aimed at himself."
Chapter VI — The Valley of Fear
We spent the evening in the little parlour of the inn, and Holmes told me, for the first time, the whole of the story that Douglas had committed to paper during his two days of hiding — the story of his life in America, of the valley in Pennsylvania where he had been known as John McMurdo, of the lodge of the Scowrers into which he had been initiated, and of the long and terrible pursuit that had followed his escape from that valley.
"It is a strange story, Watson," said Holmes, "and it is one that I have long suspected. The man who came to me in Baker Street three years ago — the man whose name I never learned, but who had the mark of the lodge on his arm — told me a version of it. He was a member of the order, and he had been forced to take part in crimes that he abhorred. He told me of the lodge rituals, of the oaths, of the murders that were carried out in the name of 'the order,' of the protection which the society afforded to its own members and the terror it inflicted on the law-abiding citizens of the valley. And he told me of a man — a man who had come into the valley as a stranger, and who had seemed, at first, to be a criminal of the worst sort, and who had turned out, at the last, to be an agent of the Pinkerton detective agency, sent to break up the gang from the inside."
"And that man was Douglas?"
"That man was Douglas. His real name, Watson, was not John Douglas at all. It was Birdy Edwards — the same Birdy Edwards whose name we heard in connection with the Pinkerton agency when we first began to suspect that the Birlstone case might have roots that went far beyond Sussex. He was the man who destroyed the Scowrers. He was the man who, at the trial in Pennsylvania, gave the evidence that sent twenty of his fellow members to the gallows, including the Bodymaster himself — a man named McGinty, who was the head of the lodge at Vermissa, and who had sworn a blood oath to have his revenge."
"But McGinty was hanged."
"Yes. But there were others, Watson. There were others who escaped the gallows and who were sent to prison — men like Ted Baldwin, who was one of the most dangerous of them all — and when they came out, after ten years or more, they swore to have their revenge on Birdy Edwards. And they have pursued him across the Atlantic, and one of them, as we know, caught up with him at Birlstone."
Holmes lit his pipe and sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the fire.
"What I do not yet understand," he said, "is how they traced him to Birlstone. Douglas took every precaution. He changed his name. He moved to a quiet part of England. He lived a retired life and made few friends. And yet, within a few months, the Scowrers found him. The hand of the master criminal is in this, and it is a hand I have felt before."
"You mean Professor Moriarty."
"I mean Professor Moriarty. I have no doubt of it. The Scowrers, when they came out of prison, would have needed help to trace their man across the Atlantic, and help of that kind is not easy to find. Moriarty is the one man in Europe who could have supplied it. He has agents in every country, and he undertakes commissions on behalf of foreign criminals as readily as on behalf of English ones. The Scowrers could have come to him, and he could have traced Douglas for them — for a price. And once he had traced him, he would have kept the knowledge in his own hands, and used it as he always uses such knowledge: to destroy his victim in the way that would be most useful to himself. It is not the first time, Watson, that a man has been killed because Professor Moriarty found it convenient that he should die."
"Then Douglas is in greater danger than he knows."
"He is in greater danger than he knows. But he is not, I think, the man who is in the greatest danger. There is a woman who loves him, and a friend who has been loyal to him for years, and the Scowrers will know that the surest way to break a man is not to kill him, but to kill the people he loves. I have warned Douglas that the coming danger is greater than the past. I shall warn him again, before I leave Sussex, that the danger is now very near."
Chapter VII — The Master in London
Before we left Sussex, Holmes had a final interview with Douglas. He did not tell him what he suspected about the source of the danger — he did not, I think, wish to alarm him unnecessarily — but he did urge him, in the strongest terms, to leave England as soon as the legal formalities connected with Baldwin's death had been settled.
"The English law," he said, "will treat you fairly. You acted in self-defence, and no jury will convict you. But the English law cannot protect you from the enemies you have made. They are not in Sussex, Mr. Douglas. They are not even, I believe, in England. They are in London, and they are behind a man whose reach extends further than you can imagine, and whose vengeance is patient. My advice to you is to leave England at the earliest possible moment, and to go to a country where you will be beyond their reach."
Douglas heard him out, and nodded, and said that he would take his advice. He had, he said, no wish to remain in England a day longer than was necessary. He would settle his affairs, collect his wife, and leave for South Africa, where he had friends and where he believed he could live in peace. Holmes did not argue with him. I think he was relieved.
We returned to London a few days later, and the case of the Birlstone murder passed, for a time, from our minds. The newspapers had, as the newspapers always do, moved on to other matters, and the trial of Douglas had been quietly concluded — a formal acquittal, in which the facts of the case were rehearsed and the verdict of the jury was accepted by the court. Holmes and I resumed the quiet routine of Baker Street, and if he thought from time to time about the man who had once been Birdy Edwards and who was now, once again, John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, he did not speak of it to me.
Two months passed. And then, one morning, there came a letter to Baker Street that I have never forgotten.
It was addressed in a hand I did not recognise, and it contained no signature. It read, in its entirety:
"Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!"
I laughed when I saw it — the note was so absurdly unlike the usual correspondence of a consulting detective. But Holmes did not laugh. He sat with the paper in his hand for a long time, and his face was very grave.
"Deviltry, Watson," he said at last. "Deviltry."
He put the note in an envelope and placed it in his cabinet. He did not speak of it again. But a few days later, Mrs. Hudson brought up word that a gentleman wished to see Holmes, and that the matter was of the utmost importance. It was Cecil Barker, the friend of the dead man — or the man we had thought to be dead — and his face was drawn and haggard, and he had come to bring bad news.
"I've had bad news — terrible news, Mr. Holmes," he said, as he came in.
"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 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 trip-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?"
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!"
Chapter VIII — The Second Part Begins
When Barker had gone, Holmes sat for a long time without speaking. The fire had burned low in the grate, and the room was growing cold, but he did not seem to notice it. His eyes were fixed on the cabinet in which he had placed the anonymous note, and his face wore the expression that I had learned to recognise as the expression of a man who has decided on a course of action and is measuring, in his mind, the distance he will have to travel before he reaches his goal.
"Watson," he said at last, "I want you to help me with something."
"Of course."
"I want you to read the story that Douglas wrote while he was hiding in that little room behind the study. It is in the bundle of papers he gave me — the story of the Valley of Fear, from the beginning. I have read it once, quickly, but I want to go through it again, slowly, and I want you to go through it with me. There is something in it that I have missed — something that will tell us who the murderer is, and why he killed, and how he came to know that Douglas was to be found at Birlstone. It is a long story, and it will take us some time to get through. But I am convinced that the answer is in it somewhere, and I do not intend to rest until I have found it."
He drew the bundle of papers from his cabinet and laid them on the table between us. The manuscript was thick — perhaps eighty or a hundred pages, written in a strong, clear hand — and I could see, at the top of the first page, the title that Douglas had given it: The Valley of Fear. And below that, in smaller letters, a subtitle that I had not noticed before: The Story of John McMurdo.
"John McMurdo," said Holmes quietly. "That was the name he used in America. And that, I think, is where the story begins — not with John Douglas of Birlstone, but with John McMurdo of Vermissa Valley, twenty years ago, in the coal and iron country of Pennsylvania. It is a strange story, Watson, and it is a story that has not yet been told. But I think it must be told now, if we are to understand the crime that has been committed in Sussex, and if we are to bring the man who committed it to justice."
He lit the lamp, and drew his chair closer to the table, and turned to the first page of the manuscript.
"Let us begin at the beginning," he said. "It is a long story, but it is a story that deserves to be told."
And so it was that, on a cold February evening in Baker Street, with the fog gathering outside the window and the fire burning low in the grate, Holmes and I began the reading of the second part of the strange case of the Valley of Fear.
Historical Context — The Molly Maguires and the Real Valley of Fear
The second part of The Valley of Fear draws on one of the most notorious episodes in American labour history: the activities of the Molly Maguires in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania in the 1860s and 1870s. The Mollies were a secret society of Irish-American miners who used violence and intimidation in their struggle against the coal operators, and who were eventually infiltrated by a Pinkerton agent named James McParlan. McParlan spent more than two years in the coal fields, living among the miners, joining their secret lodges, and gathering evidence. His testimony led to the trial and execution of twenty alleged members of the society between 1877 and 1879. The case remains controversial. Some historians regard the Mollies as a genuinely criminal organisation; others see them as victims of a ruthless campaign by the coal operators, who used the trials to break the miners' union. Conan Doyle was aware of both interpretations, and he drew on both in his novel. His fictional Scowrers are clearly based on the Mollies, and his fictional Birdy Edwards on McParlan. The details of the lodge rituals, the passwords, the branding, and the secret trials are partly documentary and partly invented. What is not invented is the atmosphere: the fear, the violence, the sense of a community held hostage by a small group of armed men, and the willingness of great corporations to employ private detectives to break the power of organised labour — all of it belongs to the real history of the Pennsylvania coal fields.
Literary Note — The Two-Part Structure and Its Critics
The Valley of Fear is the only Sherlock Holmes novel in which the solution of the mystery is followed by a long narrative that takes place elsewhere and at another time. Part One — the Birlstone murder — is solved by the end of the seventh chapter, and Part Two — the story of John McMurdo in Vermissa — is presented as the background that explains it. This structure has been the subject of critical debate for over a century. Some readers find Part Two an unwelcome interruption of the Holmes-Watson dynamic; others find it the most powerful and original section of the novel. The argument for the structure is that it gives the book a moral depth that the Holmes stories usually lack. Part One is a puzzle, brilliantly constructed but emotionally cool. Part Two is a tragedy — the tragedy of a young man who joins a criminal society for reasons he does not fully understand, who falls in love with a woman he cannot protect, and who is eventually forced to choose between his loyalty to the society and his loyalty to the truth. The crime of Part One is the consequence of the events of Part Two, and the reader who skips Part Two will never fully understand the man whose murder — apparent murder — set the whole story in motion.
Original Value — The Making of a Detective
One of the most interesting features of The Valley of Fear is the way it complicates the figure of Sherlock Holmes. In the earlier Holmes stories, the detective is presented as a man of extraordinary intelligence whose methods are essentially scientific — he observes, he reasons, he deduces. In The Valley of Fear, Holmes remains a brilliant reasoner, but he is also something more: a man who understands that crime is not merely a puzzle but a human tragedy, and that the criminal is often less interesting than the victim. The most striking moment in the novel comes not at the solution of the Birlstone mystery, but in the final scene at Baker Street, when Holmes — having learned that Douglas has been murdered at sea by the agents of Professor Moriarty — does not simply close the case, but commits himself to a long campaign against the criminal who ordered the killing. It is a moment that looks forward to the later Holmes stories, in which the detective's pursuit of Moriarty becomes something close to a personal war. It is also a moment that tells us something important about Conan Doyle's conception of his character: Holmes is not merely a thinking machine, but a man with a strong sense of justice, and a determination to see it done — whatever the cost to himself.
Continue the Series
In Playbook 3 — Flight to the South — the story shifts to America, and to the coal and iron country of Pennsylvania, twenty years before the events at Birlstone. A young Irish-American named John McMurdo arrives in the mining town of Vermissa, joins the Ancient Order of Freemen, and is drawn into the violent and secretive world of the Scowrers. It is a story of love, loyalty, and betrayal — and of a man who has come to the valley for a purpose that will not be revealed until the end.
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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.