The Valley of Fear
Jeune Fille à l’Agneau’ fetched one million two hundred thousand
francs—more than forty thousand pounds—at the Portalis sale may start a
train of reflection in your mind.”
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
“I may remind you,” Holmes continued, “that the professor’s salary can
be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven
hundred a year.”
“Then how could he buy—”
“Quite so! How could he?”
“Ay, that’s remarkable,” said the inspector thoughtfully. “Talk away,
Mr. Holmes. I’m just loving it. It’s fine!”
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration—the
characteristic of the real artist. “What about Birlstone?” he asked.
“We’ve time yet,” said the inspector, glancing at his watch. “I’ve a
cab at the door, and it won’t take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But
about this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that you
had never met Professor Moriarty.”
“No, I never have.”
“Then how do you know about his rooms?”
“Ah, that’s another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice
waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came.
Once—well, I can hardly tell about the once to an official detective.
It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over his
papers—with the most unexpected results.”
“You found something compromising?”
“Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have now
seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man.
How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a
station master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred
a year. And he owns a Greuze.”
“Well?”
“Surely the inference is plain.”
“You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an
illegal fashion?”
“Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so—dozens of
exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web
where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the
Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your own
observation.”
“Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it’s more
than interesting—it’s just wonderful. But let us have it a little
clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary—where does the
money come from?”
“Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?”
“Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? I
don’t take much stock of detectives in novels—chaps that do things and
never let you see how they do them. That’s just inspiration: not
business.”
“Jonathan Wild wasn’t a detective, and he wasn’t in a novel. He was a
master criminal, and he lived last century—1750 or thereabouts.”
“Then he’s no use to me. I’m a practical man.”
“Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would
be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at
the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles—even Professor
Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals,
to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent.
commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all
been done before, and will be again. I’ll tell you one or two things
about Moriarty which may interest you.”
“You’ll interest me, right enough.”
“I happen to know who is the first link in his chain—a chain with this
Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men,
pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every
sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian
Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself.
What do you think he pays him?”
“I’d like to hear.”
“Six thousand a year. That’s paying for brains, you see—the American
business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It’s more
than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty’s
gains and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it my
business to hunt down some of Moriarty’s checks lately—just common
innocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn
on six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?”
“Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?”
“That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should know
what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; the
bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the Crédit Lyonnais
as likely as not. Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I
commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty.”
Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as the
conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest. Now his
practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a snap to the
matter in hand.
“He can keep, anyhow,” said he. “You’ve got us side-tracked with your
interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts is your remark
that there is some connection between the professor and the crime. That
you get from the warning received through the man Porlock. Can we for
our present practical needs get any further than that?”
“We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime. It is, as
I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable, or at least an
unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the source of the crime is as
we suspect it to be, there might be two different motives. In the first
place, I may tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his
people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in
his code. It is death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man—this
Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the arch-criminal’s
subordinates—had in some way betrayed the chief. His punishment
followed, and would be known to all—if only to put the fear of death
into them.”
“Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes.”
“The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinary
course of business. Was there any robbery?”
“I have not heard.”
“If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in
favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on
a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to
manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is
some third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the
solution. I know our man too well to suppose that he has left anything
up here which may lead us to him.”
“Then to Birlstone we must go!” cried MacDonald, jumping from his
chair. “My word! it’s later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen,
five minutes for preparation, and that is all.”
“And ample for us both,” said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to
change from his dressing gown to his coat. “While we are on our way,
Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it.”
“All about it” proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was
enough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of the
expert’s closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands
together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A long
series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a
fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special
gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That
razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes’s eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue,
and his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for
work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to
MacDonald’s short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The
inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a
scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours
of the morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend,
and hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual
at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very
cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to
run.
“DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD,” said the letter which he read to
us,—“Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope.
This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can
get for Birlstone, and I will meet it—or have it met if I am too
occupied. This case is a snorter. Don’t waste a moment in getting
started. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find
something after his own heart. We would think the whole had been fixed
up for theatrical effect if there wasn’t a dead man in the middle of
it. My word! it _is_ a snorter.”
“Your friend seems to be no fool,” remarked Holmes.
“No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge.”
“Well, have you anything more?”
“Only that he will give us every detail when we meet.”
“Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he had been
horribly murdered?”
“That was in the inclosed official report. It didn’t say ‘horrible’:
that’s not a recognized official term. It gave the name John Douglas.
It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head, from the discharge
of a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was close
on to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly one
of murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was one
which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That’s
absolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes.”
“Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The
temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the
bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at
present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It’s the
chain between that we are going to trace.”
Chapter III
The Tragedy of Birlstone
Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant
personality and to describe events which occurred before we arrived
upon the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards.
Only in this way can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned
and the strange setting in which their fate was cast.
The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of
half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex.
For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the last few years
its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of
well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around.
These woods are locally supposed to be the extreme fringe of the great
Weald forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern chalk
downs. A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants
of the increased population; so there seems some prospect that
Birlstone may soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It
is the centre for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge
Wells, the nearest place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the
eastward, over the borders of Kent.
About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its
huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone. Part of this
venerable building dates back to the time of the first crusade, when
Hugo de Capus built a fortalice in the centre of the estate, which had
been granted to him by the Red King. This was destroyed by fire in
1543, and some of its smoke-blackened corner stones were used when, in
Jacobean times, a brick country house rose upon the ruins of the feudal
castle.
The Manor House, with its many gables and its small diamond-paned
windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the early