The Complete Sherlock Holmes

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. “If we handle
it right, they can never prove the killing,” said
he. “No one can see him come to the house after
dark, and I’ll lay to it that no one will see him go.
Now see here, Councillor, I’ll show you my plan
and I’ll ask you to fit the others into it. You will
all come in good time. Very well. He comes at ten.
He is to tap three times, and me to open the door
for him. Then I’ll get behind him and shut it. He’s
our man then.”
“That’s all easy and plain.”
“Yes; but the next step wants considering. He’s
a hard proposition. He’s heavily armed. I’ve
fooled him proper, and yet he is likely to be on
his guard. Suppose I show him right into a room
with seven men in it where he expected to find me
alone. There is going to be shooting, and somebody
is going to be hurt.”
“That’s so.”
“And the noise is going to bring every damned
copper in the township on top of it.”
“I guess you are right.”
“This is how I should work it. You will all be
in the big room—same as you saw when you had
a chat with me. I’ll open the door for him, show
him into the parlour beside the door, and leave
him there while I get the papers. That will give
me the chance of telling you how things are shaping.
Then I will go back to him with some faked
papers. As he is reading them I will jump for him
and get my grip on his pistol arm. You’ll hear me
call and in you will rush. The quicker the better;
for he is as strong a man as I, and I may have more
than I can manage. But I allow that I can hold him
till you come.”
“It’s a good plan,” said McGinty. “The lodge
will owe you a debt for this. I guess when I move
out of the chair I can put a name to the man that’s
coming after me.”
“Sure, Councillor, I am little more than a recruit,”
said McMurdo; but his face showed what
he thought of the great man’s compliment.
When he had returned home he made his own
preparations for the grim evening in front of him.
First he cleaned, oiled, and loaded his Smith &
Wesson revolver. Then he surveyed the room in
which the detective was to be trapped. It was a
large apartment, with a long deal table in the centre,
and the big stove at one side. At each of the
other sides were windows. There were no shutters
on these: only light curtains which drew across.
McMurdo examined these attentively. No doubt it
must have struck him that the apartment was very
The Valley Of Fear
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exposed for so secret a meeting. Yet its distance
from the road made it of less consequence. Finally
he discussed the matter with his fellow lodger.
Scanlan, though a Scowrer, was an inoffensive little
man who was too weak to stand against the
opinion of his comrades, but was secretly horrified
by the deeds of blood at which he had sometimes
been forced to assist. McMurdo told him shortly
what was intended.
“And if I were you, Mike Scanlan, I would take
a night off and keep clear of it. There will be
bloody work here before morning.”
“Well, indeed then, Mac,” Scanlan answered.
“It’s not the will but the nerve that is wanting in
me. When I saw Manager Dunn go down at the
colliery yonder it was just more than I could stand.
I’m not made for it, same as you or McGinty. If the
lodge will think none the worse of me, I’ll just do
as you advise and leave you to yourselves for the
evening.”
The men came in good time as arranged. They
were outwardly respectable citizens, well clad and
cleanly; but a judge of faces would have read little
hope for Birdy Edwards in those hard mouths
and remorseless eyes. There was not a man in the
room whose hands had not been reddened a dozen
times before. They were as hardened to human
murder as a butcher to sheep.
Foremost, of course, both in appearance and in
guilt, was the formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary,
was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy
neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible
fidelity where the finances of the order were
concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty
to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a
middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky
expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was
a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly
every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain.
The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe
young fellows with determined faces, while their
companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy, dark youth,
was feared even by his own comrades for the ferocity
of his disposition. These were the men who
assembled that night under the roof of McMurdo
for the killing of the Pinkerton detective.
Their host had placed whisky upon the table,
and they had hastened to prime themselves for the
work before them. Baldwin and Cormac were already
half-drunk, and the liquor had brought out
all their ferocity. Cormac placed his hands on the
stove for an instant—it had been lighted, for the
nights were still cold.
“That will do,” said he, with an oath.