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?’
‘Oh, Ted, be reasonable – be kind! For my sake, Ted, if ever you loved me, be great-hearted and forgiving!’
‘I think, Ettie, that if you were to leave us alone we could get this thing settled,’ said McMurdo, quietly. ‘Or maybe, Mr Baldwin, you will take a turn down the street with me. It’s a fine evening, and there’s some open ground beyond the next block.’
‘I’ll get even with you without needing to dirty my hands,’ said his enemy. ‘You’ll wish you had never set foot in this house before I am through with you.’
‘No time like the present,’ cried McMurdo.
‘I’ll choose my own time, mister. You can leave the time to me. See here!’ He suddenly rolled up his sleeve and showed upon his forearm a peculiar sign which appeared to have been branded there. It was a circle with a triangle within it. ‘D’you know what that means?’
‘I neither know nor care!’
‘Well, you will know. I’ll promise you that. You won’t be much older either. Perhaps Miss Ettie can tell you something about it. As to you, Ettie, you’ll come back to me on your knees. D’ye hear, girl? On your knees! And then I’ll tell you what your punishment may be. You’ve sowed – and, by the Lord, I’ll see that you reap!’ He glared at them both in fury. Then he turned upon his heel, and an instant later the outer door had banged behind him.
For a few moments McMurdo and the girl stood in silence. Then she threw her arms around him.
‘Oh, Jack, how brave you were! But it is no use – you must fly! Tonight – Jack – tonight! It’s your only hope. He will have your life. I read it in his horrible eyes. What chance have you against a dozen of them, with Boss McGinty and all the power of the Lodge behind them?’
McMurdo disengaged her hands, kissed her, and gently pushed her back into a chair.
‘There, acushla, there! Don’t be disturbed or fear for me. I’m a Freeman myself. I’m after telling your father about it. Maybe I am no better than the others, so don’t make a saint of me. Perhaps you hate me, too, now that I’ve told you as much.’
‘Hate you, Jack! While life lasts I could never do that. I’ve heard that there is no harm in being a Freeman anywhere but here, so why should I think the worse of you for that? But if you are a Freeman, Jack, why should you not go down and make a friend of Boss McGinty? Oh, hasten, Jack, hasten! Get your word in first, or the hounds will be on your trail.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ said McMurdo. ‘I’ll go right now and fix it. You can tell your father that I’ll sleep here tonight and find some other quarters in the morning.’
The bar of McGinty’s saloon was crowded as usual, for it was the favourite lounge of all the rougher elements of the town. The man was popular, for he had a rough, jovial disposition which formed a mask, covering a great deal which lay behind it. But, apart from this popularity, the fear in which he was held throughout the township, and, indeed, down the whole thirty miles of the valley and past the mountains upon either side of it, was enough in itself to fill his bar, for none could afford to neglect his goodwill.
Besides those secret powers which it was universally believed that he exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public official, a municipal councillor, and a commissioner for roads, elected to the office through the votes of the ruffians who in turn expected to receive favours at his hands. Rates and taxes were enormous, the public works were notoriously neglected, the accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding his tongue lest some worse thing befall him. Thus it was that, year by year, Boss McGinty’s diamond pins became more obtrusive, his gold chains more weighty across a more gorgeous vest, and his saloon stretched farther and farther, until it threatened to absorb one whole side of the Market Square.
McMurdo pushed open the swinging door of the saloon and made his way amid the crowd of men within, through an atmosphere which was blurred with tobacco smoke and heavy with the smell of spirits. The place was brilliantly lighted, and the huge, heavily gilt mirrors upon every wall reflected and multiplied the garish illumination. There were several bartenders in their shirt-sleeves hard at work, mixing drinks for the loungers who fringed the broad, heavily metalled counter. At the far end, with his body resting upon the bar, and a cigar stuck at an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, there stood a tall, strong, heavily built man, who could be none other than the famous McGinty himself. He was a black-maned giant, bearded to the cheek-bones, and with a shock of raven hair which fell to his collar. His complexion was as swarthy as that of an Italian, and his eyes were of a strange, dead black, which, combined with a slight squint, gave them a particularly sinister appearance. All else in the man, his noble proportions, his fine features, and his frank bearing, fitted in with that jovial man-to-man manner which he affected. Here, one would say, is a bluff, honest fellow, whose heart would be sound, however rude his outspoken words might seem. It was only when those dead, dark eyes, deep and remorseless, were turned upon a man that he shrank within himself, feeling that he was face to face with an infinite possibility of latent evil, with a strength and courage and cunning behind it which made it a thousand times more deadly.
Having had a good look at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward with his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the little group of courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful Boss, laughing uproariously at the smallest of his jokes. The young stranger’s bold grey eyes looked back fearlessly through their glasses at the deadly black ones which turned sharply upon him.
‘Well, young man, I can’t call your face to mind.’
‘I’m new here, Mr. McGinty.’
‘You are not so new that you can’t give a gentleman his proper title.’
‘He’s Councillor McGinty, young man,’ said a voice from the group.
‘I’m sorry, Councillor. I’m strange to the ways of the place. But I was advised to see you.’
‘Well, you see me
. This is all there is. What d’you think of me?’
‘Well, it’s early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and your soul as fine as your face, then I’d ask for nothing better,’ said McMurdo.
‘By gosh, you’ve got an Irish tongue in your head, anyhow,’ cried the saloon-keeper, not quite certain whether to humour this audacious visitor or to stand upon his dignity. ‘So you are good enough to pass my appearance?’
‘Sure,’ said McMurdo.
‘And you were told to see me?’
‘I was.’
‘And who told you?’
‘Brother Scanlan, of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health, Councillor, and to our better acquaintance.’ He raised a glass with which he had been served to his lips and elevated his little finger as he drank it.
McGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his thick black eyebrows.
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ said he. ‘I’ll have to look a bit closer into this, Mister –’
‘McMurdo.’
‘A bit closer, Mr McMurdo, for we don’t take folk on trust in these parts, nor believe all we’re told neither. Come in here for a moment, behind the bar.’
There was a small room there lined round with barrels. McGinty carefully closed the door, and then seated himself on one of them, biting thoughtfully on his cigar, and surveying his companion with those disquieting eyes. For a couple of minutes he sat in complete silence.
McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one hand in his coat-pocket, the other twisting his brown moustache. Suddenly McGinty stooped and produced a wicked-looking revolver.
‘See here, my joker,’ said he; ‘if I thought you were playing any game on us, it would be a short shrift for you.’
‘This is a strange welcome,’ McMurdo answered, with some dignity, ‘for the bodymaster of a Lodge of Freemen to give to a strange brother.’
‘Aye, but it’s just that same that you have to prove,’ said McGinty, ‘and God help you if you fail. Where were you made?’
‘Lodge 29, Chicago.’
‘When?’
‘June 24th, 1872.’
‘What bodymaster?’
‘James H. Scott.’
‘Who is your district ruler?’
‘Bartholomew Wilson.’
‘Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?’
‘Working, the same as you, but a poorer job.’
‘You have your back answer quick enough.’
‘Yes, I was always quick of speech.’
‘Are you quick of action?’
‘I have had that name among those who knew me best.’
‘Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you heard anything of the Lodge in these parts?’
‘I’ve heard that it takes a man to be a brother.’
‘True for you, Mr McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?’
‘I’m hanged if I tell you that.’
McGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered in such fashion, and it amused him.
‘Why won’t you tell me?’
‘Because no brother may tell another a lie.’
‘Then the truth is too bad to tell?’
‘You can put it that way if you like.’
‘See here, mister; you can’t expect me, as bodymaster, to pass into the Lodge a man for whose past he can’t answer.’
McMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper-cutting from an inner pocket.
‘You wouldn’t squeal on a fellow?’ said he.
‘I’ll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to me,’ cried McGinty, hotly.
‘You are right, Councillor,’ said McMurdo, meekly. ‘I should apologize. I spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe in your hands. Look at that cutting.’
McGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of one Jonas Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in the New Year week of ’74.
‘Your work?’ he asked, as he handed back the paper.
McMurdo nodded.
‘Why did you shoot him?’
‘I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make. This man Pinto helped me to shove the queer –’
‘To do what?’
‘Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then he said he would split. Maybe he did split. I didn’t wait to see. I just killed him and lighted out for the coal country.’
‘Why the coal country?’
‘’Cause I’d read in the papers that they weren’t too particular in those parts.’
McGinty laughed.
‘You were first a coiner and then a murderer, and you came to these parts because you thought you’d be welcome?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ McMurdo answered.
‘Well, I guess you’ll go far. Say, can you make those dollars yet?’
McMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. ‘Those never passed the Washington mint,’ said he.
‘You don’t say!’ McGinty held them to the light in his enormous hand, which was as hairy as a gorilla’s. ‘I can see no difference! Gosh, you’ll be a mighty useful brother, I’m thinking. We can do with a bad man or two among us, friend McMurdo, for there are times when we have to take our own part. We’d soon be against the wall if we didn’t shove back at those that were pushing us.’
‘Well, I guess I’ll do my share of shoving with the rest of the boys.’
‘You seem to have a good nerve. You didn’t flinch when I put this pistol on you.’
‘It was not me that was in danger.’
‘Who, then?’
‘It was you, Councillor.’ McMurdo drew a cocked pistol from the side-pocket of his pea-jacket. ‘I was covering you all the time. I guess my shot would have been as quick as yours.’
McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of laughter.
‘By gosh!’ said he. ‘Say, we’ve had no such holy terror come to hand this many a year. I reckon the Lodge will learn to be proud of you. Well, what the deuce do you want? And can’t I speak alone with a gentleman for five minutes but you must butt in upon us?’
The bartender stood abashed.
‘I’m sorry, Councillor, but it’s Mr Ted Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute.’
The message was unnecessary, for the set, cruel face of the man himself was looking over the servant’s shoulder. He pushed the bartender out and closed the door on him.
‘So,’ said he, with a furious glance at McMurdo, ‘you got here first, did you? I’ve a word to say to you, Councillor, about this man.’
‘Then say it here and now, before my face,’ cried McMurdo.
‘I’ll say it at my own time, in my own way.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said McGinty, getting off his barrel. ‘This will never do. We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it’s not for us to greet him in such a fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up.’
‘Never!’ cried Baldwin, in a fury.
‘I’ve offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,’ said McMurdo. ‘I’ll fight him with fists, or, if that won’t satisfy him, I’ll fight him any other way he chooses. Now I’ll leave it to you, Councillor, to judge between us as a bodymaster should.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘A young lady. She’s free to choose for herself.’
‘Is she?’ cried Baldwin.
‘As between two brothers of the Lodge, I should say that she was,’ said the Boss.
‘Oh, that’s your ruling, is it?’
‘Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin,’ said McGinty, with a wicked stare. ‘Is it you that would dispute it?’
‘You would throw over one that has
stood by you this five years in favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You’re not bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and, by God, when next it comes to a vote –’
The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the other’s neck and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not interfered.
‘Easy, Councillor! For Heaven’s sake, go easy!’ he cried, as he dragged him back.
McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken, gasping for breath, and shivering in every limb as one who has looked over the very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.
‘You’ve been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin. Now you’ve got it,’ cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. ‘Maybe you think if I were voted down from bodymaster you would find yourself in my shoes. It’s for the Lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief, I’ll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings.’
‘I have nothing against you,’ mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.
‘Well, then,’ cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff joviality, ‘we are all good friends again, and there’s an end of the matter.’
He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the cork.
‘See now,’ he continued, as he filled three high glasses, ‘let us drink the quarrelling toast of the Lodge. After that, as you know, there can be no bad blood between us. Now, then, the left hand on the apple of my throat, I say to you, Ted Baldwin, what is the offence, sir?’
‘The clouds are heavy,’ answered Baldwin.
‘But they will forever brighten.’
‘And this I swear.’
The men drank their wine, and the same ceremony was performed between Baldwin and McMurdo.
‘There,’ cried McGinty, rubbing his hands, ‘that’s the end of the black blood. You come under Lodge discipline if it goes farther, and that’s a heavy hand in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows, and as you will very soon find out, Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble.’
‘Faith, I’d be slow to do that,’ said McMurdo. He held out his hand to Baldwin. ‘I’m quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It’s my hot Irish blood, they tell me. But it’s over for me, and I bear no grudge.’
Sherlock Holmes Page 57
