The Valley of Fear
you. But before you are through with that,” he nodded at my papers,
“you will say I’ve brought you something fresh.”
Inspector 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.
“I’m not going to begin at the beginning. That’s all there,” he
indicated my bundle of papers, “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!”
The man whom we had known as 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.”
And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me
for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also
from the year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which
ended with the strange story of the man who had been known as John
Douglas. I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time, and
westward some thousands of miles in space, that I may lay before you a
singular and terrible narrative—so singular and so terrible that you
may find it hard to believe that even as I tell it, even so did it
occur.
Do not think that I intrude one story before another is finished. As
you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have detailed
those distant events and you have solved this mystery of the past, we
shall meet once more in those rooms on Baker Street, where this, like
so many other wonderful happenings, will find its end.
PART II
The Scowrers
Chapter I
The Man
It was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a severe
winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains.
The steam ploughs had, however, kept the railroad open, and the evening
train which connects the long line of coal-mining and iron-working
settlements was slowly groaning its way up the steep gradients which
lead from Stagville on the plain to Vermissa, the central township
which lies at the head of Vermissa Valley. From this point the track
sweeps downward to Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely
agricultural county of Merton. It was a single track railroad; but at
every siding—and they were numerous—long lines of trucks piled with
coal and iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude
population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the
United States of America.
For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed
it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water
pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and