Sherlock Holmes (54 page)

‘I thank you,' said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his new acquaintance he plodded, his grip-sack in his hand, up the path which led to the dwelling-house, at the door of which he gave a resounding knock. It was opened at once by someone very different from what he had expected.

It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was of the Swedish type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes, with which she surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour over her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture, the more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy surroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those black slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. So entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she who broke the silence.

‘I thought it was father,' said she, with a pleasing little touch of a Swedish accent. ‘Did you come to see him? He is down town. I expect him back every minute.'

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

‘No, miss,' he said at last; ‘I'm in no hurry to see him. But your house was recommended to me for board. I thought it might suit me, and now 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'm Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter's daughter. My mother's dead, and I run the house. You can sit down by the stove in the front room until father comes 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 McMurdo explained his business. A man of the name of Murphy had given him the address in Chicago. He in turn had had it from someone else. Old Shafter was quite ready. The stranger made no bones about terms, agreed at once to every condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money. For twelve dollars a week, paid in advance, he was to have board and lodging. So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from justice, took up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the first step which was to lead to so long and dark a train of events, ending in a far distant land.

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 to 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 fear of those who met him. For the law, too, and all 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, of Buffalo, and finally of Chicago, where he had worked in a saw-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 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 a book-keeper, 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 Ancient 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, a 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 I made bold to call. I'm surprised that you've not reported to the bodymaster. What's amiss that you've not 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 mad not to have been down to the Union House and registered your name the first morning after you came here! If you fall foul of him – well, you
mustn't
– that's all!'

McMurdo showed mild surprise.

‘I've been a member of 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.

‘Is it not?'

‘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!'

‘What – does he hate the police, too?'

Scanlan burst out laughing.

‘You go and see him, my lad,' said he, as he took his leave. ‘It's not the police, but you, that he'll hate if you don't! Now, take a friend's advice and go at once!'

It chanced that on the same evening McMurdo had another more pressing interview which urged him in the same direction. It may have been that his attentions to Ettie had been more evident than before, or that they had gradually obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his good Swedish host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young man into his private room and started on to the subject without any circumlocution.

‘It seems to me, mister,' said he, ‘dat you are gettin' set on my Ettie. Ain't dat so, or am I wrong?'

‘Yes, that is so,' the young man answered.

‘Well, I vant to tell you right now dat it ain't no manner of use. There's someone slipped in afore you.'

‘She told me so.'

‘Well, you can lay dat she told you truth! But did she tell you who it vas?'

‘No; I asked her, but she would not tell.'

‘I dare say not, the leetle baggage. Perhaps she did not vish to vrighten you avay.'

‘Frighten!' McMurdo was on fire in a moment.

‘Ah, yes, my vriend! You need not be ashamed to be vrightened of him. It is Teddy Baldwin.'

‘And who the devil is he?'

‘He is a Boss of Scowrers.'

‘Scowrers! I've heard of them before. It's Scowrers here and Scowrers there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid of? Who
are
the Scowrers?'

The boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as everyone did who talked about the terrible society.

‘The Scowrers,' said he, ‘are the Ancient Order of Freemen.'

The young man started.

‘Why, I am a member of that Order myself.'

‘You! I would never have had you in my house if I had known it – not if you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a veek.'

‘What's amiss with the Order? It's for charity and good-fellowship. The rules say so.'

‘Maybe in some places. Not here!'

‘What is it here?'

‘It's a murder society, dat's vat it is.'

McMurdo laughed incredulously.

‘How do you prove that?' he asked.

‘Prove it! Are there not vifty murders to prove it? Vat about Milman and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson vamily, and old Mr. Hyam, and little Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is dere a man or a voman in dis valley dat does not know it?'

‘See here!' said McMurdo, earnestly. ‘I want you to take back what you've said or else to make it good. One or the other you must do before I quit this room. Put yourself in my place. Here am I, a stranger in the town. I belong to a society that I know only as an innocent one. You'll find it through the length and breadth of the States, but always as an innocent one. Now, when I am counting upon joining it here, you tell me that it is the same as a murder society called the “Scowrers”. I guess you owe me either an apology or else an explanation, Mr Shafter.'

‘I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The bosses of the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the one it is the other dat vill strike you. We have proved it too often.'

‘That's just gossip! I want proof!' said McMurdo.

‘If you live here long you vill get your proof. But I vorget dat you are yourself one of dem. You vill soon be as bad as the rest. But you vill find other lodgings, mister. I cannot have you here. Is it not bad enough dat one of these people come courting my Ettie, and dat I dare not turn him down, but dat I should have another for my boarder? Yes, indeed, you shall not sleep here after tonight!'

So McMurdo found himself under sentence of banishment both
from his comfortable quarters and from the girl whom he loved. He found her alone in the sitting-room that same evening, and he poured his troubles into her ear.

‘Sure, your father is after giving me notice,' he said. ‘It's little I would care if it was just my room; but indeed, Ettie, though it's only a week that I've known you, you are the very breath of life to me, and I can't live without you.'

‘Oh, hush, Mr McMurdo! Don't speak so!' said the girl. ‘I have told you, have I not, that you are too late? There is another, and if I have not promised to marry him at once, at least I can promise no one else.'

‘Suppose I had been first, Ettie, would I have had a chance?'

The girl sank her face into her hands.

‘I wish to Heaven that you
had
been first,' she sobbed.

McMurdo was down on his knees before her in an instant.

‘For God's sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!' he cried. ‘Will you ruin your life and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow your heart, acushla! 'Tis a safer guide than any promise given before you knew what it was that you were saying.'

He had seized Ettie's white hand between his own strong brown ones.

‘Say that you will be mine and we will face it out together.'

‘Not here?'

‘Yes, here.'

‘No, no, Jack!' His arms were round her now. ‘It could not be here. Could you take me away?'

A struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo's face, but it ended by setting like granite.

‘No, here,' he said. ‘I'll hold you against the world, Ettie, right here where we are!'

‘Why should we not leave together?'

‘No, Ettie, I can't leave here.'

‘But why?'

‘I'd never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been driven out. Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not free folk in a free country? If you love me and I you, who will dare to come between?'

‘You don't know, Jack. You've been here too short a time. You
don't know this Baldwin. You don't know McGinty and his Scowrers.'

‘No, I don't know them, and I don't fear them, and I don't believe in them!' said McMurdo. ‘I've lived among rough men, my darling, and instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared me – always, Ettie. It's mad on the face of it! If these men, as your father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if everyone knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to justice? You answer me that, Ettie!'

‘Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely, Jack, you must have read all this! I had understood that every paper in the States was writing about it.'

‘Well, I have read something, it is true, but I had thought it was a story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they are wronged and have no other way to help themselves.'

‘Oh, Jack, don't let me hear you speak so! That is how he speaks – the other one!'

‘Baldwin – he speaks like that, does he?'

‘And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell you the truth, I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also. I fear him for myself, but, above all, I fear him for Father. I know that some great sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say what I really felt. That is why I have put him off with half-promises. It was in real truth our only hope. But if you would fly with me, Jack, we could take Father with us and live for ever far from the power of these wicked men.'

Again there was a struggle upon McMurdo's face, and again it set like granite.

‘No harm shall come to you, Ettie – nor to your father either. As to wicked men, I expect you may find that I am as bad as the worst of them before we're through.'

‘No, no, Jack! I would trust you anywhere.'

McMurdo laughed bitterly.

‘Good Lord, how little you know of me! Your innocent soul, my darling, could not even guess what is passing in mine. But, halloa, who's the visitor?'

The door had opened suddenly and a young fellow came swaggering in with the air of one who is the master. He was a handsome, dashing young man of about the same age and build as McMurdo himself. Under his broad-brimmed black felt hat, which he had not troubled to remove, a handsome face, with fierce, domineering eyes and curved hawkbill of a nose, looked savagely at the pair who sat by the stove.

Ettie had jumped to her feet, full of confusion and alarm.

‘I'm glad to see you, Mr Baldwin,' said she. ‘You're earlier than I had thought. Come and sit down.'

Baldwin stood with his hands on his hips looking at McMurdo.

‘Who is this?' he asked, curtly.

‘It's a friend of mine, Mr Baldwin – a new boarder here. Mr McMurdo, can I introduce you to Mr Baldwin?'

The young men nodded in a surly fashion to each other.

‘Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?' said Baldwin.

‘I didn't understand that there was any relation between you.'

‘Did you not? Well, you can understand it now. You can take it from me that this young lady is mine, and you'll find it a very fine evening for a walk.'

‘Thank you, I am in no humour for a walk.'

‘Are you not?' The man's savage eyes were blazing with anger. ‘Maybe you are in a humour for a fight, Mr Boarder?'

‘That I am,' cried McMurdo, springing to his feet. ‘You never said a more welcome word.'

‘For God's sake, Jack! Oh, for God's sake!' cried poor, distracted Ettie. ‘Oh, Jack, Jack, he will do you a mischief!'

‘Oh, it's “Jack”, is it!' said Baldwin, with an oath. ‘You've come to that already, have you?'