any connection--"
"I imagine nothing, Mr. Barker. I am bound to make every inquiry
which can bear upon the case. But I mean no offense."
"Some inquiries are offensive," Barker answered angrily.
"It's only the facts that we want. It is in your interest and
everyone's interest that they should be cleared up. Did Mr. Douglas
entirely approve your friendship with his wife?"
Barker grew paler, and his great, strong hands were clasped
convulsively together. "You have no right to ask such questions!" he
cried. "What has this to do with the matter you are investigating?"
"I must repeat the question."
"Well, I refuse to answer."
"You can refuse to answer; but you must be aware that your refusal is
in itself an answer, for you would not refuse if you had not
something to conceal."
Barker stood for a moment with his face set grimly and his strong
black eyebrows drawn low in intense thought. Then he looked up with a
smile. "Well, I guess you gentlemen are only doing your clear duty
after all, and I have no right to stand in the way of it. I'd only
ask you not to worry Mrs. Douglas over this matter; for she has
enough upon her just now. I may tell you that poor Douglas had just
one fault in the world, and that was his jealousy. He was fond of
me--no man could be fonder of a friend. And he was devoted to his
wife. He loved me to come here, and was forever sending for me. And
yet if his wife and I talked together or there seemed any sympathy
between us, a kind of wave of jealousy would pass over him, and he
would be off the handle and saying the wildest things in a moment.
More than once I've sworn off coming for that reason, and then he
would write me such penitent, imploring letters that I just had to.
But you can take it from me, gentlemen, if it was my last word, that
no man ever had a more loving, faithful wife--and I can say also no
friend could be more loyal than I!"
It was spoken with fervour and feeling, and yet Inspector MacDonald
could not dismiss the subject.
"You are aware," said he, "that the dead man's wedding ring has been
taken from his finger?"
"So it appears," said Barker.
"What do you mean by 'appears'? You know it as a fact."
The man seemed confused and undecided. "When I said 'appears' I meant
that it was conceivable that he had himself taken off the ring."
"The mere fact that the ring should be absent, whoever may have
removed it, would suggest to anyone's mind, would it not, that the
marriage and the tragedy were connected?"
Barker shrugged his broad shoulders. "I can't profess to say what it
means." he answered. "But if you mean to hint that it could reflect
in any way upon this lady's honour"--his eyes blazed for an instant,
and then with an evident effort he got a grip upon his own
emotions--"well, you are on the wrong track, that's all."
"I don't know that I've anything else to ask you at present," said
MacDonald, coldly.
"There was one small point," remarked Sherlock Holmes. "When you
entered the room there was only a candle lighted on the table, was
there not?"
"Yes, that was so."
"By its light you saw that some terrible incident had occurred?"
"Exactly."
"You at once rang for help?"
"Yes."
"And it arrived very speedily?"
"Within a minute or so."
"And yet when they arrived they found that the candle was out and
that the lamp had been lighted. That seems very remarkable."
Again Barker showed some signs of indecision. "I don't see that it
was remarkable, Mr. Holmes," he answered after a pause. "The candle
threw a very bad light. My first thought was to get a better one. The
lamp was on the table; so I lit it."
"And blew out the candle?"
"Exactly."
Holmes asked no further question, and Barker, with a deliberate look
from one to the other of us, which had, as it seemed to me, something
of defiance in it, turned and left the room.
Inspector MacDonald had sent up a note to the effect that he would
wait upon Mrs. Douglas in her room; but she had replied that she
would meet us in the dining room. She entered now, a tall and
beautiful woman of thirty, reserved and self-possessed to a
remarkable degree, very different from the tragic and distracted
figure I had pictured. It is true that her face was pale and drawn,
like that of one who has endured a great shock; but her manner was
composed, and the finely moulded hand which she rested upon the edge
of the table was as steady as my own. Her sad, appealing eyes
travelled from one to the other of us with a curiously inquisitive
expression. That questioning gaze transformed itself suddenly into
abrupt speech.
"Have you found anything out yet?" she asked.
Was it my imagination that there was an undertone of fear rather than
of hope in the question?
"We have taken every possible step, Mrs. Douglas," said the
inspector. "You may rest assured that nothing will be neglected."
"Spare no money," she said in a dead, even tone. "It is my desire
that every possible effort should be made."
"Perhaps you can tell us something which may throw some light upon
the matter."
"I fear not; but all I know is at your service."
"We have heard from Mr. Cecil Barker that you did not actually
see--that you were never in the room where the tragedy occurred?"
"No, he turned me back upon the stairs. He begged me to return to my
room."
"Quite so. You had heard the shot, and you had at once come down."
"I put on my dressing gown and then came down."
"How long was it after hearing the shot that you were stopped on the
stair by Mr. Barker?"
"It may have been a couple of minutes. It is so hard to reckon time
at such a moment. He implored me not to go on. He assured me that I
could do nothing. Then Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, led me upstairs
again. It was all like some dreadful dream."
"Can you give us any idea how long your husband had been downstairs
before you heard the shot?"
"No, I cannot say. He went from his dressing room, and I did not hear
him go. He did the round of the house every night, for he was nervous
of fire. It is the only thing that I have ever known him nervous of."
"That is just the point which I want to come to, Mrs. Douglas. You
have known your husband only in England, have you not?"
"Yes, we have been married five years."
"Have you heard him speak of anything which occurred in America and
might bring some danger upon him?"
Mrs. Douglas thought earnestly before she answered. "Yes." she said
at last, "I have always felt that there was a danger hanging over
him. He refused to discuss it with me. It was not from want of
confidence in me--there was the most complete love and confidence
between us--but it was out of his desire to keep all alarm away from
me. He thought I should brood over it if I knew all, and so he was
silent."
"How did you know it, then?"
Mrs. Douglas's face lit with a quick smile. "Can a husband ever carry
about a secret all his life and a woman who loves him have no
suspicion of it? I knew it by his refusal to talk about some episodes
in his American life. I knew it by certain precautions he took. I
knew it by certain words he let fall. I knew it by the way he looked
at unexpected strangers. I was perfectly certain that he had some
powerful enemies, that he believed they were on his track, and that
he was always on his guard against them. I was so sure of it that for
years I have been terrified if ever he came home later than was
expected."
"Might I ask," asked Holmes, "what the words were which attracted
your attention?"
"The Valley of Fear," the lady answered. "That was an expression he
has used when I questioned him. 'I have been in the Valley of Fear. I
am not out of it yet.'--'Are we never to get out of the Valley of
Fear?' I have asked him when I have seen him more serious than usual.
'Sometimes I think that we never shall,' he has answered."
"Surely you asked him what he meant by the Valley of Fear?"
"I did; but his face would become very grave and he would shake his
head. 'It is bad enough that one of us should have been in its
shadow,' he said. 'Please God it shall never fall upon you!' It was
some real valley in which he had lived and in which something
terrible had occurred to him, of that I am certain; but I can tell
you no more."
"And he never mentioned any names?"
"Yes, he was delirious with fever once when he had his hunting
accident three years ago. Then I remember that there was a name that
came continually to his lips. He spoke it with anger and a sort of
horror. McGinty was the name--Bodymaster McGinty. I asked him when he
recovered who Bodymaster McGinty was, and whose body he was master
of. 'Never of mine, thank God!' he answered with a laugh, and that
was all I could get from him. But there is a connection between
Bodymaster McGinty and the Valley of Fear."
"There is one other point," said Inspector MacDonald. "You met Mr.
Douglas in a boarding house in London, did you not, and became
engaged to him there? Was there any romance, anything secret or
mysterious, about the wedding?"
"There was romance. There is always romance. There was nothing
mysterious."
"He had no rival?"
"No, I was quite free."
"You have heard, no doubt, that his wedding ring has been taken. Does
that suggest anything to you? Suppose that some enemy of his old life
had tracked him down and committed this crime, what possible reason
could he have for taking his wedding ring?"
For an instant I could have sworn that the faintest shadow of a smile
flickered over the woman's lips.
"I really cannot tell," she answered. "It is certainly a most
extraordinary thing."
"Well, we will not detain you any longer, and we are sorry to have
put you to this trouble at such a time," said the inspector. "There
are some other points, no doubt; but we can refer to you as they
arise."
She rose, and I was again conscious of that quick, questioning glance
with which she had just surveyed us. "What impression has my evidence
made upon you?" The question might as well have been spoken. Then,
with a bow, she swept from the room.
"She's a beautiful woman--a very beautiful woman," said MacDonald
thoughtfully, after the door had closed behind her. "This man Barker
has certainly been down here a good deal. He is a man who might be
attractive to a woman. He admits that the dead man was jealous, and
maybe he knew best himself what cause he had for jealousy. Then
there's that wedding ring. You can't get past that. The man who tears
a wedding ring off a dead man's--What do you say to it, Mr. Holmes?"
My friend had sat with his head upon his hands, sunk in the deepest
thought. Now he rose and rang the bell. "Ames," he said, when the
butler entered, "where is Mr. Cecil Barker now?"
"I'll see, sir."
He came back in a moment to say that Barker was in the garden.
"Can you remember, Ames, what Mr. Barker had on his feet last night
when you joined him in the study?"
"Yes, Mr. Holmes. He had a pair of bedroom slippers. I brought him
his boots when he went for the police."
"Where are the slippers now?"
"They are still under the chair in the hall."
"Very good, Ames. It is, of course, important for us to know which
tracks may be Mr. Barker's and which from outside."
"Yes, sir. I may say that I noticed that the slippers were stained
with blood--so indeed were my own."
"That is natural enough, considering the condition of the room. Very
good, Ames. We will ring if we want you."
A few minutes later we were in the study. Holmes had brought with him
the carpet slippers from the hall. As Ames had observed, the soles of
both were dark with blood.
"Strange!" murmured Holmes, as he stood in the light of the window
and examined them minutely. "Very strange indeed!"
Stooping with one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the slipper
upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded. He smiled
in silence at his colleagues.
The inspector was transfigured with excitement. His native accent
rattled like a stick upon railings.
"Man," he cried, "there's not a doubt of it! Barker has just marked
