6 The Scowrers

Chapter 6 The Scowrers The man blinked at us with the dazed look of someone who had spent a long time in darkness. "I'm flabbergasted!" declared MacDonald. "If you're Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, then whose death have we been investigating these past two days, and where in the world did you just spring from? You seemed to come right out of the wall." "Ah, Mr. Mac!" said Holmes. "I told you to read that book on the history of this house. It has some quite miraculous hiding places. If it could hide a king, then I was certain it could conceal Mr. Douglas, too, and so it did. As soon as I fished that bundle of clothes out of the moat, I knew the body we found couldn't have belonged to Douglas but to the cyclist from Tunbridge Wells." "I don't regret any of it and I'd do it all again," said Douglas. "This gang has been hunting me

for years and I'm sick of it. And when I saw Baldwin in Tunbridge Wells, I... But don't blame my wife or Barker. They knew nothing about this. When you questioned them yesterday, they told you all they knew." "Tell us about Baldwin, Mr. Douglas," suggested MacDonald. "It was on January 5," said Douglas. "I was in Tunbridge Wells when I glimpsed him walking down the street. He's one of the gang who've been on my tail. I don't know how he found me. I was nervous all the next day, but I thought I was safe that night with the drawbridge up. I

never dreamed he'd already sneaked into the house. "When I entered the study, I immediately scented danger. If you've been on the run as long as I have, you develop an instinct for these things. So when Baldwin flung the curtain aside and aimed his shotgun at my chest, I was already charging at him. As he cocked the weapon to fire, I grabbed the barrel and tried to wrest it from him. His grip was as tight as iron, but I managed to push the barrel up under his chin. Maybe I pulled the trigger or maybe we both did. Anyhow, he got both barrels in the face.

"I was still standing there in shock when Barker and my wife came down. I began explaining to them what had happened. That's when the idea came to me of swapping places with him. "The man was roughly my size and height. He had the same silver hair and branded mark of the gang on his forearm. I fetched some spare clothes and in ten minutes I'd put my dressing gown on him and laid him out as you found him. We put his things in the moat and I laid the card he'd meant to lay on my body beside his. I even placed the plaster from my shaving cut on his

jaw. You slipped up there, Mr. Holmes. If you'd removed it, you'd have found no cut beneath it. The only problem was my wedding ring." Douglas held up his finger. "As you can see, it's on too tight to remove. "My plan was to lie low and let these people think Baldwin had got his man. Then I'd go abroad somewhere, joined by my 'widow', and live out the rest of my life in peace. "I suppose you can work out the rest for yourselves. Barker made the blood mark on the sill to show how the murderer escaped, then I hid, and he rang the bell for all he was worth."

"Who are these people who want to kill you, Mr. Douglas?" asked Mason. "They're part of a gang called the Scowrers," said Douglas. "They dominated Vermissa Valley, this coal-mining area in the western United States." "That would explain the V. V. on the card left by the body," said Holmes. Douglas nodded. "It came to be known as the Valley of Fear, because the Scowrers were so cruel to the people living there. "I was a detective back in those days, based in Chicago, and I was determined to bring the