He was doubly wrong: On the one hand, he could scarcely have provided anything more conducive to public morale than a new adventure by the always reassuring Sherlock Holmes, which gave citizens something to take their minds off the grisly business across the Channel. On the other hand, this particular novel ends with the implication that the forces of darkness are unconquerable, a disquieting thought in the face of the implacable Hun facing the Allies across the trenches.

Conan Doyle writes in the preface to Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Long Stories (1929) that “The valley of Fear had its origin through my reading a graphic account of the Molly McQuire [sic] outrages in the coal-fields of Pennsylvania.” That account was Allan Pinkerton’s The Molly Maguires and the Detectives, published in 1877, which details the experiences of James McParlan, a Pinkerton employee who masqueraded as James McKenna to build a case against a group of lawless Irish labor terrorists in Pennsylvania. Conan Doyle became a friend of Pinkerton’s son William, who apparently confided some information about his father’s career that Conan Doyle used in his new novel. When The valley of Fear was published, Pinkerton considered suing Conan Doyle for using this confidential information without asking permission. Exactly what Conan Doyle learned from Pinkerton we don’t know, but it’s one of those nice ironies that the son of the most famous American detective should have unwittingly provided information that formed an adventure of the world’s most famous fictional detective.

The Pinkerton liaison came several years after Conan Doyle learned of a similar infiltration of lawless gangs. In 1892 Thomas Beach had published Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, which detailed his penetration of a group of Irish revolutionaries in America, much like the Molly Maguires. Using the name Major Henri Le Caron, he gave evidence against them and then had to be guarded by the British government for years afterward for fear of reprisals. His death on April 1, 1894 had attracted Conan Doyle’s attention, for its announcement was much publicized and Le Caron was buried in Norwood, near where Conan Doyle was living at the time. The fact that the announcement came on April Fool’s Day gave rise to a rumor that the master spy’s demise was a ruse to throw killers off his trail, a feature Conan Doyle used in The Valley of Fear by having Douglas fake his own death for the same reason.

So there was historical precedence for the novel’s story. The new novel was originally written with a third-person narrator telling the entire story. By the time it was finally published in September 1915, Conan Doyle either had had second thoughts about the wisdom of that decision, or he was urged by someone to revise the work so that once again we have Watson as our trusty guide. As in A Study in Scarlet, the long flashback to experiences in America is written from a third-person point of view. We are told that Douglas presents Holmes and Watson with a manuscript explaining the provenance of the current situation. That manuscript is clearly the basis for the long flashback, but it isn’t clear whose words we are reading.

On first glance this would seem to be a step backward. After the awkward third-person flashback of A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle had gotten better and better about introducing the distant past into his novels. The Sign of Four lets two of the characters, Sholto and Small, each tell part of the previous story, so that no omniscient narrator obtrudes with testimony Watson couldn’t have heard. The Hound of the Baskervilles needs only a two-page letter about the history of the curse of the Baskervilles, read by Doctor Mortimer, to explain how the past is prologue to the present. Most readers don’t think of it as a flashback at all. At this point in his career, after reaching the peak of his ability to construct plots, why would Conan Doyle revert to a clumsy tactic of his youth?

A second glance—indeed, a long, hard stare, perhaps—reveals that Conan Doyle was trying something here that he couldn’t have begun to bring off in his younger days. We’re being asked to judge Douglas in a way that would be impossible if Watson were our guide. Watson is an admirable example of the dependable narrator. We believe what he says. The success of this story depends on our doubts about McMurdo/Edwards /Douglas. That doubt is first sown when Douglas reveals that an intruder, armed with a shotgun, was “accidentally” shot square in the face during a struggle. In view of the plan to use this accident to his advantage, one can’t help but wonder if in fact Douglas managed to capture Ted Baldwin, the intruder, and then cold-bloodedly execute him as the realization sank in that he would never be free from the retributive arm of the Scowrers. It seems a little too convenient for Baldwin’s face to be obliterated; and how exactly would an intruder get into a castle like Birlstone Manor, with a moat and a drawbridge, and then be surprised so quickly that he couldn’t get off a shot with a shotgun? It seems more likely that someone else with a gun got the drop on him. Part II convinces us that Baldwin was a killer who got just what was coming to him. But his premeditated killing, even if it saves Douglas’s life, would put Douglas in a morally ambiguous state. Our doubts about Douglas only grow when we note that Holmes doesn’t congratulate him for his escape. Holmes is strangely quiet, perhaps pondering this very ambiguity.

When we then read the story of Douglas’s career as secret agent, we have to wonder just how he managed to rise so high in an organization of killers, thieves, and scoundrels of all stripes without committing any crimes himself.