The Lost Valley Part 20

wouldn't it be a streak of luck if he knew! Yes, I did the right thing in sending in that ad. One man's bitten at any rate."

He went about the house all day chuckling away to himself.

The second incident which occurred that same day was of even a more disturbing nature. Late that afternoon the telephone bell rang, and when Bryce answered it a voice asked if he was the Mr. Bryce who had advertised for an a.s.sistant in an expedition to the Grampians.

"That's me," said Bryce. "But I'm sorry to say that the position's filled."

"Why are you sorry?" the voice asked disconcertingly.

"Um!" said Mr. Bryce. "Aren't you after it?"

"No chance," said the voice. "As a matter of fact, I was on the point of writing out a similar one myself, when I saw yours and guessed I'd let you do the work."

"Who are you?" Bryce demanded with a trace of sharpness in his voice.

The man at the other end of the wire laughed cheerfully. "Never you mind," he said. "You'll know soon enough, as soon as you've landed Jack Bradby's plunder. Now, I want to put up a sporting proposition to you.

We'll retire gracefully, if you'll split fifty-fifty."

"We!" Bryce repeated. "So there's more than one of you?"

"There's lots of us, and we've got the whip hand of you because, you see, you don't know who we are. We know you; we've been following a couple of jumps behind you right through all the records, and we guess it's high time we cashed in."

"I'll see you in h.e.l.l first!" said Bryce angrily.

"Probably you will," said the voice with a chuckle. "If you won't treat with us, we'll get what we want in other ways."

"No, by thunder, you won't!" said Bryce shortly. "I'll warn you that I'll shoot on sight."

"So do we," the other laughed. "I hope, for your sake, you recognise us first, though I don't think it likely."

"If I catch you monkeying around I'll fill you so full of holes that your own mother won't know you from a colander," Bryce threatened; but the voice laughed irritatingly, and when Bryce tried to get a reply he found that the other had rung off.

He flickered the hook with his finger. "Exchange," he said, giving his number, "can you tell me who was speaking just now?"

"Box three, G. P. O. public 'phones," said the girl wearily.

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" said Bryce in disgust, and hung up the receiver.

The rest of the week pa.s.sed without incident of any sort, and, despite the warning he had received. Bryce went on calmly with his preparations.

For all the fat flabbiness of him he was grit through and through, and it took more than a warning over the telephone to turn him aside once he had made up his mind to take a certain course. He went on quietly and silently; his only sign of perturbation was that first thing on Tuesday he slipped down town and bought a big calibre revolver.

Friday morning came, and at ten-thirty exactly, not a minute before or after, Mr. Abel c.u.mshaw knocked at the front door and was admitted. He was shown at once into Mr. Bryce's study, where that gentleman awaited him, watch in hand.

"On time to the tick," he said affably as c.u.mshaw entered the room.

"Everything's ready for an immediate start. I suppose you've got all you want."

"I'm always ready at a moment's notice," c.u.mshaw said. "I travel light.

I'm an old campaigner."

"That's the way I like to hear a man talk," Bryce said breezily. "We'll be going in my car as far as we can. After that we'll have to walk, and I'm not a very good hand at that. There's some rough spots up there, they tell me," he said off-handedly. For all his seeming nonchalance he was watching c.u.mshaw intently, and he saw him give an almost imperceptible start. It flashed across Bryce's mind that perhaps c.u.mshaw was in the pay of the people who had gone to such pains to 'phone him. A second look at the man convinced him that such was not the case.

c.u.mshaw's eyes were frank and clear, and met his unswervingly. They were not the eyes of a man who was playing a double game.

There was something in them that Bryce did not quite understand. It was the animation of newly-resurrected hope, such a light as might have shone in the eyes of the men who rode to find the Holy Grail. Bryce knew nothing of him or his history, and his only thought was that in some queer way the man had a vital interest in the Grampians. It must be remembered that, as far as known facts were concerned, Bryce knew nothing more than the police records had told him. True, his reasoning faculties, which were none of the densest, carried him a little further, but he would have been the very first to admit his fallibility. Nothing had occurred as yet to connect c.u.mshaw with Mr. Jack Bradby. He recognised that the man had a definite object in view in going to the Grampians--that was plain enough--but it might after all be merely coincidence. Such things have happened. Mr. c.u.mshaw, on the other hand, was alert and suspicious. He suspected everybody and everything, and he had answered the advertis.e.m.e.nt solely because he believed, or affected to believe, that an expedition to the hill country could have no other object that the recovery of the gold. Doubtless it will appear strange that Mr. c.u.mshaw had allowed so many years to elapse without attempting to secure it for himself, but, as he told Bryce later on, there were reasons even for that.

They stopped at Ballarat for lunch; Bryce refilled the petrol tank, and then they set out on the long stretch to Ararat. Though no definite statement exists, they pa.s.sed the night at the latter town, for c.u.mshaw afterwards told his son that they reached Landsborough about 10.30 the following morning. Beyond Landsborough the track became very trying for the car, and somewhere towards the evening of the second day the machine was hidden away securely in one of the many gullies that abounded in the neighbourhood. Then the hardest part of the journey began. Child's play though it might have been to c.u.mshaw, who, for all his years, had a const.i.tution such as it is given to a few men to possess, it certainly must have been a matter of infinite torture to Bryce, handicapped as he was with his weak-heart and his wheezy lungs.

They spent the next few days in working across to the spot where Bradby had been killed thirty odd years before. As they drew near to the place c.u.mshaw became more self-contained and uncommunicative than ever. The sight of the old scene seemed to have depressed him marvellously. Bryce watched him with increasing attentiveness; he noticed that he picked out the road as if he had been used to it from childhood. There were times when Bryce turned suddenly on him and caught a glimpse of a hard-set jaw and a mouth about which strong lines of determination had woven themselves. Yet, as soon as c.u.mshaw fancied he was observed, the mask of his face melted into a smile, and the sombre eyes sparkled with a humor that somehow seemed too real to be a.s.sumed.

"You seem very familiar with the place, c.u.mshaw," Bryce remarked one morning.

"I told you I was," c.u.mshaw answered, his unfathomable eyes searching his employer's face.

"How long is it since you were here last?" Bryce asked.

At the question all expression vanished from the other's face, leaving it as immobile as a carven image of stone. "I have been here many times," he said evasively.

"Um!" said Bryce in that peculiar way of his, and he looked the other up and down contemplatively. "I didn't think anyone had been here since Bradby was shot."

Bryce made the remark in the most casual and innocent way; he hadn't the faintest notion in the world that what he had said was like a bombsh.e.l.l bursting beneath the structure of Mr. c.u.mshaw's composure. He was intelligent enough to realise that it was more than probable that c.u.mshaw possessed knowledge of that almost forgotten episode which was not shared with anyone else, but he had not the least suspicion that his casual utterance would hit home so shrewdly as it did.

Mr. c.u.mshaw stared at him as if he could not believe his ears. For once he made no attempt to disguise his emotions beneath the mask of stoicism. He saw laughter in the other's eyes, the jovial laughter of a man who has always known the sweets of victory, and he jumped to the natural though erroneous conclusion that Bryce had fathomed his connection with the late Mr. Bradby. For all that he did not abandon his defences without some show of resistance.

"What do you mean?" he demanded in the belligerent att.i.tude of a man who is fighting a desperate though losing fight.

"Just what I said, Mr. c.u.mshaw," Bryce smiled. "What else did you think I meant?"

The quiet question was put in such an unexpectedly mild tone that c.u.mshaw was left wordless for the nonce, though his face showed in all their fulness the emotions that were stirring within him. Doubt, indecision, fear of a kind.

"I thought----," he said and then stopped short.

"You thought," Bryce repeated with a gentle persuasiveness in his voice.

"What was it you thought, c.u.mshaw?"

They were both fencing, in sporting parlance "sparring for wind," each of them with the Big Idea almost within reach, and each not daring yet to put it into words. For the s.p.a.ce of a heart-beat they stared into each other's eyes, seeking to read the other's thoughts. In the end it was c.u.mshaw who gave in first. He tore his eyes away from that fixed yet kindly gaze that seemed to search and read his very soul.

"I see," said Bryce, with a sudden intake of breath that lent a sibilant quality to his speech, "I see that we are on the same track. Mr.

c.u.mshaw, place your cards on the table. You are after the gold that Bradby hid; so am I. Our aims are the same. Let us be partners, instead of employer and a.s.sistant. What do you know that I do not? What do I know that you do not?"

Like most fat and comfortable people Bryce was the soul of generosity, and his offer was dictated not so much by expediency as by a sense of the pity that he felt for this man, who seemed to have aged years in the last few minutes. He, too, in his time had known what it meant to have the prize within a hand's touch and then at the last moment lose it after all.

"You know nothing about me," c.u.mshaw said impulsively. "You don't know who I am or what I've been. You haven't an idea...."

Bryce cut him short with a sweeping gesture of his chubby hands. "My dear man," he said, "what you've been doesn't matter a tinker's curse to me. It's what you are that counts."