The Bodymaster’s scowl relaxed as he listened to the humblewords. “Very good, Brother Morris. It’s myself that would besorry if it were needful to give you a lesson. But so long as I amin this chair we shall be a united lodge in word and in deed. Andnow, boys,” he continued, looking round at the company, “I’llsay this much, that if Stanger got his full deserts there would bemore trouble than we need ask for. These editors hang together,and every journal in the state would be crying out for police andtroops. But I guess you can give him a pretty severe warning. Willyou fix it, Brother Baldwin?”
“Sure!” said the young man eagerly.
“How many will you take?”
“Half a dozen, and two to guard the door. You’ll come, Gower,and you, Mansel, and you, Scanlan, and the two Willabys.”
“I promised the new brother he should go,” said the chairman.
Ted Baldwin looked at McMurdo with eyes which showedthat he had not forgotten nor forgiven. “Well, he can come if hewants,” he said in a surly voice. “That’s enough. The sooner we getto work the better.”
The company broke up with shouts and yells and snatches ofdrunken song. The bar was still crowded with revellers, and manyof the brethren remained there. The little band who had been toldoff for duty passed out into the street, proceeding in twos andthrees along the sidewalk so as not to provoke attention. It was abitterly cold night, with a half-moon shining brilliantly in a frosty,star-spangled sky. The men stopped and gathered in a yard whichfaced a high building. The words, “Vermissa Herald” were printedin gold lettering between the brightly lit windows. From withincame the clanking of the printing press.
“Here, you,” said Baldwin to McMurdo, “you can stand below atthe door and see that the road is kept open for us. Arthur Willabycan stay with you. You others come with me. Have no fears, boys;for we have a dozen witnesses that we are in the Union Bar at thisvery moment.”
It was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for oneor two revellers upon their way home. The party crossed the road,and, pushing open the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin andhis men rushed in and up the stair which faced them. McMurdoand another remained below. From the room above came a shout,a cry for help, and then the sound of trampling feet and of fallingchairs. An instant later a gray-haired man rushed out on the landing.
He was seized before he could get farther, and his spectaclescame tinkling down to McMurdo’s feet. There was a thud and agroan. He was on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clatteringtogether as they fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thinlimbs quivered under the blows. The others ceased at last; butBaldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking atthe man’s head, which he vainly endeavoured to defend with hisarms. His white hair was dabbled with patches of blood. Baldwinwas still stooping over his victim, putting in a short, vicious blowwhenever he could see a part exposed, when McMurdo dashed upthe stair and pushed him back.
“You’ll kill the man,” said he. “Drop it!”
Baldwin looked at him in amazement. “Curse you!” he cried.
“Who are you to interfere—you that are new to the lodge? Standback!” He raised his stick; but McMurdo had whipped his pistolout of his pocket.
“Stand back yourself!” he cried. “I’ll blow your face in if you lay ahand on me. As to the lodge, wasn’t it the order of the Bodymasterthat the man was not to be killed—and what are you doing butkilling him?”
“It’s truth he says,” remarked one of the men.
“By Gar! you’d best hurry yourselves!” cried the man below. “Thewindows are all lighting up, and you’ll have the whole town hereinside of five minutes.”
There was indeed the sound of shouting in the street, and a littlegroup of compositors and pressmen was forming in the hall belowand nerving itself to action. Leaving the limp and motionless bodyof the editor at the head of the stair, the criminals rushed down andmade their way swiftly along the street. Having reached the UnionHouse, some of them mixed with the crowd in McGinty’s saloon,whispering across the bar to the Boss that the job had been wellcarried through. Others, and among them McMurdo, broke awayinto side streets, and so by devious paths to their own homes.
The Valley of Fear
When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason toremember his initiation into the lodge. His head ached with theeffect of the drink, and his arm, where he had been branded, washot and swollen. Having his own peculiar source of income, he wasirregular in his attendance at his work; so he had a late breakfast,and remained at home for the morning writing a long letter to afriend. Afterwards he read the Daily Herald. In a special columnput in at the last moment he read:
OUTRAGE AT THE HERALD OFFICE—EDITOR
SERIOUSLY INJURED.
It was a short account of the facts with which he was himselfmore familiar than the writer could have been. It ended with thestatement:
The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can hardly behoped that their exertions will be attended by any better resultsthan in the past. Some of the men were recognized, and there ishope that a conviction may be obtained. The source of the outragewas, it need hardly be said, that infamous society which has heldthis community in bondage for so long a period, and against whichthe Herald has taken so uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger’smany friends will rejoice to hear that, though he has been cruellyand brutally beaten, and though he has sustained severe injuriesabout the head, there is no immediate danger to his life.
Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchesterrifles, had been requisitioned for the defense of the office.
McMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipewith a hand which was shaky from the excesses of the previousevening, when there was a knock outside, and his landlady broughtto him a note which had just been handed in by a lad. It wasunsigned, and ran thus:
