It was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for one or two revellers upon their way home.  The party crossed the road, and, pushing open the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin and his men rushed in and up the stair which faced them.  McMurdo and another remained below.  From the room above came a shout, a cry for help, and then the sound of trampling feet and of falling chairs.  An instant later a gray-haired man rushed out on the landing.

He was seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles came tinkling down to McMurdo’s feet.  There was a thud and a groan.  He was on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clattering together as they fell upon him.  He writhed, and his long, thin limbs quivered under the blows.  The others ceased at last; but Baldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking at the man’s head, which he vainly endeavoured to defend with his arms.  His white hair was dabbled with patches of blood.  Baldwin was still stooping over his victim, putting in a short, vicious blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when McMurdo dashed up the 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?  Stand back!” He raised his stick; but McMurdo had whipped his pistol out of his pocket.

“Stand back yourself!” he cried.  “I’ll blow your face in if you lay a hand on me.  As to the lodge, wasn’t it the order of the Bodymaster that the man was not to be killed—­and what are you doing but killing him?”

“It’s truth he says,” remarked one of the men.

“By Gar! you’d best hurry yourselves!” cried the man below.  “The windows are all lighting up, and you’ll have the whole town here inside of five minutes.”

There was indeed the sound of shouting in the street, and a little group of compositors and pressmen was forming in the hall below and nerving itself to action.  Leaving the limp and motionless body of the editor at the head of the stair, the criminals rushed down and made their way swiftly along the street.  Having reached the Union House, some of them mixed with the crowd in McGinty’s saloon, whispering across the bar to the Boss that the job had been well carried through.  Others, and among them McMurdo, broke away into side streets, and so by devious paths to their own homes.

Chapter 4 — The Valley of Fear

When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to remember his initiation into the lodge.  His head ached with the effect of the drink, and his arm, where he had been branded, was hot and swollen.  Having his own peculiar source of income, he was irregular in his attendance at his work; so he had a late breakfast, and remained at home for the morning writing a long letter to a friend.  Afterwards he read the Daily Herald.  In a special column put in at the last moment he read: