The Complete Sherlock Holmes

McMurdo was a man who made his mark
quickly. Wherever he was the folk around soon
knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely
the most important person at Shafter’s. There
were ten or a dozen boarders there; but they were
honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the
stores, of a very different calibre from the young
Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered together
his joke was always the readiest, his conversation
the brightest, and his song the best. He
was a born boon companion, with a magnetism
which drew good humour from all around him.
And yet he showed again and again, as he had
shown in the railway carriage, a capacity for sudden,
fierce anger, which compelled the respect and
even the fear of those who met him. For the law,
too, and all who were connected with it, he exhibited
a bitter contempt which delighted some and
alarmed others of his fellow boarders.
From the first he made it evident, by his open
admiration, that the daughter of the house had
won his heart from the instant that he had set eyes
upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward
suitor. On the second day he told her that he
loved her, and from then onward he repeated the
same story with an absolute disregard of what she
might say to discourage him.
“Someone else?” he would cry. “Well, the
worse luck for someone else! Let him look out for
himself! Am I to lose my life’s chance and all my
heart’s desire for someone else? You can keep on
saying no, Ettie: the day will come when you will
say yes, and I’m young enough to wait.”
He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish
tongue, and his pretty, coaxing ways. There was
about him also that glamour of experience and of
mystery which attracts a woman’s interest, and finally
her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys
of County Monaghan from which he came,
of the lovely, distant island, the low hills and
green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful
when imagination viewed them from this place
of grime and snow.
Then he was versed in the life of the cities
of the North, of Detroit, and the lumber camps
of Michigan, and finally of Chicago, where he
had worked in a planing mill. And afterwards
came the hint of romance, the feeling that strange
things had happened to him in that great city, so
strange and so intimate that they might not be
The Valley Of Fear
CHAPTER II.
The Bodymaster
705
spoken of. He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving,
a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange
world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened,
her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with
sympathy—those two qualities which may turn so
rapidly and so naturally to love.
McMurdo had obtained a temporary job as
bookkeeper; for he was a well-educated man. This
kept him out most of the day, and he had not
found occasion yet to report himself to the head
of the lodge of the Eminent Order of Freemen.
He was reminded of his omission, however, by a
visit one evening from Mike Scanlan, the fellow
member whom he had met in the train. Scanlan,
the small, sharp-faced, nervous, black-eyed man,
seemed glad to see him once more. After a glass
or two of whisky he broached the object of his visit.
“Say, McMurdo,” said he, “I remembered your
address, so l made bold to call. I’m surprised
that you’ve not reported to the Bodymaster. Why
haven’t you seen Boss McGinty yet?”
“Well, I had to find a job. I have been busy.”
“You must find time for him if you have none
for anything else. Good Lord, man! you’re a fool
not to have been down to the Union House and
registered your name the first morning after you
came here! If you run against him—well, you
mustn’t, that’s all!”
McMurdo showed mild surprise. “I’ve been a
member of the lodge for over two years, Scanlan,
but I never heard that duties were so pressing as
all that.”
“Maybe not in Chicago.”
“Well, it’s the same society here.”
“Is it?”
Scanlan looked at him long and fixedly. There
was something sinister in his eyes.
“Isn’t it?”
“You’ll tell me that in a month’s time. I hear
you had a talk with the patrolmen after I left the
train.”
“How did you know that?”
“Oh, it got about—things do get about for good
and for bad in this district.”
“Well, yes. I told the hounds what I thought of
them.”
“By the Lord, you’ll be a man after McGinty’s
heart!”