_ As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a
lonely one and very well suited for such a crime as they had
planned. It was on the extreme fringe of the town and stood well
back from the road. In any other case the conspirators would
have simply called out their man, as they had many a time
before, and emptied their pistols into his body; but in this
instance it was very necessary to find out how much he knew,
how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.
It was possible that they were already too late and that the
work had been done. If that was indeed so, they could at least
have their revenge upon the man who had done it. But they were
hopeful that nothing of great importance had yet come to the
detective's knowledge, as otherwise, they argued, he would not
have troubled to write down and forward such trivial information
as McMurdo claimed to have given him. However, all this they
would learn from his own lips. Once in their power, they would
find a way to make him speak. It was not the first time that they
had handled an unwilling witness.
McMurdo went to Hobson's Patch as agreed. The police
seemed to take particular interest in him that morning, and
Captain Marvin -- he who had claimed the old acquaintance with
him at Chicago -- actually addressed him as he waited at the
station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak with him.
He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw McGinty
at the Union House.
"He is coming," he said.
"Good!" said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves,
with chains and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a
diamond twinkling through the fringe of his bristling beard.
Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as well as
powerful man. The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse
of the prison or the gallows which had risen before him the night
before.
"Do you reckon he knows much?" he asked anxiously.
McMurdo shook his head gloomily. "He's been here some
time -- six weeks at the least. I guess he didn't come into these
parts to look at the prospect. If he has been working among us
all that time with the railroad money at his back, I should expect
that he has got results, and that he has passed them on."
"There's not a weak man in the lodge," cried McGinty.
"True as steel, every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there
is that skunk Morris. What about him? If any man gives us
away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the boys
round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they
can get from him."
"Well, there would be no harm in that," McMurdo answered.
"I won't deny that I have a liking for Morris and would be sorry
to see him come to harm. He has spoken to me once or twice
over lodge matters, and though he may not see them the same as
you or I, he never seemed the sort that squeals. But still it is not
for me to stand between him and you."
"I'll fix the old devil!" said McGinty with an oath. "I've had
my eye on him this year past."
"Well, you know best about that," McMurdo answered. "But
whatever you do must be to-morrow; for we must lie low until
the Pinkerton affair is settled up. We can't afford to set the
police buzzing, to-day of all days."
"True for you," said McGinty. "And we'll learn from Birdy
Edwards himself where he got his news if we have to cut his
heart out first. Did he seem to scent a trap?"
McMurdo laughed. "I guess I took him on his weak point,"
he said. "If he could get on a good trail of the Scowrers, he's
ready to follow it into hell. I took his money," McMurdo
grinned as he produced a wad of dollar notes, "and as much
more when he has seen all my papers."
"What papers?"
"Well, there are no papers. But I filled him up about
constitutions and books of rules and forms of membership.
He expects to get right down to the end of everything
before he leaves."
"Faith, he's right there," said McGinty grimly. "Didn't he
ask you why you didn't bring him the papers?"
"As if I would carry such things, and me a suspected man,
and Captain Marvin after speaking to me this very day at the
depot!"
"Ay, I heard of that," said McGinty. "I guess the heavy end
of this business is coming on to you. We could put him down an
old shaft when we've done with him; but however we work it we
can't get past the man living at Hobson's Patch and you being
there to-day."
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 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.
"Ay," said Baldwin, catching his meaning. "If he is strapped
to that, we will have the truth out of him."
"We'll have the truth out of him, never fear," said McMurdo.
He had nerves of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of
the affair was on him his manner was as cool and unconcerned as
ever. The others marked it and applauded.
"You are the one to handle him," said the Boss approvingly.
"Not a warning will he get till your hand is on his throat. It's a
pity there are no shutters to your windows."
McMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains
tighter. "Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the
hour."
"Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger,"
said the secretary.
"He'll come, never fear," McMurdo answered. "He is as
eager to come as you can be to see him. Hark to that!"
They all sat like wax figures, some with their glasses arrested
halfway to their lips. Three loud knocks had sounded at the door.
"Hush!" McMurdo raised his hand in caution. An exulting
glance went round the circle, and hands were laid upon hidden
weapons.
"Not a sound, for your lives!" McMurdo whispered, as he
went from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.
With strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the
steps of their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him
open the outer door. There were a few words as of greeting.
Then they were aware of a strange step inside and of an
unfamiliar voice. An instant later came the slam of the door
and the turning of the key in the lock. Their prey was safe
within the trap. Tiger Cormac laughed horribly, and Boss
McGinty clapped his great hand across his mouth.
"Be quiet, you fool!" he whispered. "You'll be the undoing
of us yet!"
There was a mutter of conversation from the next room. It
seemed interminable. Then the door opened, and McMurdo
appeared, his finger upon his lip.
He came to the end of the table and looked round at them. A
subtle change had come over him. His manner was as of one
who has great work to do. His face had set into granite firmness.
His eyes shone with a fierce excitement behind his spectacles.
He had become a visible leader of men. They stared at him with
eager interest; but he said nothing. Still with the same singular
gaze he looked from man to man.
"Well!" cried Boss McGinty at last. "Is he here? Is Birdy
Edwards here?"
"Yes," McMurdo answered slowly. "Birdy Edwards is here.
I am Birdy Edwards!"
There were ten seconds after that brief speech during which
the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence.
The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to
the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who
dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then,
with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle
barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn
from their hangings.
At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear
and plunged for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met
him there with the stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine
Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell
back into his chair.
"You're safer there, Councillor," said the man whom they
had known as McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take
your hand off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it
out, or by the Lord that made me -- There, that will do. There are
forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for
yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!"
There was no possible resistance under the menace of those
rifles. The men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed,
they still sat round the table.
"I'd like to say a word to you before we separate," said the
man who had trapped them. "I guess we may not meet again
until you see me on the stand in the courthouse. I'll give you
something to think over between now and then. You know me
now for what I am. At last I can put my cards on the table. I am
Birdy Edwards of Pinkerton's. I was chosen to break up your
gang. I had a hard and dangerous game to play. Not a soul, not
one soul, not my nearest and dearest, knew that I was playing it.
Only Captain Marvin here and my employers knew that. But it's
over to-night, thank God, and I am the winner!"
The seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was
unappeasable hatred in their eyes. He read the relentless threat.
"Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take
my chance of that. Anyhow, some of you will take no further
hand, and there are sixty more besides yourselves that will see a
jail this night. I'll tell you this, that when I was put upon this job
I never believed there was such a society as yours. I thought it
was paper talk, and that I would prove it so. They told me it was
to do with the Freemen; so I went to Chicago and was made one.
Then I was surer than ever that it was just paper talk; for I found
no harm in the society, but a deal of good.
"Still, I had to carry out my job, and I came to the coal
valleys. When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong
and that it wasn't a dime novel after all. So I stayed to look after
it. I never killed a man in Chicago. I never minted a dollar in my
life. Those I gave you were as good as any others; but I never
spent money better. But I knew the way into your good wishes
and so I pretended to you that the law was after me. It all worked
just as I thought.
"So I joined your infernal lodge, and I took my share in your
councils. Maybe they will say that I was as bad as you. They can
say what they like, so long as I get you. But what is the truth?
The night I joined you beat up old man Stanger. I could not warn
him, for there was no time; but I held your hand, Baldwin, when
you would have killed him. If ever I have suggested things, so as
to keep my place among you, they were things which I knew I
could prevent. I could not save Dunn and Menzies, for I did not
know enough; but I will see that their murderers are hanged. I
gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that when I blew his house in
he and his folk were in hiding. There was many a crime that I
could not stop; but if you look back and think how often your
man came home the other road, or was down in town when you
went for him, or stayed indoors when you thought he would
come out, you'll see my work."
"You blasted traitor!" hissed McGinty through his closed
teeth.
"Ay, John McGinty, you may call me that if it eases your
smart. You and your like have been the enemy of God and man
in these parts. It took a man to get between you and the poor
devils of men and women that you held under your grip. There
was just one way of doing it, and I did it. You call me a traitor;
but I guess there's many a thousand will call me a deliverer that
went down into hell to save them. I've had three months of it. I
wouldn't have three such months again if they let me loose in the
treasury at Washington for it. I had to stay till I had it all, every
man and every secret right here in this hand. I'd have waited a
little longer if it hadn't come to my knowledge that my secret
was coming out. A letter had come into the town that would
have set you wise to it all. Then I had to act and act quickly.
"I've nothing more to say to you, except that when my time
comes I'll die the easier when I think of the work I have done in
this valley. Now, Marvin, I'll keep you no more. Take them in
and get it over."
There is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed
note to be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission
which he had accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the
early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much
muffled man boarded a special train which had been sent by the
railroad company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the
land of danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her
lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were
married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the
wedding.
The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where
their adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law.
In vain they struggled. In vain the money of the lodge -- money
squeezed by blackmail out of the whole countryside -- was spent
like water in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear,
unimpassioned statement from one who knew every detail of their
lives, their organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all
the wiles of their defenders. At last after so many years they
were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from the
valley.
McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining
when the last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his
fate. Fifty-odd had various degrees of imprisonment. The work
of Birdy Edwards was complete.
And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There
was another hand to be played, and yet another and another.
Ted Baldwin, for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys;
so had several others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For ten
years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they
were free once more -- a day which Edwards, who knew his men,
was very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had
sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as a
vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep their
vow!
From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near
success that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago
he went under a changed name to California, and it was there
that the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards
died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the
name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canyon, where with an
English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there
came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track
once more, and he cleared -- only just in time -- for England. And
thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy
mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life
which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard. _