The Lost Valley Part 9

Almost at that moment I heard footsteps in the hall, and knew that the servants had just come home. The big clock in the hall chimed ten.

"There's the women," I said. "You'd better tell them, and see they don't make a scene."

Moira nodded and went down the hall to meet them.

There is little more to relate of this phase of my story. Naturally there was an inquest, and just as naturally was a verdict returned of "death at the hands of a person or persons unknown," or words to that effect. The situation, in fine, was that Bryce was dead and buried, and the police admitted that they held no clue to the ident.i.ty of the murderer. Motive there was none as far as they could see, and the whole affair looked like one of these senseless crimes that from time to time startle the city folk from their easy-going equanimity. The matter was not even a nine-days' wonder, for other things occupied the attention of the press, and a stickful was the most it ever got in any paper.

I stayed on in the house at Moira's request and attended to several matters that were rather outside her province. The old man turned out not to be as rich as we had thought, though he had money enough in truth. The bulk of this went to Moira, with the curious proviso that she could not invest it in any way without first submitting the proposal to me and receiving my sanction. The will was of recent date, as a matter of fact it had been drawn up within a few days of Moira's arrival. There was a sum left to me, too, enough to make me independent for a good many years to come.

Moira's mother arrived the day after the tragedy, and showed no very evident intention of returning home. She was very nice to me, but then there was no reason why she should have been anything else. Any strain that there had been, and was still for that matter, was between her daughter and myself, and, like a wise mother, she forebore from interfering in what did not immediately concern her.

For my own sake, if for no other reason, I hurried along the winding-up of Bryce's affairs. I saw, or fancied I saw, that the sooner I left the house the better would Moira be pleased. For when all was said and done there could be no denying that things were far from satisfactory.

Neither of us made any further reference to my bare-faced lying on that ill-starred night, but the more I thought of it the more equivocal did the present situation seem. I for one was doubly glad when at last we finished with the lawyers, and things--blessed, indefinite word--seemed like to settle down again.

My time of departure was no further off than twenty-four hours away when the incident occurred that led to a hurried readjustment of my plans and that brought us, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, to the Valley--for so I still persist in calling it, as if there were not another valley in the world--and the treasure that lay there and helped us to unravel the tangled threads of Bryce's past life.

I had my bag already packed, and had announced that I was going the next evening, when Moira stayed me with a word.

"I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time," she said, "but somehow I could never seem to summon up enough courage. It's about Uncle and ... well, you know as well as I do, that there was some mystery about him."

"Go on," I said.

"Well, he told me once that if ever anything happened to him we would find doc.u.ments in his room that would help us to take up the work where he left off. He repeated that the very night he died. Don't you see what that means?"

"It means that they are still there," I said soberly.

CHAPTER VII.

INTRODUCING MR. ALBERT c.u.mSHAW.

"That's the peculiar part of it, Jim. They should still be in the room, because they couldn't possibly have been taken away. Yet I've hunted high and low and I can't find them."

"And, now you find you're in difficulties, you call me in," I hinted.

"Jim, I wish you wouldn't talk that way. There's no call for us to be continually bickering. If we can't be anything else, at least we can be friends, can't we?"

"I suppose it's worth trying. But what have the papers to do with me?"

"They affect you as well as me, Jim. Uncle wished the two of us to carry on his work."

"How pleasant!" I murmured. "And suppose I refuse?"

"Well," she said, with just the least gesture of helplessness, "I'll have to do whatever I can myself. But it was Uncle's wish that we divide the proceeds."

"The proceeds of what?"

"That's more than I can say, Jim. We've got to find the papers first."

"That's so, Moira. Seeing it's you, I'll hunt for them; if it's worth while I might even help you through, but you'll have to understand from the very start that I won't finger a penny of what you call the proceeds."

"You usen't to be like that, Jim."

"I've changed a lot, haven't I?" I grinned.

For a moment she stared blankly at me, then she asked me, as if the thought had just occurred to her, "There isn't any other girl, is there?"

"There never was any other girl," I said. "There was always only the one, but she failed...."

I saw that she had some intimate little revelation on the tip of her tongue, so, for fear she might say too much--one never knows what a woman will say if she fancies any words of hers will gain the day--I said briskly, "Now, about those papers, Moira. Where did you look?"

"Everywhere, Jim."

"You couldn't have. There's one place at least where you haven't looked."

"And that?" she queried eagerly.

"The place where they're hidden," I answered disconcertingly.

"Oh," she said blankly; and then, "Have you any idea where that is?"

I shook my head. "None at all, Moira. Still your uncle told you that they were in his study, and as you say they couldn't have been taken away, the only thing to do is to look in every likely place for a start."

"And if we find nothing?"

"Then we'll look in the unlikely places. And as there's no time like the present, I suggest we start now."

Moira was quite agreeable to that, so we entered the room. Books and everything lay just as we had left them the night of the tragedy; only the broken window-pane had been taken out and a new one inserted.

"I never thought of it before," I remarked, "but the sight of that new pane just brought to my mind how narrow a squeak you had that night."

"I don't follow you, Jim."

"Well, if our friends the police hadn't been so willing to swallow the obvious, they would have seen that my tale was all bunk.u.m. When that chap fired he starred the window, and when your shot went through it finished the job and knocked a finger of gla.s.s right out. If the sergeant had only gone over to the window and examined it carefully, he would have seen enough to make him wonder how the deuce the same shot could have hit the same bit of gla.s.s in two places. But he didn't go over to examine it; I had filled his mind with an hypothesis, and he couldn't see anything else but that. Now it's the same with this business of looking for the papers. You seem to think your uncle would put them just where anyone could lay hands on them. I don't. Your uncle had a fair amount of foresight--he realised all along that it was likely that he'd be cut off short--and the mere fact that he told you twice at least that he had left you instructions shows that he had gone about things carefully and methodically. Again, he had no means of knowing just how he would be killed, so you can take it for granted that he provided against such a contingency as this room being thoroughly searched by the murderers. In other words, the papers are so placed that only an intelligent person who knew your uncle's mind would guess where the hiding place is. Now I'm having a wild shot at it, but it's logical enough in all conscience. When you can't find a thing, try to take over the mentality of the man who hid it."

"I'm afraid you're getting too deep for me, Jim."

"I'll put it another way, Moira. Something influenced your uncle in the hiding-place he selected, and we've got to parallel his thoughts, if we can, in order to find out the spot."

"But that's impossible."

"At first glance it seems like it. But just think the matter over. I've got more than half an idea already. Whatever those papers are they're certainly typewritten, and I'm sure they've something to do with that bit of wood. Oh, I forgot. I've never told you about that. It happened on the beach."

"Uncle told me how he met you," Moira volunteered.