"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."

CHAPTER III.

THE PROMISED LAND.

"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--

The deep blue skies wax dusky and the tall green trees grow dim,

And the sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim,

And on the very sun's face weave their pall,

but there were no blue skies or green trees. The heavens were just a

dull slate-grey with streaks of smoke-colored cloud scurrying across

from the west, and the trees that might have been green in a better

light were black and gaunt, like weird spectres which had taken on wild

shapes and unorthodox hues. There was just the slightest suggestion of

chill in the atmosphere, and that, combined with the scurrying clouds,

made me study the sky with growing anxiety.

"If that's not a storm brewing," I said, pointing skywards, "I'm

anything you like to call me."

Cumshaw cocked one eye in the direction indicated. "It does look like

it," he said lazily, after a prolonged study of the sky.

I looked him up and down as best I could. One can't survey a man too

well when lying on one's back; but something in the glance and more that

I gave him, struck him as being so odd that he sat up and stared at me.

I made no movement.

"Well?" he queried at length.

"It's just the other way round," I said in my most aggravating tone.

He looked at the sky again at that, and then turned his dark eyes on me.

"I can see it's going to be a fine old storm," he said, "but I don't

understand why you're worrying about it."

"I'm not," I said a trifle untruthfully. I was worrying, but not as much

as he seemed to think. Ordinarily I would have told him just what I

fancied was wrong, but this time I didn't fancy anything. For all I

could say to the contrary there was just an ordinary April storm brewing

over across the hills, and presently the thunder would begin, and then

the lightning, and after that the rain; still I felt like a man who is

on the verge of a great discovery, on the brink of finding that

something that means all the difference in the world between success and

failure. Even now when I come to consider calmly the emotions of that

hour I cannot say that what I have just written down is a true

description of my feelings and thoughts. What happened later that same

night has had its effect on my memory and has mixed itself inextricably

with my earlier recollections. All this about my fancying that the storm

meant more than a storm usually means may be due to the fact that, but

for it, the momentous event itself would never have occurred.

I do know that I was a little doubtful about the security of the

improvised tent that sheltered Moira, and I think I must have showed a

little of that anxiety in my face. That perhaps was what struck Cumshaw

and led him to make the remark that he did.

Presently Moira called us to tea, and we hauled ourselves up from the

grass and went over to her. The fire was burning up brightly and threw

the tent and the surrounding trees into bold relief. It made the sky

look even darker and more threatening than before. The scurrying clouds

had all passed away by now, but in their train came thicker and heavier

ones, big black things that rolled slowly across the evening sky with

the heavy implacability of Fate. They moved like the advancing vanguard

of a wild army of infamy, and soon had shut out altogether the dying

light of day and the growing radiance of the silver stars. The sudden

chill of thirty minutes previously had passed like a swift breath of

wind into the limbo of lost and forgotten things, and in its place had

grown a deadly hot oppressiveness that somehow reminded me of the

sweltering dampness of those Gaudalcanar forests I had so recently

described to Cumshaw. It filled us with something of its own torpor, so

much so that we ate languidly, and when we spoke at all we spoke in

monosyllables.

The storm broke almost without warning. There was just one low

premonitory growl of thunder, the sky was split by a yellow sword of

lightning, and then the rain came pouring down in the way that can be

best described as the bursting of the flood-gates of heaven. At that our

torpor vanished and we made an unceremonious rush for the poor shelter

afforded by the tent, bringing with us what was left of our meal. The

tent had not been constructed with a view to holding more than one; at

its poor best it was but a rough shelter from the night dew. We had

never intended it to keep out the rain; it had not entered our heads as

even a remote possibility. I, perhaps, as the only one of the three who

had had any practical experience of out-door life, should have kept just

such a chance in mind. The fact remains that I overlooked it, and I

can't say that then or at any other time was I sorry for my

miscalculation.

I had lived so long in the tropics that the rain that came seemed to me

the veriest drizzle, but the others had their own opinion, as I learnt

the moment I said what I thought. Cumshaw remarked that it was the devil

of a downpour, and Moira expressed her idea in less forcible though more

polite terms. It was no use my saying that if I were in Port Moresby or

Samarai the rain would have gone through the thin fabric of the tent

like a rifle bullet through butter-cloth. They pointed out with equal

truth that the present rain was dribbling through even as it was, and

that a quarter of an hour more would see us saturated.

Whether we would or not must remain a mystery. No doubt we would have

found out sooner or later had it not come on to blow. The thunder had

ceased and the lightning flashed less frequently, now that the rain had

set in, but the wind began to rise, and almost on the last clap of

thunder I felt the wall of the tent shiver under the impact of the

blast. It occurred to me in one of those flashes of memory that we

sometimes have in moments of tension that we had not troubled about

running up guy-ropes, and there was nothing now to hold the tent if the

wind caught it squarely. Scarcely had the thought formed in my mind than

an extra fierce blast caught the light fabric, shook it as a

Newfoundland dog would shake a small terrier it had picked up in its

mouth, and then, before we knew what had happened, the wind had whirled

the tent away like a child's balloon, leaving us standing bareheaded,

shivering and exposed to all the force of the elements. I left Moira

with Cumshaw and groped about in the darkness, hoping to find our

missing tent, but I might as well have been hunting for the proverbial

needle in a bundle of hay for all the chance I had. I merely got wet

through, so much so that I changed by mind completely about the force of

Victorian storms, and when at last I found my way back to the others I

was sopping from the sole of my boots to the top of the woe-begone hat I

had hurriedly thrust on my head. As matters stood I could not get any

wetter, and I supposed that Cumshaw was in much the same state.

Nevertheless there was Moira to think of, and the sooner we got to

shelter of some sort, a cave on the hillside or even a tolerably thick

bush, the better it was going to be for all of us. I shouted this to

Cumshaw--it was very hard to hear now that the gale had risen and was

blowing everything to ribbons--and he understood me only after a couple

of attempts. So I took Moira by one chill wet hand and Cumshaw took the

other, and thus in the darkness and the steady soaking rain began our

hunt for shelter of some sort.

I haven't an idea how far we walked. We just kept on and on, and really

I think we did not notice the storm so much as if we had been standing

still. Most of the time our attention was too taken up with feeling our

way, for the ground was very slippery and more than once I almost lost

my footing, to give more than a passing thought to personal discomfort.

It was too dark to see more than an inch or so in front of us, and even

then we saw nothing more than a black wall that constantly receded as we

advanced and yet was still as near as ever in the end. I don't think any

of us realised that we had drifted into a gully or a track of some sort

until I put out a tentative hand and felt a wall of bushes dead in front

of me. I pulled back with a jerk, but my sudden movement startled the

others, and in the flurry of the moment they did the very thing I had

been trying to avoid. They slipped and I went with them. I had sense

enough to release Moira's hand the moment I felt the drag of her body,

and then, before I quite knew what had happened. I found I was whirling

along in the mud, cavorting down the side of something that looked, or

felt--for I couldn't see, as I've already stated--very much like the

edge of a precipice. I brought up, just when I was beginning to wonder

how much further I had to fall, by colliding with something that felt

very like a hedge of brambles. There I lay in the soaking rain, with the

mud plastered thickly on my face, and every bit of breath knocked out of

my body.

Somehow it seemed quieter down here. The wind still whistled and roared,

but it was some feet or more above my head and it touched me not.

Presently I began to sit up and wonder where I was and what had happened

and what had become of the others. I felt very stiff and wet and dirty,

and my right knee ached more than I liked. I was just on the point of

staggering to my feet and feeling my way to leveller ground, when quite

close to me I heard something very like a moan. I dropped on my knees at

that and put out a tremulous hand. My fingers touched something soft and

cold, and then I realised that it was a human face--Moira's, judging by

the tangle of hair. I put my hand under the head and raised it up. A

heavy mass of loose hair fell damply about my arm, and I knew then that

it was my sweetheart I held. She stirred a little and moaned again. I

was in a quandary. Clearly something must be done, but how or what I

could no more say that I could fly. The night and the storm had

swallowed Cumshaw up for the time being, but, beyond wondering vaguely

what had become of him, I never gave him a thought. All my life long I'd

been too used to men taking care of themselves to worry myself much

about my missing colleague. But Moira's case was insistent and called

for immediate attention. If there had been any shelter handy, even the

rudest of bark humpies, I would have known what to do, and, what is

more, I would have done it on the instant. Obviously the only course I

could take was to crawl in under the ledge or precipice, or whatever it

was, down which we had fallen and trust to the overhang--if there was

any--and the few bushes that I had crashed through as I spun down, to

keep the worst of the rain off us.

Accordingly I rose to my feet and lifted Moira up in my arms. She was a

greater weight than I had thought, and that and my own condition caused

me to walk with the uneven steps of a drunken man. At last I found some

sort of recess in the side of the slope--I came across it more by

accident than of set purpose--and there I crouched with Moira between me

and the wall. The rain whirled in on me, and, if possible, I got a

trifle wetter than before, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that my

body kept both the rain and the wind away from her. It was a tedious

enough job, holding the unconscious girl in my arms, and more than once

I felt like dropping her, only that I recollected in time that I was

crouching ankle deep in mud. I am stronger than the average, and I have

had my body trained in hard schools, but even that has not made a

Hercules of me. I was more than glad when she opened her eyes, or,

rather, when she moved a little in my arms and then spoke.

She was not hurt much, she said in answer to my question, but she felt

stiff in every limb, and the dampness seemed to have soaked through to

her very bones. How was I, and what had happened?

I answered the two questions in almost the same breath. Brevity is not

only the soul of wit, but it is the sole method of carrying on a

conversation when both parties are wet and shivering.

"Have you any idea where we are?" Moira asked.

I shook my head and then, remembering that my answer was unintelligible

in the darkness, I said, "I haven't. We fell over a cliff or a

precipice, and that's all I can say about it."

"Why," she said, "you're shivering!" And she put out her hand to touch

me. Her fingers came to rest on my arm, and I could feel her stiffen in

the dark.

"Jim, why did you do it?" she demanded, with yet a curious softness in

her voice.

"Do what?" I fenced.

"As if I don't know that you're in your shirt sleeves. That's your coat

that's wrapped round me."

"What if it is?"

"You shouldn't have done it. You'll catch your death of cold."

"Much chance there is of that," I grunted.

She was silent for a time, and then I felt her arms about me, and I

realised that she was trying to place my coat about my shoulders.

"If that's what you're after," I said, "I'll put it on. But you'll catch

cold yourself."

She made no direct answer, but I heard something that sounded curiously

like a sob.

Presently she moved up closer to me and a soft voice whispered in my

ear, "Jim, I'll be warmer if you'll let me snuggle up to you. It's a

long time since last ... I didn't deserve it then."

I reached out in the darkness and drew her towards me. With her tired

head resting on my shoulder we waited for the dawn.

It was a long time coming, how long I cannot say, for in my then state

of nervous tension the hours dragged with the awful unendingness of

eternity. At last the black wall of night cracked into streaks of grey,

looking for all the world like feeble sun-rays filtering through the

chinks in the roof of a deserted house. Moira stirred a little, and I

saw in one hasty glance that her wet hair was streaming about her face

and her saturated dress was caked with black mud.

I held her off at arm's length and looked her over quizzically. Then we

each laughed outright at the sight the other presented.

"You're wet through, Moira," I said, "and you look as if you've been

having a mud-bath. All the same you're a brick to have stood it all the

way you have."

"I'm not and I haven't," she said cryptically, and silenced my further

objections with a kiss.

When I looked out on the world again it was to see that the day had

already broken, and a dirty and bedraggled Albert Cumshaw was making his

way towards us with slow and painful steps.

CHAPTER IV.

WE ENTER THE VALLEY.

I cannot explain why just at that instant my heart gave a thump. There

was nothing for it to thump about. Cumshaw, toiling up the slope, for

all his woe-begone look, was the most ordinary figure imaginable, and

there was nothing in the landscape to excite or rivet attention. It was

a white dawn, and, though the rain had ceased long before, everything

was still dull and grey. In the hollows the mist lingered and hung

between us and the further view like a great white curtain. That and the

advancing Albert Cumshaw completed the picture, a picture that was

neither interesting nor sensational. Yet at the sight, as I've already

stated, my heart jumped queerly and unaccountably. Do coming events

really ever cast their shadows before them? Are we sometimes granted

visions of "the things beyond the dome?" I do not know, and, even if I

did, I would not care to express a definite opinion in my own case. I

have seen things dangerously like coincidences happen so often in my own

experience that I have grown chary of either affirming or denying that

there is something more than chance at the bottom of it all. Still the

fact remains that twice within twenty-four hours the same queer feeling

crept over me, and on each occasion the course of events proved that it

was premonition. But that is running a shade ahead of the story.

I ran down the slope to meet Cumshaw, and the first thing I noticed was

that there was a great livid bruise across his right temple.

"You've got a nasty knock there on your forehead," I greeted him, in the

casual self-contained fashion of the men who live in the open.

He answered me with one of those laughs that are nothing more than

almost soundless chuckles.

"Is it hurting?" I enquired with a trace of anxiety in my voice.

"Hurting, hell!" he said impolitely. "Of course it is."

"How did you do it? Was it an accident?"

"I don't look as if I did it just for amusement, do I?" he snarled.

"It hasn't improved your temper, my lad," I said under my breath. Aloud

I remarked: "We're all in much the same boat. Miss Drummond's had a

stiff time of it, and I've got all my bruises where you can't see them,

but I can assure you that they hurt all the same."

At the mention of Moira a shadow passed over his face. Frankly I could

not quite understand his attitude towards her. At first I was rather of

the opinion that he was in love with her, but latterly I hadn't been so

sure, for he had had the decency to suppress his feelings once he found

how the land lay. The mere mention of her name calmed him down

wonderfully. He even seemed a little ashamed of his outbursts of temper.

"I might have remembered that I wasn't the only one in the party," he

said. "But then I came a fearful cropper, and on top of it I've been out

in the rain all night."

"We were a little luckier." I told him. "We found an overhang and that

kept off most of the rain. All the same I wouldn't mind a chance of

drying myself."

"And we're likely to get that," he said with some asperity. "All our

goods are God knows how many miles behind. I've got a box of matches in

my pocket, but they're just about as useful here as they would be at the

bottom of the sea."

"Come now," I said, "it's not as bad as all that. We've got a lady to

take care of, and we've got to shuffle our brains about a bit and see

what we can do. We'll never get anywhere by standing still railing at

our fate."

"Well, you're in charge, Carstairs," he told me. "It's up to you."

"It is," I admitted, "and as the first step towards success I might

point out to you that the mist is lifting."

He wheeled round at that with greater agility than I expected, seeing

that by his own account he was still feeling pretty dicky. The mist was

lifting in truth, and yellow spears of sunlight were thrusting

themselves through like hat pins run through cloth.

"It'll be the better part of half an hour before the place's clear," he

asserted, with one eye cocked at the sky and the other watching me.

"In the meanwhile we'd better go back to Miss Drummond and set her mind

at rest," I suggested.

He trudged along at my elbow with a step that lacked its usual buoyancy,

but the sidelong glances I stole at him every now and then showed me

that he was fast recovering his spirits. The bruise on his forehead,

seen now close at hand and in a better light, was not the fearsome thing

I had at first taken it to be. True, it lent him an air of general

disrepute, but then none of us were quite fit for the drawing-room. Even

Moira, sheltered as she had been, showed very much the worse for wear.

She greeted Cumshaw with a cheery smile, the bravest thing about her I

thought, and a ready question as to his adventures. But he could tell

her little more than that he had gone over the edge with us and rolled

away until he brought up against the stone or whatever it was that had

bruised his face so nicely. Our own story, what there was of it, was

soon told, and a few glances about us showed that in the murk of the

night and rain we had missed our footing and shot off the track a dozen

feet or so to the level ground below. Above us waved the tall shapes of

kingly gums, and below us lay vast spaces of bracken. Beyond that we

could form little idea as to our position, though the mist was slowly

drifting away now.

"The best thing to do, I suppose," I remarked, "is to get back to last

night's camping-place and see what we can find of the stores. Of course

we shouldn't have left them, but it's no use being wise after the event.

We've to go back as quick as we can now, and maybe we can dig up

something warm. That's supposing that everything isn't too wet to be

used."

"As I remarked before, it's up to you," Cumshaw threw at me. "Lead on,

Carstairs."

"If you can show me any way back to the main track, I'll lead on with

pleasure," I told him. "There's none visible that I can see, and I don't

fancy that my eyes are over dull."

Cumshaw said something under his breath, but before I could drop on him

for it Moira interposed. "How about walking round at the foot of this

ridge and seeing where it'll lead us to?" she suggested.

"That's as fine a plan as any," I answered. "We'll try it."

We did. We sauntered along listlessly for the best part of an hour, and

then it struck me all of a sudden that we were rising rapidly.

"We're on the wrong track," I said, stopping short. "We didn't come down

as steep a slope as this last night."

"You're right there, Carstairs. We didn't," Cumshaw said, stopping short

and looking about him with a puzzled air.

"Why not keep right on?" Moira advised. "It's just possible that we're

working back to the track."

"We'll give it a chance," I said, after chewing the suggestion over in

silence for a few minutes. "We'll keep on for ten minutes or so, and if

it gets any worse we can always go back."

The ground became rougher at every step and finally in despair I called

a halt. The sun was well up by this and the mist had cleared away from

the hills, though filmy vapors still lingered in what I knew must be the

hollows. In front was a causeway, strewn with boulders, and beyond that

what I took to be a sea of wattles. I could see no use in progressing

further in that direction, and I said so as succinctly as I could.

Cumshaw was inclined to argue, but the consensus of opinion was against

him. The outcome of it was that we decided to retrace our steps. Before

we did so I suggested looking about for something that would give us an

indication of our present position.

I stumbled on it quite by accident. Another step further and I would

have fallen down the funnel-shaped opening that gaped at my feet. I drew

back just in time to save myself, and for the second time that morning

my heart gave a jump. To think that we had gone so close to missing it

altogether! The thing, so to speak, had lain at our feet all the time. I

turned about and searched the landscape for my companions. Moira was

visible in the near distance; the wattles had swallowed Cumshaw.

"Cumshaw, Moira, I've found it!" I called at the top of my voice.

Moira whipped round at the sound of my voice. I waved to her and she

came running towards me. A second later I saw Cumshaw come out of the

shadows, and I yelled at him with all the power of my lungs. I don't

know what he must have thought of the yelling, dancing, frantically

waving figure that caught his eye. He must have fancied for a moment

that I had gone mad. Then, in a flash, so he says, the truth dawned on

him, and he in his turn sprinted towards me, the one idea uppermost in

his mind being that the valley must have been found. At the same instant

my soul was singing "Eureka!" and Moira was weeping and laughing at the

same time.

"Cumshaw," I cried, as he came within speaking distance, "if that's not

the funnel that your father and Bradby left the valley by you can call

me a goggle-eyed Chinaman."

And then somehow we all seemed to be talking together.

"That must be the valley down under the wattles."

"I knew we'd find it."

"It only shows that one should never give in."

"If we hadn't fallen down that slope last night...."

"If I hadn't kept going when you all wanted to turn back, you mean."

"It's found now and that's the best part of it."

I must confess that I lost my head just as the others did. I should have

known better, I suppose, than to go yelling out our discovery at the top

of my lungs, but knowing's one thing and doing's altogether different.

I've seen miners on the Lakekamu shouting themselves hoarse over even

less of a discovery, seasoned men who knew how and when to hold their

tongues. Could tyros like ourselves be blamed for what we did? I don't

think so.

"That's the funnel right enough," Cumshaw said. "There can't possibly be

two of the same kind in the same district. I'm sure this is the one;

it's been described too often to me for there to be any mistake about

it. But what's puzzling me is the valley. There doesn't seem to be much

of one here. All I can see is wattles, wattles whichever way I look."

"There's one way to settle it," I said in an aside to him, and I looked

at Moira.

He gathered from my warning glance that I had something to say I didn't

want her to hear, so he shifted out of earshot with me.

"There's things you don't want a girl to see," I explained as we walked

off; "but if this is the valley the skeletons of those two horses should

be down there somewhere," and I pointed over the edge of the funnel.

"I'll go down," he said with alacrity. "I guess it's my go. It's time I

took some sort of a risk."

"You surely don't expect there'll be anything wrong?" I queried.

"I can't say," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, I

think you'd better get back to Miss Drummond. She's looking over this

way, and in a minute or so she'll be asking awkward questions, if you

don't go and tell her something."

"All right," I agreed. "Look as slippy as you can, but be careful. An

injured man is always more or less of a nuisance, you know."

He grinned cheerfully at that, and then, without another word, turned on

his heel and made off towards the funnel. I walked back to Moira.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked me suspiciously. "What's Mr.

Cumshaw after?"

"He's going down through that funnel-shaped thing," I answered. "He

wants to see what's at the end of it."

The golden-brown eyes regarded me thoughtfully for a space and then:

"Why didn't you go yourself instead of sending him?" she asked.

"It was his suggestion," I said defensively. "He seemed to think he had

a better right than anyone else, so I didn't argue with him about it. I

let him go."

"We could all have gone," she hinted.

"We could have," I agreed, "but we didn't."

In the meantime Cumshaw had lowered himself carefully down into the

opening, felt about a bit with his feet, found a foothold, and then

swung easily down from projecting ledge to projecting ledge. He emerged

quite unexpectedly into a tangled mass of wattle. That puzzled him much,

as it had puzzled me a few minutes previously; the elder Cumshaw's tale

contained no mention of wattle save the golden barrier at the further

side of the valley. Yet here was wattle as far as the eye could reach.

It looked as if a generous scientist, like the man in H. G. Wells' "Food

of the Gods," had let loose some power capable of forcing on this

abnormal growth. The valley itself was in an undulating sea of

vegetation. Had it been early in September the place would have been a

vast expanse of golden glory, but as it was late March the dominant

color note was that of grey-green. Under the circumstances it was as

clear as daylight how the elder man had missed the place. It was buried

under the rank growth, and all definable features, as we learnt

later--everything that could be used as a leading mark--had disappeared

or been swamped by the wattles. The bushes were not so thick about the

lower entrance to the funnel as to impede Cumshaw's movements, and so he

began to look about him in the hope of locating the one thing that would

definitely identify the place. The horses had been shot close to the

wall of rock, and it was a practical certainty that some trace of their

bodies would be found in the vicinity. Ten minutes' close search brought

to light a pile of bones that might or might not be those of the missing

animals--Cumshaw had no knowledge of anatomical structure and so did not

feel quite clear on that point--but the remarkable feature about them in

his eyes was that they were all more or less blackened, and amongst them

he found a heap of lime-dust, which he took to be bones reduced to their

elemental form by the application of great heat. Still he felt justified

in regarding the identity of the place as being sufficiently

established, and without wasting any more time he returned the way he

had come.

"There's no doubt about it," I agreed when I heard his tale. "This is

the valley right enough. I vote on going down there at once. The old hut

can't be far away, and it'll be somewhere for us to camp in and fix up

our clothes. And that reminds me that one of us'll have to go back for

our stores and extra clothes. There's no need for both of us to go; one

will do. However that can wait until we find the hut."

"I'm not hungry," Moira said, "and I think my clothes are practically

dry. The sun's coming out now, and I don't see why we should feel any

the worse for last night's adventures if we only take reasonable care of

ourselves."

"If that's the case," I remarked, "let us go down by all means."

I sent Cumshaw down first, as he was the only one of us who was familiar

with the place, and then I handed Moira down to him. Or, rather, I

helped her down; Moira at the best of times is no light weight. For a

moment we stood blinking at the entrance to the funnel, and then Moira

caught my arm in her impulsive way and cried, "Come on, Jim! Let's enter

into Paradise!"

I smiled at her quaintness and made to follow her, but Cumshaw

interposed quickly. "Not that way," he said. "This is the way." He

glanced at me as he spoke, and I realised that he was taking us by a

path that would lead us away from the mouldering bones.

The ground was rough underfoot, and the matted cover of vegetation that

effectually hid stray boulders from view made it all the worse. In

places the wattle grew over our heads in a profusion that was almost

tropical, and more than once we would have lost our way had I not taken

our bearings at the start, and thus was able to guide the party by means

of my pocket-compass.

"In your father's day there was a wood hereabouts," I said to Cumshaw

presently. "There doesn't seem to be one now."

"There doesn't," he said. "Can you understand how practically the entire

physical features of the place have changed so much?"

"Frankly I can't. But they apparently have, and that's about all we can

say. We'll just have to keep our eyes open and trust to luck."

"Our luck seems to have held good so far," Moira said, turning to me

with high hope in her face.

"Mind your footing," I said warningly. "You want to watch every inch of

the way. There's all sorts of rocks and boulders under this stuff."

"I'll be careful," she smiled, and scarcely were the words out of her

mouth than her foot caught in something. She pitched forward on her face

before I could spring to her assistance. I lifted her up carefully, but

she seemed none the worse for her fall.

"I don't know what it was that tripped me," she confided. "It wasn't a

boulder or anything of the sort. I think it was a log of wood, yet my

foot seemed to catch underneath it."

I was on the point of offering a suggestion, but something held me

silent, and instead I dropped down on my knees and felt feverishly in

the undergrowth. Of course it was a silly thing to do--there might have

been snakes and all manner of noxious crawling things there--but I

didn't think of that at the time. I was too intent on solving the

riddle. My hand touched something.... I straightened up and faced the

others.

"Moira and Cumshaw," I said. "I've found the hut. That's a piece of it

there." Bending down, I dragged to light a rough-hewn beam that possibly

had been the threshold plank. It was weather-worn, and in places the

fungus had grown thickly on it; but I could see for all that that it had

been warped and twisted and charred in the blaze of a fire. Three pairs

of eyes met across the plank, and three lips put the same idea into

words.

"There's been a fire here," we said in chorus.

"And that," I added on my own account, for the benefit of the others who

had not jumped to the same conclusion as I had, "and that explains

everything that's puzzled us since we entered the valley. There's been a

bush fire here at some period during the last twenty years. It destroyed

the hut, it burnt down the wood, and it made that pile of lime you

found, Cumshaw."

"What pile was that?" Moira queried quickly. "I didn't see any."

"Mr. Cumshaw passed a pile in the bushes as we came along," I said

off-handedly. "The heat must have rendered the stones down."

She accepted my explanation at its face value.

"No wonder the place remained hidden," I ran on. "If you'll look over

east, where there should be a lone tree, you won't find any. It's wattle

everywhere you look. The fire cleared out all the trees and forced the

wattle on in their place. If you came by here on any side but the one we

came by you'd take this to be just an ordinary hollow full of wattle."

"You're talking nothing else but wattle," Cumshaw interrupted. "What has

the wattle to do with the fire anyway?"

"Why, don't you see?" I cried. "Without the fire there wouldn't have

been any wattle here. The seed'll lie dormant in the ground for years

sometimes; it takes great heat to germinate them. That's why wattle

always springs up in profusion after there's been a bush fire. The same

thing happens with grass, the coarser kinds, though to a lesser extent."

"I see," he said gravely. "It means that we are back just where we

began."

"It doesn't mean anything of the sort," I said quickly. "All this is in

our favor. We're better off than we were before."

"I don't see how that is," he replied.

"But it is," I persisted, "and I'll show you why when the time comes.

And now there's plenty to be done. One of us has to go back for the

provisions that we left behind last night, and the other's got to stop

here with Miss Drummond and run up a bit of a bark humpy that'll keep

off the wind and won't let the rain through. Now if you're as hungry as

I am you'll understand just how pressing the need of that food is. It's

you or I, Cumshaw. Which of us is to go?"

"I'll toss you," Cumshaw offered.

I nodded, and he drew a coin from out his pocket and spun it in the air.

"Heads!" I called.

We bent down over it. "It's tail," said Cumshaw. "I go back for the

food," I said.

I straightened up and spoke seriously to the pair of them. "Cumshaw," I

said, "do as much as you can while I'm away, and keep one eye on the

horizon all the time. You must remember that there's always danger

about; the luck's been with us so far, but it may turn any minute, and

our rivals are just the sort of men who'd come on you suddenly and shoot

before you could say 'Jack Robinson.' And as for you, Moira, keep out of

harm's way and do what you can towards keeping a good lookout. I'm going

across to the other side, as I reckon that we must have travelled round

the valley last night."

"You'll be careful, won't you, Jim, dear?" Moira whispered.

"Aren't I always careful?" I said. "It's you that's got to watch out.

Now, one kiss, dear. I'll be back as soon as I can possibly manage it."

* * * * *

Five minutes later I had gained the further wall of the valley, and

found that, with the help of the bushes, it was the easiest thing

imaginable for an active man like myself to haul himself up over the

ridge and drop on the track which Abel Cumshaw and the late Mr. Bradby

had trodden so many years before. I took my bearings carefully, then

snapped up my pocket-compass and set off down the road with as jaunty a

swing as I was capable of. I had long got over my stiffness, and now

that the sun was shining brightly I began to feel more confident than

ever that all was going well. If it had not been for the terrible way in

which the dread purpose of our rivals had been brought home to us

already I would have felt absolutely at ease. As it was I did not let my

rosy anticipations of the future interfere at all with my sense of

caution.

CHAPTER V.

DIES IRAE.

As a matter of strict fact the place was much further away than I had

anticipated. We must have wandered a considerable distance in the

confusion of the evening's storm and covered more ground than we had

thought. I had positioned the sun as I had left the valley and judged

the time to be about eleven o'clock; "that," I thought, "will bring me

back by two at the very latest." But really it was close on five, and

the shadows were already dropping down over the country-side before I

was ready to return. I found our little store of goods intact, though

most of them were rain-soaked, and as a measure of good fortune I

retrieved the tent whose sudden departure had been the primary cause of

our hurriedly shifting camp. There was a fair load in all, but when I

had made it up and rolled everything packwise in the tent and fastened

it on my shoulders with what odd bits of string I found handy, there

wasn't anything in it that would seriously try the strength of a

seasoned explorer like myself. Then, because the night was beginning to

draw in and I did not want to go stumbling through the valley in the

dark, I set off at my top pace. I don't claim to be anything wonderful

as far as walking is concerned, but if I were ever asked what I

considered my record I would point back to that very night. I forced

myself along, my whole being intent on reaching the valley before the

sun slipped down behind the hills. I think it was more will-power than

sheer physical strength that kept me moving. I was just a little anxious

about Moira too. Cumshaw was a fine chap and clever in his own way,

though he did have occasional spurts of temper; but he lacked my

woodcraft experience, and I wasn't sure but what he might go to pieces

if any prowlers pounced down on him unawares. Neither he nor Moira had

ever come up against anything that would teach them to act as quickly as

they could think, and, though they might work like niggers when they

were under someone else's orders, an emergency that threw them on their

own resources might find them seriously wanting.

The shadows lengthened as I sped along, the tired yellow sun slipped

down behind the hills like a penny-into-the-slot machine, and the early

April twilight touched all inanimate objects with its own drab lack of

coloring. I had no fear of losing my way in the darkness--I had too much

locality sense for that--but the possibilities of my being ambushed

appeared too many to be pleasant. A hurrying man, who is also

heavily-laden, cannot pick his footsteps with the meticulous care that

he would like, and it seemed within the bounds of probability that some

strange listener might start out on my track and put an abrupt period to

my career of usefulness. I have an unqualified and not unreasonable

objection to being cut off in what is practically the flower of my

youth. I was afraid. I admit that quite frankly, and I have yet to find

the man who has not known fear whenever he drifted into a tight corner.

But fear is not the hall-mark of a coward; it is at worst a natural

impulse to seek safety and take precautions, and at its best it is the

intellectual penalty that a strong man pays for having a will-power that

will not permit him to scurry away from danger and earth himself like a

rabbit in its burrow.

I reached the valley without incident, scrambled down the historic

slope, now as slippery as a child's mud-slide, and was half-way across

the open space before I received my first shock. Some queer sixth sense

pulled me up in mid-stride. I had heard nothing, I had seen nothing; but

for all that I knew that a strange and obtrusive presence was very close

to me. The New Guinea native can at times tell the presence of an enemy

simply by his sense of smell, and I suppose I've lived so long amongst

them that I have acquired something of this kind. Be this as it may, I

was aware of the other man's proximity long before my faculties went

into action and confirmed me in my belief.

I slipped my shoulders out of the pack-strings and dropped it

noiselessly on the ground. At that precise instant I heard a stealthy

movement on my left hand. It was so dark that I could not see an inch in

front of my face, but a little eddy of the breeze brought me the merest

whiff of stale tobacco--the sort of smell that comes from a pipe that

has been put out before it has completely burnt away. It was that dead

scent that always seems to hang about the vicinity of a newly quenched

fire. I was so close that I caught the sound of the man's breathing.

With every second breath there came a barely perceptible wheeze, and in

an instant my mind flashed back to the night of the burglary in Bryce's

house and the man I had caught coming out of the library. I was so sure

of it that I wasted no further time in stalking him; no two men in the

world could have that same regular wheezing breath. It requires a neat

sense of distance to catch an invisible man round the throat when he and

everything else tangible and real is hidden under cover of Stygian

darkness; but this time I made the snatch of my life, and as luck would

have it, had him by the windpipe before he realised that there was

anyone within a quarter of a mile of him. I didn't give him a chance to

cry out--I had no idea how close his friends were, if he had any--but

just threw all my weight into my clutching hands and quietly but

inexorably choked the life out of him. In the struggle his hat fell off

and I released one hand and ran it through his hair. Up till then there

was a lingering suspicion at the back of my mind, that after all I might

have throttled Cumshaw by mistake, but the feel of that straight hair

completely burked the last of my doubts. There was no possible chance of

mistaking Cumshaw's curly crop for the strands I held in my free hand,

for he suddenly went limp under my hands, and when I fumbled for his

heart I could not feel it beating. At the time I felt rather cut up, and

considered that I had practically killed the man in cold blood; but

afterwards, when I came to reckon up the tally of disaster, I was sorry

that I had passed him out so peacefully. There were a lot of other

methods I might have used had I known in time. But then I didn't, and

that makes all the difference.

Satisfied in my own mind that the stranger was out of action for good

and all, I rose to my feet and threaded my way back to where I had left

my pack. I slipped the strings over my shoulders and set off again in

the direction I hoped to find Moira and my companion. But scarcely had I

taken a dozen steps forward when the silence of the night was shattered

by the report of a revolver, and in an instant a perfect fusillade had

begun. I dropped all caution at that. Throwing the pack from off my

shoulders, I drew my revolver as I ran. I simply tore across the

intervening space like a red god of vengeance suddenly descended on a

planet of sin. The sound of the shots had maddened me beyond all belief,

and in my then mood I would have walked single-handed into a whole army.

Luckily for myself I had not gone far before I collided with a wattle

bush, and the scratches I received brought me back to a saner frame of

mind. I saw with an appalling clarity of vision that I was taking the

worst possible course. Cumshaw and Moira were being attacked--that was

beyond question--and my game was to come upon the attackers unawares and

either rout or put as many of them out of action as I could with the

weapons at my command.

So when I moved off again I had slackened my pace down to a stealthy

cat-like tread that took me along with an incredible absence of noise.

As I moved forward I began to turn the configuration of the place over

in my mind and wonder to what practical use I could put the fine natural

cover of the bushes. As I could see none I put the matter out of my head

and devoted all my energies to coming to immediate grips with the men

who had murdered the eternal peace of the valley.

Presently I caught sight of a little red flash from one of the

revolvers, but as I had no idea as to whose it was I held my hand and

commenced to circle round the fight. It must be remembered, in order to

gauge the seriousness of the situation, that the night was as black as

the ace of spades, and that the only guide I had was the occasional

flash from a revolver--a flash that might have come from either friend

or foe; I had nothing to tell me which. It was in this queer fashion

that I was progressing when the toe of my boot touched something soft

and alien. I slipped down by the side of it and ran my hand over it. It

was a man's body--the still warm body from which the pulsing life had

suddenly been hurled. With my experience of the other man I had handled

earlier in the night I felt for the hair, and, to my utter horror, I

clutched a crop of short, crisp curls. It was Albert Cumshaw beyond a

doubt. I did not waste a moment in useless sentimentality over the dead.

The truth flashed across my mind with the blinding clearness of

lightning. Moira was by herself, fighting like some heroic goddess

against those other bestial savages. I know it is the fashion to picture

men in such moments as going berserker, but I don't think in my case

that I have ever been so sanely clear-headed in my life. It was a

monstrous and incredible thing that this quiet little corner of the

quietest little State in Australia should be polluted by the presence of

the incarnate fiends that had murdered Bryce, that had killed Cumshaw,

and were even now seeking to send Moira to join them in the shades. A

cold, pitiless anger took possession of me, and I set about my work of

vengeance as calmly as if I were going rabbit-shooting. I knew now of a

surety that I could shoot at any man who came within range without fear

or favor.

It was then I blessed my stars for the matted undergrowth and the wild

profusion of wattle. The one deadened the sound of my movements and the

other gave me all the cover I needed. The game was now fairly in my

hands, and if I lost it would be through no one's fault but my own. It

was quite evident on the face of it that the attacking force had no idea

that a third party was maneuvering outside the range of fire, and I

counted on that fact to assist me in my work. The one drawback at

present was that I had no notion which was friend and which was foe. The

shots seemed to come from all round the compass, and any one of them

might be Moira's. It was quite on the cards that she was moving round in

a circle, in the full knowledge that every time she fired she shot at an

enemy, and again it was just as likely that she knew nothing at all

about Cumshaw's death. Clearly it was a situation that called for an

immense amount of care on my part.

I had no time to waste puzzling the matter out; whatever I did had to be

done as quickly as possible, for I had no guarantee that the one-sided

warfare might not terminate fatally at any moment. One of the attackers

was just as likely to hit Moira as she was to hit him. I had slipped up

the catch of my revolver long before this, and was carrying it in such a

fashion that it could be fired instantly. I felt ready for any

emergency, and the contingency that presently arose found me well

prepared. There was a stealthy rush through the undergrowth, and a man

backed hastily in my direction. I couldn't see him, but I knew that it

was a man by the sound of the footsteps. There is always a perceptible

difference between the footsteps of a man and a woman, but it requires a

trained ear to pick it out. I slipped down into cover as he rushed back,

and, judging more by sound than sight, I fired as he passed me. He came

down heavily amidst a crash of breaking branches and the smashing of

twigs. "I seem to be the only sure-footed man about to-night," I thought

as the fellow thudded to the ground. At that precise moment, as if to

give the lie direct to me, a deafening report sounded right in my ear, a

pain as of a red-hot needle stabbed through my right shoulder, and I

pitched forward on my face. Even as my nose ploughed through the soft

soil it occurred to me to wonder if I had received a shot intended for

the other man, or if he was not as dead as I had fancied and signalised

his escape by shooting me in his turn. I was more scared than hurt, and

I quickly picked myself up and clapped an anxious hand to my throbbing

shoulder. The ball, by the feel of it, had done nothing worse than skim

through the fleshy part of my arm, and I was in no wise incapacitated. I

thanked my lucky stars that I was whole and entire, save for a spoonful

or so of unwanted blood, for I rather guessed that I had heavy work

ahead of me before I went to sleep that night.

Just as my mind was clearing again I became aware that someone was

striking matches. I distinctly heard the scrape of one along the top of

the box, and I fancied I saw a tiny phosphorescent glow such as a match

makes when it misfires, but in that I may have been mistaken. As I

watched for another flash it dawned on me that the artillery had ceased

fire, and, for aught I knew to the contrary, I was probably the last

bird topped off that night. Therefore the person with the matches could

only be one of the victorious side, and was just as obviously counting

up the casualties.

There came another little interlude of scraping, a match spluttered

undecidedly for a moment and then glowed brightly. After the Stygian

darkness the light came as a queer physical shock, and for the space of

a heart-beat I blinked like an owl in broad daylight. I think the other

person must have been just as much dazzled as I was, for the light died

out and the glowing tip of the match fell to the ground without a

movement from either of us. But it was followed almost instantly by

another match, less damp than its fellow, for it splashed into light

right away. And there in the little circle of radiance I caught sight of

the one face on earth that I ever wished to see again.

"Moira!" I gasped and glided to her side.

She dropped the match in the surprise of the moment, and I heard her

breath come and go before she answered, "You, Jim! Oh, I'm so glad! I

thought perhaps...."

"They didn't," I said grimly, cutting across her thoughts. "It was the

other way about."

"Mr. Cumshaw, Jim? Have you seen him anywhere?"

"No," I said truthfully enough. I hadn't seen him; it had been too dark,

and I dared not strike a match.

"Oh, I'm afraid he's been shot. We got separated in the darkness, and I

don't know what happened to him."

"How did you get separated?" I queried quickly.

"We were making for the cave and I lost him in the dark. After that they

started firing, and I just fired back, more to keep up my courage than

anything."

"But where on earth did you get the revolver? You hadn't one of your

own."

"Yes, I had, Jim. I brought it with me, and I didn't say anything

because I thought you might laugh or else be angry with me."

"You've certainly shown that you know how to use it," I said dryly.

Something in my voice must have told her what had happened. "What do you

mean?" she asked in a frightened tone. "Did I shoot anyone?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "You pinked me. Right in the shoulder. It's only a

flesh-wound; nothing to worry about."

"I've hurt you and I didn't mean to," she wailed.

I reached out and seized her by the shoulders. "Look here, Moira," I

said with a semblance of sternness in my voice, "you've done a man's

work to-night and it's making you hysterical. Don't let it. Pull

yourself together, for heaven's sake if not for mine."

I think it was just that last bit that brought her round. "I'm sorry,

Jim," she said, though what there was to be sorry about was more than I

could say.

"And now, Moira," I ran on before she had time to say anything more,

"the sooner we finish that interrupted journey to the cave the better.

It's not as good as the hut would be if it was still standing, but it

gives us shelter, and that's the main thing. Also we can light a fire

and sleep the night in peace, now that the gang seems to have been

rubbed out for good."

She made no answer, so I took her arm, and thus we commenced our walk

across the valley. I found the pack without any trouble, though my heart

was in my mouth for fear that we would trip over poor Cumshaw's body.

But the luck was with me that night, though it hadn't been with him, and

I reached the pack and hoisted it on my shoulders without either of us

striking any of the victims of the fight. The sting of the wound in my

shoulder made the pack an uncomfortable burden, but I bore it as best I

could, for I was afraid that Moira would notice me if I kept wriggling

it into an easier position. So I fought the pain all the way to the

cave, which we reached in something under five minutes. Moira did not

speak a word all the way, and somehow I hadn't the heart to break the

news of Cumshaw's death to her. It had to be done sooner or later, I

knew, but I was inclined to put it off as long as possible.

Once in the cave I built a little fire of chips and dry bracken that had

somehow escaped the rain. That done I turned with a clear conscience to

the task of making tea. Moira, however, had forestalled me; the billy

was already full, and she but awaited me to adjust the tripod of sticks

that held it in its place over the fire. It was while I was bending over

doing this that she must have noticed the bloodstains on my sleeve. At

any rate, when I straightened up, she looked at me with accusation in

her eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me before that it was as bad as that?" she asked.

"Because it isn't," I answered with cheerful paradox. But she would have

none of my jesting, and if I hadn't allowed her to wash and bind it up

right away I'm afraid I wouldn't have got any tea that night. When she

finished she placed her hands upon my shoulders and kissed me full on

the lips.

"My dear," she said brokenly, "you would die for me, I know, and yet I

so little deserve your love."

I had tact enough to suppress the banality that was trembling on my

lips.

* * * * *

"I wonder what could have happened to Mr. Cumshaw?" she remarked about

an hour later. "You'd have thought he'd have been here long ago if he

was all right."

"Maybe," I said, bending my head over the fire so she would not see my

tell-tale face, "maybe he's not satisfied that this is our party."

There was an interval of silence and, though I did not look up, I knew

that she was regarding me steadfastly. I could feel her eyes boring into

my head like twin gimlets.

"Jim," she said suddenly and sharply, "what are you hiding from me? What

has happened to Mr. Cumshaw? I know something has gone wrong by the way

you're acting."

I raised my eyes to meet hers; it was impossible to hide it any longer.

"The very worst that could happen," I said frozenly, and I dropped my

head once more.

When I looked up again she was crying very softly to herself. I could

understand her sorrow, and for once her regard for the man caused me no

stab of pain; one cannot be jealous of the dead.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SOLUTION.

The grey light of the early dawn found me wide awake and alert. I felt

much fatigued after my exertions of the previous night, and would dearly

have liked to have slept an hour or so longer, but there was that to be

done which would admit of no delay. Further out in the Valley lay three

dead men, and I felt I must get them out of sight before Moira awoke.

Accordingly I scribbled a short note of explanation on a leaf torn from

my pocket-book, placed it in a conspicuous position, and, taking with me

the light spade we had brought with us, I slipped noiselessly out of the

cave. I found the bodies of our two enemies without any trouble, but, to

my great surprise, there was no trace of Cumshaw. He had disappeared as

utterly as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him. True, there

were broken branches and snapped twigs galore, but of signs that would

show me where the body had been taken or what had happened after I had

left, there was absolutely none. For the moment I wondered if it had all

been but a vivid dream, but the sight of the torn and scarred ground and

the memory of the other two bodies told me that it was only too real.

Obviously then the corpse had been moved, but where or by whom I could

not say.

I spent the next half-hour in scouring the valley from end to end, yet

when I had finished I was compelled to admit that I was no nearer to a

solution than before. All the time, of course, there was a perfectly

simple explanation staring me in the face, but it was so infernally

obvious that I missed it.

As my search had not led me any further forward, I shut the matter out

of my mind for the present and turned to the less engrossing though

certainly more pressing task of burying the bodies that remained. The

spot I chose for the grave seemed rather familiar to me, but for the

moment I could not say just what it brought to my mind. I pegged away

with the spade, and had already dug a fair-sized hole when,

unexpectedly, the further side of the grave caved in. I swore under my

breath at this brilliant result of my efforts, and, with the intention

of clearing away the rubble, thrust my spade deep into the loose earth.

It met with a solid obstruction, something that seemed to me like the

root of a tree, or----At that I stopped dead. Could it be possible that

I had struck the foundation of the hut?

The morning we entered the valley Moira had tripped over one of the

loose logs that had once been part of the building, and at the time I

had attached peculiar significance to the discovery; but now it appeared

that I had actually gone one better. Without more ado I made the dirt

fly, and in less time than it takes to tell I had shot away the covering

earth and brought to light the object that had at first drawn my

attention. I saw then, with a gasp of relief, that it was indeed the

eastern foundation of the hut that I had unearthed. Whoever had built

the place had built well, for the thick cross-piece still remained

tightly nailed to the stout posts that had supported the foundation. The

fire that had swept the neighbourhood had somehow failed to consume it,

though subsequent developments had buried it under piles of bracken and

dead brushwood. It was an amazing discovery, and under the circumstances

the luckiest one imaginable. At the very least it enabled me to place

one of the fixed points that were vital to the discovery of the plunder.

At the same time it showed me how I might be able, with a little extra

luck, to locate the sight of the burnt tree.

I went on with my digging.

Half an hour later I finished my self-imposed task, swung the spade over

my shoulder, and prepared to return to the cave. I could see Moira in

the distance moving towards me, and I guessed that my prolonged absence

had made her feel somewhat uneasy.

"Where have you been all the time, Jim?" was her greeting. "I was just

beginning to fear that something had happened to you."

"Something has," I answered, "but not in the way you mean. I've located

the exact position of the hut. That piece of wood you tripped over must

have been only a log that escaped being fully consumed. We're well on

the way towards finding the treasure now."

She eyed me keenly before she spoke again, and I knew what she was going

to ask me almost before she put her thoughts into words.

"Was that all you went to do?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I came out mainly to bury the dead."

She gave a little shudder at that, but her voice was steady enough as

she said, "And you did? All of them?"

I shook my head. "Not him," I said ungrammatically.

"Why?" she demanded, with Heaven knows what idea at the back of the

question.

"Because," I said distinctly, "because he wasn't there."

"Jim, whatever do you mean?" she cried.

"I can't say any more than I've just said," I told her. "When I went to

look I found he wasn't where I'd left him last night, and, though I

searched the valley from end to end, I couldn't find sign or sight of

him."

"It's impossible," she asserted. "You can't make a dead man fade into

thin air like that. If he's not in the valley, he's been taken out of

it."

"And who's taken him out?" I countered. "There's only two ways out.

Nobody's passed us during the night, and anyone that went out through

the wattles would leave a trail like an elephant."

"That's true enough," she admitted crestfallenly. And then she turned on

me swiftly. "Jim," she cried, "it's possible.... He might...."

The idea jumped into my mind at almost the same moment, but it seemed

too preposterous for belief.

"No," I interrupted. "It isn't. He couldn't. Moira, I tell you he was as

dead as a door-nail when I reached him."

She made a little gesture of despair as she realised to the full the

bitter futility of attempting to solve the puzzle, yet I had a feeling

that she had not quite given up hope. She did not make any further

remark on the way back to the cave, and she certainly wasn't as much

thrilled by my discovery of the ruins of the hut as I had expected her

to be. I let her be; it's never safe to divert the current of a woman's

thoughts.

I stepped into the cave ahead of her, and no sooner had I passed from

the light outside into the interior darkness than a crisp voice snapped

at me.

"Hands up!" it said tersely.

I shot my hands into the air more as a measure of precaution than

anything else, for I recognised the voice--the voice that I thought had

been silenced for ever.

"Cumshaw!" I ejaculated.

I could not see him since he was lurking right in the interior shadows,

but some electric quality in the air convinced me that his astonishment

was as great as mine. Nevertheless he answered me in tones that were as

calm as could be.

"So it's yourself, Carstairs," he said. "I'll have to apologise for

being a little previous with you, but you must remember that you are

standing in your own light and I can only see your outline. And----Ah!

here is Miss Drummond too."

He came towards us at that, a dark figure looming out of the gloom. And

the next instant we had him one by each hand and pelted him with

questions.

"I thought you were dead," I said. "How did you come alive again?"

"What happened?" Moira asked.

"How did you get here and what were you doing all night?"

"One question at a time," he said laughingly. "It seems pretty obvious

that I'm not dead, doesn't it?"

"It does," I admitted. "But you were dead, or you appeared to be, when I

left you last night."

"I don't quite understand," he said. "What do you mean?"

I told him then how I had stumbled across his body on my return the

previous evening, how I had identified him, and, satisfied that he was

dead, had left him to attend to more pressing business. I related how I

had scoured the valley that very morning and failed to find the least

trace of him. What was the explanation of the seeming miracle? I asked.

"There's nothing miraculous about it," he said. "Last night I must have

been creased, sort of stunned, you know. The bullet didn't go near any

vital part. It just ploughed along the back of my neck and knocked me

unconscious. I suppose I would seem pretty dead to anyone who stumbled

across me. It's not always so easy for a layman to tell whether a man is

really dead or not. However, I remember coming-to just on daylight, and

hearing someone crashing through the bushes. It struck me then that I

didn't know how things had panned out, so I'd better take cover until I

made sure. So when you were hunting for me I was running away from you,

keeping a couple of jumps ahead all the time. I gradually edged round

towards the cave, and was just in time to see a dim figure slip out into

the bushes. I wasn't close enough to see more clearly. Miss Drummond,

you say. Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't know that then. However, as the

cave seemed deserted after that I took possession with the intention of

turning the tables. And then----But you know the rest yourself. How much

further have we got?"

"Lots," I said. "The others are dead and buried, and I have found the

original site of the hut. Once we locate the lone tree we're right."

"That should be easy enough," said Moira with a woman's airy assurance.

Cumshaw watched us both with a queer smile flickering about his lips.

"What do you think of it, Carstairs?" he said at length.

"I don't fancy there'll be much difficulty in that," I answered. "It

should be plain sailing from now onwards."

"It strikes me," he said, "that we're just entering upon the toughest

stretch of the lot. However, the sooner we get to work the better. I

vote we start right away."

"But, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira protested, "do you think you feel well

enough?"

"Miss Drummond," he answered, "I've got pains all down my neck, and my

head's humming like a hive of bees, and I've got incipient rheumatics in

every joint in my body from lying all night on the damp ground. It's bad

enough to have all that wrong with me, without being compelled to spend

another day in idleness. No, if I get to work at once I'll feel much

better. Work, you know, is a good soporific."

"I suppose you know best," she conceded, a little doubtfully.

"I've been thinking things over," I remarked as we made our way back to

the site of the hut, "and it's just struck me that something I once

heard Bryce say might have some bearing on the matter. The night those

chaps burgled us he said, 'They're up a gum-tree when they should be

under one.' I'm not so sure of the exact words now, but that's the

substance of them anyway."

"But," Cumshaw objected, "he didn't know as much about the Valley then

as we do now."

"Quite so," I said. "I never thought he really meant anything by what he

said, but that remark's been running through my head. It seems to me

that everyone right through has been obsessed by the idea of the tree,

and now that it's disappeared we're at a loose end. Everybody, from your

father and Bradby down to Bryce and ourselves, has taken it for granted

that a tree's vital to the solution."

"Isn't it?" Cumshaw queried quickly.

I shook my head. "Not in the least," I said. "If the tree was absolutely

necessary it'd mean that we'd have to wait until 3rd or 4th of December,

the day on which Bradby buried the treasure, and the only day of the

year on which the sun, the tree and the threshold of the hut would be in

an exact line. Bryce's idea of having to wait three months must have

been conceived in the belief that the 3rd or 4th June would answer

equally well. It might, but I'm not so sure about it. I guess there'd be

a lot of difference in the declination of the sun. But now the tree's

gone we're left without that seemingly necessary leading mark."

"What are we going to do about it?" Cumshaw demanded.

"We can't give up after having gone so far," said Moira.

"We're not," I told her. "There's a way out of it, and the simplest way

on earth. It's so infernally simple that we've all overlooked it. It

narrows down to a simple problem in geometry. Do you remember what the

cypher said?"

"'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 the previous one, extending for twelve feet. Dig then.'"

He rattled through the directions so rapidly that I knew he must have

had them off by heart.

"That's it," I said, while the others listened in breathless interest.

"Now this is the position to my mind: The line that runs through the

doorway, the tree and the sun must go due east. The sun at that time of

the year would be due east. Well, all we have to do is to cast our east

line, carry it along for seven feet, and then turn so that we are facing

direct north."

"And at right angles to the previous line," Moira reminded me.

"It's the same thing," I said. "Direct north runs at right angles to

direct east, if you want to know. However, when we've got our north line

we follow it for twelve feet, and after that we dig. Quite possibly

Bradby made some slight variation--he wouldn't have the necessary

instruments to make his figures absolutely exact--but, as I've said

before, I don't see that we can go very far wrong. Whatever variation

there is won't matter much once we start digging. If we allow a foot or

so in all directions we'll be on the safe side. What do you think,

Cumshaw?"

"Well," he said slowly, "it sounds feasible enough, and if it turns out

as well in practice as it does in theory I'll have nothing to say

against it."

"There's only one way of making sure," I said tentatively.

Moira turned on me. "What's that?" she asked with unfeigned interest.

"Trying and seeing for ourselves," I answered. "Here we are, right on

the very spot, so why not put it to the test?"

Neither of them answered. A queer, speculative look crept into Moira's

eyes and Cumshaw paled a little beneath his tan. It was the crucial

moment of the expedition, and the mere adoption of my suggestion meant

that in the next few minutes we would be face to face with either

failure or success--none of us knew which. While we were in ignorance

there was always room for hope, but the instant our investigation was

concluded the matter would be settled for good or for evil.

"Well," I asked, "what about it?"

"I suppose we've got to do it some time," Cumshaw said slowly. "We might

as well do it first as last. What do you say, Miss Drummond?"

"Ye-es," said Moira in a half-whisper. "Ye-es, I suppose we had better."

"And you, Carstairs?"

"Nothing venture, nothing win," I quoted gaily. "Anyway it's my

suggestion, and I'm not going to fall down on it. I didn't bring the

spade along just for the fun of carrying it."

"Go on then," Cumshaw said.

Then commenced the operation of locating the position of the treasure.

As the one most used to such things I snapped open my pocket-compass,

took a line from the mouldering ruin that had once been the threshold of

the hut, and proceeded to calmly measure off the requisite distance. The

others followed my movements with breathless interest; Cumshaw's cheeks

were still pale, partly from the stress of emotion and partly, I fancy,

because he feared that, even at the last, Fate would play a trick on us

and bring the work of two generations to nothing. Two little red spots

glowed in Moira's cheeks, and in her eyes was an opalescent glow that

spoke of suppressed excitement. I wasn't so carried away by my feelings

as the others were--I had been trained in a rough school, and my

training had taught me at all times to keep an adequate control over my

emotions--but the romance of the adventure and the excitement of the

game had penetrated even my thick skin, and the mere fact that others

hung breathlessly on my movements swayed me a little from the normal.

That streak of vanity which is in all of us came to the surface, as it

does with the best of men at the best of times.

I didn't see how I could possibly make a mistake, and the only thing

that troubled me was the likelihood of some stray prospector having

stumbled on the hoard by accident. At last I reached the spot where the

north line ended, and then calmly and methodically I took off my coat,

folded it, and laid it on the ground. I rolled up my shirt sleeves and

seized the spade in my hands. The others watched me with apprehensive

eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ADVENTURE CLOSES.

I could hear Moira's quick breaths come and go as I worked, and with

each shovelful of soil I turned Cumshaw craned his head a little further

forward.

"Three foot, maybe three foot six," Cumshaw said once, in a voice that

was curiously hoarse. The remark puzzled me for a moment, and then in a

flash I recollected that his father had told Bryce that the hole where

the gold was buried would be three feet or three feet six deep at a

guess.

I went on digging. The hole deepened and widened, and still nothing

appeared. I paused in my work and flung the damp perspiration from my

forehead with a grimy hand. I had been working eagerly, excitedly.

"I'll take a hand now," Cumshaw offered with surprising alacrity.

I shook my head and stabbed the spade further into the earth. It struck

something soft which yet offered a remarkable resistance to the progress

of the instrument. And then in an instant I was down on my knees, the

steaming sting of my perspiring face all forgotten in the wild intense

eagerness of my discovery. I flung the spade about like a mad-man, and

my breath came and went through my teeth with a hissing sound like that

of escaping steam. I was mud and muck from head to foot and my hands

were caked with clay, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered save the

one startling fact that I had struck something that answered to the

description of the stuff we were seeking. At last, after seemingly

eternal hours of incredible toil, though in reality it couldn't have

been more than a few seconds, the earth came away, and my spade lay bare

four bags of mouldering leather--four torn and decaying things through

which came the dull golden gleam of minted metal. With a smothered cry

Cumshaw threw himself on the saddle-bags and hugged and clawed them like

a man gone demented. For the moment there came a curious vulpine look

into his face, and then it passed so swiftly that I could have fancied

that it had never been there or anywhere else save in my imagination.

"We've found it at last," I said, and was surprised to find how thin my

voice had become. It was the first rational word since I had begun to

dig, and it acted on Cumshaw like a douche of cold water. He dropped the

bags as if he had been stung, and climbed out of the hole rather

shamefacedly.

Moira opened her mouth as if to speak and then shut it again. Ludicrous

as it all looked, it was sufficient to show me just how unbalanced sane

people can become at the sight of gold. The three of us looked at each

other, and then I fancy we all laughed, albeit a little hysterically.

The rest is soon told. We got the rotting bags out somehow, and portion

of their contents spilled out on the ground, though we didn't mind that

at the time. There was more money in each of the bags than any one of us

had ever handled before. In the light of what happened afterwards I'm

positive that it was Cumshaw who suggested filling up the hole.

"A good idea," I thought. A gaping hole in the ground might attract the

attention of strangers and lead to further enquiries--the kind of

enquiries that would not be welcomed by us. I had thrown all but the

last shovelful in when Cumshaw drew something from his pocket, looked at

it a moment, and then, with a muttered exclamation, threw it into the

hole and trod it deep into the earth. I got but the one look at it, and

it seemed to me to be an ordinary leather-covered pocket-book. I was on

the point of asking him the meaning of his action when I chanced to

glance up at his face, and what I saw there made me shut my lips down

like a steel trap. I said nothing, and beyond my first natural start of

surprise I don't think I gave myself away at all.

* * * * *

It doesn't matter just how much we made out of it. If I were to write

down the exact figures no one would believe them or me; but when I say

that neither Cumshaw nor I--for Moira pooled her share with mine after

all--will have to do a hand's turn again as long as we live, some idea

can be gained of what was in those four decaying saddle-bags. To place

gold, more especially minted coin, in circulation in this year of grace

one thousand nine hundred and twenty requires more ingenuity than most

men are possessed of, and frankly I could see no way out of it for many

a long day. But in the end I struck an unexpected solution. What that

solution was is neither here nor there: the expedients I resorted to

would, if written down, fill a longer and perhaps a more exciting volume

than this. Some day, when old age is creeping on me and the good opinion

of my neighbours has almost ceased to matter, I may tell the tale in its

entirety.

As we had no desire to attract more attention than we could help we did

not attempt to take the gold along with us. Instead we buried it in a

secluded spot not far from the railway, and a week or so later Cumshaw

and I returned in the car for it.

* * * * *

"I wonder," I said, "how those chaps managed to find out so much about

everything? Of course they were paralleling Bryce's investigations, but

that doesn't explain all; they knew more about some things than he did

himself."

We were sitting round the fire one evening a month or so later. Moira

and I had just returned from our honeymoon, and Cumshaw had dropped in

with the news that his father was in the hands of a noted alienist who

hoped in time to completely cure the old man. The announcement had set

us talking about our recent experiences, and _apropos_ of them I had

uttered the above remark.

"I've often wondered," Moira said, "how they first learnt about the

treasure."

There was silence for a space and then Cumshaw spoke. "I rather fancy,"

he said, "that they knew about its existence long before Mr. Bryce did."

Moira shot a startled glance at him and I said, "Whatever do you mean?"

"You remember that pocket-book I threw into the trench the day we found

the treasure?"

I nodded. "Yes," said Moira breathlessly.

"I found that in the grass early in the morning before I went up to the

cave. It was a diary belonging to a man named Alick Blane. I didn't read

it right through--I didn't have the time for one thing--but what I did

see told me all I wanted to know. I buried it in the trench because I

did not want what was written in the book to be published to the world.

It was one of those things that are better kept out of sight and

circulation."

"But what was it?" I queried.

He looked at us a moment as if debating with himself whether or not to

tell us.

"Alick Blane's father was the trooper who shot Bradby," he said, and

left us to imagine all the rest.

THE END.