The Valley of Fear (Sherlock Holmes 7)

"What! have you never heard of the boss?"

"How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a stranger inthese parts?"

"Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country. It's beenin the papers often enough."

"What for?"

"Well," the miner lowered his voice--"over the affairs."

"What affairs?"

"Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without offense.There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in these parts, andthat's the affairs of the Scowrers."

"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang ofmurderers, are they not?"

"Hush, on your life!" cried the miner, standing still in alarm, andgazing in amazement at his companion. "Man, you won't live long inthese parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man hashad the life beaten out of him for less."

"Well, I know nothing about them. It's only what I have read."

"And I'm not saying that you have not read the truth." The man lookednervously round him as he spoke, peering into the shadows as if hefeared to see some lurking danger. "If killing is murder, then Godknows there is murder and to spare. But don't you dare to breathe thename of Jack McGinty in connection with it, stranger; for every whispergoes back to him, and he is not one that is likely to let it pass. Now,that's the house you're after, that one standing back from the street.You'll find old Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives inthis township."

"I thank you," said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his newacquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path which led to thedwelling house, at the door of which he gave a resounding knock.

It was opened at once by someone very different from what he hadexpected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was ofthe German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of apair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger withsurprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colourover her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, itseemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; themore attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomysurroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those blackslag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. Soentranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was shewho broke the silence.

"I thought it was father," said she with a pleasing little touch of aGerman accent. "Did you come to see him? He is downtown. I expect himback every minute."

McMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration until her eyesdropped in confusion before this masterful visitor.

"No, miss," he said at last, "I'm in no hurry to see him. But yourhouse was recommended to me for board. I thought it might suit me--andnow I know it will."

"You are quick to make up your mind," said she with a smile.

"Anyone but a blind man could do as much," the other answered.

She laughed at the compliment. "Come right in, sir," she said. "I'mMiss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter's daughter. My mother's dead, and I runthe house. You can sit down by the stove in the front room until fathercomes along--Ah, here he is! So you can fix things with him right away."

A heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In a few words McMurdoexplained his business. A man of the name of Murphy had given him theaddress in Chicago. He in turn had had it from someone else. OldShafter was quite ready. The stranger made no bones about terms, agreedat once to every condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money.For seven dollars a week paid in advance he was to have board andlodging.

So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from justice, tookup his abode under the roof of t

he Shafters, the first step which wasto lead to so long and dark a train of events, ending in a far distantland.

Chapter 2

The Bodymaster

McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the folkaround soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely the mostimportant person at Shafter's. There were ten or a dozen boardersthere; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from thestores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of anevening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest,his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a bornboon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all aroundhim.

And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railwaycarriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled therespect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law, too, andall who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter contempt whichdelighted some and alarmed others of his fellow boarders.

From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that thedaughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he hadset eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward suitor. Onthe second day he told her that he loved her, and from then onward herepeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she mightsay 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 myheart's desire for someone else? You can keep on saying no, Ettie: theday 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 andof mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and finally her love. Hecould talk of the sweet valleys of County Monaghan from which he came,of the lovely, distant island, the low hills and green meadows of whichseemed the more beautiful when imagination viewed them from this placeof 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 hadworked in a planing mill. And afterwards came the hint of romance, thefeeling that strange things had happened to him in that great city, sostrange and so intimate that they might not be spoken of. He spokewistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into astrange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, herdark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy--those two qualitieswhich may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.