The Complete Sherlock Holmes

Needless to say that they were discharged with
something very near to an apology from the bench
for the inconvenience to which they had been put,
together with an implied censure of Captain Marvin
and the police for their officious zeal.
The verdict was greeted with loud applause
by a court in which McMurdo saw many familiar
faces. Brothers of the lodge smiled and waved.
If anything had been needed to give an impetus
to Jack McMurdo’s popularity among his fellows
it would have been his arrest and acquittal. That a
man on the very night of joining the lodge should
have done something which brought him before
the magistrate was a new record in the annals of
the society. Already he had earned the reputation
of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and
withal a man of high temper, who would not take
an insult even from the all-powerful Boss himself.
But in addition to this he impressed his comrades
with the idea that among them all there was not
one whose brain was so ready to devise a bloodthirsty
scheme, or whose hand would be more capable
of carrying it out. “He’ll be the boy for the
clean job,” said the oldsters to one another, and
waited their time until they could set him to his
work.
McGinty had instruments enough already; but
he recognized that this was a supremely able one.
He felt like a man holding a fierce bloodhound in
leash. There were curs to do the smaller work; but
some day he would slip this creature upon its prey.
A few members of the lodge, Ted Baldwin among
them, resented the rapid rise of the stranger and
hated him for it; but they kept clear of him, for he
was as ready to fight as to laugh.
But if he gained favour with his fellows, there
was another quarter, one which had become even
more vital to him, in which he lost it. Ettie
Shafter’s father would have nothing more to do
with him, nor would he allow him to enter the
house. Ettie herself was too deeply in love to give
him up altogether, and yet her own good sense
warned her of what would come from a marriage
The Valley Of Fear
CHAPTER V.
The Darkest Hour
723
But there were others who sat with compressed
lips and brooding eyes as the men filed out of the
dock. One of them, a little, dark-bearded, resolute
fellow, put the thoughts of himself and comrades
into words as the ex-prisoners passed him.
“You damned murderers!” he said. “We’ll fix
you yet!”
with a man who was regarded as a criminal.
One morning after a sleepless night she determined
to see him, possibly for the last time,
and make one strong endeavour to draw him
from those evil influences which were sucking him
down. She went to his house, as he had often
begged her to do, and made her way into the room
which he used as his sitting-room. He was seated
at a table, with his back turned and a letter in front
of him. A sudden spirit of girlish mischief came
over her—she was still only nineteen. He had not
heard her when she pushed open the door. Now
she tiptoed forward and laid her hand lightly upon
his bended shoulders.
If she had expected to startle him, she certainly
succeeded; but only in turn to be startled herself.
With a tiger spring he turned on her, and
his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the
same instant with the other hand he crumpled up
the paper that lay before him. For an instant he
stood glaring. Then astonishment and joy took
the place of the ferocity which had convulsed his
features—a ferocity which had sent her shrinking
back in horror as from something which had never
before intruded into her gentle life.
“It’s you!” said he, mopping his brow. “And
to think that you should come to me, heart of my
heart, and I should find nothing better to do than
to want to strangle you! Come then, darling,” and
he held out his arms, “let me make it up to you.”
But she had not recovered from that sudden
glimpse of guilty fear which she had read in the
man’s face. All her woman’s instinct told her that
it was not the mere fright of a man who is startled.
Guilt—that was it—guilt and fear!