The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  106 Secret signs, handshakes, and codewords were a regular part of secret societies, and although the rites of the AOH have not been revealed, it is likely that they were similar to those of the Freemasons. Freemasons were obliged to keep secret the several words and various signs revealed to them, and the motto of the order was “Audi Vide Tace” (“Hear, See, Keep Silent”). It was commonly supposed that Masons would reveal themselves to other members by secret hand grips, signs, and codewords. For example, the “pass-grip” of a Master Mason is known as “Tubalcain” (the password that accompanies it). Malcolm Duncan’s guide to the Freemasons, Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor (1866), describes the greeting as follows: “The Mason places his thumb on the space between the second and third knuckles of the fellow Mason’s right hand, while the fellow Mason moves his thumb to the corresponding space on the first Mason’s hand. The thumb is pressed hard between the second and third knuckles of the hands.” For more on the Freemasons, see A Study in Scarlet, note 109.

  107 “Bodymaster” was, and still is, the title used by the Ancient Order of Hibernians to denote the leader of the local lodge or body. The title carried over to the Molly Maguires: Each division had its own bodymaster, usually an ex-miner who now operated a saloon. This person would recruit members, issue the orders, and do “favors” for bodymasters of other districts (see note 130, below).

  108 On August 5, 1952, a dynamite truck exploded in Craig’s Patch, Pennsylvania, shattering the entire village. “It does not require a very active imagination to identify Craig’s Patch with the ‘Hobson’s Patch’ of the story,” writes James Montgomery, in “Paging Birdy Edwards.” He concludes that the truck was blown up by descendants of the Scowrers/Mollies, who banded together and revived the organisation more than seventy years later.

  109 John “Black Jack” Kehoe, the proprietor of the Hibernian House in Girardville and bodymaster for that town, was a prominent leader of both the AOH and the Molly Maguires. Executed in 1878, he was granted a posthumous pardon in 1979 by the governor of Pennyslvania, thanks to intense and tireless lobbying by Kehoe’s great-grandson. To this date, Kehoe is the only Molly to have received a pardon. In the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, the tough but sympathetic character of Kehoe was played by Scotsman Sean Connery.

  110 American editors “spiced up” the text with various phrases that apparently were inappropriate for an English audience, here replacing “in thunder” with “in hell.” There are numerous other changes in slang expressions, as the American editors tried to make the narrative—originally penned by John Douglas (an American) but undoubtedly rewritten by Watson for his intended English readers—more understandable to an American audience. The result is a mishmash of Englishisms and Americanisms.

  111 A travelling-bag. According to Kelvin Jones, “The ‘grip-sack’ has long been in use in America as a slang term for a hand satchel …”

  112 “By gosh!” in the Strand Magazine and English book text. Similar changes are too numerous to be further noted.

  113 The Union House was in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, but there was a Sheridan House located on Central Street in Pottsville. William H. Conway and Lynda L. Conway report that the building was part hotel and part private residence. “It was three stories high with a ten-pin alley in the rear of the building. In the basement was the dining-room and kitchen along with the laundry. On the first floor the saloon was in the front and at the end of the bar was a small parlor used for card-playing and bagatelle.” The “Union House” of the tale is probably a disguised composite of the Sheridan House, the actual Union House, and Jack Kehoe’s Hibernian House in Girardville.

  “Dormer calls his hotel the Sheridan House.”

  The Molly Maguires and the Detectives, by Allan Pinkerton (1877)

  114 As noted earlier (see note 66, above), she is Swedish in the Strand Magazine and English texts. David Randall writes, “The story was finished in the summer of 1914 at the latest. We do not know when it was begun. But by the time serialization began in the Strand Magazine, World War I had just started and it was patently impossible to have … any German depicted as a kindly character in an English publication. This was not vital, however, at the time, in the American editions, so [the] original characterization was not changed.” The German identification appears more likely, based on the general population of Pennsylvania.

  115 $12.00 per week in the English editions. According to the Conways, the wages of the local Irish miners were approximately $11.25 per week. In light of the weekly wages, the seven-dollar rent seems more appropriate.

  CHAPTER

  II

  THE BODYMASTER116

  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 from 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 the 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 onwards he repeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she might say to discourage him.

  The Valley of Fear.

  (New York: Bantam Books, 1950)

  “Some one else!” he would cry. “Well, the worse luck for some one else! Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life’s chance and all my heart’s desire for some one 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, and finally of Chicago, where he had worked in a planing 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 bookkeeper; 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, the 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 the Lodge for over two years, Scanlan, but I never heard that duties were so pressing as an 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 German host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young man into his private room and started onto the subject without any circumlocution.

  “It seems to me, mister,” said he, “that you are gettin’ set on my Ettie. Ain’t that so, or am I wrong?”

  “Yes, that is so,” the young man answered.

  “Vell, I vant to tell you right now dat it ain’t no manner of use. There’s some one slipped in afore you.”117

  “She told me so.”

  “Vell, you can lay that 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 Baldvin.”

  “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 every one did who talked about that terrible society. “The Scowrers,” said he, “are the Ancient Order of Freemen!”

  The young man stared. “Why, I am a member of that order myself.”

  “You! I vould 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, that’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 there a man or a voman in this valley dat does not know it?”

  “See here!” said McMurdo, earnestly. “I want you to take back what you’ve said, or else 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 forget that 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 to-night!”

  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!118 ’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.119 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 every one 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 loat
he 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 the 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 a curved hawk-bill 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 surly fashion to each other.

  “Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?” said Baldwin.