He came upon Cumshaw very suddenly. The car was creeping through the trees at a snail's pace—there was no clearly defined track in that part of the bush, and Bryce was taking no unnecessary risks—when he caught sight of a figure that might or might not be the missing Mr. Cumshaw. He stopped the car at once and descended to the ground. As has already been noted earlier in these memoirs, Mr. Bryce, when occasion required it, for all his huge bulk, could move as agilely and noiselessly as that pre-eminently silent animal, the domestic cat. He had been so keyed up by the emotional stresses of the last few days that he threw himself into the adventure with all the zest of a schoolboy just being introduced into romance. The man was dodging through the trees a hundred yards or so ahead, and there was something so furtive about his movements that Bryce approached with more than his usual caution.
The man halted and glanced swiftly around. Bryce flattened himself against a handy tree, and fervently hoped that the shadow was thick enough to conceal him. The other patently had no idea that he was being followed, for, apparently quite satisfied with his hasty scrutiny, he dropped on his knees and commenced scraping the earth away with the point of a knife that had appeared in his hand with the magical suddenness of a conjuring trick. As the man worked away Bryce peeped out from his hiding-place and saw then that it was indeed Cumshaw. He watched fascinated. His heart was thumping away like the piston of a steam-engine, and some queer unnamed instinct told him that the chase was drawing to a close. Cumshaw was digging up something of vital importance; it might be the treasure itself or perhaps the key to it. But why should Cumshaw have gone so stealthily to work unless—? "Unless he is going to cut me out of it," said Bryce to himself.
Abruptly the other straightened up and hugged something to his breast. It was covered with black loam, and at the distance Bryce could not tell what it was. He slipped stealthily from tree to tree until he had wormed his noiseless way right up to Cumshaw. Then, seeing that he had his man cut off should he attempt to escape, he stepped out into the open and laid a kindly hand on the fugitive's shoulder. Cumshaw turned in a flash, and, in the excitement of the moment, the earth-covered object slipped out of his hands and fell on the grass at his feet.
"Where have you been all this time?" Bryce asked jovially.
Cumshaw stared at him in a puzzled way. His face at first had shown all the symptoms of fear, but the moment Bryce spoke they faded out, to be replaced by a very obvious air of relief. Yet there was nothing of recognition in the man's eyes; they were full of a great blank wonder, like the eyes of a child who takes its first look at the teeming life beyond its doors. His forehead crinkled up as if he were trying to recall something that had slipped his memory.
"Who are you?" he said at length. "I ... I don't think I know you," and he brushed his forehead with a weak, ineffective gesture of the hand. It was then that Bryce noticed the matted, blood-stained condition of his hair and the big purple bruise that disfigured his temple. His quick mind guessed at what had happened, though, erroneously enough, he concluded that Cumshaw had received the blows in an encounter with the men who had been the original cause of the man's flight.
"You'd better come with me, Cumshaw," he said in the same soothing tone that he would have applied to a tired child.
"I'm going home," said Cumshaw with weak stubbornness. "I don't want to go with you."
"I'll take you home," said Bryce.
That he decided was the only thing he could do. Cumshaw was in no fit state to continue the search for his lost valley, and Bryce realised that it would not be safe to leave him uncared for. If he went home with Cumshaw he would be throwing his pursuers off the track. That would help him considerably. He had no fear that they would discover the valley during his absence; their attack on him showed that they had come to the end of their resources, and fancied that their only hope of touching any of the spoils was by forcing the secret out of Bryce. Of course it was quite on the cards that they would follow the car, but it was just as likely that they would make no definite move until they had solved the meaning of his change of plans.
Cumshaw was still standing like a man in a dream. Bryce placed his hand on the man's arm.
"Come along with me," he said. "I'll see that you get safely home."
He bent down quickly and picked up the loam-encrusted object that Cumshaw had dropped in the first moment of the encounter, Cumshaw followed his movements with troubled eyes, but did not interfere in any way. Bryce could see that the thing was a bit of wood, and on one piece of it, where the earth had been scraped off, there were letters scratched. He thrust it into his pocket, meaning to examine it more closely at his leisure.
Cumshaw walked to the car with him. He yielded to the stronger will without any show of resistance. All his own will-power seemed to have departed, and he obeyed Bryce with a child-like faith. Once in the car he slumped into the corner and closed his eyes. Bryce seized the opportunity thus given him to steal another look at the wood he had picked up. He scraped away what loam he could with his finger nail, and soon was able to make out two complete words.
"This'll have to wait," he said with a sigh, as he thrust it back into his pocket. "This bit of wood's got your name on it, Mr. Abel Cumshaw, and I'll bet all I ever owned that it's the key you've been hunting for."
He cranked up the car, and soon was speeding back to the high road. In his corner Mr. Cumshaw slept.
Ten minutes after they reached the main road another car swung out along the Ararat road. There were three men in it, the chauffeur and two passengers. One of the latter held his hand to a wounded shoulder, and swore at the chauffeur every time the car jolted and sent a quiver of pain through the wound.
In course of time Bryce's car came to a little hamlet on the Geelong to Colac road—a hamlet that must be nameless in this story. There he found the Albert Cumshaw of this tale, delivered his father into his care and told him all that had happened, suppressing only the episode of the finding of the wood. He found Albert Cumshaw easier to deal with than he had expected—as a matter of fact the younger man already knew much of his father's story—and the result of the conversation was that the search was held over, pending the elder Cumshaw's recovery.
Bryce remained the night with the Cumshaws, saw that a doctor was secured who would give skilled attention to the elder man, and then early in the morning set out for home. The day was very warm, and the cool breeze that presently sprang up from the ocean moved Bryce to motor down to the coast. At the worst it was only a few miles out of his road. At first he had no intention of making a stop at the heads, but the sea as he came within sight of it looked so cool and inviting that he was tempted to have a dip. He parked his car in the reserve, purchased a bathing suit at the local store and ambled down to the beach. It was only when he commenced to undress that he recollected that the wood was still in his pocket, so with rare caution he thrust it under the sand, quite satisfied that no one would dream of looking there. He had no idea that his pursuers were so close behind him; he was merely taking precautions against any casual tramp who might be tempted to run through his pockets.
Ten minutes later James Carstairs, explorer, gentleman and rolling stone, limped into the picture, and the story of The Lost Valley entered upon its penultimate phase.
"You may smoke if you like, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira said graciously to our visitor.
I said nothing; instead I silently handed the man my cigar-case. He selected a weed with a discriminating care that I felt cast an unwarranted reflection on the quality of the cigars I smoked. I watched him in silence while he cut off the end with a neat, precise stroke of his penknife, lit the cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his mouth. All the time I was staring at him I could feel Moira's eyes on me, and I knew that she was wondering what made me so boorish and morose. Or, perhaps, with a woman's keen instinct for ferreting out the things she shouldn't know anything about, she guessed just what was the matter. To tell the truth I was just beginning to feel a little jealous. Frankly I considered that she was paying too much attention to Mr. Albert Cumshaw, and I hadn't two sharp eyes without seeing that he openly admired her. Of course I had turned down her overtures of reconciliation, and I think I told her plainly enough that there was no possibility of my falling in love with her again; but, if all that were perfectly true, I shouldn't have been jealous because the two of them took to making eyes at each other. The fact remained that I was a little hurt by what I saw, and I had to recognise, even though I ran counter to the promptings of my common-sense, that I wasn't as indifferent to her as I would have myself believe.
I brought myself back with a jerk to the matter in hand.
"What do you propose doing about the matter?" I asked of Cumshaw.
He did not reply immediately. His right little finger flipped the ash from off the end of his cigar, and then the dark curly head lifted and the glowing eyes looked straight into mine.
"What do I propose doing!" he repeated. "Well, if it was left to me," he said, after a contemplative pause, "I'd say the treasure's there, and the sooner we go after it the better. We know already that there's other people on the job—they killed Mr. Bryce and they made a mess of the Dad—and it's all right thinking, as Mr. Bryce did, that they've come to the end of their tether and are waiting for us to set the pace for them. There's been so many miracles in this play already that it doesn't do to risk the chance of any more. We've got no absolute guarantee that they won't stumble on the key to everything while we're wasting time here. You say you've got a cypher Mr. Bryce left you. Well, that cypher contains the position of the treasure; there's no doubt about that in my mind. Bradby carved it on the wood—neither he nor the Dad had any paper with them at the time—and from what I've heard of the man I'm confident that it's the kind of thing he would do. Then when Mr. Bryce got hold of it he burnt the wood and threw what was on it into a sort of cryptogram. One way and another he was pretty cautious when the fit took him, though I must say that when it was a question of his own life he wasn't so particular. It boils down to this. The Dad's out of the game for good and we've got to use our own wits. Within limits we've got a fair idea of the position of the valley, and, once we've solved the cypher, we'll probably have something more definite to go on."
"That," I remarked, "is supposing we do solve it. As far as I can see it's too weird for anything."
"Uncle," said Moira severely, "wouldn't have written it if he didn't think you could solve it. That's why he made it easy."
"If you think it's easy," I retorted, "take it yourself and see what you can make of it."
"That's a good idea," Cumshaw cut in, turning my own shaft against myself. "Suppose we all have a shot at it and see what we can make of it. We might get it all out and again we mightn't. When we get as far as we can we'll all pool our efforts, and maybe we'll make something out of it that way."
"An excellent suggestion, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira said, and darted a glance of triumph at me. It said as plainly as so many words that here was a champion for her, a man who would defend her against the whole world. Of course I ignored it. What man would do anything else under the circumstances? But there are some things, of which this was one, that the more one ignores them the more insistent as to their presence do they become. So, though I affected not to see Moira's little glance of triumph, it photographed itself upon my mind's eye and completely spoiled the evening for me.
"We'll get Jim here to type out a copy for you before you go, Mr. Cumshaw," she promised, "and you can see what you can make of it."
"Thanks," said the young man briefly. I had expected him to make a bigger mouthful of it than that, and I thought it odd that he did not. It struck me too as queer that he did not ask for a look at the cypher; an ordinary man would have known no peace until he had examined it in all its baffling details. As I was to learn, Mr. Cumshaw was no ordinary man, and, for a young chap of his age, had his emotions and inclinations under rather remarkable control.
I stood up. "If you want that cypher," I said, "I'll type it out now, and you can study it on the way home if you wish."
"It's very kind of you," Cumshaw murmured with a well-bred lack of enthusiasm.
"I think," said Moira, "that we'd all better adjourn to the study. I don't like to think of anyone being in there alone, especially at night. You see," she explained to Cumshaw, "the room hasn't been used since Uncle's death. He was killed in that very room ... in front of my eyes."
"I understand," said Cumshaw softly, and he rose to his feet and held the door open for Moira to pass out. She led the way to the study and unlocked the door. It had been a fad of hers ever since the tragedy to keep the room sealed, and, as I saw no reason for gainsaying her, I had never interfered. She switched on the light and we stood for a moment on the threshold, dazzled by the unaccustomed radiance. Nothing in the place had been touched—we had not disturbed anything during our search for Bryce's papers—and, save for the absence of some of the actors in the scene, it might have been the very night of the tragedy itself.
I broke the spell by walking into the room and proceeding to take the cover off the typewriter. The machine had not been used since its owner had died. Despite the manner in which I had lied to Bryce, I knew a thing or two about typewriters. As a matter of fact I transcribed the greater part of my father's three volumes of Solomon Island Ethnology on just such another machine. I sat down at the table and drew from my pocket the letter and the cypher, both of which I had thrust out of sight when Albert Cumshaw had been announced that afternoon.
"There's the cypher," I said, and I spread the sheet out on the table.
Cumshaw bent over it and read out aloud from beginning to end.
"2@3; 5@3 &9; 3 5433-3/4 5@ 3 @75 £994 1/4;£ 5@3 48½8;? ½7; ¼43 8; & 8;3 —3¼½743 ½3:3; "335 3¼½5.5@3; "¼/3 £843/5 ;945@¾£4¼2 ¼;95@34 &8;3 ¼5 48?@5 ¼;?&3½ 59 5@3 043:897½ 9;3¾3)53;£8;? " 94 523&:3 "335.£8? 5@3;," he said, stumbling every now and then at the unfamiliar expressions.
"What do you make of it?" I asked.
He looked up at me with just the flicker of a smile about the corners of his mouth. "I can't say just yet," he replied. "All these things take time. You can't solve them in an instant."
"I thought we might," I said, with just the least hint of offensiveness in my tone. I don't know whether or not he noticed it, but if he did he was gentleman enough to ignore it.
"All right," I ran on, "I'll type this out if one of you'll read it to me. Go slowly, as I don't want to have any mistakes. It's bad enough to have to do it once without having to do it again."
"I'll read it," Cumshaw volunteered. I nodded to show my agreement. I then threaded the paper through and said, "I'm ready."
He began to read it very slowly and carefully, and I typed away as he spoke. I had just got the first four or five combinations down when Moira interrupted me.
"I knew you'd make a mess of it," she said coldly. "I told you so at the beginning." As a matter of fact she had said no such thing, but I let it pass.
"What's wrong?" I queried, looking up at her.
"I've been watching you," said she, "and you haven't depressed your figure lever once. You must have it all wrong. It'll just be simple letters instead of the signs."
I had been typing all the time with my eyes on the keyboard, and I hadn't once glanced at the finished work. Now I looked at it I saw that she was right. I had been typing letters all along when I should have been printing figures. And then something queer about the letters struck me. My heart gave a jump.
"Go on," I said huskily to Cumshaw. "Give me a few more."
He read out two or three more combinations and then I leaned back in the chair. "Look," I said triumphantly, "look what I've done!"
Two heads bobbed down over my work, stared at it for a moment, and then two pairs of eyes smiled at me.
"You've solved it by accident," said Cumshaw.
"I'm sorry for what I said," Moira said simply.
"It's just the simplest cypher in existence," I said. "You've got a keyboard with letters and figures on it. When you want letters you type straight out, and when you want figures you just depress the lever. Now look at this. That 5 is on the same key as T, @ is on H's key, 3 means E, and so on. When Bryce worked it out he simply pressed down the figure lever and left it down, and now to reverse the process all we've got to do is to hit the keys these signs are on and leave the lever alone. Simple, isn't it?"
"Very," said Cumshaw.
"Get it all out, Jim, quick!" said Moira with feminine impatience.
I did. I pressed 2 and I got W, and so on all along the keyboard, and when I had finished I pulled the sheet out and handed it to them. "Read it out, Moira," I said. "It's your turn."
"'When the Lone Tree, the hut door and the rising sun are in line measure seven feet east. Then face direct north, draw another line at right angles to previous one, extending for twelve feet. Dig then.'"
"If it hadn't been for you," said Cumshaw, "we wouldn't have found it. I congratulate you," and he held out his hand to me.
"Rubbish!" I said. "It was all a lucky accident." But all the same I took the proffered hand.
"We can go right on with it now," Moira cried joyously. "There's nothing to stop us."
"Only that we've got to find the valley yet," said Cumshaw gloomily. "My father made several attempts but couldn't locate it."
"You've got to bear in mind," I told them, "that we've got some information your father hadn't, strange though it seems."
"And that?" Cumshaw queried quickly.
"We're looking for a valley that's got a lone tree overlooking it. Your father didn't seem to be aware of that."
Cumshaw seized the paper and read it through quickly. "By the Lord Harry, you're right, Carstairs! That's one piece of information he didn't have. If he had known that when he went after the gold himself he'd have got it."
"Maybe he would," I said doubtfully.
"You don't seem too sure of it, Carstairs," Cumshaw remarked, with a sidelong glance at Moira.
"No more I am," I told him. "I don't like our chances either."
"But," he protested with a puzzled indrawing of his eyebrows, "as far as we're concerned it's as easy as falling off a log."
"Just as easy," I agreed, "providing our friends the enemy don't interfere. They don't seem to be the kind of men who rest on their oars, that is if we can judge anything from their past exploits."
"You're right there, Carstairs," Cumshaw said. "I never gave them a thought, but I see now that they're likely to prove a pretty active menace to our safety."
"That," I said, turning to Moira, "cuts out all possibility of your coming with us. You can't be running into danger."
"Can't I just," she said with an assertive toss of her head, "and, whether I can or not, I'm going," she finished.
I looked at Cumshaw. I could not tell from his expression whether he was pleased or sorry. His face was as devoid of emotion as that of a china doll.
"What do you think about it?" I asked him straight out.
He glanced at me in his turn with a curious baffling light in his dark eyes, and I felt as if he had stripped my soul bare of all pretences and was reading my thoughts in all their nakedness.
"I should think," he said at length with an air of absolute impartiality, "that Miss Drummond is the mistress of her own actions and neither you nor I have any right to dictate what she is to do."
"Have it your own way then," I said, with difficulty suppressing my rising anger. "But if anything goes wrong remember that I warned you beforehand."
"I'll remember that," Moira said, and she favored Cumshaw with a little smile of gratitude. She never smiled at me like that, not even in those far-away days when we were all the world to each other or thought we were. Which in the end amounts to much the same thing.
"Well, if you don't mind," said Cumshaw, breaking an awkward silence, "I'll go home now and think matters over. And then to-morrow we'll decide what to do."
"Home?" I echoed. "I thought——" And then I stopped.
"I'm staying in town," he said with a smile. "That's what I meant when I said home."
"In that case," I said, "you'll be handy whenever we want you. You'd better leave your address in case we want you in a hurry."
He scribbled his address—a leading city hotel—on a blank card and handed it to me. I glanced at it and then thrust it into my pocket. When I looked up again he was holding Moira's hand in his, just a trifle longer than convention demanded I thought, and saying something to her that I did not catch. She smiled in return, a dazzling smile, and said quite distinctly, "Please call whenever you feel inclined. There is no need for us to stand on ceremony with each other now we're partners."
I saw him to the door. At the threshold he turned and spoke with one foot on the step and the other on the ground, taking up that attitude of unaffected ease that gives an air of friendliness to even the most formal conversation.
"I'm rather pleased I met you, Carstairs," he said. "In one way and another I've heard a lot about you, and I think you've got the kind of level head we'll need before we've seen this business through."
"Thank you," I replied. I was nearly going to say 'Soft words butter no parsnips,' but my common-sense came to my aid just in time to prevent me making a fool of myself. He held out his hand, and I took it in the spirit in which he had offered it to me. Nevertheless I was absurdly jealous of the man, though Heaven knows I hadn't the least reason to be. I could see with half an eye that he had made a good impression on Moira, and the way she had spoken to him, especially that last remark of hers, showed me that she was egging him on. It didn't matter one single solitary damn to me. I had told her clearly and definitely that we were business partners and that love was altogether out of the question. Yet here was I, the moment a potential rival appeared on the scene, behaving for all the world like a spoilt child. And, like a spoilt child, for my own good I needed someone to bring me sharply and suddenly to my bearings.
Cumshaw bade me a cheerful good-night. I saw his lithe figure swing along through the sub-tropical darkness of a moonless summer night. Then the latch on the gate clicked with the ringing sound of metal striking against metal. I closed the door and went inside.
Moira was standing in the study just as I had left her, standing as motionless and devoid of life as a statue of carven stone. I don't think she heard me at first.
"Well," I said conversationally, "how is it now?"
She turned at the sound of my voice and faced me squarely. I could see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and something inside of me moved me with a sudden impulse to go up to her. I placed my hands on her shoulders and was amazed to find how unsteady they were. They trembled, my hands trembled! And yet they used to tell me in the old Island days that I hadn't a nerve in my body.
I was quite prepared for anything except what really happened. I could feel a sort of tension in the atmosphere, and I expected her to do something theatrical. But she didn't. She backed away from me, but she didn't go far. The table was behind her.
I don't know how long we stood looking at each other. It seemed a lifetime to me, and the silence was the sort that a man feels it sacrilege to break.
"You make it very hard for me, Jim," Moira said calmly. The tears were still in her eyes, but her voice was under excellent control. It didn't vibrate a note. She looked at me as she spoke, looked me straight in the eyes, and I think it was then that I began to realise what an ass I had been making of myself.
"How do I make it hard?" I asked. My voice was curiously low, almost husky in fact. I rather think she noticed it and took heart therefrom. A man is very easy to handle when he is not quite sure of himself.
"I've got to pretend," she said in answer to my question. "Pretend that you are nothing to me when——"
She stopped short. It seemed almost as if she regretted that she had said so much.
"Go on," I urged.
"There's not much to say," she continued. "I just want to tell you, to tell you in such a way that you'll believe me, that if I've treated you shamefully I've suffered for it. I can't make any reparation for it; you were quite right in saying that it is too late now to alter things. I just want you to know that I'm sorry. I can't say much more than that, though I don't want to take any credit for it now, seeing that it's been practically forced out of me."
I remembered the way she had been standing when I came in, the tears in her eyes, and the way she had backed out of my reach the moment I put my hands on her shoulders. It would have been so easy for her to have done the other thing, but she hadn't, and I admired her all the more for it. She might easily have captured me in the first flush of emotion, but she had instead given me time to think and a chance to get away if I wanted to. There was something in her attitude that appealed to my sense of fair play and at the same time prevented me from in any way misinterpreting her last remark.
"Moira," I said, "were you crying when I came in just now?"
Her lip trembled a little as she asked, "Why do you want to know?"
"Because," I said slowly, "I've solved one riddle already to-night, and I've a mind to solve another before I go to bed."
"I was crying," she admitted, "only I didn't mean you to see."
"And why was that?"
"I thought you might imagine I was just doing it."
I knew what she meant; there was no need for her to explain further. She didn't want to influence me in any way; whatever I did must be done of my own free will.
"I'm beginning to understand," I said slowly.
"Then you'll forgive?" she said quickly, and one hand went up to her throat as if she were choking.
I nodded and impulsively she held out her hand to me. I did not take it, and she half-turned so that I would not see what was in her eyes.
"Can't we even be friends?" she said, with a queer little catch in her words.
Something snapped in my head at that, and the words I had been holding back all the evening came to my lips in a rush of speech.
"I didn't mean you to take it that way," I said desperately. "I wouldn't shake hands because ... that's not what I want. It's too stand-offish. I'm going to do more than forgive, and we're going to me more than friends, if you still want me."
"You know I want you," she said softly with her head bowed shyly and the blushes rising in her cheeks.
I took her in my arms and kissed her.
Once we had definitely fixed the date of our departure we lost no time in making ready. As the days went by I began to see more and more clearly that it was just as well I had thrown in my lot with Moira and young Cumshaw. Neither of them had the least idea of organisation, and they seemed to think that things just happened of their own accord. Moira couldn't see anything else but the glamor and romance of the adventure, and I found that, for all his cleverness, Albert Cumshaw did not know what was essential to the expedition and what wasn't.
"We can't start off like a picnic party," I said to them on one occasion, "and just wander on until we come to a likely spot. We've got to have everything planned out right down to the last box of matches and the last cartridge."
Cumshaw drew a deep breath. "Cartridges!" he said, "Are you talking figuratively?"
"No," I answered. "I'm speaking literally. It might yet be the case of the last cartridge. You must remember that, even if we get the gold and come back here in safety, we're still not out of the wood. We're not safe until our friends the enemy are removed from our paths for ever."
"You mean that they must be killed?" Moira demanded.
"I don't mean anything of the kind," I answered. "As a matter of fact I've got a perfect horror of killing people. It makes such a mess, and I'm naturally a rather tidy person."
Cumshaw laughed softly, but Moira bit her lip, though she made no reply to what I had said.
"Now, while we're talking about it," I ran on, "I just want to impress on you the fact that we aren't going off into the bush—not the kind of bush that you read about in books, where it's all scrub and myall blacks and things like that. Most of the time we'll be within coo-ee of civilisation. Most of Western Victoria's pretty well settled, and it's just the luck of the game and the formation of the country that this valley's remained so long hidden away. We'll be near enough to people all the time to be noticeable if we do anything remarkable. We've got to go to work so that we'll attract as little attention as possible. We'll want food, enough for several weeks, I suppose, and we've got to get it and take it with us, and do it all in such a way that nobody's going to wonder what we're after. Another thing that that reminds me of. Miss Drummond here had better keep out of sight as long as she can. We two can manage to escape observation, but people always want to know what a woman's doing in it when there's anything suspicious happening."
"If you mean by that that you think I can be turned back at the last moment, you're making a mistake," Moira informed me.
"I don't mean that," I said calmly, "but I want to take every precaution that I can. I'm in charge of this expedition, elected by three votes to nothing, and I'm going to run things the way I think best. It mightn't be the best way in the end, but that's quite another matter. I haven't wandered across the world from Yokohama to the White Nile and from the Klondyke to the Solomons without knowing how to organise an expedition."
"You're right there," Cumshaw acknowledged. "You're the only one amongst us who's had practical experience. In future what you say goes."
"That's the spirit," I said briskly. "What have you to say, Moira?"
"You know best," she answered. "As long as you don't leave me out altogether I'll agree to anything, but I want to take my share of the risk too."
"Apparently," I remarked, "everyone's afraid that everybody else'll have the lion's share of the fighting. Well, if I can fix it, there'll not be any fighting at all."
"What do you mean?" Cumshaw asked interestedly.
"That's nothing to do with the situation at present," I informed him. "You'll all see when the time's ripe. Now what's next?"
"There's nothing more that I know of," Cumshaw volunteered.
"And you, Moira?"
"I think I've got everything fixed," she answered.
"That means we can start at the end of the week," I said with satisfaction. "It looks as if fortune's turning our way at last."
The three of us laughed together, and Cumshaw I think it was who said, "Success to the expedition!" It sounded very nice, and we were all so sure that things were going to turn out well. But there was one little point that all of us had overlooked, and that was destined in one way and another to upset our plans to a remarkable extent.
Profiting by Bryce's experience, I decided to leave the car at home, as I realised that we would have to abandon it sooner or later, and nothing is so apt to set foolish people talking as an apparently ownerless car. I resolved on making our headquarters at the spot where by all accounts the unlamented Mr. Bradby had met his death. For one thing all the later developments of the chase had centred round that one spot, and Bryce himself had gone there unhesitatingly by the shortest and most direct route he knew of. I couldn't see at the time where I could find a better jumping-off place. To say the least it was a fixed point from which to start exploring, and we had the comforting knowledge, though it might not be of any practical use to us, that the valley itself was within two or three days' march. With it as the centre we would have to cast a circle with a radius of anything up to fifty miles, and then somewhere within the enclosed area we might, or might not, find the elusive vale that held the treasure.
We approached the rendezvous by widely divergent routes. It was a rather extravagant precaution, no doubt, but then I wasn't taking any risks that I could possibly avoid. The murderous gentlemen who were quite certainly on our track were a power to be reckoned with, and at the same time we had to keep our eyes open for the law itself. It was all right for Bryce to say that he was playing within the law—quite possibly he was—but I had no idea of paying any percentage to the Crown. I was rather hazy on the matter myself, though I seemed to have heard somewhere or other that the Government always gobbled a big share of the loot in the case of treasure trove. At any rate the quieter we kept the expedition the less likelihood there was of us having to pay anything at all.
Moira was to travel with me from Murtoa, and Cumshaw decided to train as far as Landsborough—the recently opened Crowlands to Navarre railway would take him that far—and then do the rest across the hills on foot. His was the longer and more difficult route, and I had intended at first to take it myself, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with this tale; but he was so insistent, and at one stage threatened so much unpleasantness, that I gave into him, if only for the sake of peace. Before we started I had another talk with Moira and endeavored to dissuade her from accompanying us, but she very calmly told me that she had additional reasons now for going with us. There was sure to be trouble, she admitted that much; but then wasn't her place by my side, more especially if things weren't all they should be? Her logic left much to be desired, but it had the one merit of achieving its object. It was devastating; it completely crushed all my arguments and left me without a leg to stand on.
The late March of the year 1919 saw the three of us at the rendezvous, which we had reached without incident of any sort. Contrary to our expectations the other party had not been sighted, and the outlook was certainly auspicious. For all that I felt worried. Everything was going along too swimmingly, and I had a queer feeling that we would meet with trouble very shortly, if only to even things up. Ease and success can only be won after much expenditure of blood and tears; there is not a thing in life worth trying for that can be bought with a minimum of effort. The greater the prize, the greater the price one must pay; always one pays, with health, with limbs, sometimes with life itself.
During the time Moira and I had been travelling together I had slept of a night with one eye more or less open, and the strain of being constantly on the alert was just beginning to tell on me. As a consequence I was very pleased when Cumshaw suggested that we should take watch and watch about. I agreed, with the reservation that I must always be on guard for the dawn-watch. I didn't explain why I was so anxious to take that particular watch, and, though I noticed Moira looking curiously at me, she made no remark. I knew from experience that men are at their sleepiest about four o'clock in the morning, and an attack can be successfully launched then that would fail at any other hour of the day or night. I had yet to test Cumshaw on active service, so I claimed the four o'clock stretch for my own. It doesn't hurt to be careful; I've never yet met anyone who was sorry he had taken precautions.
We camped within a hundred yards of the creek, and after supper Cumshaw and I sprawled on the grass and talked. Moira had retired to an improvised tent we had fashioned for her, and, as it was just out of earshot, we were free to speak our thoughts. I had not seen Cumshaw for the better part of two weeks—he had started from his own place and come right on from there without calling on me again—and I hoped that he might have some further news for me. I asked him casually how his father was getting on.
"Right enough," he said, blowing a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. "Some days you wouldn't think there was a thing wrong with him. He'll talk pretty lucidly at times, but it isn't anything that can be of any use to us. He doesn't seem to have taken much notice of the position of the valley, he apparently thought at the time that it would be very simple to pick it up again, and I fancy that Bradby must have confirmed him in that view. He couldn't have taken into account the way they had twisted about in the mountains. It's the simplest thing in the world to lose yourself here, the more so if you're confident you know your way."
"You've about struck it there," I said. "I just want to give you a little piece of advice, and I hope you won't take it amiss. I don't want to talk about this expedition any more than I can help for two reasons. One's this: I don't wish to cause Miss Drummond any more uneasiness than is absolutely necessary. You know as well as I do that there's a big chance of the lot of us being wiped out just about the time we get within sight of the end. I wouldn't be surprised if they let us walk into a trap and finished us at their leisure. As for the other reason—well, it's never safe to say that you're alone anywhere. If we raise our voices above whispers here we might be giving away valuable information. So just let us keep watch on our tongues. More hopes have been ruined and more chances of success spoilt by gabbling tongues than by any other dozen causes all rolled together."
"I can quite understand that," Cumshaw said, between puffs at his pipe. It was one of those neat little affairs with a round bowl, a spick-and-span pipe that had burnt an even color and that shone as brightly as the day he bought it. My pipe was a sorrier article; it was battered and blackened, and one side of the bowl was down beneath the level of the other, showing that it had been lighted oftener with a blazing brand than with the orthodox matches. In a way it was like its owner; it had been tested by fire and had survived the test. If I were philosophical—but then I wasn't, and that's about all there is to it.
"I didn't go to Landsborough," Cumshaw said after a pause. "I missed my train at Ararat, and so I came on to Great Western. It's much the shorter way. I wish you had known of it before."
"I'm all the better pleased you came that way," I told him. "It will help to disorganise the chase."
He bent over, picked up a live coal in his bare fingers and applied it to his pipe before replying.
"I rather think," he said slowly, "that it will have just the opposite effect."
"You can't have any nerves in those fingertips of yours," I said. "Why will it?"
"I don't seem to have any, do I? I think I saw one of the men at Great Western."
"You don't know them," I said. "How could you?"
"Mr. Bryce described them in his letter," Cumshaw answered. "This man fitted the description of one of them, a dark sort of chap."
"Spanish type?" I queried.
Cumshaw nodded. "I wonder why it is," he ran on, "that we're always more suspicious of that sort of man than, say, a fair type?"
"Relic of the Armada, I suppose," I suggested. "Tell me all about the man you saw."
"I was coming along the roadside," Cumshaw began, "past one of the vineyards, when I noticed a man working close at hand. I was just going to pass by when it struck me that he was the only person about. I thought that rather queer and I gave him a second look. Then I saw that he wasn't digging, as I had thought at first, but that he was scratching aimlessly at the ground. One of those queer feelings that seem altogether unrelated to fact crept over me. Call it second sight or any other fancy name you please, the fact remains that I suddenly knew—not thought, mind you; I knew—that he did not want me to notice him and that he was pretending to be one of the workmen, just so that I would pass him by without more than a cursory glance. When I came to think it over afterwards, I remembered that it struck me when first I saw him that he was the only man I had seen in the vineyards for miles. Of course I had that idea in my mind when I looked at him the second time. That doesn't explain how I understood that I was the very man he did not want to see. He had his head bent down naturally, his hat well drawn over his face, and he went on scratching and scraping as if his very life depended on the energy with which he worked. I didn't get more than a passing glimpse of him, and that wasn't too good—you can't go over to a man and pull off his hat just because he looks suspicious—but I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that he's one of the men we'll have to deal with."
"Perhaps so," I said. "At any rate I'm not going to allow chance workers in the fields to rob me of my night's rest."
"No more am I," assented Cumshaw. "So you don't think there's any likelihood——."
"I don't think anything at all," I cut in. "I take proper precautions, that's all."
He made no comment on my unceremonious interruption, but the strange half-smile he gave me showed that he realised in part at least how his story had affected me. As a matter of fact I was more perturbed than I cared to admit. I had been thinking things over all day, and it had just occurred to me that, seeing we had heard nothing of them since Bryce's death, it was quite possible that they were even now following up the false clue that he had laid for them, and which one of them had got away with the night of the burglary. If that were so, why had they come back and killed Bryce? It was a curious enough situation, and the more I thought about it the more I became convinced that I was right. Our immunity so far was due solely to the fact that the others were well occupied with the faked plan they had stolen on that memorable evening. Now on top of that Albert Cumshaw must come with this circumstantial story of his and upset all my deductions. The strange part of it was, though my reason told me that he had been a victim of his own brilliant imagination, part of my mind—that part that believed in second sight and banshees and were-wolves, and stuff of that sort—told me that he was not so very much wrong after all.
"I'll get to sleep," he said, interrupting the train of my thoughts. "I'll be fresh when my turn comes for guard."
"Tell me," I said, for the matter had been puzzling me all night, "where did you learn to light your pipe with red-hot coals?"
"Oh, that," he said with a laugh. "I saw you doing it earlier in the evening, and I made up my mind that what you did I could do."
"Then it must have burnt you."
"Horribly," he said with a grimace. "Good-night."
"This," I remarked, "is the sort of country Adam Lindsay Gordon would have loved. No man but he could do justice to it."
"We've been out seven days," said Cumshaw, "we've travelled God knows how many miles, we've climbed up a Hades of a lot of mountains, and I don't think there's a blind creek for twenty miles that we haven't followed to the end and back again, and at the end of it all we're no nearer the Valley than we were when we started. Gordon might have made an epic out of it, but I'm hanged if I'm poet enough to appreciate the country or philosopher enough to ignore the sheer physical discomforts of the journey."
"If you'd been through the things I've been through," I asserted, "if you'd been in New Guinea when there was a gold-strike on and had to climb hundreds of feet up a straight cliff to get to the fields, hanging on all the time to creepers as thick as your wrist, you'd think this was just Paradise. If you'd been with me in the sweltering Solomon Island jungle, where every breath you took made the perspiration stand out on your forehead in big beads, or up in the Klondyke when it was fifty below and a man's own breath turned into ice about his mouth, you'd know what life really meant. Here you're in the Garden of Victoria; you see sights that knock some of the beauty spots of the world into a cocked hat, and all you can do is growl at the country. You can't expect to go up and down the mountain side in a lift or anything of the sort."
"It's all very well for you to talk like that," he objected. "You're used to this kind of life; we're not. That makes all the difference."
"So it seems," I said. "But I haven't the slightest intention of giving in yet. As a matter of fact I rather think we've been a little too sure that we were on the right track. We haven't been as careful as we might. We've gone along blindly."
"What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Just this. We've been so infernally confident that we only had to find a clump of wattle and a lone tree, and we were there. Now that lone tree must be somewhere on the east side of the valley, and, despite the fact that it's on high ground, it's so hidden that we wouldn't see it until we were almost on top of it. It might be perfectly visible from inside the valley, and at the same time be hidden from the outside by another hill. As for the wattle, has it ever struck you that wattle only begins to spring into bloom about the end of August? It's almost April now, and you wouldn't find anything but just a mass of green bushes."
"If there was a valley, which same I'm beginning to doubt," Cumshaw said doggedly, "we'd have found it before this."
"I don't know what Miss Drummond is cooking for our tea," I remarked irrelevantly, "but it smells good."
"If you think you can put me off that way," Cumshaw said, "you're mighty mistaken. I'm tired of it all, and for two pins——"
"You know very well," I cut in, "that I haven't one pin, let alone two."
"You apparently don't understand that I'm perfectly serious."
"Yes, I do. I'm serious too. I'm quite satisfied that we haven't been going about things in the right way. We've made mistakes, and it's up to us to find out what those mistakes are and go over the ground again."
"I'll give it another week," said Cumshaw, "and if we haven't found anything by then we might as well retire, for you can bet your sweet life we never will."
I didn't answer him immediately. I was sprawling on the grass, on my back, with my eyes turned to the west, and something in the color of the sky surrounding the setting sun caught and held my attention. Curiously enough it made me think of Gordon and "The Sick Stockrider"—it must have been floating through my mind when I began to talk—and it needed very little effort of imagination to see—