The Valley of Fear Read online

  Chapter 2

  Sherlock Holmes Discourses

  It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed. Itwould be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even excited bythe amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of cruelty in hissingular composition, he was undoubtedly callous from longover-stimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled, his intellectualperceptions were exceedingly active. There was no trace then of thehorror which I had myself felt at this curt declaration; but his faceshowed rather the quiet and interested composure of the chemist whosees the crystals falling into position from his oversaturated solution.

  "Remarkable!" said he. "Remarkable!"

  "You don't seem surprised."

  "Interested, Mr. Mac, but hardly surprised. Why should I be surprised?I receive an anonymous communication from a quarter which I know to beimportant, warning me that danger threatens a certain person. Within anhour I learn that this danger has actually materialized and that theperson is dead. I am interested; but, as you observe, I am notsurprised."

  In a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts aboutthe letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on his hands andhis great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow tangle.

  "I was going down to Birlstone this morning," said he. "I had come toask you if you cared to come with me--you and your friend here. Butfrom what you say we might perhaps be doing better work in London."

  "I rather think not," said Holmes.

  "Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!" cried the inspector. "The papers will befull of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's the mysteryif there is a man in London who prophesied the crime before ever itoccurred? We have only to lay our hands on that man, and the rest willfollow."

  "No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your hands on theso-called Porlock?"

  MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed him. "Postedin Camberwell--that doesn't help us much. Name, you say, is assumed.Not much to go on, certainly. Didn't you say that you have sent himmoney?"

  "Twice."

  "And how?"

  "In notes to Camberwell post-office."

  "Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?"

  "No."

  The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. "Why not?"

  "Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first wrote that Iwould not try to trace him."

  "You think there is someone behind him?"

  "I know there is."

  "This professor that I've heard you mention?"

  "Exactly!"

  Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he glancedtowards me. "I won't conceal from you, Mr. Holmes, that we think in theC. I. D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in your bonnet over thisprofessor. I made some inquiries myself about the matter. He seems tobe a very respectable, learned, and talented sort of man."

  "I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent."

  "Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I made it mybusiness to see him. I had a chat with him on eclipses. How the talkgot that way I canna think; but he had out a reflector lantern and aglobe, and made it all clear in a minute. He lent me a book; but Idon't mind saying that it was a bit above my head, though I had a goodAberdeen upbringing. He'd have made a grand meenister with his thinface and gray hair and solemn-like way of talking. When he put his handon my shoulder as we were parting, it was like a father's blessingbefore you go out into the cold, cruel world."

  Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. "Great!" he said. "Great! Tellme, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview was, Isuppose, in the professor's study?"

  "That's so."

  "A fine room, is it not?"

  "Very fine--very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes."

  "You sat in front of his writing desk?"

  "Just so."

  "Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"

  "Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my face."

  "It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the professor'shead?"

  "I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you. Yes, Isaw the picture--a young woman with her head on her hands, peeping atyou sideways."

  "That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."

  The inspector endeavoured to look interested.

  "Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger tips andleaning well back in his chair, "was a French artist who flourishedbetween the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course to his workingcareer. Modern criticism has more than indorsed the high opinion formedof him by his contemporaries."

  The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better--" he said.

  "We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am saying has a verydirect and vital bearing upon what you have called the BirlstoneMystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called the very centre of it."

  MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. "Your thoughtsmove a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out a link or two,and I can't get over the gap. What in the whole wide world can be theconnection between this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?"

  "All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked Holmes. "Eventhe trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled LaJeune Fille a l'Agneau fetched one million two hundred thousandfrancs--more than forty thousand pounds--at the Portalis sale may starta train of reflection in your mind."

  It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.

  "I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's salary canbe ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is sevenhundred a year."

  "Then how could he buy--"

  "Quite so! How could he?"

  "Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk away,Mr. Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!"

  Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration--thecharacteristic of the real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he asked.

  "We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch. "I've acab at the door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to Victoria. Butabout this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that youhad never met Professor Moriarty."

  "No, I never have."

  "Then how do you know about his rooms?"

  "Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twicewaiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came.Once--well, I can hardly tell about the once to an official detective.It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over hispapers--with the most unexpected results."

  "You found something compromising?"

  "Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have nowseen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man.How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is astation master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundreda year. And he owns a Greuze."

  "Well?"

  "Surely the inference is plain."

  "You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in anillegal fashion?"

  "Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so--dozens ofexiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the webwhere the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention theGreuze because it brings the matter within the range of your ownobservation."

  "Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it's morethan interesting--it's just wonderful. But let us have it a littleclearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary--where does themoney come from?"

  "Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?"

  "Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? Idon't take much stock of detectives in novels--chaps that do things andnever let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: notbusiness."

  "Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel.
He was amaster criminal, and he lived last century--1750 or thereabouts."

  "Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man."

  "Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life wouldbe to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day atthe annals of crime. Everything comes in circles--even ProfessorMoriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals,to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per centcommission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's allbeen done before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two thingsabout Moriarty which may interest you."

  "You'll interest me, right enough."

  "I happen to know who is the first link in his chain--a chain with thisNapoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men,pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with everysort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel SebastianMoran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself.What do you think he pays him?"

  "I'd like to hear."

  "Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see--the Americanbusiness principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It's morethan the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty'sgains and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it mybusiness to hunt down some of Moriarty's checks lately--just commoninnocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawnon six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?"

  "Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?"

  "That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should knowwhat he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; thebulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the Credit Lyonnaisas likely as not. Sometime when you have a year or two to spare Icommend to you the study of Professor Moriarty."

  Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as theconversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest. Now hispractical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a snap to thematter in hand.

  "He can keep, anyhow," said he. "You've got us side-tracked with yourinteresting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts is your remarkthat there is some connection between the professor and the crime. Thatyou get from the warning received through the man Porlock. Can we forour present practical needs get any further than that?"

  "We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime. It is, asI gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable, or at least anunexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the source of the crime is aswe suspect it to be, there might be two different motives. In the firstplace, I may tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over hispeople. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment inhis code. It is death. Now we might suppose that this murderedman--this Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of thearch-criminal's subordinates--had in some way betrayed the chief. Hispunishment followed, and would be known to all--if only to put the fearof death into them."

  "Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes."

  "The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinarycourse of business. Was there any robbery?"

  "I have not heard."

  "If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and infavour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it ona promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down tomanage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it issome third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek thesolution. I know our man too well to suppose that he has left anythingup here which may lead us to him."

  "Then to Birlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping from hischair. "My word! it's later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen,five minutes for preparation, and that is all."

  "And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened tochange from his dressing gown to his coat. "While we are on our way,Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it."

  "All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there wasenough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of theexpert's closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin handstogether as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A longseries of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was afitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all specialgifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. Thatrazor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.

  Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue,and his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call forwork reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently toMacDonald's short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. Theinspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon ascribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hoursof the morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend,and hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usualat Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a verycold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run.

  "DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:

  "Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope. Thisis for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can getfor Birlstone, and I will meet it--or have it met if I am toooccupied. This case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in gettingstarted. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will findsomething after his own heart. We would think the whole thing had beenfixed up for theatrical effect if there wasn't a dead man in the middleof it. My word! it is a snorter."

  "Your friend seems to be no fool," remarked Holmes.

  "No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge."

  "Well, have you anything more?"

  "Only that he will give us every detail when we meet."

  "Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he had beenhorribly murdered?"

  "That was in the enclosed official report. It didn't say 'horrible':that's not a recognized official term. It gave the name John Douglas.It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head, from the dischargeof a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was closeon to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly oneof murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was onewhich presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That'sabsolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes."

  "Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. Thetemptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is thebane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain atpresent--a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's thechain between that we are going to trace."