The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  “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 cager 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!”155

  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, whilst the curtains were torn from their hangings.

  “ ‘Not a sound, for your lives!’ McMurdo whispered.”

  Arthur I. Keller, Associated Sunday Magazines, 1914

  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 Coal and Iron 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 gun, 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 except Captain Marvin here and my employers. But it’s over to-night thank God, and I am the winner!”

  “Then with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle-barrels broke through each window, whilst the curtains were torn from their hangings.”

  Frank Wiles, Strand Magazine, 1915

  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.156 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 for the coal valleys. When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong and that it wasn’t a dime novel157 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.

  “ ‘Halt!’ shouted Linden.” [The Coal and Iron Police in action.]

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

  “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 knowing smile. In the early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much-m
uffled 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 for ever 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 free158 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.159 And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex country gentleman—a life which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.160

  153 Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson first partnered in 1852 in Norwich, Connecticut, to manufacture a lever-action repeating pistol. Facing financial difficulties, they were forced to sell their enterprise to Oliver Winchester (see note 140, above), who was able to achieve success for his own company using elements of the original design. Undaunted, Smith and Wesson founded their next company in 1856 to manufacture the first revolver with a fully contained cartridge (known as the Model 1). Having obtained patents on both the gun and the cartridge, the partners were the sole producers of that sort of gun until the patent expired in 1872. In 1870 they began selling the Model 3 American, the first large-calibre, or “big-bore,” cartridge revolver on the market. This self-ejecting revolver was a favourite among frontiersmen and Western lawmakers—the U.S. cavalry purchased 1,000 of them—and McMurdo was in all likelihood the owner of one of these guns, possibly the popular .45.

  154 Colin Prestige points out that the descriptions appear to be wrong here. The remark about “finances” seems applicable to Carter, the treasurer; and one would think that the “capable organiser” would be Harraway, the secretary. The description of Harraway is also inconsistent with earlier depictions of the “vulture-faced old greybeard.” In the manuscript of The Valley of Fear, Prestige reports, Harraway is originally described as “the secretary treasurer” and the phrase “The treasurer Carter” originally read “The Secretary Stinton.” Douglas’s notes were evidently confused here.

  155 The name “McMurdo” chosen by Edwards as his alias has a fine Irish ring to it. He may have had in mind Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo, an officer on the Terror, one of the ships of James Clark Ross used on his expedition to the Antarctic from 1839 to 1843. McMurdo Base is now a permanent land base at the southern end of Ross Island, located on McMurdo Sound at 77°55’ S, 166°40’ E.

  156 Ian McQueen suggests that Holmes, in joining an Irish secret society in Buffalo to build his “Altamont” reputation (in “His Last Bow”), may have taken a page from McMurdo’s book.

  157 In America, a slang term for a type of sensational literature, cheaply printed and sold for ten cents or less. Many Sherlock Holmes stories were reprinted in dime novels, and many authors copied the style of Watson’s stories. For a brief overview of the Canon in the dime novel format, see J. Randolph Cox’s “A. Conan Doyle, Dime Novelist; or, Magnetic Attractions for Bibliophiles.” Nils Nordberg’s “Sherlock Holmes in the Claws of the Confidence Men; or, The Misadventures of a World Detective,” traces the history of Sherlock Holmes as a character in European dime novels.

  158 Owen Dudley Edward observes, “[I]t is difficult to see how, since McMurdo had his full account of his murder of Hales of Stake Royal; but presumably the lodge members and the passing couple stayed away.” Ian McQueen notes that Douglas “fails to make it clear whether that [ten-year] period was the sentence [Baldwin] served, calculated from the date of conviction, or the total length of his incarceration following his arrest. It is inconceivable that he was ever allowed bail.”

  159 Dean W. Dickensheet, in “ ‘Two Good Men,’” presents startling evidence of the avenging presence of the Molly Maguires in Nevada in 1875, evidently on the trail of Edwards, en route from Chicago to California. In “The Birlstone Masquerade,” Theodore W. Gibson argues that Allan Pinkerton was protecting the real Birdy Edwards, and that John Douglas was assigned to assume the rôle of Edwards and draw off the avengers.

  In a fascinating piece of speculation entitled “The Birlstone Hoax,” Charles B. Stephens takes the position that Cecil Barker, not Douglas, was Birdy Edwards. He bases this analysis on Watson’s earlier description of Barker as “a tall, straight, broad-chested fellow, with a clean-shaved, prize-fighter face, thick, strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of masterful black eyes which might, even without the aid of his very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile crowd.” Stephens proposes that Barker came to England to infiltrate Moriarty’s gang under the nom de plume of “Porlock” and to resume working with Captain Marvin—alias Sherlock Holmes!

  160 It is beyond question that the basis for Birdy Edwards (a k a Jack McMurdo, a k a John Douglas) was James McParlan, a detective with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. In 1873, railroad magnate Franklin Gowen, concerned about the Molly Maguires’ power and their ability to undercut his own profits, appealed to Allan Pinkerton to help him bring down the secret society. Pinkerton sent McParlan, a gregarious Irish Catholic immigrant who ingratiated himself with the most influential Mollies and quickly rose through the ranks of the organisation. “James McKenna,” as he called himself, spent two years gathering information on the Molly Maguires, learning everything there was to know about how their activities were carried out. Eventually, his cover was blown. After discovering that Jack Kehoe suspected his true identity and planned to murder him, McParlan fled the area and served as the key witness in a series of sensational trials, in which he testified against more than fifty alleged members of the Molly Maguires. Kehoe and eighteen others were convicted and hanged, and Franklin Gowen mysteriously committed suicide in 1889, less than a week before the eleventh anniversary of Kehoe’s execution.

  Several details in Edwards’s tale resonate with events from McParlan’s own experience undercover. McParlan claimed to be a counterfeiter, a ruse that explained how he always had enough cash on hand to treat his new friends to another round of drinks. Upon his arrival in town, he immediately impressed the Mollies gathered at the Sheridan House by dancing a hornpipe, singing a song, and then playing a game of euchre in which the local bodymaster served as his partner. Though the story may be apocryphal, Cleveland Moffett wrote that McParlan hotly accused a burly Molly of cheating, then bested him in a fistfight despite being at
a significant height and weight disadvantage. “Six times in succession,” Moffett wrote, “he [McParlan] floored the bully of Pottsville, and the seventh time Frazer fell heavily on his face and failed to get up again.” Like Birdy Edwards, McParlan allowed others to believe that he had once committed murder; and like Edwards, he did what he could to thwart planned attacks, though he was not always successful.

  Here, however, the stories of Edwards and McParlan diverge. Modern historians point out that by McParlan’s own testimony, he was often on the fine edge of actual participation in the Mollies’ violence and speculate that he may well have provoked a portion of it. His testimony in several of the controversial Pennsylvania cases was for the most part unsubstantiated, and in other instances was corroborated only by questionable witnesses who had turned state’s evidence. After testifying against the Molly Maguires, McParlan did not go into hiding but became the head of Pinkerton’s western division, based in Colorado. In 1906, he was involved in a botched investigation into the murder of Frank Steunenberg, the governor of Idaho, and his questionable exploits and tactics were brought to light by defence attorney Clarence Darrow. After retiring, McParlan died in 1919 in Denver.

  EPILOGUE

  THE POLICE TRIAL had passed, in which the case of John Douglas was referred to a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions,161 at which he was acquitted as having acted in self-defence.

  “Get him out of England at any cost,” wrote Holmes to the wife. “There are forces here which may be more dangerous than those he has escaped. There is no safety for your husband in England.”

  Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic note slipped into our letter-box. “Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!” said this singular epistle. There was neither superscription nor signature. I laughed at the quaint message; but Holmes showed unwonted seriousness.