The Valley of Fear
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.”
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.
“Now, McMurdo!” said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat
frozen in their seats.
“I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards,” McMurdo explained. “I need
not tell you that he is not here under that name. He’s a brave man, but
not a crazy one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is
lodging at Hobson’s Patch.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time,
nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now
I’m sure it’s the man. I met him on the cars when I went down the line
on Wednesday—a hard case if ever there was one. He said he was a
reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted to know all he could
about the Scowrers and what he called ‘the outrages’ for a New York
paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get something. You bet
I was giving nothing away. ‘I’d pay for it and pay well,’ said he, ‘if
I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.’ I said what I
thought would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill
for my information. ‘There’s ten times that for you,’ said he, ‘if you
can find me all that I want.’”
“What did you tell him, then?”
“Any stuff I could make up.”
“How do you know he wasn’t a newspaper man?”
“I’ll tell you. He got out at Hobson’s Patch, and so did I. I chanced
into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.
“‘See here,’ said the operator after he’d gone out, ‘I guess we should
charge double rates for this.’—‘I guess you should,’ said I. He had
filled the form with stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we
could make of it. ‘He fires a sheet of this off every day,’ said the
clerk. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘it’s special news for his paper, and he’s scared
that the others should tap it.’ That was what the operator thought and
what I thought at the time; but I think differently now.”
“By Gar! I believe you are right,” said McGinty. “But what do you allow
that we should do about it?”
“Why not go right down now and fix him?” someone suggested.
“Ay, the sooner the better.”
“I’d start this next minute if I knew where we could find him,” said
McMurdo. “He’s in Hobson’s Patch; but I don’t know the house. I’ve got
a plan, though, if you’ll only take my advice.”
“Well, what is it?”
“I’ll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I’ll find him through the
operator. He can locate him, I guess. Well, then I’ll tell him that I’m
a Freeman myself. I’ll offer him all the secrets of the lodge for a
price. You bet he’ll tumble to it. I’ll tell him the papers are at my
house, and that it’s as much as my life would be worth to let him come
while folk were about. He’ll see that that’s horse sense. Let him come
at ten o’clock at night, and he shall see everything. That will fetch
him sure.”
“Well?”
“You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara’s is a lonely
house. She’s as true as steel and as deaf as a post. There’s only
Scanlan and me in the house. If I get his promise—and I’ll let you know
if I do—I’d have the whole seven of you come to me by nine o’clock.
We’ll get him in. If ever he gets out alive—well, he can talk of Birdy
Edwards’s luck for the rest of his days!”
“There’s going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton’s or I’m mistaken. Leave it
at that, McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we’ll be with you. You once get the
door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest with us.”
Chapter VII
The Trapping of Birdy Edwards
As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a lonely one and
very well suited for such a crime as they had planned. It was on the
extreme fringe of the town and stood well back from the road. In any
other case the conspirators would have simply called out their man, as
they had many a time before, and emptied their pistols into his body;
but in this instance it was very necessary to find out how much he
knew, how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.
It was possible that they were already too late and that the work had
been done. If that was indeed so, they could at least have their
revenge upon the man who had done it. But they were hopeful that
nothing of great importance had yet come to the detective’s knowledge,
as otherwise, they argued, he would not have troubled to write down and
forward such trivial information as McMurdo claimed to have given him.
However, all this they would learn from his own lips. Once in their
power, they would find a way to make him speak. It was not the first
time that they had handled an unwilling witness.
McMurdo went to Hobson’s Patch as agreed. The police seemed to take
particular interest in him that morning, and Captain Marvin—he who had
claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago—actually addressed him
as he waited at the station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak
with him. He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw
McGinty at the Union House.
“He is coming,” he said.
“Good!” said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves, with chains
and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling
through the fringe of his bristling beard. Drink and politics had made
the Boss a very rich as well as powerful man. The more terrible,
therefore, seemed that glimpse of the prison or the gallows which had
risen before him the night before.
“Do you reckon he knows much?” he asked anxiously.
McMurdo shook his head gloomily. “He’s been here some time—six weeks at
the least. I guess he didn’t come into these parts to look at the
prospect. If he has been working among us all that time with the
railroad money at his back, I should expect that he has got results,
and that he has passed them on.”
“There’s not a weak man in the lodge,” cried McGinty. “True as steel,
every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris.